‘And now you want me to grovel in defeat?’ Nero suggested.
Her gaze dropped to his lips, adrenalin still raging through her. ‘No. I want more than that.’
She thought she was safe taunting him? Nero’s head only dropped minutely, as if he were thinking about this. The next thing she knew, she was in his arms.
The heat of the
chase had made her crazy, Bella concluded as Nero’s mouth crashed down on hers—crazy for Nero. A lifetime of wondering and longing, and ultimate disappointment and embarrassment, was all worth it for it to end like this in a fierce pampas kiss—not a vain old man’s kiss, but a gaucho’s kiss—a real man’s kiss—a kiss that was certain and firm, and teasing, and exciting, and so much more than she had ever dreamed a kiss could be.
Fire met fire. They should have burned each other out. Not a chance. Sharp black stubble scored soft, pale skin. Pain was pleasure. The hot, experienced South American and the cool, inexperienced Englishwoman. Surely, it should have been unmitigated disaster—it wasn’t. It was fire and ice, heat and need, action and pressure, gripping, grasping, seizing, holding, punctuated by groans of ecstasy and growls of intent. And all the time the heat was mounting. Even the horses had moved away. Who’d have thought it? The Ice Maiden had finally melted and met her match.
No… No!… No! What was she thinking? Theirs was a professional relationship. She had to recover the situation somehow!
Which hardly seemed likely when her body was an out of control, wanton, craving force. And if she was any other woman, it might be possible to go right ahead with this and deal with the consequences later, in a cool and professional manner. But she would never recover her self-respect if she didn’t get out fast. She didn’t have the savvy, the nous, the tools…
‘Please—’ Pulling away, she combed her hair with her fingers into some semblance of order. ‘Forgive me…’ She added a light laugh that sounded as insincere as it was. ‘I don’t usually get carried away like this.’ All this in a cut-glass accent as foreign to her as Nero’s South American drawl. ‘The excitement of the chase…’ She glanced at Nero to judge his reaction, only to find she had missed the mark by a mile or so. His face was a mask of sardonic disbelief.
‘You’d like to talk about the scheme now?’ he suggested.
‘Yes, yes, I would,’ she exclaimed with relief, blanking the sarcasm in his voice.
There was time to see little more than a flash of movement—amused eyes and a tug of Nero’s lips—before she was in his arms again. ‘I don’t want to talk,’ he murmured. To prove the point, he teased her with his tongue and with his teeth, brushing the swell of her bottom lip with kisses until she was struggling to breathe and arousal hit every erotic zone at once, leaving her whimpering with need, and longing for release. But he hadn’t taken possession of her mouth yet and, when he did, plunging deep into her moist warmth in a blistering approximation of what he could be doing to her, she responded as he must have known she would, by arcing upwards, seeking contact in a frenzy of excitement.
And Nero’s answer to this loss of self-control?
He pulled away, leaving her in a daze.
She had been dazzled by the master of control. It was this foreign land and their exotic surroundings, Bella reasoned, the unfamiliar trees rustling a very different tune, and the small, angry stream bursting through the ground on its way to the sea. She was lost in a terrifyingly wild open space on a scale she couldn’t even begin to describe.
All this was her fault, Bella convinced herself, tying her hair back in a signal to them both that this mistake was well and truly over.
Who was she trying to kid? She certainly wasn’t fooling Nero who, having had time to process the data, was now regarding her with barely controlled amusement. ‘Don’t tie your hair up on my account,’ he said.
‘Lady Godiva of the pampas?’ Bella grimaced as she pretended to consider this. ‘I don’t think so, do you?’
‘Depends on whether you think I want to see you naked.’
She flinched inwardly. ‘Believe me, you really don’t.’
Nero knocked some dried grass from his breeches. ‘Concerned you might disappoint me?’
‘Concerned?’ She laughed it off. ‘Why should I be? And, anyway, as you won’t get the chance to find out…’
‘You’re supposing I want that chance.’
But he did, Bella thought as she went to find Misty. And, more worrying that that, so did she.
She drew a sharp breath as Nero caught hold of her arm. ‘Why do you always pull back from the brink, Bella?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t lie to me—I sensed the change in you while I was kissing you.’
Her hand was already at her mouth. ‘The change in me?’ she repeated, pretending surprise though the proof that she had been violently aroused was emblazoned on her lips.
‘You know what I mean,’ Nero insisted.
Brazening it out and holding his gaze, she snapped, ‘Do I?’