‘I didn’t mean it like that, Raul!’ Polly argued strickenly as she sprang off the bed.
‘So far you have had everything your way, but here it stops,’ Raul delivered, his cold rage unconcealed. ‘If you refuse to behave like a normal wife, don’t expect me to behave like a husband!’
Shocked and distressed by the savage anger she had provoked, Polly clutched at his arm as he reached for his jacket, ‘Raul, I—’
He swung back and closed a powerful arm round her slight body, imprisoning her. He meshed long fingers into her hair, forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘First you bargain with my son, then you bargain with sex.’
Breathless and trembling, she gazed up at him, lost herself in the brilliance of his shimmering dark eyes. ‘No!’ she protested painfully.
Bending, Raul slid his arm below her slim hips and lifted her unceremoniously up to his level, crushing her swelling breasts into the muscular wall of his chest. Her nostrils flared on the enervating, hot, husky male scent of him. Hard black eyes assailed hers and held them by pure force of personality. ‘You will not dictate terms to me. You will not demand empty and meaningless guarantees. A proper wife doesn’t put a price on her body!’
‘I...I wasn’t doing that—’
&nb
sp; ‘The marriage is on trial...I am not!’ Raul stressed forcefully. ‘I will not be judged on the basis of my past!’
Polly couldn’t get breath into her lungs. Soft lips parting, she snatched in tiny little pants, drowning against her volition in the power of those compelling dark eyes.
‘You’re such a little hypocrite,’ Raul delivered in a contemptuous undertone, scanning her dilated pupils and flushed cheeks. A sensually intent glitter flared in his assessing gaze, giving him the look of a tiger about to spring as he cupped her chin, lean fingers lingering to smoothly stroke the smooth curve of her jaw. ‘This close to me, you’re like a stick of dynamite hoping for a match!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
Striding over to the bed, Raul lowered her and followed her down onto the divan in one smooth, lithe motion. ‘Then let me show you...’
Before she could even guess his intention, he had anchored her in place with one long, powerful thigh and brought his hard, mobile mouth crashing down on hers. With his tongue he plundered the sensitive interior with raw, erotic thoroughness. She groaned, plunged helplessly into the grip of mindless pleasure. He slid a hand beneath her, arching her up into contact with the aggressive thrust of his arousal, sending a cascade of fire trickling through her veins to accelerate every pulse.
Raul lifted his head. Her eyes were dazed, her ripe mouth reddened and swollen. Looking up at that lean, strong face, she trembled, caught up in a spell she was too weak to fight. With a slumberous smile, Raul flicked loose the tiny pearl buttons on the lace bodice of her nightie. And all the time Polly was involuntarily watching him, studying the black density and length of the lashes fanning his high cheekbones—the sole feminising influence in those hardboned features—the luxuriant ebony hair tumbled by her fingers on to his brow, the blue-black shadow already roughening his strong jawline. All male, stunningly sexy
‘You have beautiful breasts,’ Raul sighed.
Disconcerted, she followed the direction of his gaze. Thunderstruck, she stiffened and flushed at the sight of her own breasts, rising bare and shameless for his appraisal, her nipples already distended into wanton pink buds. ‘Raul...?’ she mumbled unevenly, lying there, wanting to cover herself, wanting to move, and yet inexplicably powerless to attempt to do either.
He allowed his thumb to delicately rub over one prominent peak, and her whole body jerked on the wave of sudden sensation that made her teeth grit in sensual shock and fired an insistent throb between her thighs.
‘And you are so responsive,’ he husked, angling back from her and then, without any warning whatsoever, smoothly sliding off the bed to spring upright again.
She suddenly found herself lying there alone and exposed, and a muffled cry of dismay escaped Polly. She rolled over onto her stomach, shaken, bewildered eyes pinned to Raul. Hooking his jacket on one forefinger, he glanced back at her from the door, bronzed face saturnine, black eyes several degrees below freezing.
‘I could take you any time I wanted...and I will,’ he swore, soft and low.
‘You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do!’
‘Oh, yes, I can, gatita. Haven’t the last five minutes taught you anything?’ Raul skimmed back with merciless cool. ‘You have an amazing capacity to lose yourself in passion. By the time I’m finished with you, you will be begging me to share the marital bed!’
Polly was already so devastated by what he had just done to her that she just gaped at him, heart sinking like a stone, stomach clenching sickly. A cruelly humiliating and deliberate demonstration of sexual power from a male who had homed in like a predator on her one weakness. Him. She was appalled by a depth of diabolic calculation alien to her own more open nature.
‘A car will pick you up tomorrow evening. We’re flying home,’ Raul drawled indolently as he sauntered out through the door. ‘Buenas noches, Señora Zaforteza.’
She listened to him walk down the corridor, her hands bunched into fists. She wanted to scream with angry frustration and pain. She hated him, but she hated herself more. He had kissed her and nothing else had mattered. Now her body ached with guilty, unfulfilled passion, the enemy of every fine principle she had ever believed in. She was finally finding out how hard it was to withstand physical temptation.
And Raul? she thought furiously. Raul had simply walked away, content to have made his point in the most ego-crushing manner available.
CHAPTER SIX
POLLY sat in a comfortable seat in the spacious cabin of Raul’s private jet and suppressed a sigh. Luis was asleep in his skycot and Raul had still to arrive. He had been delayed.
She glanced curiously at Irena, the young and pretty stewardess watching out for Raul’s arrival. A sultry brunette, she looked like a model in her smart uniform, but in spite of the long wait she had coolly avoided any real contact with her employer’s wife. A man’s woman, uninterested in her own sex, Polly had decided.