Carole Mortimer - The Balfour Legacy

‘Put the dish down, Kat,’ he said slowly.

‘What did you think I was going to…?’ But her bravado suddenly deserted her as she saw something written on his face—a look which pierced her heart and her body like an erotic arrow. It was desire—raw, undisguised and urgent. ‘C-Carlos?’ she questioned, her voice and her hand shaking as she put the pasta down. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’ll give you three guesses.’

He was on his feet now, moving with the lithe grace of some dark panther as he stalked towards her, as if he were the predator and she his prey. Almost roughly, he pulled her into his arms and Kat stared up at him in confusion.

‘But you said…’ she whispered in confusion.

‘To hell with what I said—I’ve already broken every rule in the book for you, Kat Balfour, so why not break one more and have done with it?’ he demanded, as his mouth came down hungrily on hers.

The kiss was hot, breathless. Two mouths meeting and mingling with urgent greed. Kat shuddered as her hands flew to his shoulders while his own snaked possessively around her waist. She tried telling herself that his stark declaration of desire hadn’t contained a single word of affection, and surely she shouldn’t settle for that. But as his lips continued to sweetly plunder hers, all her doubts just melted away. Sucked into the powerful vortex of newly awoken desire, she found herself wondering just where all this was going to lead. Up here, on deck…surely he wasn’t planning to…to…

But abruptly, he terminated the kiss and, catching hold of her hand, wordlessly led her towards his cabin.

Kat hadn’t been in Carlos’s bedroom since she’d taken that rather resentful tour of the yacht on the day she’d arrived, before he had flown in by helicopter. It seemed a lifetime ago, and yet she could count off the days on one hand. A few days and your life could change for ever…

‘Carlos—’

‘Do you know what we’re going to do for the next two weeks?’ he questioned silkily. ‘I am going to take you to heaven and back, Princesa . I am going to show you a hundred different ways to make love.’ His voice dipped. ‘And then a hundred more.’

‘I…I—’

‘Sssh. Just kiss me,’ he commanded unsteadily.

An unmistakable note of hunger had now deepened his voice and it was strong enough to make her forget her fears. Strong enough to make her feel his equal again—her, the woefully inexperienced Kat Balfour feeling the equal of this worldly wise and powerful Spaniard. How crazy was that? But she did. In that hot and breathless moment she did . ‘Oh, Carlos,’ she whispered helplessly, as she drifted her mouth against his.

Inexplicably, Carlos’s hands were trembling, and for the first time in his life he had difficulty yanking down the zip on a pair of woman’s jeans. But Kat proved bold. She slid his silk shirt off as if she had just been taught the most erotic way to remove an article of clothing—and where she laid his flesh bare, her lips followed, anointing tiny butterfly kisses on his skin.

Her soft, sweet seduction almost took his breath away, and Carlos tumbled her down onto the silken counterpane which covered his vast bed, his hands reacquainting themselves with all her soft curves and secret places as if it had been months since he’d last touched her body, instead of hours. Burying his head between the lush warm globes of her breasts, he could feel her squirm with excitement beneath the flickering path of his tongue. His mouth drifted to one rose-peaked nipple and he heard her gasp as it puckered in his mouth.

‘Carlos!’

‘Sí, Princesa — qué pasa?’

Kat’s fingers tangled in his black curls as waves of pure pleasure washed over her. ‘K-kiss me.’

‘Oh, I will kiss you,’ he murmured, with a low growling laugh. ‘Don’t you worry your beautiful head about that.’

Kat had meant a kiss—a proper kiss—but now his dark head was drifting down towards her belly. And his tongue was sliding into the faint dip there and flicking at her so playfully that she felt quite faint. He was certainly kissing her, but…kissing her there ? She shuddered as a wave of pleasure racked through her body, accompanied by another wave of disbelief and wonderment. ‘C-Carlos.’

‘Mmm?’ Now his lips were brushing over the soft fuzz of hair between her thighs, hearing her tiny gasp as he parted her legs and began to lick at her honeyed sweetness.

Kat couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think. She was aware that she was trembling as tiny shimmerings of pure excitement began to build inside her, promising the same pleasure as he’d bestowed on her during the night. Just as she was aware of the sensation of Carlos’s mouth kissing her at the focal point of her femininity. It felt almost unbearably intimate and yet—bizarrely—it also felt like the most natural thing in the world.

The shimmerings now became little peaks—a whole range of sensations which began to hum and throb deep inside her, like a heavily laden honeybee about to topple from a flower.

‘Oh!’ she breathed—and then she clutched his broad shoulders. ‘Oh, oh, oh !’

Inhaling the distinctive scent of her arousal, Carlos sucked deeply on her throbbing flesh while she orgasmed against his mouth, her sighs of satisfaction sounding like tiny gasps of disbelief.

He moved back up to lie over her, brushing her tousled black hair away from her flushed face. ‘You liked that?’ he asked eventually, a finger moving to trace the trembling outline of her lips.

Liked it? Kat was so overawed by what had just happened to her—so seduced by the subsequent gentling of his tone—that she couldn’t hold back on the way she was feeling. Lifting her hand to one olive cheek, she let it trail deliciously over the dark rasp of his jaw. ‘It was…it was wonderful.’

‘Then let’s make it even more wonderful, shall we?’ But this time he reached for the condom he’d laid in readiness by the bedside and he saw her watching him from between slitted blue eyes as he carefully ripped open the wrapping. ‘Better not make the same mistake again,’ he declared, as he took her into his arms once more, softening her with kiss after kiss until she was ready for that first sweet thrust.

And afterwards, Kat lay there, curled against his hard body, watching the sunlight which was shafting in from the portholes while one word danced around in her mind. Mistake , he had said, as he had slid on the protection and moved over her with dark intent in his eyes.

Carefully, she turned her head to look at him, but his eyes were closed—the harsh lines of strain on his face now dissolved by the recuperative power of sleep. In repose, his face seemed softer, but no less formidable for that. The strong line of his jaw and the proud slash of his cheekbones still spoke of a certain arrogance, and strength.

His was the face and the body of the hunter—strong and powerful—with the finest genes and an unmistakable air of dominance. The kind of man that nature had conditioned women to desire. Instinctively, Kat let her hand flutter down to lie on her belly. How flat it felt—and yet, even now, his child might be growing there. Layer upon layer of tiny cells building by the minute, the hour. How big would it be by the end of the week? By the end of two?

Her heart gave a leap of something which felt uncomfortably close to excitement and, with an effort, she forced the thought away. But then, she’d had a lot of practice at pushing away disturbing memories. And it was pointless getting worked up by a pregnancy which probably didn’t exist outside her imagination.

What if it did? What if she was carrying the Spaniard’s child?