Kate Walker - The Alcolar Family

Only to find that she was no longer the softly sensual sleeper he had left curled up in the bed, as if still feeling his presence beside her. Instead she had turned back into the woman he had been having so much trouble with over the past weeks. The woman who was edgy, touchy, sharp-tongued and impossible to understand. The woman whose moods were difficult to predict, whose mind seemed so often to be elsewhere, lost in thoughts he couldn’t discover.

‘I thought—’

‘You thought that because we’d had a—a hot night—that I would be quite content to lie here, stark naked, and just wait for my lord and master to come back and take up from where we left off?’

‘Yes—no! Well—what the devil would be wrong with that?’

Okay, so he hadn’t expected her to lie there and wait for him, but he certainly wasn’t going to object to the idea of it! But how he wished she hadn’t said ‘stark naked’. He’d been aware of the fact that she had no clothes on, of course. No red-blooded male could look at that luscious body and not be aware of that. But they were often naked with each other, usually totally comfortably, and he was trying to be relaxed about it.

But the words stark naked , together with the implication of her just lying there, combined with heated memories of the night before, had served to scramble his brain. That was rubbing his nose in things, reducing his thought processes from efficient to single-minded so that they could run on only one track. And a very basic one at that—one that was in no way conducive to holding a rational argument with an illogically furious woman who was standing right in front of him stark damn naked!

‘What the devil…?’ Cassandra repeated, the words rushing through her teeth on a violent breath. ‘Do you really think that I would be prepared to do that?’

‘Well, you are still here in my room,’ Joaquin pointed out, ‘Waiting for me. And…’

He let his eyes drop, his gaze skimming over the soft curves, the slender limbs exposed to him, the shadow of curls between her legs. He immediately recognised his mistake as his body subjected him to a sharp, stinging twist of desire that changed the fit of his trousers from comfortable to way too tight in the space of a heartbeat.

‘And you are naked,’ he muttered, roughly, struggling with the feeling.

Cassandra’s reaction disturbed him.

For the first time since they had been together, she looked totally shocked, embarrassed at realising that she was wearing no clothes. Her hands came up to cross over her chest, her eyes darkening, and her mouth actually fell open slightly in horror. Not even on the first time they had slept together had she looked like this. This was new. And it was something he didn’t like at all.

‘Here…’

Reaching for the nearest thing to hand, he flung the black cotton robe at her.

‘Put that on.’

As she scrambled into the concealing garment, her haste betraying the way she was feeling, he had to admit to himself that he didn’t know whether he had offered her the robe to ease her evident embarrassment or to soothe his own disturbed state of mind. He just couldn’t think straight with her standing there before him. Totally nude. Indignation had put a spark in her eyes, brought a rush of blood to the surface of her skin—even her body was washed with the flush of pink—and it was damnably distracting.

In spite of the fact that she obviously wished it weren’t, her nakedness was pure provocation to any living, breathing male. Everything that was masculine in him urged him to respond in the most primitive, basic way. But he knew from Cassandra’s expression that to do so would be the most foolish move he could make.

So he had to get her covered up—and fast! And the black robe was the only thing he could find.

Not that it really helped, he acknowledged a moment later as Cassandra pulled the soft cotton firmly round herself, belting it tightly at her waist. The robe was his and it totally swamped her, coming almost to her ankles, the sleeves hanging way down at the ends of her arms, the wrap-over front gaping loosely at her throat and revealing the beginning of the curves of her breasts. In its own way, the item of clothing was a whole new form of torture, making her look even more feminine and vulnerable, emphasising the fragility of her bones at ankle and wrist, the slender, satin-skinned lines of her neck.

But it was the look in her eyes that stung so sharply.

‘ Maldito sea! ’ he muttered violently as she tied another knot in the belt for good measure. ‘There’s no need to act as if just my look will contaminate you!’

The dark savagery in his tone brought her head up, her eyes widening in shock. He supposed he should explain that his anger was more at himself, and the conflict that was going on between his brain and his groin, than at her. But the truth was that he didn’t think he could put it into words. And besides, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to try to explain something that he really didn’t understand himself. Didn’t want to reveal raw, unformed thoughts when he had no idea at all what her response might be.

‘I—I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘No—then what were you thinking, querida ?’

He laced the term of affection with an acid that turned it into something the exact opposite of loving.

‘Why should my seeing your body—the body I have seen, touched, kissed a thousand times before now—why should that suddenly turn into a crime?’

‘I never said that!’

‘No, but you sure as hell implied it!’

His eyes raked over her now carefully concealed body and he didn’t trouble to try and hide the hot anger that was forcing its way up through his control, like lava pushing through the surface of a volcano, and pouring out down the sides.

‘But don’t you think that it’s a little too late to suddenly turn prim and proper? You weren’t so coy about being with me last night.’

‘Last night was last night!’ Cassandra flung at him, blue eyes flashing defiance. ‘It was different!’

‘Different how?’ he demanded. ‘And today is—what? A time for second thoughts?’

Her inability to answer, the way that her eyes dropped away from his, almost destroyed him. Holding on tight to what little was left of his shattered self-control, he forced himself to speak through lips that might have been carved from wood, they felt so stiff and unresponsive.

‘I thought you enjoyed it!’

The need to fight the heavily erotic images that his brain was throwing at him, and the knowledge that his body was reacting hard and fast to just the thought of the things he remembered, the things he had done, the things he would love to do again, loosened his control over his tone. The comment came out harder, coarser than he had ever planned, and to judge from Cassandra’s face that was what she felt too.

‘And enjoyment is everything?’

Blazing defiance burned in her eyes, warning him that he had well overstepped the line, wherever the line that she now laid down might be.

‘It’s a pretty damn important part of things!’ he tossed at her in furious exasperation. ‘I never heard you complain before!’

‘And because I never complained, that means that nothing is wrong?’

‘Cassie, if you mean to complain about something—then at least do me the courtesy of letting me know what I’m accused of.’

Cassie. There it was again, Cassie thought. There was Joaquin’s own particular usage of the shortened form of her name. The one that warned, that spoke ominously of danger to come.

Just the thought of it dried her mouth, shrivelling all hope of an answer into ashes on her tongue. She couldn’t find a word to say to him, no way of broaching the fears that burned so sharply in her mind that she was afraid he might be able to look into her eyes and read them there.