JENNIE LUCAS - One Night in Madrid - Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife / The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin / The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

He had been off balance, true. This week had left his brain clouded, his emotions raw, but that was no excuse. One kiss, one touch and he had been in the power of his libido and it was as if all the time he had spent maturing, learning control, becoming a man and not a wayward boy, had been stripped away, leaving him a prey to his most basic, most primitive desires in a second.

But then Alannah had always been able to do that to him. From the moment they had first met, less than three years before, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her. Her body called to his in the way that no other woman had ever done, before or since, and he had never felt so out of control, so much as if his life wasn’t his own. He hadn’t liked it then—and he liked it one hell of a lot less now.

Because nothing was as he had believed it to be.

Last time he had proposed marriage to her. And she had laughed in his face and walked away to be with another man—or so she had claimed. But the woman he had taken to bed just now had been a virgin, as innocent as she had been two years ago.

Which meant that two days ago, when he had believed that she was coming on to him in order to get what she wanted from him, in fact.

In fact, what?

Pushing both hands through his hair again, he turned back into the room, and, seeing the mobile phone still lying on the table where he had slammed it, picked it up and pressed the speed-dial button for Carlos. When the chauffeur answered he spoke quickly to his driver, keeping it as brief as possible. Alannah would be waiting and he was impatient to get back to her.

He didn’t think he had been very long, but by the time he opened the door into the bedroom it was obvious that he had taken too much time. And Alannah’s mood had changed as a result.

She was no longer in the bed where he’d left her. Instead, she was up and had dressed again … at least, as well as she could, with the buttons—as many of them as were left intact—fastened up and her dress pulled together where she could close the gaps that revealed the pale green silk and lace of her bra, the peachy tones of her flesh.

But it was her expression that concerned him most. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, the stiffness of her body, spine straight, head held high, and the frozen, stiff-mouthed, distant-eyed look that told of a very different frame of mind from that of the ardent, sensual woman he had had in his arms no more than a few minutes before.

Silently and savagely cursing the ill-timed appearance of the porter, Raul hid his frustration behind a smile.

‘He’s gone now. You can relax.’

Relaxing looked like the last thing on her mind as she got up from the bed, fingers clutching tightly at the front of her dress, dragging it closed where it gaped worst.

‘If you’d arrange for that car to take me home now,’ she said in a small, stiff, oh-so-typically-English voice, ‘I’d be very much obliged.’

Raul’s breath hissed in through his teeth in a sound of fierce exasperation.

‘And I’d be obliged if you’d stop freezing up and come back here so that I can kiss you again—’

Green eyes clashed with gold, hers so defiant that he felt he could almost see the sparks flashing from them and snapping in the air. Oh, damn that porter to hell! His timing just couldn’t have been worse.

‘I don’t think so—I don’t think that this is a good idea.’

‘You don’t think!’ Raul exploded. ‘You don’t. No, look …’ he amended hastily, seeing the way she stepped back at his outburst, the clouded look that had come into her eyes. ‘Alannah, querida —just stop this nonsense. Just don’t think. It doesn’t help matters.’

‘Help what?’

‘Thinking just gets in the way—what we have doesn’t need thought, or sense, it just needs this …’

He reached for her, wanting to kiss her back into the hot, hungry state she had been in just moments before, The hot, hungry, demanding state where she had been clutching at his arms, his back, his hair, anything she could get her hands on to hold him closer, bringing him as tight against her body as he could be. But she dodged away from his hand, moving to the far side of the room, where she faced him, stubborn defiance stamped into every line of her face.

‘This isn’t going to happen again,’ she flung at him, stamping her foot in emphasis, though because she was barefooted and the carpet was soft and thick the result was obviously not what she had hoped for. The glare she turned on him warned him not to laugh, so he swallowed down his amusement though some of it still lingered in his voice.

‘Of course it’s going to happen again. We can’t stop it—we don’t have any say in the matter.’

‘On the contrary—I have plenty of say in the matter and what I’m saying is no.’

‘That’s not what you were saying just now—in there.’

A tilt of his dark head indicated the abandoned bed, where the covers and pillows were still crumpled and in disarray.

‘Are you going to claim that—?’

‘I’m not claiming anything,’ Alannah cut in on him sharply. ‘Only that I want to go home. And you have a plane to catch. And I have no intention of being slotted in for a quick tumble to while away the time between now and the point where you have to leave. So if you will please call your driver …’

‘I’ve called him already,’ Raul pointed out.

If her problem was that she thought he was going to spare her only a minimum of time then she couldn’t be more wrong. He had no intention of rushing this. There was no way in hell that she was going to be just a ‘quick tumble’.

‘And told him not to come at the time we originally arranged but to leave it until I called him. But if you’re worried about the plane then—’

‘I don’t give a damn about the plane! I’m well aware of the fact that Don High and Mighty Il Duque Raul Marcín has the power and the money to have a private plane at his beck and call so that all you have to do is snap your fingers and the pilot is ready to fly as and when you command. But you needn’t think that you can do the same with me.’

Now he couldn’t hold back the laughter. This was just too ridiculous.

‘I don’t have to snap my fingers—just use them to touch you, and you’ll be mine to do exactly as I command.’

He moved forward, hand raised, fingers spread, to show her just how stupid this all was. But she started like a nervous horse, edging backwards again, and this time her hand actually came up and dashed his aside with a sharp slap before she whirled away from him, moving swiftly to the other side of the room.

‘Don’t you dare! I don’t want this!’

‘You don’t want …’

This time his laughter was cold, hard, no trace of humour in it anywhere.

‘You little liar,’ he said in a low, deadly tone. ‘You wanted it only too much just now—so what the hell has changed your mind?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s changed my mind.’

Her chin came up, her eyes flashing even more, and Raul couldn’t help but be distracted by the way that the unevenness of her breathing made the precariously fastened dress gape even more, exposing the smooth swell of her breasts, rising and falling in the most provocative way.

‘Please do.’

‘You changed it!’

‘I did? And how?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? You come sauntering back in here, clearly expecting that I’ll be waiting for you—just dying to finish what we started! I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you didn’t think that I might have stayed naked and ready in this bed—’ a wild gesture with one hand indicated the bed that now stood between them ‘—to save time!’ ‘I told you—’

‘Yes, I know what you told me. You told me that you had already phoned your driver—that you were so sure of your conquest that you didn’t bother to check whether I was still—still up for it—before you postponed your travel plans so that you could have a quick—’