The Alcolar Family: The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail

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.

‘Well, Cassie?’ Joaquin asked, the smile that accompanied the words sending a cold, creeping shiver down the length of her spine. ‘Nothing to say? Nothing to complain about?’

What could she say? She had to say something. But with Joaquin in this mood, this dangerous, alien, disturbing mood, she didn’t dare just launch into the real reasons for the way she was feeling.

‘You’re going to work!’ she blustered and heard his short, harsh bark of totally sceptical laughter.

‘I’m going to work,’ he endorsed cynically. ‘As I do nearly every day. Is there a problem with that?’

‘I…’

Cassie pulled the edges of the robe closer together over her breasts, feeling even more than ever the desperate need to hide away from his burning, searching eyes and the way they were fixed on her face, seeming to probe right into her soul.

‘I didn’t think you would—at least not today.’

Coward! she reproached herself. If she was honest, then today was not what mattered—but Friday. The anniversary of the day they had first come together. That was what was really important to her.

‘And why particularly not today?’

Abruptly Joaquin swung away, pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he paced across the floor to the window and back. And then back again. Then just as Cassie, unable to bear the resemblance to the restless prowling of a sleek, caged, restless jungle cat, feared her tongue might run away with her, he suddenly whirled round again and looked deep into her unhappy eyes.

‘Oh, I see—because of last night? You didn’t want me to go because…’

‘I thought we needed to talk!’ Cassie rushed in, desperate to try and bring the conversation round to the topic of their future. Clearly Joaquin simply thought that all she wanted was a long, luxurious day in bed, and that was not at all the way she wanted things to go.

‘And I have to work. If you recall, I came home to work yesterday, but I didn’t get the work I had planned done, did I?’

And whose fault was that? the look in his eyes, the faint curve to his mouth, demanded. Who had distracted him, seducing him away from his desk with the enticement of her body? Who had offered sex instead of work?

‘You don’t need to work,’ Cassie muttered mutinously.

If he never worked again, it wouldn’t matter. The wine business was so firmly established, so hugely profitable, that he could appoint a manager, sit back and enjoy a luxurious income for the rest of his life. She admired the fact that he did work, that he didn’t just live the life of a playboy, but right now she wasn’t prepared to concede that. She wanted to get her point across and, feeling the way she did, she would argue that black was white if that was what was needed to win her case.

‘I want to work.’

Joaquin’s tone had hardened, and the half-smile that had been on his face a moment before had vanished like mist before sun. It was only when she saw how bleak and icy his expression looked without it that Cassie realised just how much easier, more approachable that smile had made him look and found herself wishing for it back.

She was suddenly desperately, painfully aware of the fact that she might have lived with this man for almost a year, but she didn’t really know him at all. Deep down, there was a dark, buried part of him that he kept hidden from her.