Liza snatched her hand away, and fixed all her attention on the tray, unwilling to acknowledge the blatant sensuality in his look. There was a silver coffee-pot, a jug of cream, a bowl of sugar and two cups and saucers and a plate of pastries. ‘You’re joining me for breakfast; how nice,’ she said politely, and unwillingly her gaze was drawn back to meet Nick’s.
‘That was the idea. I did not think you would object.’ He noted her small hands clench in the coverlet and realised she was nervous. ‘I thought a woman of your incredible sexual aptitude would naturally share all my appetites,’ Nick teased, a slow, intimate smile curving his firm lips.
‘No—yes…of course not,’ Liza said in confusion, not sure if she should be flattered or furious he had found her satisfactory! Not sure he should even be here in her room, she thought, panic rising in her breast. ‘What about Manuel…? Your mother…?’ Liza heard her voice rising but was unable to control it as the full import of what she had allowed to happen hit her, and she turned red with embarrassment.
‘Take it easy, Liza.’ Nick chuckled. ‘Manuel and Marta always have Sunday morning free to attend church. As for mother, she is at church in Granada, and won’t be back for a while yet. She need never know that you are sharing a coffee with me.’ And with a wicked grin he added, ‘Stark naked beneath that sheet.’
The reminder of her nakedness made Liza blush even more, but his smile surprised her. Nick could amuse her and make her feel wanton at one and the same time. It was a lethal combination that made her even more wary. ‘Oh, just shut up and pour the coffee,’ she snapped.
‘I do adore a woman who can take charge occasionally,’ Nick drawled with a sardonic arch of one ebony brow. ‘Especially in the bedroom.’
‘Just pour the damn coffee,’ she reiterated, her temper rising. ‘I can do without sexual innuendoes first thing in the morning.’
‘Pity,’ Nick opined, but leant forward and filled the two cups from the jug and passed one to her. ‘I guess you’re not a morning person.’
Liza took hers and swallowed it down with unseemly haste, clattering the cup down on the tray with a less than steady hand. ‘Well, you’re wrong. I am once I have my caffeine fix.’ She strove for normality, but it was difficult with Nick sitting so close. She picked up a pastry and took a bite, but she had never felt less like eating, and it was such a struggle to get the food down she didn’t risk another bite, and dropped it back on the plate.
Nick chuckled, a deep, throaty sound, and reached out a long, elegant hand to sweep the tangled mass of her hair from her face. Then settled his arm around her shoulders, trapping her in the arc of his muscular chest. ‘Prove it, Liza.’
His stunningly handsome face was much too close; she could see the curling length of his lashes sweep his high cheekbones, and lift to reveal eyes glinting with amusement, the firm mouth also quirking at the corners with humour.
‘Prove what?’ She stared up at him with a
mixture of fear and anticipation.
‘This.’ And he covered her mouth with his own.
Her startled cry was silenced in her throat; she struggled wildly, lashing out at his great torso with curled fists. She was no man’s push-over…whatever Nick Menendez thought… With a husky laugh he tipped her back against the pillows, and captured both of her flaying hands in one of his and pinned them above her head, his long body pressing her to the bed, and then he was kissing her again with a hard, deep hunger that set her on fire.
Suddenly the reason for her resistance was lost in the chaos he made of her mind. She tried to pull her hands free to hold him and with another husky chuckle Nick lifted his head and stared down into her flushed face.
‘No, my lovely, I am not setting you free. I missed you in my bed last night.’ Instantly she was flooded with an emotion so powerful she nearly told him, she didn’t want to be free of him ever… Surely he could see that. He might be an overbearing, arrogant chauvinist, but she knew deep within her soul that he was everything she could ever want or need in a man.
She wanted back the friend she had missed, the lover she had only just discovered, and the intellectual and emotional strength that he had given so generously to a young girl before the episode that had made him her enemy.
‘Your mother…’ She made a weak attempt to object but her heart wasn’t in it. It was in her mouth as he kissed her again. She couldn’t get enough of his mouth, her tongue seeking his in a dance of desire that met and matched him with ever deeper abandon. She slid her hands over his shoulders removing his robe in the process.
His mighty chest heaved and finally Nick lifted his head, his breathing harsh and his eyes staring into hers with burning satisfaction. ‘Has no one ever told you it is not a good idea to remind a man of his mother at a time like this?’ he husked, the tension holding Nick’s huge, powerful body taut over hers relaxing slightly as he shrugged off the robe completely. His heavy thigh slid over her slender hips and his hand splayed under her bottom, and pulled her into fierce connection with the rigid strength of his erection, sending quivering arrows of exquisite delight up from the apex of her thighs to spread through every nerve in her body.
Lifting his eyes to hers, a gleam of devilment lurking in their depths, he said throatily, ‘But maybe you’re right. You just reminded me of the first pleasure in a male’s life—the joy of suckling.’
Leaning back, he looked his fill of the perfect mounds of her breasts, pale as magnolia with erect, rosy peaks. His hands cupped and shaped them, his thumbs teasing the straining nubs until Liza moaned her pleasure, and only then did he bury his hot mouth against her aching breasts. He laved his tongue over a rigid tip and then drew the tight bud into his mouth and suckled gently.
Helplessly Liza ran her fingers through the thick black hair of his head and urged him to deliver the same ecstasy to its aching counterpart and he obliged.
‘You like that,’ Nick teased and then replaced his mouth with his hands, rolling the distended, dusky nipples between his thumb and forefinger, while he trailed a burning line of kisses down over her flat stomach.
He nudged her long legs apart and, swamped in sensation after sensation, Liza helped him, and when his mouth delivered the most intimate kiss of all she welcomed it. Her slender hands grasped his wide shoulders and tremor after tremor shook her whole body, her nails dug into his flesh as the pressure heightened and heightened, until she thought she would die, and then suddenly it happened.
Nick reared up and, lifting her, plunged into the shuddering heat of her in one driving movement. ‘Dios! You feel fantastic, unbelievable.’
‘So do you!’ Liza cried out as she took all of him, and as he began to move she convulsed and convulsed again in a shattering climax. Her blue eyes flew wide and collided with molten black and his dark head bent and took her mouth in a deep, almost yearning kiss.
Incredibly the pleasure was rising again as Nick moved in a sensual rhythm, a driving urgency that Liza met and matched in a primitive, wild abandon that had her whimpering and crying out with pleasure. Then she felt Nick’s ferocious tension, and one last desperate plunge that seemed to rock her very womb. She climaxed again as his great body shuddered over her. He groaned out something in Spanish but she was too far gone to hear, as his life force poured into her.
He had given her more pleasure than she had ever imagined existed, and yet when it was finally over, and their sweat-slicked bodies lay entwined in exhausted abandon, she felt the chill tendrils of fear snake through her tired mind.
Nick had only to appear for her to collapse into his arms. How on earth was she going to hide her helpless reaction to him? Nick was conceited and arrogant enough already about women if the gossip columns were to be believed. He did not need her adding to his tally.