One Night With The Enemy. ABBY GREEN

dress to stalk off, but at that moment one of her oversized shoes came off and she stumbled. A strong hand closed around one bare arm to steady her and the sensation was electric.

      Nicolás didn’t let her go, though. She was whirled around to face him again, one shoe on, one shoe off.

      He was frowning down at her. ‘What do you mean no electricity?’

      Maddie was used to being considered tall, but right now she felt positively petite. Bitterness laced her voice at being made to feel so vulnerable, when she had no doubt that was exactly what this man had intended all along. ‘We’ve been using an ancient generator to get electricity in our house since they cut my father off months ago—when he stopped paying the bills.’

      Nicolás shook his head. He looked shocked. ‘I didn’t know it was that bad.’

      Maddie tried to pull her arm back but his grip was firm. Panic at her helpless physical reaction galvanised her to say, ‘As if you care. You were too busy signing off on your solicitor’s letters, doing your utmost to get a dying man to sell up. Do you know that he received the last letter the day he died?’

      Now Nicolás looked confused. His hand tightened. ‘What are you talking about? I never signed any letters. Any correspondence between my family and yours stopped when my father died. I was too busy rebuilding our own brand and renovating the estate and house.’

      ‘You can spout all the lies you like, de Rojas. This evening was a mistake. I’ve let down every generation of my family and my father by coming here. It won’t happen again.’

      Nicolás’s hand softened its grip on her arm and Maddie felt ridiculously disorientated, her anger dissipating like mist over a hill. His eyes were intense blue flames that communicated something base and carnal directly to her insides.

      His voice was deep. ‘But you did come here tonight, and there’s something in the air … it brought us together before, and it’s still there.’

      Maddie felt the sense of disorientation increase. She finally yanked her arm free from his grip, but his words were hurtling her back in time to when he had stood in front of her and said, ‘You’re nothing but a tempting tease. I was curious to know what the Vasquez princess tasted like and now I know—poisonous.’

      The bitterness and anger of that exchange eight years ago was far too acute, eclipsing everything else. Maddie had not trusted herself with another man since then because of it. She’d held a part of herself private and aloof for fear of getting hurt again, or facing painful revelations. She had to push him back before he guessed how vulnerable she was.

      She squared her shoulders and forced herself to look Nicolás dead in the eye. ‘I seduced you once, de Rojas. Did you really think this evening would induce me to try and seduce you again? Eight years isn’t enough time for you to get over your wounded ego?’

      Nicolás stood tall, and she saw him pale beneath his tan. ‘You little bitch.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      MADDIE didn’t know where on earth she’d got the nerve to say those words when, if anything, they could be more legitimately levelled at her. She hadn’t got over what had happened eight years ago—not by a long shot.

      She heard a rushing in her ears, but she ignored it and tossed her head. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t see me again. I think we can safely say this farce is over. I came tonight because I was curious to see what you were up to. You’ve seriously underestimated me.’

      She was turning away again when she forgot that she still had one shoe off. She stumbled into thin air, and would have fallen if Nicolás hadn’t caught her and hauled her back against him. One strong arm was wrapped around her ribcage, just under her breasts, and the other was across her shoulders. Adrenalin pumped through Maddie’s veins. She immediately tried to remove his arms but they were like steel bands. And they were completely alone.

      She had an urge to shout out, but a hand came over her mouth as if he’d read her mind. Panic gripped her—not at the threat of violence but at the threat of something much more potent. The evidence of Nicolás de Rojas’s hardening body at her back was liquefying her insides. A silent scream sounded in Maddie’s head: No! Not this, please. He would expose her vulnerability in seconds if he touched her.

      She bit down on the fleshy part of his hand and heard him curse—but not before she’d tasted the salty tang of his skin. Her belly swooped and fire danced along her veins. He moved her effortlessly in his arms and now she was facing him, his arms manacling her to his body, her hands behind her back. She was completely powerless. And, to her absolute disgust, the predominant thing she was feeling was excitement.

      ‘Let me go.’

      He shook his head, eyes glittering down into hers. Maddie felt as if she’d completely lost her footing. Past and present, everything was mixing, and she felt seriously overwhelmed.

      ‘I’m not finished with you, Maddie.’

      Maddie’s heart lurched painfully at hearing him use the diminutive of her name. She could remember with painful clarity telling him that she preferred Maddie to the more stuffy-sounding Madalena. He had touched her cheek and said, ‘Maddie it is, then …’

      He smiled, and it was the smile of a predator, forcing Maddie back to the present moment. ‘One thing you should know is that if I’ve underestimated you, then you’ve seriously underestimated me. We have unfinished business—and ironically enough it’s got nothing to do with business.’

      Before Maddie had even properly taken in his words or read his intent he’d hauled her even closer. His head descended and his hard mouth pressed against hers. For a second Maddie had no reaction except numb shock. And then sensation exploded behind her eyes—hot and urgent.

      Desperately she tried to cling onto reality and not let that hot urgency take over her need to stay immobile and unresponsive. But she might as well have been hoping that the sun wouldn’t rise in the morning.

      Being in this man’s arms again was like seeing a beacon of light strobing across a choppy ocean and reacting to it with an unthinking instinct to seek harbour. Maddie felt the inexorable and overpowering urge to follow it, even as everything rational was screaming at her to stop, pull herself free, not to react. But a much bigger part of her was aching all over with the effort it took not to react.

      As if sensing her turmoil, Nic freed her hands and lifted his own to her head, fingers caressing her skull, angling her head so that he could better plunder her mouth. His tongue flicked against the closed seam of her lips and at that touch Maddie felt her resistance falling away. Her free hands hovered for a long moment. She knew in some dim place that she should use them to push him away, but when she put them between their bodies and felt the taut musculature of his torso underneath his thin shirt they clung … didn’t push.

      He growled low in his throat at her capitulation and became bolder, his tongue prising open her soft lips to seek the hot interior of her mouth. The devastation of that simple intimacy made Maddie sway against him. She could feel her breasts crushed against the solid wall of his chest.

      One of his hands was on her waist, digging into her flesh, anchoring her solidly against him. She could feel the bold thrust of his arousal against her belly, and between her legs she felt hot and moist.

      The world was turning into a hot furnace of sensation and desperate wanting—and then suddenly a cool breeze was waking Maddie as if from a drugged trance and she was blinking up into Nic’s impassive face. It looked as if it was carved from stone. Maddie felt like jelly. Her mouth was swollen, her heart beating like a piston. Her hair was tumbling down over sensitised skin.

      ‘You …’ She couldn’t even formulate a word beyond that.

      In a voice so cold it woke her up more effectively than anything else, Nic said, ‘What do you want to say, Maddie? You want me to believe this act? That I’ve effectively rendered you speechless with passion?’

      A