The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

as she clung to him, heart beginning to pound as she felt the first flick of his tongue. Wasn’t this how a kiss was supposed to feel? What she’d been holding out for all her life? ‘Oh,’ she moaned helplessly, as the pressure of his lips increased. ‘Oh!’

       ¡Dios!

      Carlos felt her instant capitulation, as sweet and responsive as he had guessed she might be. As he deepened the kiss, he could feel her breasts peaking against him. Sweet, neat breasts—like tender peaches just waiting to be bitten into. He wanted to take one into his hand, to rub his thumb against its ripe nub. And then to delve his fingers beneath the soft silk of her sinful little dress, to discover if she was wearing proper panties this time. Or another of those X-rated G-strings…

      For several agonisingly tempting moments, he imagined plunging into her, imagined her hungry little cries as she urged him on. And then, just as suddenly as the kiss had started, he tore his lips away from hers, stepping back as if she was contaminated, his furious gaze raking over her flushed cheeks and darkened eyes.

      Frustrated desire found an outlet in heated accusation as he willed the frantic thudding of his heart to lessen and the fierce aching at his groin to stop throbbing and tormenting him. ‘Do you always act like this—like a sex-starved tramp?’ he demanded unevenly. ‘Are you one of these women who are ruled by the hunger of their bodies, perhaps—who grab at the nearest man whenever he happens to be available?’

      The harsh words hurt, but presumably that had been his intention. ‘C-can’t the same be said about you?’ she shot back, stung, because he was so wrong in his character assessment of her that it would have been almost laughable had it not been quite so insulting. Clamping her arms around her still-tender breasts she hid her arousal and confusion behind a shield of sarcasm. ‘I mean, obviously you have a fantastic technique—’

      ‘That was never in any doubt, Princes a.’

      ‘I’m just appalled at my own reaction to an uncaring brute like you,’ she choked. ‘Especially since you had another woman in your arms only yesterday!’

      Carlos found his gaze drawn irresistibly to the rapid rise and fall of her breasts which she was trying and failing to hide. ‘I had another woman in my arms only yesterday,’ he repeated slowly.

      ‘The woman in the gold bikini!’ she accused, hating the shaft of pure jealousy which shot through her.

      ‘The woman in the gold bikini?’

      ‘Will you stop repeating everything I say?’

      ‘Then would you mind explaining what the hell you’re talking about?’

      ‘The gold bikini top,’ elaborated Kat bitterly. ‘The one I found along with the remains of the meal in the dining room!’

      ‘Ah, yes!’ A slow and glittering smile of comprehension began to curve at Carlos’s lips as he remembered. ‘Tania Stephens…I had forgotten all about that.’

      Kat felt sick, appalled at her own behaviour. She had been…been…Well, if she were being absolutely honest, hadn’t she been like the softest putty in his hands? Wouldn’t she still be writhing pleasurably beneath his practised caresses if he hadn’t put a stop to it so abruptly? And yet he’d been doing the same thing to another woman only yesterday and had forgotten all about it! Didn’t that speak volumes about his attitude to women in general and her in particular? What a lucky escape she had had!

      ‘You make love to a woman and less than twenty-four hours later you’ve “forgotten all about it”?’ she breathed in disbelief.

      ‘I did not make love to her.’

      Kat’s heart pounded. ‘So a woman’s gold bikini top just happens to be lying discarded on the floor of your dining room, along with evidence of some intimate little meal à deux—and yet you claim to know nothing about it?’

      ‘That’s not what I said,’ he snapped. ‘I said that I didn’t make love to her.’

      ‘But…but she wanted to?’

      There was a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he agreed softly. ‘All women want me to make love to them. Didn’t you demonstrate that yourself only moments ago?’

      Kat flinched at the accusation, but she couldn’t deny it, could she? ‘So who was she?’ she questioned.

      ‘A journalist.’ Carlos allowed himself a brief, hard smile. ‘Who I heard was doing a feature on me—and so I invited her here to find out what angle she was taking, and whether or not I needed to persuade her to adopt a different one.’

      ‘Why would anyone want to do a feature on you?’

      Black eyes challenged her. ‘Any ideas?’

      ‘Because you’re rich? Or because you’re unbearable?’

      He gave a soft laugh. ‘Wealth is hardly an achievement in its own right. You of all people should know that, Princes a.’

      And then she remembered the photo. That startling photo. The young Carlos wearing the richly ornate jacket of the bullfighter—his face just as proud and as beautiful as it was now, but without the cynicism which time had etched onto the features of his older self.

      ‘Bullfighting,’ she said slowly. ‘She wanted to talk to you about bullfighting.’

      There was the beat of a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he said slowly. ‘They always want to talk about bullfighting.’

      ‘But why?’ Kat stared at him. ‘Because it’s exciting—or because hardly anyone does it as a career choice?’

      ‘Both those things, but it is a little more complex than that.’ He met the question in her eyes. ‘It’s fifteen years since I left the ring, and she’s just digging around because she wants to know why.’

      ‘And why did you leave?’

      ‘You think I want to talk about it with someone like you?’ he queried softly. ‘A woman whose definition of a hard day’s work is painting her own nails because the manicurist happens to be off sick?’

      He saw her flinch but Carlos didn’t care. Couldn’t she take the truth about the kind of woman she was? He had vowed never to talk of those days, to relive the pain and the torture which had raged inside him during his tumultuous years in the ring. A pain which had little to do with the noble bullfight itself, and more to do with the cruel father who had made his life such a torment.

      The journalist had tried every trick in the book to get him to talk, and a couple more besides. She had certainly been enterprising, he would say that for her. The editor had probably selected her for her beauty and her sheer ruthlessness. So that when the lunchtime interview had not been progressing as she’d wished, she had suggested sunbathing. And then laughingly stripped off her bikini top as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.

      He had been aroused, yes—of course he had. The woman’s breasts had been full and pale and her glossy lips had parted as if to demonstrate that she was very accomplished with her mouth. But sex offered to him on a plate had never been his thing.

      He looked down into the blue eyes of the Balfour girl. Maybe he should tell her that and have done with it—because, in effect, wasn’t she doing exactly the same? Trying to twist him round her little finger with her come-to-bed eyes and pouting lips. Perhaps he should tell her that no matter how much she tried to tempt him, she was here to do a job and nothing more. He had given his word to her father that he would teach her something in the way of commitment, and Carlos always kept his word.

      So why had he kissed her? And why was the memory of that kiss making him grow hard even now? So hard that he would have liked to have taken hold of her aristocratic hips and thrust right into her.

      ‘You’d better have some breakfast,’ he said harshly. ‘And then start by clearing away the mess in the dining room.’

      Kat