From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride (9 page)

“I never did. It just comes out of me when I’m with you. And I need you to be as spontaneous with me. I can’t bear the walls you’ve erected between us. I need your passion-hued eyes to melt me with your all-out appreciation again.”

“Passion-hued...” she repeated on a sigh.

He
was
too much. And she wanted him too fiercely.

She sighed again. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Confusion crept into his eyes. “Do what?”

“Have sex.”

Six

“I
assume you have protection this time?”

Rafael disengaged from Eliana with the same caution he would distance himself from a bomb.

Just as guardedly, he said, “I don’t.”

“There’s a pharmacy nearby that delivers merchandise,” she murmured.

He shook his head, as if it would change what he was hearing. “What’s come over you?”

She raised one eyebrow challengingly. “That’s why you’re here, right? The untold pleasure thing you said we promised each other? So let’s cut the chase.”

“You mean cut to the chase.”

“No, I mean what I said. You seem to want me the more I resist, so I’m ending the chase. Let’s do it.”

“Stop saying
it.
”

“What do you want me to call sex?”

“Don’t say that, either. When I take you it won’t be ‘sex.’”

“You like to refer to it as ‘making love’?”

“I never ‘refer to it’ as anything.”

“You just do it, huh? Fine by me.”

“I said stop it, Eliana.” He scowled at her, but those eyes of hers were unrepentant. And they inflamed him even more for it. His lips twitched. “But if I must give what we’ll share a name, it would be something like...plunging in passion.”

The twist of her lips told him what she thought of his flowery descriptions. He couldn’t fault her ridicule. He was stunned at what kept spilling from his lips himself.

He exhaled forcibly when she kept looking stubbornly at him. “Why the sudden change of mind?”

She shrugged. “I doubt I’ll ever want a man like I want you, and you want to have sex—oh, sorry—to
plunge in passion
with me. Probably to uphold your record of never having a woman say no to you. But I no longer care about your motive. I just want to find out what the fuss is all about. Once you’re appeased, you’ll walk away again and that will be that.”

“First, I don’t have a record. Second, I didn’t walk away in the first place.”

“So you say.”

“So you didn’t believe my explanations?”

“They’re no longer relevant. So if you want to take me to bed, I want that, too. But let’s be clear about what it will be—a one-night stand or at most a very brief liaison.”

His insides tightened. This was spiraling out of control, going where he never expected. “Is this what you want?”

Another shrug. “This is what will happen.”

“Is this about my wealth and power again?”

“It’s about everything that you are. I always held my own with anyone, but I can’t with you. You are
way
out of my league.”

“Stop saying that, too,” he growled, exasperation soaring.

“It’s the truth, as your horror of a friend said.”

“Seems he has more than I thought to answer for.”

“He just pointed out what I was trying not to see so I can have some time with you. But I need balance in any relationship, no matter how fleeting, and the gross imbalance of power between us is something I can’t deal with.”

He reached for her hands carefully, as if afraid she’d bolt away and never let him near again. “Those tiny hands turn me to mush. I am powerless where you’re concerned. And since you’re the one who has the will to resist me, that makes you the one with the power in this relationship.”

She snatched her hands away, hugging herself in a defensive gesture. “We don’t have a ‘relationship.’ And if you haven’t noticed, that will to resist you lasted about an hour. So here I am...offering myself like I did last night. But this time I know what to expect. So take me or leave me. Your choice.”

Frustration boiled over at her finality, which he knew in his bones was no act. “You believed me last night without reservations. Why do you doubt everything I say now?”

Her shoulders jerked on what felt like dejection. Then she kicked off her sneakers and sat down on the armchair by the couch, curling her legs beneath her.

She looked so small and vulnerable, nothing like the entity who’d sizzled with energy and enchantment as she’d entertained the children. Yet she was the most formidable force he’d ever encountered. Her hold on him was growing by the second. He suspected it might already be unbreakable.

She sighed. “Something changed when you walked away. And I guess I...woke up. I did try to cling to the fantasy, but you and your partner thankfully made it impossible. So though your explanation is so lame it should be true, since you could have come up with something better if you were lying, it doesn’t revive the trust I felt in you. You’re no longer the man I trusted implicitly, just another person I have to take my usual precautions with. That’s why I need the upfront terms to guarantee I won’t end up feeling like I did last night.”

And
that
was where he’d miscalculated. He’d come here counting on that trust to make his justifications readily acceptable to her but hadn’t realized he’d already pulverized it. And that her being so in tune with him would actually backfire. She now saw through the fakeness of his explanations, just as she had sensed the truth of his every word and emotion last night.

So he didn’t deserve her trust, not where her father was concerned, but he’d meant every word he’d said to her—and about her. And now that he’d made sure her orphanage work was all benevolence, he was free to surrender to what he felt for her.

How this would work in tandem with his revenge on Ferreira, he had no idea. And for now, he didn’t care. He just needed her trust and spontaneity back.

And he would do
anything
to have all of her again.

He crouched down beside her armchair, struggling not to haul her out of it and crush her in his arms. “Then give me a chance to take you back to the fantasy and I will make it a reality. I will erase the change that happened inside you.”

She curled tighter, like a cat shying away from petting. “The change I felt happened inside
you.
I can’t explain it, but it...hurt.”

Had she felt his hatred and aggression when he’d seen her father, and it had pained her that much? She was
that
supremely sensitive to everything he felt?

“I know I didn’t know you long enough to have the right to feel or say any of that...”

He took the hands twisting on her lap to his aching lips. “You have every right to feel and say anything. We already agreed what we share transcends time.”

“I agreed to that when I was still under your spell.”

“Then let me cast another one.”

She wrenched her hands out of his. “No thanks. Sex is all I want from you now, all I have to offer. If you want to play more games, I’m no longer available for those.”

“No games, Eliana. Never any games. This is deadly serious to me.” He succumbed to the need to wrap his arms around her, laid his head on her breasts, listening to the music of her heartbeats. “I spent the night in a fever, my mind flooding with images and sensations. Of silk sheets drenched in your sweat, of your hot velvet limbs around me, of your cries rising in the dark.”

The heart beneath his ear raced, with his every word, but when she talked her voice was as stiff as her body. “No need to fantasize anymore. Take me and be done with it.”

He withdrew instead. This wasn’t how he wanted her. And then there was something else.

“You said something earlier...about finding out what the fuss is all about. Did you mean me or sex in general?”

“I meant sex with you. After all the buildup, I’m warning you I have ginormous expectations.”

“I will provide you with satisfaction of massive proportions.” He took her hands in his good one. “But there’s one thing I need to know. Are you a virgin?”

“Are you going to have sex with me now?”

He growled at the word
sex.
“No.”

“Well, when you decide to make good on your promises, I’ll let you know. Until then, that’s privileged info.” Her fiery eyes crackled with ire. “What’s it to you anyway?”

“Just finding out my variables. If you’re a virgin, I’ll live with it. If you’re not...I’ll also live with it.”

“Both variables sound equally unwelcome to you. Which is hard luck for you, since these are the only two available.”

He stroked a finger down her hot cheek, loving the way it trembled at his touch. “I actually welcome either. I would just appreciate a heads-up as to which is the truth, as it would dictate my...approach.”

Scoffing and choking on mortification at once, her eyes and lips became petulant. “Then why won’t you take me to bed now and end the suspense once and for all?”

“Because I made a promise to you that I would take it slow.”

“But I’m telling you I no longer want slow.”

“Only because you want to punish me.”

This time her scoff was pure derision. “Gee, I didn’t realize taking me to bed would be such a hardship.”

“You can’t forgive me, so you want to have me so you can get me out of your system and get rid of me. Just wanting this is as harsh a punishment as you can deal me.” Releasing her tresses from the elastic band, his groan echoed her moan as he massaged her scalp, sealed her lips with his and poured his pledge into her. “But I’m in your system to stay,
minha
Eliana.”

The way she melted into his kiss—like all the parts of him he hadn’t known had been missing fitting back into his being—made his head spin with hunger.

Before he forgot all the big talk about not taking her now, he released her.

She gasped, “I—I do forgive you.”

His heart thundered. “You do?”

“For last night. But I can’t forgive you for today.”

“You mean showing up uninvited at the orphanage? Attending your performance without your consent?”

She pushed at him, furious tears surging in her eyes. “How about dangling yourself in front of those deprived kids, especially a boy like Diego? He is
starved
for an adult male presence in his life. Then you appear like a genie that could grant him his every wish, treating him as if he mattered to you and making idle promises. Didn’t you think you’d be adding another letdown to a lifetime defined by abandonment?”

The lash of her disapproval felt like salt in every open wound. “I meant every promise I made to him.”

She jumped to her feet, glared down at him. “That you’d visit him? Once? More? Then what? Don’t you realize the hopes he could be pinning on you? And that he’s already hero-worshipping you?”

He rose to his feet, met her glare with his. “Are you telling me not to see him again?”

“I’m telling you it’s dangerous, it’s thoughtless and it could end up damaging him. I saw his expectations soar just realizing you exist, and when you showed him interest and regard, it developed into a tangled mess right before my eyes. A fall from such heights back to the bleakness of his reality would be devastating.”

She had a point. No matter that this boy so reminded him of himself at the age when he’d also found himself without a family, he had to tread carefully. He’d felt an incredible connection with Diego on sight, almost as strong as the one he’d felt with her. And although he
did
have intentions he would see through, he didn’t have a clear-cut plan in place yet. So for now, he just sighed, nodded in concession.

Taking this to mean he wouldn’t pursue the matter further, she exhaled. “About the check you cut to the orphanage—care to give me a number? Just so I know how bad the heart attack you gave the sisters was?”

“A million dollars.” At her gasp, he elaborated, “I estimated it’s what they need for immediate needs, and for rebuilding the parts of their convent and the orphanage that got damaged in the last tropical storm. But once they give me a comprehensive list of what they need for the children I’ll provide them with open funding.”

She gaped at him. Then she swallowed. “Thank you.”

He bent and caught the convulsive movement in her throat in an openmouthed kiss. He really couldn’t keep his hands and lips off her for longer than a few minutes. “Thank
you.
”

Throwing her head back, giving him license to worship her, she moaned, “Thank me for what?”

He raised his head. “For guiding me to Casa do Sol. My aid work is focused on organizations for children, but so many are inferior hellholes while others use children to bait donations that end up lining the pockets of the managers. I always have to deal with inefficiency or crush corruption before I can benefit the children. When I found you’ve been mostly working with Casa do Sol since you came to Rio, I investigated and found out that it’s the one orphanage that’s above all suspicion, as well as the one offering their children the best quality of life. That’s why I wrote them a check on the spot.”

That appreciation he was already addicted to was back in her eyes. Now it mixed with bashfulness. “That was very...thorough of you. Not to mention very thoughtful.”

“It’s just a start. If you have any ideas for improving the orphanage, or specific wishes for the children, make me a list. I will make them all a reality.”

“Thank you, I will.” She suddenly hid her face in his chest, peach staining her cheeks. “I didn’t know you had such an ongoing involvement in helping children. I’m sorry I accused you of being oblivious to their needs.”

A finger below her chin raised her eyes to his. “You were looking out for the children’s best interests.”

“I shouldn’t have interpreted your actions in the worst way just because I was angry with you. I’m really sorry.”

The whole world darkened as her eyes filled. She was that upset she’d misjudged him.

He hugged her fiercely, needing to absorb her dismay. “I
am
too powerful, and your worry that I might thoughtlessly step over the vulnerable without noticing was well founded. You couldn’t know what I do as I keep those activities a secret.”

She buried her face in him again, shaking her head. “I still shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”

He tilted her chin up again. “You’re painfully fair. I love this about you, as long as the pain you inflict in your fairness isn’t on yourself.”

“You don’t mind if I inflict it on you?”

“I welcome anything you inflict on me. I invite it.” A deep drugging kiss. “I beg for it.”

After he let go of her lips, she let out a crystalline laugh. “Diego read you right on the spot, too. He said you looked like Batman in his secret identity. That guy is also a billionaire philanthropist.”