The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride (20 page)

‘I had done little to earn your trust,
querida
. Lucita means nothing to me—you are the only woman I've ever loved, and I swear I will love you for the rest of my life. I'm just sorry that it took almost losing you to make me acknowledge that fact.'

He kissed her again with a fierce passion that left her in no doubt of the depth of his love for her. Grace curled her arms around his neck and clung to him as he suddenly lifted her into his arms and strode out of her room down the corridor to the master bedroom, where he deposited her in the centre of the huge, four-poster bed.

‘This is where you belong,' he teased her, but almost instantly his smile faded and his expression became one of stark longing. ‘Tell me this is real, Grace, not just an illusion brought on by my desperation. If you leave me now you'll take my heart with you.'

Grace knelt up and began to unfasten the buttons of her nightdress. ‘I'm not going anywhere,' she promised softly. ‘El Castillo de Leon is my home and I intend to live here with you and the children we'll one day have for the rest of my life.' Her voice faltered slightly as she remembered the fragile, fleeting life she had lost. She wasn't ready to think about another baby yet, but in the future she hoped to fill the
castillo
with Javier's children so that he never felt alone again.

She freed the last button and tugged the voluminous nightgown over her head before reaching for him. ‘I want to show you how much I love you,' she whispered against his mouth. ‘I meant every word of the vows I made on our wedding day. I might not have realised it at the time, but my soul recognised you as its twin and I will never leave you again, even for one day.'

She helped him remove his clothes with feverish haste, and when his body covered hers she held him close, revelling in the feel of his satiny skin beneath her fingertips. At first he seemed content just to kiss her, his mouth an instrument of sweet torture as he trailed a path from her lips to her breasts, where he tenderly stroked each nipple with his tongue until she gasped and dug her nails into his shoulders. He slid his hand over her stomach and with infinite care parted her legs and began to caress her with a butterfly touch, gently stoking the flames of her desire, so that she twisted her hips in a restless invitation.

‘I love you, Grace,' he groaned as he moved over her and slowly entered her, desperate not to hurt her. ‘Don't ever leave me.' The raw vulnerability in his voice made her heart clench, and she wrapped her legs around him to draw him deeper inside her. His childhood scars ran deep, and it might take years of constant reassurance before he was fully confident of her love, but she would tell him every day, in words and deeds, how much he meant to her.

When he began to move, she moved with him, matching his pace as he drove them higher and higher towards that place where only the two of them existed. She heard him groan her name, felt the exact moment his control shattered so spectacularly, and at the same moment her muscles convulsed around him in a climax that was more intense than anything she'd ever experienced.

Eventually his breathing slowed and he rolled off her, but immediately wrapped his arms around her and held her close, stroking her hair with a hand that shook slightly. ‘You are my life,
querida
,' he whispered. ‘And I will never let you go.'

Grace snuggled closer still, loving the tender afterglow of their lovemaking. ‘Would you really have sent me back to England?'

‘Certainly—and immediately filed for divorce,' he said, tightening his grip on her when she gave an audible gasp. ‘Once we were no longer tied together by that hellish marriage contract, I was going to wait a reasonable amount of time—say, one week—before I put my plan into action.'

‘What plan?' she asked breathlessly, her heart setting up a frantic tattoo at the wicked glint in his eyes.

‘To woo you properly—wine you and dine you and generally be so utterly charming that you wouldn't be able to refuse me when I asked you to marry me and spend the rest of your life with me.'

‘Oh,' Grace pouted in disappointment. ‘I rather like the idea of being wined and dined, but I'm not a fan of divorce, so we'll just have to stick together.'

‘Always,' Javier vowed fervently, and spent the next few minutes showing her in many varied and pleasurable ways just how close he was going to stick to her.

Grace finally untangled herself from him and sat up. ‘I don't want you to give up your place as head of the bank,' she said seriously. ‘It's important to you.'

‘Nothing is as important as you,' he replied fiercely. ‘I don't want you to harbour any doubts about why I'm married to you.' He tugged her back down on top of him. ‘Lorenzo is keen for us to work together and run the bank between us, but ultimately it's your decision,
querida
. I am—how do you say?—putty in your hands.' He inhaled sharply when she trailed her hand over his thigh and groaned when she encircled him with firm fingers.

‘You don't feel like putty to me,' she murmured innocently and then gasped with delight when he flipped her onto her back and demonstrated just who was the master of El Castillo de Leon.

O
N THE
first anniversary of their marriage, Javier picked roses for Grace from the gardens of the
castillo
, but the thorns cut his hands and she insisted that he spend the rest of the day in bed with her to recover.

On their second anniversary he picked roses again, and carefully removed the thorns before laying the bouquet on the bed where she was nursing their month-old son.

‘Rico's cheeks are as soft as rose petals,' she murmured when she handed Javier his son and buried her face in the blooms. ‘He's so adorable, isn't he? I hope we have lots more like him.'

‘Are you kidding? I couldn't go through another birth like that,' Javier muttered with a shudder as he recalled the agonising sixteen hours that he'd watched Grace suffer before Ricardo Herrera had finally made his entry into the world. He brushed his lips over Rico's cheek and felt his heart clench with love that was mirrored in his eyes when he smiled at Grace. ‘We'll love him with all our hearts, but I'm afraid he's going to be an only child,
querida
.' He placed the baby gently in his crib and moved towards the bed where his wife was waiting with open arms.

‘Nonsense. I want at least two more, and you know I always get my own way,' Grace said cheerfully.

And eighteen months later she did just that when she gave birth to twin girls, Rosa and Susannah. The
castillo
rang with the sound of children's laughter, and
el Leon de Herrera
never walked alone again.