Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) (10 page)

Santa mãe!
How could he want her so badly? What spell had she cast on him that had decimated his ability to think of anything but her and his consuming longing to feel her soft body beneath him?

She unfastened the strap beneath her chin and as she lifted off her riding helmet her blonde hair cascaded down her back like a river of silk. Cruz almost groaned out loud. When they had been together he had loved her hair, loved the way it felt against his skin when she had straddled him and leaned forwards so that the long golden strands brushed his chest.

His jaw clenched. Once he had loved her, and for a while he had even managed to kid himself that she was in love with him. What a fool he had been to think that a woman of Sabrina’s class and refinement would give up her life of privilege and luxury for a poorly paid, poorly educated miner.

‘Why are you here?’ Her cultured voice pulled Cruz from the past. ‘You told me I had until seven o’clock this evening to give you my answer.’

Sabrina led Monty back to the stables and was supremely conscious of Cruz walking beside her. She despised the way her heart had missed a beat when she’d noticed him watching her ride. In black trousers and shirt, his eyes hidden behind designer shades, he was devastatingly handsome and a dangerous threat to her peace of mind.

Katie, the teenage groom, was waiting in the yard and took Monty into his stall to unsaddle him.

‘Do you only keep one horse here?’ Cruz glanced at the five empty stables.

Sabrina nodded. ‘When I was a child all the stables were occupied. My mother had a couple of hunters and a horse for dressage, and my brother and I learned to ride on ponies.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Soon there will be no horses at Eversleigh. Monty is to be sold.’

‘Tears,
gatinha
?’ Cruz caught hold of her chin to prevent her from turning away and captured the sparkle of moisture clinging to her lashes with his thumb pad. He noted the dark shadows beneath her eyes that looked like bruises on her porcelain skin. Her lower lip quivered almost imperceptibly before she firmed it and her air of vulnerability made his gut twist.

Abruptly he released her and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘You can cry over a horse, yet you did not cry when you lost our child,’ he said harshly. ‘But I know you regretted your pregnancy and perhaps you did not find the loss of our baby so terrible.’

Sabrina stared at his hard face and the arrogant line of his mouth and a fierce rage simmered inside her. ‘Not terrible?’ she choked. ‘The day of the miscarriage was the worst day of my life. I was utterly heartbroken when I lost Luiz.’ At Cruz’s look of surprise, she went on to explain, ‘We’d discussed baby names. When I was miscarrying they scanned me at the hospital and could see that we were expecting a boy. Although he never lived in the world, he lived inside me for seventeen weeks and I wanted him to have a name.’

She felt a couple of spots of rain and glanced up to see ominous dark clouds had covered the sun. But she ignored the imminent storm as the storm inside her became an unstoppable force. ‘How can you suggest that I wasn’t affected by the miscarriage? I was devastated.’

‘If you were, you hid it well.’ Cruz’s tone seemed to imply that he did not believe her. ‘You did not appear grief-stricken—and I should know. After I was born my parents tried unsuccessfully for many years to have another child. My mother suffered several miscarriages and each time she lost a baby she was beside herself with grief. My overriding memory of my childhood was hearing my mother sobbing,’ he said grimly.

‘After a few months she would be happy because she was pregnant again, but each of her pregnancies ended in more tears and heartache and there was nothing that I or my father could do to comfort her. My mother believed it was a miracle when she eventually gave birth to my twin sisters, fourteen years after she’d had me.’

Sabrina stared at him. Ten years ago he had not spoken about what had happened to his mother, and his revelation now gave a new insight to why he had been overly protective during her pregnancy. ‘I appreciate that your mother must have been distraught every time she suffered a miscarriage. Everyone deals with things differently and at the time we lost Luiz I was in a state of shock and I couldn’t cry. But that wasn’t because I didn’t care.’ She was shaking with anger now. ‘How dare you judge me because my reaction to losing my baby was different from your mother’s? And how dare you say that I had regretted falling pregnant? If you believe that, it proves that you never really knew me, and you certainly didn’t care about me. All you wanted was our child.’

Her voice rose as her words spilled out in a furious torrent. ‘Nothing has changed. You didn’t want me then and you don’t want me now. The only reason you’re willing to pay me to be your mistress is for my social skills and because you think my connections with the aristocracy will boost sales for your jewellery company. Well, I am not for sale!’

She whirled away from him and ran across the yard, heading towards the nearest shelter from the rain that was now falling hard. By the time she reached the hay shed her jacket was soaked and she wrenched open the buttons and tugged her arms out of the sleeves.

‘
I don’t want you?
That’s a laugh,’ Cruz’s voice growled close to her ear.

Sabrina spun round and gasped as he snaked his arm around her waist and hauled her against his muscular and very aroused body. She looked up at his face and saw no evidence of laughter on his hard-boned features, only a savage determination that made her heart lurch.

‘Does this feel like I do not want you,
gatinha
?’ he demanded. He gave her no chance to reply as he captured her mouth with his and kissed her with a fierce hunger, crushing her lips as he sought to crush her resistance with his urgent desire.

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
E
FILLED
HER
SENSES
, and beneath his hands her body became alive, every skin cell and nerve-ending quivering with pleasure at his touch. But Sabrina still felt blazingly angry at how badly he had misjudged her at the time of the miscarriage. When she was eighteen she had put Cruz on a pedestal and thought he could do no wrong. But now she was older and wiser and she knew he was a mortal man with strengths but also weaknesses.

She was determined not to be overwhelmed by him as she had been in the past. His physical strength was superior to hers, but she was not going to submissively let him have things all his own way. His mouth was creating havoc as he trailed his lips over her cheek to her ear and his sharp teeth bit her tender lobe. She repressed a shudder of longing and renewed her attempts to resist him, but her wild struggling had a counter-effect, she discovered, as she felt his rock-hard arousal push against her thigh.

His arms were like bands of steel around her, making escape impossible. He slid one hand down and splayed his fingers over her buttocks, urging her into even closer contact with the solid ridge of his manhood straining beneath his trousers. Sabrina gasped as he circled his hips against her pelvis, and in a corner of her mind she registered that he could not be faking his desire. Cruz was on fire for her and she was melting in his heat.

His other hand tangled in her hair as he angled her head and kissed her mouth again, forcing her lips apart so that his tongue could plunder her inner sweetness. He kissed her as if he could not have enough of her, as if he had fought a battle with himself and lost.

‘I wish I did not want you,’ he muttered when he finally wrenched his mouth from hers to allow them both to drag oxygen into their lungs. ‘You are like a drug in my veins, so bloody addictive that I can’t resist you even though I know I should for the sake of my sanity.’

His words made no sense to Sabrina. How could she be a threat to Cruz’s sanity? It was the other way round, and it was imperative that she found the strength of will to resist him. He still had one hand clamped on her bottom, and he moved his other hand to the front of her shirt. Her heart gave a jolt when he began to unfasten the buttons, but she did not stop him, couldn’t, if she was brutally honest.

Excitement spiralled inside her as he pushed her shirt off her shoulders to reveal her plain white bra. She wished she were wearing sexy underwear in black satin and lace, but then Cruz traced his fingers over the outline of her nipple visible through the stretchy material of her bra and she caught her breath as a shaft of exquisite pleasure shot through her.

‘It doesn’t help that you are so damned responsive,’ he said harshly. He reached around her back to unfasten her bra and tugged the straps down her arms, baring her breasts to his hot gaze. His voice thickened. ‘How the hell am I supposed to resist you when your body tells me that you are as hungry as I am?’

Sabrina shivered when he cupped her naked breasts in his hands, but it was not cold that made her nipples harden into burgeoning points but anticipation and uncontrollable sexual excitement. Cruz gave a husky laugh as he flicked his thumb pads across her nipples and heard her swiftly indrawn breath.

‘I remember you used to love it when I caressed your breasts with my hands and especially my mouth. Do you still like that,
gatinha
?’ He gave another low chuckle when he realised that she was incapable of replying. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

Dimly she knew she should stop him and bring an end to this madness, but she was enraptured by the feel of his warm hands on her flesh, seduced by his soft words of promise. He lifted her into his arms and laid her down on the pile of square hay bales. The hay felt scratchy beneath her shoulders but she forgot the slight discomfort as Cruz knelt over her and lowered his head to her breast. He drew her nipple into his mouth and suckled her hard. The pleasure was so intense that she gave a keening cry and curled her fingers into his shoulders to urge him to continue his exquisite torment.

He needed no persuading, pausing only to transfer his mouth to her other nipple. ‘Oh, God!’ she groaned as deep shudders of pleasure racked her body when he flicked his tongue back and forth over the tender peak. She could feel the fire building low in her pelvis as he continued his merciless ravishment of her body. Reality faded and she was aware only of the sweet smell of hay, the sound of the rain drumming on the roof of the shed and Cruz’s uneven breaths as he took his mouth from her breast and claimed her lips in a deep, drugging kiss that ravaged her soul.

This was the Cruz she remembered from the past. He might wear expensive clothes now, instead of jeans, and drink champagne rather than beer, but the essence of him hadn’t changed and her senses recognised the familiar musk of male pheromones and the subtle scent that was uniquely him.

She ran her hands over his soaking-wet shirt and tugged open the buttons before pushing the material over his shoulders. His bronzed chest was satin overlaid with black hairs that felt like silk beneath her fingertips as she traced the ridges of his powerful pectoral and abdominal muscles.

He was so beautiful. And so massively aroused! Desire flooded through her when he bore his weight down on her so that her breasts were crushed against his bare chest and she was supremely conscious of his erection pressing into the junction between her thighs. Their clothes were an unwanted barrier. The fire inside her burned hotter and became an inferno of feverish need, and she sensed from the fierce intensity of Cruz’s kiss that he had passed the point of no return.

He tugged the zip of her jodhpurs down but struggled to pull the clingy trousers over her hips.

‘These were not designed for easy access,’ he growled impatiently.

The sound of his voice broke through the sexual haze surrounding Sabrina’s brain and forced her to acknowledge a vital fact.

‘I’m not on the pill,’ she muttered.

Cruz did not seem to hear her as he managed to slip his hand inside her jodhpurs and stroked a finger over the damp panel of her knickers. Instinctively she arched her hips and a shudder of longing ran through her when he eased the panel aside and touched her eager flesh. But her common sense could not be ignored. She would never risk another unplanned pregnancy and she pulled at his hand to make him stop his intimate exploration.

‘We can’t. I’m not protected.’

This time he heard and he lifted his head and stared down at her, his eyes glittering with frustration before he swore savagely and rolled away. He lay on his back on the hay bales and held his forearm across his eyes—almost, Sabrina thought, as if he was ashamed of what emotions they might reveal. But he could not disguise the ragged sound of his breathing or the heaving of his chest as he dragged air into his lungs. Outside, the rain fell harder and somehow the thunderous drumming on the roof and the feeling that they were trapped in the hay shed made the prickling atmosphere even tenser.

‘Cruz...’ She flinched as he leapt to his feet and could not disguise her shock when she saw his tortured expression.

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘So now you have discovered the truth. How does it feel to know that you have the power to bring a grown man to his knees?
Of course I damn well want you.
’ He threw the words at her as if the confession had been ripped from his soul. ‘I wanted you ten years ago and nothing has changed. I desire you more than I have ever desired any other woman. You are my nemesis,
gatinha
.
’
His lip curled in self-mockery. ‘No doubt you are gloating at my weakness?’

‘No,’
she said shakily. His self-contempt touched something inside her and she stretched her hand towards him. ‘Cruz, I...’

He swore again and snatched up his shirt, thrusting his arms into the sleeves with such violent force that the material ripped.
Deus
, was that pity he had heard in Sabrina’s voice? Cruz felt humiliated by his inability to resist her and his anger made him want to verbally lash out at her.

‘However much you might wish to deny it, you want me as badly as I want you. We are both gripped by this madness, and neither of us will know any peace until we have sated our desire for each other.’