Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) (13 page)

She gave a sob of frustration when he withdrew his finger but her momentary panic that he was enjoying teasing her faded as she watched him rip open a condom packet and deftly sheath himself. His eyes glittered with purpose and something else she could not define. Cruz wanted emotionless sex, she reminded herself. So it could not have been regret that she’d glimpsed in his olive-green depths. It must have been the shadow cast by the bedside lamp. Her thoughts scattered as he leaned over her and kissed her mouth passionately but with an unexpected tenderness that completely unravelled her.

He was Cruz, her Cruz, and she had missed him so much. With a soft sigh she stroked his cheek and moved her hand up to run her fingers through his springy black hair while he took the kiss even deeper, drugging her senses with his sensual exploration of her lips.

He kept his mouth on hers as he positioned himself over her, and she instinctively bent her knees as he pressed forwards and entered her with a powerful thrust that drove the breath from her lungs. He felt the slight resistance of her body and paused, his voice thick with remorse as he muttered, ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’ Sabrina forced herself to relax, allowing her internal muscles to stretch around him. ‘It’s been a while since I last did this,’ she admitted with faint embarrassment in her voice. Feeling him begin to withdraw, she clutched his shoulders and urged him down onto her. ‘Don’t stop.’

Cruz had no intention of stopping. Sabrina’s confession that there had been no other man in her life recently had decimated the last vestiges of his restraint, and he groaned and thrust into her again, driven by an intensity of need that shocked him because it was utterly beyond his control. It was just sex, he reminded himself. Very, very good sex—but he had known it would be. The sexual connection he felt with Sabrina went beyond anything he’d felt for any other woman. He set a rhythm that she quickly matched, and with deep, measured strokes he reclaimed her and possessed her utterly.

He felt the first ripples of her orgasm and heard her gasp as the spasms grew stronger and her muscles clenched around him, inciting him to increase his pace as he drove them both higher. Cruz’s sole aim was to ensure her pleasure, and he tormented her nipples with his tongue, lapping each swollen peak in turn until she suddenly gave a cry and arched like a bow beneath him.

For a few seconds he held her at the edge, testing the limits of his self-control, and then drove into her again, deeper and harder, and felt the explosion of her climax. She wrapped her legs around his back and her fingers gripped his buttocks. The sensation of her fingernails raking across his flesh was beyond his endurance. Pleasure surged through him in an unstoppable force, causing him to lose control spectacularly. Eyes closed, his head thrown back so that the cords in his neck strained, his groan was wrenched from his soul as his body shuddered with the exquisite ecstasy of sexual release.

For a long time afterwards neither of them moved. Sabrina felt Cruz’s heart echo the jerky rhythm of her own thunderous pulse as she held him tightly to her. She breathed in the sweet musk of his sweat-sheened skin, loving the warmth of his body and the weight of him pressing her into the mattress. She could have stayed like that, joined with him, for ever. But then he rolled off her without saying a word.

His silence stretched her nerves. She felt hot all over as she replayed her wanton response to him in her mind. Perhaps he was shocked by her shameless enjoyment of sex, unaware that she had only ever behaved with such wild abandon with him? She remembered the deal they had made. He was paying her for sex but perhaps he thought that
she
should pay
him
for servicing her so thoroughly? She risked glancing at him and discovered that he had fallen asleep.

He looked younger and the grooves at the sides of his mouth had disappeared. His dark lashes fanned on his cheeks and his black hair fell across his brow so that Sabrina longed to run her fingers through its silky thickness. In his relaxed state he looked like the younger man she had known ten years ago and she wondered how she had ever had the strength back then to have left him. The painful truth was that he had not loved her and it had been that certainty that had sent her rushing back to Eversleigh, she thought bleakly.

Nothing had changed. He did not love her now. But he had gone to great lengths to make her his mistress despite the fact that he could have any woman he wanted without having to fork out one and a half million pounds. She had been half amused, half irritated at the way the majority of the female guests at the party had openly flirted with him. But Cruz had only had eyes for her, and when he had made love to her just now his primitive hunger had thrilled her because she had known he was powerless to resist the blazing sexual chemistry that sizzled whenever they were near each other.

She bit her lip. At eighteen she had been too young and unsure of herself and too devastated by the miscarriage to fight for him. But making love with him just now had shown her that she still had feelings for him and that maybe—her heart jolted as she tested a startling idea—maybe she had never fallen out of love with him.

So why not fight for him? She would not be the first woman in history to use sex as a way to a man’s heart; she thought of her ancestor Henrietta Bancroft who had been the king’s mistress.

Her strongest weapon was Cruz’s desire for her, but he had insisted that he wanted sex without emotion so that was what she would let him think he was getting. Dared she go through with her plan knowing that six months from now he might walk away from her and break her heart? Her heart had been doomed from the minute he had turned up at Eversleigh Hall, she thought ruefully. If nothing else, she would have six months of amazing sex to remember him by.

The sound of his regular breaths reminded her of when they had been lovers in Brazil and she had lain awake watching him while he slept. She gave in to the temptation to trace her forefinger lightly over his mouth and when he did not stir she moved her hand lower to his chest, following the path of dark hairs that arrowed over his stomach. He took a deeper breath, and she held hers, but he remained asleep and after a moment she continued her exploration, carefully lifting the sheet away from his hips.

He was still semi-aroused, and even in that state the size of his manhood made her breath catch. He was so beautiful, his body honed to perfection and powerfully muscular. Utterly absorbed in her study of him, she could not resist running her fingers over the proud tip of his penis.

His response—to full, hard arousal—was immediate.

‘
Deus
, Sabrina, I hope you are prepared to finish what you’ve started,’ Cruz growled.

Her smile made his gut clench. She was an evocative mix of seductive minx and curious innocence that reminded him of the virginal eighteen-year-old who had gifted him with her maidenhood. His thoughts became focused on what she was doing with her hands and he drew a sharp breath when he watched her open a condom and roll it over his throbbing erection.

‘I’m prepared, and now so are you,’ she murmured. She sat astride him and leaned forwards so that her long blonde hair tumbled in a silken curtain over his chest. ‘What is your wish, master?’ she said in a teasing voice.

Evidently she had decided to enact the role of concubine. Cruz knew he should respond in the same light tone and join in with her game, but he couldn’t. Desire was a ravenous beast inside him that demanded appeasement. How could he be this desperate for her so soon after he’d had sex with her the first time? He despised himself for his inability to resist her, but she leaned further forwards and deliberately stroked her nipples across his chest, and he felt the pressure building inside him until he feared he would explode.

‘Kiss me,’ he ordered harshly.

When she complied he took her lips, took everything she offered and claimed possession, driving his tongue into her mouth to elicit a sensual exploration that he sensed shocked her with its blatant eroticism. He slid his hands down her spine and shaped the twin globes of her buttocks before he gripped her hips, lifted her high and brought her down onto his erection so that she gasped as her vaginal muscles stretched to accommodate him.

He knew she was surprised by his barely leashed savagery but she did not falter as he encouraged her to ride him. She quickly learned the rhythm he set and the expression on her face became intent as she absorbed thrust after devastating thrust of his solid shaft into her velvet heat.

Faster, faster, Cruz gritted his teeth as he fought to control the primitive urges of his body. He needed her to come now before this went spectacularly wrong, and he was relieved when she gave a sudden sharp cry and he felt her convulse around him. His relief was short-lived as with a sense of disbelief he realised that he could not stop his own release. With a muffled oath he reversed their positions and rolled her beneath him, gave one final, powerful thrust and was hit by a tidal wave of pleasure that went on and on as his seed flooded out of him.

* * *

Last night had not been his finest hour, Cruz brooded the following morning. He sat down at the breakfast table but had no appetite for food as his mind replayed his total and humiliating loss of control caused by Sabrina’s witchery. He did not understand why she affected him so strongly. With every other woman he’d had sex with he had never had a problem curbing his desire. He could make love for hours, and there had been many occasions when his brain had been occupied with his latest business project while he had gone through the motions of assuring whichever woman was in his bed that she was amazing.

His temper did not improve when Sabrina strolled into the room wearing a short black silk robe that barely covered her thighs. Last night he had ordered her to strip naked and the memory of how she had enjoyed playing the sexual tease evoked a heated sensation in Cruz’s groin. She had turned into a wildcat in his arms, but this morning she was a picture of refinement with her blonde hair caught in a knot on top of her head, revealing the slender column of her elegant neck.

As she sat down opposite him at the table he made a show of glancing at his watch. ‘Good morning. Although it’s nearly afternoon.’ It was an exaggeration but he was irritated that she had evidently had no problem sleeping, while he had stayed awake for most of the night trying to comprehend his craven weakness for her. ‘I was about to come and wake you.’

She shrugged. ‘I had a bath.’

And she smelled heavenly. Cruz inhaled a waft of rose-scented bath oil and body lotion that she had used to moisturise her skin, and felt a certain part of his anatomy spring to life. ‘Would you like coffee?’

‘I’d prefer Earl Grey tea if you have it.’

He poured her a cup of anaemic-looking liquid before helping himself to strong black coffee. ‘I suppose you are used to a privileged lifestyle where you can get up at whatever time you like instead of having to join the morning commute to a job,’ he said tersely.

‘Actually my alarm goes off at six a.m. at home. I lecture at a university on two days a week, and if I am commissioned to work on a restoration project I have to travel to London or further afield to a museum or stately home.’

Sabrina frowned. ‘I certainly don’t swan around at Eversleigh Hall playing the lady of the manor. Running the estate takes up a lot of my time, and anyway I have to get up early to exercise Monty.’ Her heart gave a pang as she remembered that her horse would have been collected by his new owner and the stables at Eversleigh would be empty.

Cruz’s voice drew her attention back to him and she thought how mouth-wateringly sexy he looked with the top buttons of his shirt open and a shadow of dark stubble on his jaw. Her breasts were a little sore this morning from where his rough jaw had scraped her skin. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.

‘When I checked my emails this morning I opened several invitations to social functions addressed to both of us.’ Cruz’s mouth curled into a cynical smile. ‘Many of the newspapers have reported on our romantic liaison, and it would appear that your links with the aristocracy are working in my favour. Perhaps I should marry you,’ he said sardonically. ‘Having a high-class wife would clearly offer me even more benefits and business opportunities.’

Sabrina’s heart missed a beat but her outward response was to raise her finely arched brows. ‘I assume you are joking,’ she replied in her cultured voice that made Cruz long to ruffle her
sangfroid
.

He watched her take a ripe peach from the fruit bowl and cut it into slivers with a silver knife before she bit into a slice with her perfect white teeth. Juice trickled down her chin and she licked the syrupy liquid with the tip of her tongue. Cruz felt sweat on his brow.
Deus!
Was she deliberately trying to turn him on? He took a gulp of coffee, forgetting that he had just poured it and it was scalding hot. The shock of burning at the back of his throat caused him to jolt and he spilt coffee down the front of his shirt. He swore beneath his breath.

‘I know what your reply would be if I had made a serious proposal of marriage,’ he said grimly. ‘You would turn me down just as you did ten years ago.’ His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Or would you?’ he mused aloud. ‘You didn’t want to marry me when I was poor, but now that I am a multimillionaire perhaps you would consider me a better catch. Why settle for one and a half million pounds when, if you were my wife, you could get your claws on my entire fortune?’

Sabrina pushed her half-eaten peach away. For some reason Cruz was being deliberately insulting. She did not know why he was in a foul mood, but perhaps he had tired of her already and was regretting paying her to be his mistress. She knew full well that he hadn’t been serious about wanting to marry her.

‘Your lack of money wasn’t the reason I turned you down.
It wasn’t,
’ she insisted when he gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘It was because you had asked me to marry you for the wrong reason.’

‘You were expecting my baby.’