LITMIR.BIZ

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started to speak, but his gloved finger pressed hard against her lips and stilled them. “The sight of you like that, so disheveled, stirred me,” he said very quietly. “It isn’t a thing that a gentleman should admit, and I was taking pains to conceal what I felt. I spoke in frustration. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

      She was horribly embarrassed now. “As if your opinion of my...of my body matters to me!”

      “You have little enough self-esteem,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “It was unkind of me to do further damage to it.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it tenderly. “Forgive me.”

      She tried to pull her hand away. “Please...don’t do that,” she said breathlessly.

      He looked into her eyes and held them with a suddenly glittery, piercing stare. “Does it disturb you to feel my mouth on your skin, Bernadette?” he chided very softly.

      She was terribly uncomfortable and it was showing. The breathlessness now was as much excitement as asthma, and his expression told her that he knew it.

      His thumb smoothed over the back of her hand in a slow, sensuous tracing that made the breathlessness worse. “You’re far too innocent,” he said huskily. “Like a Spanish maiden cloistered with her duenna. You understand your own feelings even less than you understand mine.”

      “I don’t understand anything,” she choked out.

      “I realize that.” His fingers moved to her mouth and slowly, gently, traced its soft outline in a silence that throbbed with excitement and dark promise.

      It was the first intimate contact she’d ever had with a man and it unnerved her. “Eduardo,” she whispered uncertainly.

      His thumb pressed hard against her lips, parting them. Something flashed in his eyes as he felt her mouth tremble under the sudden rough caress of his thumb bruising the inside of her lips back against her teeth.

      She gasped and he made a sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl.

      The lace at her throat was shaking wildly. She saw his eyes go there and then, inexplicably, to her bodice. His breath drew in sharply. She looked down, curious even through her excitement, to see what had brought that sound from his lips.

      She saw nothing except the sharp points of her nipples against the fabric, but why should that disturb him?

      His eyes moved back up to hers. His fingers traced her chin and lifted it. His eyes fell to her soft mouth. He moved, just enough to bring him so close that she could taste the coffee scent and cigar smoke on his mouth as it hovered near hers.

      She had a hold on his dark jacket. She didn’t realize how tight a hold it was until she became aware of the cool cloth in her fingers.

      “Bernadette,” he whispered in a tone she’d never heard him use before. She was frozen in time, in space. She wanted his mouth to come down and cover hers. She wanted to taste it, as she’d wanted to so often in the past two years, even as she feared the change that it would bring to their turbulent relationship. But at the moment, the blood was surging through her veins and she was hungry for something she’d never known. The lack of restraint made her reckless.

      Involuntarily, she leaned closer to him, her lips approaching his as she forgot all her upbringing in the heat of sudden desire.

      He was tempted as he hadn’t been in many years. He was painfully tempted. But suddenly, he murmured something violent in Spanish, something she was certain he’d never have given voice if he’d suspected how fluent she was in Spanish. She’d never told him that she had learned his language, for fear of him knowing the reason—that she wanted to speak it because it was his native tongue.

      He drew back, his expression curiously taut and odd. He stared at her with narrowed eyes and she flushed at her own forward, outrageous behavior and dropped her gaze to his jacket in a flurry of embarrassment.

      Tension flowed between them as the sudden sound of hard shoes on tile broke the pregnant silence like pistol shots. Eduardo moved away from her to the window and grasped the thick curtain in his lean hand as Maria came through the open doorway carrying a silver tray.

      She was looking at it, not at the occupants of the room, so Bernadette had a few precious seconds to compose herself. Her hands still shook badly, but she managed to clasp them in her lap while Maria put the cups and saucers along with a pitcher of cream and a sugar dish on the table against the wall. She poured thick coffee into the cups and then laid napkins and spoons beside them. By the time she brought the coffee to Bernadette, the younger woman was pale but smiling. “Thank you, Maria,” she said hoarsely, and tried to sip the hot coffee, almost burning her mouth in the process.

      “This disease of the lungs is something you must be careful about, niña,” Maria said firmly. “You must take better care of yourself. Is this not so, Señor Conde?”

      He turned from the window and faced them with his usual composure. “Yes, it is,” he agreed, although his voice sounded huskier than usual. “Will you stay with her, Maria?” he added curtly. “I’ll go find her father myself. There’s something I need to discuss with him.”

      “Do you not want your coffee?” she asked, surprised.

      “Not at the moment, graçias.” He barely glanced at Bernadette. With a courteous nod, he left the room.

      “What odd behavior,” Maria murmured.

      Bernadette didn’t say a word. She’d shamed herself so badly that she wondered if she’d ever be able to look Eduardo in the eye again. Why couldn’t she have controlled her wild heartbeat, her scant but rapid breathing, when he was so close? How could she have leaned so close to him, as if she were begging him to kiss her?

      She groaned aloud, and Maria hovered worriedly. “I’m all right,” she assured the servant. “It’s just that...that the coffee is hot,” she said finally.

      “This is so, but it will help your lungs,” Maria coaxed with a smile.

      Yes, it would help the lungs. Strong black coffee often stopped an attack of asthma stone cold.

      But it wasn’t going to do much for the renegade heart that was beating like a drum in her chest or the shame she’d brought on herself in a moment of ungoverned passion. Amazing that she could feel such emotions with Eduardo. He didn’t even want her. But if he didn’t, then why had he come so close, spoken so seductively? It was the first time since she’d known him that he’d ever behaved in that way with her. They fought constantly. But there were times when he had been tender with her, concerned for her, as even her own father wasn’t. But this, today, was different. He’d treated her for the first time as a woman he desired. It gave her an extraordinary feeling of power, of maturity.

      She let herself dream, for a space of seconds, that he felt the same helpless attraction for her that she felt for him. Only a dream, but so sweet!

      CHAPTER TWO

      EDUARDO STALKED TOWARD THE barn where Maria had said Colston Barron was working. He felt sick to his stomach for the way he’d worked on Bernadette’s senses, taking advantage of her naiveté and unworldliness. She was easy prey for an experienced man. He’d turned her inside out with no trouble at all, just to see if he could. The result made his head spin. She wanted him. He was dumbfounded. Having experienced little more than open hostility from her, especially for the past two years, the knowledge of her vulnerability with him was overwhelming.

      His mind was forming plans as he walked. Bernadette’s father wanted a titled son-in-law, a place in polite society that his wealth couldn’t buy for him. Bernadette was ripe for a lover. Eduardo, on the other hand, needed money badly to save his ranch. The alternative was to go on his knees to his grandmother and beg for help, something the proud old woman might not give him—without strings attached. Her favorite was his cousin Luis, a shrewd young blade with big eyes and grandiose plans who would love to see Eduardo humbled.

      Eduardo’s

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