Hot Nights with a Spaniard: Bedded for the Spaniard's Pleasure / Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride / Spanish Magnate, Red-Hot Revenge

His gaze narrowed on her warningly. ‘If you won’t agree to come down to Cannes with me this evening, then I’m not going, either,’ he repeated evenly.

‘Scrap my previous statement—your behaviour is positively juvenile!’ Cairo glared at him. ‘I won’t if you won’t,’ she mocked as she reached for another of the towels and began to hang it on the line. ‘You have to go to Cannes this evening, Rafe—I don’t!’

‘I don’t have to go anywhere until I’ve managed to find out the identity of the man who spoke to Daisy at lunchtime,’ Rafe assured her just as stubbornly.

Rafe had called several people he knew in the newspaper business, but as yet none of them had been offered a story about himself and Cairo. They would call him back when, or if, they did.

Admittedly his own temper was slightly frayed around the edges after those memories earlier of their time together on the Isle of Man. But Cairo’s adamant refusal to even think about reconsidering her decision not to go down to Cannes with him tonight was only increasing Rafe’s frustration, which was already exacerbated by a sexual tension that was becoming more unbearable by the minute.

She sighed. ‘So much for your “couple of phone calls”.’

‘If he’s a reporter, then we’ll know by tomorrow morning, anyway,’ Rafe pointed out. ‘I only said if he’s a reporter, Cairo,’ he said as she gave a pained groan.

She shook her head. ‘We both know that he is. Do you think he has photographs, too?’

‘If he’s any good at his job then, yes, of course he has photographs.’ There was no point in even attempting to lie, Rafe knew, when tomorrow morning’s newspapers would tell their own story, no doubt including wild speculation about their relationship.

He could see it now, photographs of himself and Cairo shopping for food, of them walking through Grasse with Daisy, of the three of them laughing together as they sat down at the table in the square outside the restaurant.

All very cosily domestic.

Deceptively so.

Anyone who had ever listened to a single conversation between himself and Cairo would know differently—they couldn’t even discuss the weather without getting into an argument about it!

‘I don’t see anything in the least funny about this situation, Rafe!’ Cairo snapped as she saw his rueful smile. ‘The reason I’m annoyed is pretty obvious after the publicity following my divorce from Lionel.’ She grimaced. ‘But I’m sure there must be someone in your own life who isn’t going to be amused, either, by photographs of the two of us together.’

Cairo hadn’t spent long, boring hours in her trailer waiting to be called on set for months now—that was the only time she flicked through the glossy magazines that contained those sorts of gossipy articles—so she had no idea whether or not Rafe was involved with anyone at the moment. But he probably was….

His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘I doubt any of my family will be concerned.’

Cairo sighed. ‘I wasn’t talking about your family and you know it.’

Rafe had occasionally talked about his family when they were together. Of his Spanish father who had visited America as a student and fallen in love with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a Texas rancher, the two of them marrying once they finished college, and now working that ranch in Texas themselves, along with Rafe’s younger brother, Pedro, and his wife and young family.

Rafe grinned. ‘I’m well aware of that, Cairo,’ he drawled. ‘And, no, I very much doubt that photographs of you and I together are going to bother anyone but the two of us.’

‘What a shame,’ she came back insincerely.

Rafe sobered. ‘Cairo, I would never have kissed you last night if I was involved with someone else.’

She raised sceptical brows. ‘Really?’

‘Dammit, Cairo—’

‘Rafe, I have no intention of getting into yet another argument with you,’ she told him wearily. ‘Just accept that I am not going to Cannes with you tonight—’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘One, I don’t want to go. Two, I didn’t bring anything suitable to wear. Three,’ she added simply, ‘I’m still waiting for Jeff to return one of my calls.’

She had made two so far. One at the restaurant when she had reached his answering service, and hadn’t bothered to leave a message as she had quickly rung off to be with Daisy. And another one at the beach when she had returned from her swim and had left a message asking Jeff to call her back as soon as possible to let her know how Margo was.

She had brought her mobile outside with her now in the hopes he would call back soon.

Rafe scowled. ‘One, I don’t give a damn what you want; I’m not going out and leaving you and Daisy here alone this evening. Two, you can go naked for all I care. And three, that’s what mobile phones are for!’ he all but snarled.

‘There’s no need to shout—and I told you not to touch me again, Rafe!’ Cairo’s eyes flashed a warning as she looked down at the fingers that had reached out to curl like steel bands about her arm.

Rafe breathed unevenly as he looked down at her for several long seconds. ‘You would try the patience of a saint, Cairo!’

‘You should be just fine, then, shouldn’t you?’ she baited him. ‘I told you to let go of my arm, Rafe.’ She looked up to meet his gaze unflinchingly.

The very air seemed to have stilled about them, not a sound to be heard except their own breathing as they continued that silent battle of wills, their faces only inches apart as blue eyes held brown.

Cairo felt as if the whole of her insides were melting as Rafe stood far too close to her, those fingers encircling her arm sending waves of awareness to her breasts and thighs.

Only Rafe had ever been able to make her feel like this with just a look. Only Rafe had ever been able to make her want him with just the touch of his hand against her flesh.

A hand he now let drop back to his side even as his gaze continued to hold hers captive. ‘Do you know what I want to do to you right this minute?’ he murmured.

Cairo moistened dry lips, unable to speak or look away from that mesmerizing gaze.

‘If you won’t let me touch you, then let me tell you all the things I’ve been imagining doing with you,’ Rafe said gruffly. ‘Wild, wonderful things—’

‘Rafe—’

‘Erotic beautiful things,’ he continued mercilessly, his eyes gleaming with the desire he no longer held in check. ‘You see that wall behind you …? Yes, that wall,’ he confirmed softly as Cairo gave the low stone wall a quick glance. ‘I want to slip off your jeans and panties before sitting you on top of that wall and kneeling in front of you. I want to slowly unbutton your blouse to bare your breasts to the sun so that I can touch them, kiss them, lick your nipples, suckle them into the heat of my mouth—’

‘Rafe …!’ Cairo’s intended groan of protest instead came out as an aching entreaty for him to continue, her skin becoming sensitized just by his words, by the evocative image he was creating, her nipples hard against the soft material of her blouse, and a moist heat pooling between her thighs.

His eyes were dark. ‘Then I want to kiss my way—slowly—down to your navel.’ His voice was low, hypnotic. ‘Dipping my tongue, tasting you, before I go lower, parting your legs even as I part your glossy curls and find the very centre of you with my lips and tongue. I still remember the taste of you there, Cairo. So sweet and hot …’ He groaned.

‘Rafe, you have to stop this now!’ she choked, all of her feeling on fire now, aching with a need for the things he had described so eloquently.

‘Why do I, Cairo?’ His gaze still held hers. ‘I’m only talking, telling you of the things I would like to do with you.’

Cairo could feel every single one of them! Could feel his hands and lips against her breasts, suckling her nipples, his mouth hot and liquid across the flatness of her stomach as he moved lower, tasting that pool of moisture there, licking her, sucking ever so gently on her arousal and taking her over the edge into wild oblivion. She could feel all of that just as strongly as she felt the sun beating down on them.

Just as she could imagine touching Rafe, her hands gliding lovingly over the broadness of his bare shoulders and torso, her lips following that same path, kissing him, caressing him as she slowly made her way down to the hard thrust of his arousal, lips and tongue tasting him as she took him in her mouth and felt his response to those caresses, hearing his groans of longing, his need for release …

Why had everything gone so wrong between them eight years ago? she wondered achingly. Why, when she had loved him so much, given so much—when they had been able to give each other such physical pleasure—hadn’t she been enough for him?

They were questions Cairo had asked herself many times over the years. The answers were all too obvious.

With the prospect of a month’s filming on the Isle of Man—a beautiful unspoilt island but nevertheless one that offered very little in the way of entertainment for a man as rakish as Rafe Montero—Cairo must have been an easy conquest, a diversion in what might otherwise have been a tedious time for him when he wasn’t actually filming.

Admittedly the relationship had continued for a while longer once they’d all returned to London to complete the filming, Cairo more often than not spending the night in Rafe’s penthouse suite at his hotel with him, the two of them even occasionally going out to dinner with Margo and Jeff.