Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride

The bed was as pale and cool as a lunar landscape in the mystical blue twilight. Tristan’s hands slipped down her arms, making her shiver, and then he was taking her hands in his and drawing her towards it. She wasn’t aware of the ground beneath her feet any more. Stars, brighter even than the ones lighting up the washed out sky outside, filled her head, gold and glittering as, very gently, he pushed one strap of her dress down over her shoulder and stroked a circle of bliss over the skin he had exposed.

Lily bit her lip to stop herself crying out into the thick silence. With maddening, excruciating slowness Tristan turned his attention to the other shoulder. In the fading light his face bore an expression of detached intensity, which made tongues of fire leap along her nerves, burning pathways into the hungry, molten core of her. With a care that was almost abstracted he took the pleated silk between his fingers, holding it for a second before sliding it off her shoulder.

The dress slithered to the floor like a curtain coming down, and Lily stood before him, naked apart from a pair of tiny silk knickers.

She was almost too beautiful, Tristan thought with an edge of despair. Too perfect.

As she stood there, the muted evening folding around her like veils of blue voile, softening the planes and angles of her impossibly slender body and silvering the coronet of leaves in her hair, she looked like some remote and untouchable figure from ancient mythology. With careful restraint he reached out and took her waist between his hands, stroking his thumbs upwards to the small, exquisite breasts.

‘Selene…’ he murmured, and her head jerked back, her eyes filled with shock and hurt, but he felt the convulsive tremor that shook her as his palms brushed her hardened nipples and she didn’t try to move away.

‘No!’ she said harshly, raggedly. ‘That’s not my name. I’m Lily…’

Tristan laughed softly. Her misplaced insecurity touched him. As if anyone would forget her name. ‘I know that.’ He bent his head, pressing his lips to the pale skin below her collarbone, unhurriedly moving downwards. ‘Earlier I thought you were a golden Demeter, but now you look like Selene, the goddess of the moon.’

She closed her eyes and buried her shy smile in the silk of his hair. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘She fell in love with a mortal—a handsome shepherd boy called Endymion—and she couldn’t bear the thought of ever being separated from him.’ Tristan’s mouth hovered for a second over the tight bud of her nipple, the warmth of his breath caressing the quivering, darkened flesh until he felt his own desire pounding at the barriers of his self-control. ‘So she asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep, so that he would never die and never grow older. Every night she used to go and lie with him.’

He straightened up and looked at her. Her eyes were incandescent with unconcealed need but laughter gleamed in their depths as she raised herself up onto her tiptoes to kiss him again.

‘You seem to be on first name terms with all the A-list goddesses,’ she said softly against his mouth. ‘Either you have friends in very high places or a degree in Classics.’

He pulled away sharply, dipping his head downwards so she couldn’t see his face. ‘Neither,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I have half a degree in Classics.’

‘You gave it up?’

‘Yes. I dropped out.’ His voice was soft, but he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from it as he pressed his mouth against her scented skin and pushed away the thoughts of the life he should have had. He heard her gasp as he ran the tip of his tongue around the rosy halo of her nipple and he felt her whole body momentarily convulse against him as he took her deeper into his mouth, sucking, kissing, losing himself in her.

Her arms tightened around his neck, her breath in his ear was a soft siren song of want. The familiar room, his refuge, his private sanctuary, blurred and blackened as the blood pounded in his head, a primitive, insistent rhythm, drowning out everything else but the miracle of her cool, creamy flesh on his tongue.

Sense left him. His brain—exhausted, jaded, cynical—crashed, and the jagged pattern of his constant, tormented thoughts levelled out into a flat line of submission while his body and his senses took over. Her hands were on his belt, working swiftly, deftly at the buckle, then pushing his trousers downwards, his underwear too, and together they sank down onto the bed, their mouths not leaving each other, their hands not pausing in their urgent, hungry exploration. Dimly Tristan was aware that his shirt still hung loose and unbuttoned from his shoulders, but he was too far gone to stop and take it off.

He was too far gone for anything. The awfulness of the last few days, the constant, grinding stress, the relentless horror that pushed at the steel barriers he placed around his mind had suddenly gone, sucked into the vortex of physical need, of blissful annihilation. It was as if some inbuilt survival mechanism had clicked into place inside him, finally shutting off the maddening need to think and plan and stay rigidly in control…

Did she sense this as she pushed him gently back onto the moonlit bed, and rose above him? Her flawless skin was bleached to ghostly whiteness, intensifying the dark glitter of her eyes and the crimson of her kiss-bruised mouth as she dipped her head and slid down his thighs, parting her glistening lips and…

The outside world slipped from focus. Even the machine-gun snap of the fireworks faded to a dull crackle. There was nothing beyond the sensation of her soft mouth on his burning, swollen flesh, the feathery caress of her hair brushing his skin as she bent over him. Opening his eyes, looking down, he could see the pale arc of her back. In his dazzled head her shoulder blades looked like angel’s wings.

Dios…Dios mio…

He was on the edge, on the brink of oblivion, holding on by his fingernails, but he wouldn’t allow himself to let go and hurtle through the secret darkness to his own bliss. Sitting up, he caught hold of her and, sliding his hands into her hair, pulled her head up.

‘My turn now.’

Meeting his eyes through the blue gloom Lily was instantly flooded with slippery heat. Though his face was tense and set, they were black and liquid with arousal. Wordlessly she let him pull her towards him, so that they were facing each other on the moon-drenched bed. One hand was in her hair, his strong fingers slowly massaging her scalp, sending shivering electrical impulses down through her entire body. The other remained at his side as he looked at her.

He simply looked…

Lily Alexander was used to being looked at. It was her job. Her life. It made her feel many things…resentful, jaded, uncomfortable, contemptuous…Never like this before. Never as if she were burning from the inside, as if fire were spreading from the cradle of her pelvis through the centre of her, while torrents of honeyed desire soaked her. Her body was a tool of a job she’d never wanted, and over the years she had learned to regard it with dispassionate acceptance, as if it were something impersonal. But now this man was bringing it to life. Transforming it from an aesthetically successful arrangement of bones, muscles, limbs into a finely tuned network of tingling nerves, heat, pounding blood. By making it his, he was giving it back to her.

His fingers circled her navel, making the taut skin of her midriff quiver as shock waves of screaming anticipation zigzagged downwards, and then in a gesture that was more intimate than anything that had happened before he gently laid his flattened hand against her stomach.

For a few heartbeats they were both very still. Lily wondered distantly if he could feel her stomach contract and tighten with clenching desire beneath his palm. Warmth radiated into her from his touch, and she was aware that beneath the storm of need and arousal she also felt strangely still, as if the clamour that had raged inside her for so long was finally hushed.

She felt cherished.

And then the moment was gone, and another crashing wave of need hit her as he slid one finger beneath the silken top of her pants, slipping them down over her hips. She could feel her pelvis tilting upwards in brazen invitation, her head tipping backwards so that he was supporting it in his cupped hand, as the fingers of his other hand splayed downwards, towards the swollen heart of her desire. She felt herself opening for him as his clever, unhurried fingers stroked and caressed, moving inexorably closer, until she could bear the waiting no longer, twisting and writhing her hips in a wordless plea for release.

With a whisper-light touch of a fingertip he brushed the tight bud of her longing, holding her tightly as a shuddering gasp tore through her in response.

‘Please, Tristan…’ she begged. ‘I can’t wait any more…’

Her hands were on his shoulders, gripping him tightly as if to anchor herself. She felt as if she were breaking up, slipping away, as if she needed him to hold her and keep her together. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head.

‘We can’t.’

His voice was hard, jagged, and as he spoke his grip on her tightened as if he had anticipated the rip tide of shock and disappointment that tore through her at his words.

Her head whipped up and she gave a sharp, indrawn hiss. ‘Why? Why not?’

‘Contraception. I have nothing.’

The tension left her in a rush. ‘But th-that’s OK, it’s fine,’ she stammered, inarticulate with relief, leaning in towards him again and murmuring into his neck as she trailed a line of kisses along the line of his jaw. ‘I’m on the pill…and I’m clean…It’s quite safe.’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘But you don’t know about me.’

His words stopped her in her tracks and she pulled away to look into his face. In the half-light his deep-set eyes were shadowed, making it impossible to read the expression in them. Her gaze travelled slowly over his face. The moonlight turned his skin to marble, and accentuated the sculpted perfection of his cheekbones, the deep cleft in his chin.

She shook her head, momentarily struck dumb by his beauty, trying to find the words.

‘No,’ she said eventually, reaching out and stroking her hand down his face in a mixture of tenderness and reverence. ‘But I trust you. I’ll do what you say. If we have to stop this here…’

Her hand was on his chest now. Lily was aware of the steady, strong beat of his heart beneath her palm.

‘No.’ He barely moved his lips as he said the word. ‘There’s no need to stop. It’s safe.’

Exhilaration leapt inside her, instantly detonating tiny explosions of desire along the winding pathways of her central nervous system. A low gasp of relief and longing was torn from her lips in the moment before Tristan took possession of them, and then her head was filled with nothing but the musky scent of his skin, the champagne taste of his mouth. His hands gripped her pelvis, pulling her onto him, while her fingers tore at his muscular shoulders.

He entered her with a powerful thrust that made her want to scream out with joy. She was taut and trembling with ecstasy, so stupefied with desire that she was unable to think, only to feel. Bliss flooded every cell of her body, making her pliant and helpless, but Tristan’s arms were tight around her. Gently he laid her down in the cool sheets, kissing her breast, her throat, finally coming back to her parted, panting lips as the rhythm of their bodies gathered pace and her legs twined helplessly around his hips.

Lily’s final, triumphant cry of release shattered the still blue evening at exactly the same time as the finale of fireworks exploded beyond the lake. They lay together, their breathing fast and laboured as the sweat dried on their bodies and pink and gold stars cartwheeled through the blue infinity above.

It had rained in the night.

Getting up from the crumpled bed Lily had gone to the window and looked out onto a cool world of silver and green. The rain had fallen in sheets, turning the glassy surface of the lake misty.

As she looked out of the window of the Jeep as it rattled over the arid African plane just a little over twenty-four hours later it was almost impossible to believe that she hadn’t dreamed it. Hadn’t dreamed that cool lushness; hadn’t dreamed turning away, crossing the floor back to the bed where Tristan lay, his arm thrown across the place where she’d been lying.

Hadn’t dreamt the expression of torment on his face.

And as she’d watched him he’d cried out, a harsh, bitter shout of anger, or of pain, and without thinking Lily had slipped back beneath the sheets beside him, cradling his beautiful head against her, stroking him, murmuring soothing, meaningless, instinctive sounds into his hair until the room had reassembled itself in the grey light of dawn and she had felt the tension leave his body.

Then she had got quietly out of bed and put on her silk dress and slipped silently out the door and down the stairs. He hadn’t reminded her about the Heathrow terminal, as he’d so jokingly promised. He hadn’t woken up to say goodbye.

The Jeep stopped at the camp. The heat was already almost beyond endurance, the air thick with the dust thrown up by their convoy of vehicles. Getting stiffly out, Lily wondered whether she was strong enough to face what lay ahead.

She bent her head, closing her eyes for a second and running her tongue over dry lips.

But she had found the strength to walk away from the tower yesterday morning.

If she could do that, she could do anything.

CHAPTER FOUR

London, six weeks later.

‘CONGRATULATIONS, Miss Alexander.’

Lily looked uncomprehendingly into the smiling face of the doctor. She had come here expecting an explanation for why she had felt so awful since picking up a stomach bug on her trip to Africa just over a month ago, but Dr Lee looked as if he was about to tell her she’d won the lottery, not contracted some nasty tropical disease.

She frowned. ‘You have the test results back?’

‘I have indeed. I can now confirm that you don’t have malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis…’ he let each sheet of flimsy yellow lab paper drift down onto the desk between them as he went through the sheaf of test results ‘…typhoid, rabies or diptheria.’

Lily’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that she wanted a nasty tropical disease, but at least if she knew what was causing the constant, bone-deep fatigue, the metallic tang in her mouth that made everything taste like iron filings, then maybe she could do something about it. Take something to make it go away, so she could start sleeping at night instead of lying awake, hot and breathless, fighting the drag of nausea in the back of her throat and trying not to think of that other night. Of Tristan Romero.

She shook her head, trying to concentrate. That was another thing that was almost impossible these days, but with huge effort she dragged her mind back from its now-familiar refuge in a twilit tower, a moon-bleached bed…

She had to put that behind her. Forget.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. If all the tests have come back negative, then what—?’

‘Ah, not quite all the tests show a negative result. There was one that has come back with a resounding positive.’ Dr Lee folded his hands together on the desk and beamed at her. ‘You’re pregnant, Miss Alexander. Congratulations.’

The walls seemed to rush towards her, blocking out the bright September sunshine outside, compacting the air in Dr Lee’s very elegant consulting room so that it was too thick to breathe. Lily felt the blood fall away from her head, leaving a roaring, echoing emptiness, which was filled a few seconds later by the distant sound of Dr Lee’s voice. She was aware of his hand on the back of her head.

‘That’s it…just keep your head down like that, there’s a good girl. This sort of reaction isn’t uncommon…Your hormones…Nothing to worry about. Just give it a moment and you’ll soon feel right as rain…’

Rain.

The memory of the lake at Stowell in the misty pre-dawn light rose up from the darkness inside her head; the rain falling in shining, silvery sheets on a landscape of pearly greyness. She remembered the musical sound of it, a timeless, soothing lullaby as she had held Tristan, stroking the tension from his sleeping body, while all the time, unknown, unseen, this…secret miracle had been unfurling within her own flesh.

‘There. Better now?’

She sat up, inhaling deeply, and nodded. ‘Yes. Sorry. The shock…’

Dr Lee’s face was compassionate, concerned. ‘It wasn’t planned?’

‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t understand. I’m on the pill.’

‘Ah. Well, the contraceptive pill is pretty good, but nothing gives a one-hundred-per-cent guarantee, I’m afraid. The sickness bug you picked up in Africa could have impaired the pill’s effectiveness, if that was quite soon after…’ He cleared his throat and left the sentence tactfully unfinished.

Mutely Lily nodded.

‘In that case it would tell me that it’s still very early days,’ he said gently. ‘There are many options open to you, you know.’

Lily got clumsily to her feet and held onto the back of the chair for support as the meaning of his words penetrated her numb brain.

Options.

‘Think about it,’ Dr Lee said with professional neutrality. ‘Talk it over with your partner, and let me know what you decide.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t have a partner. He’s not…He wouldn’t…’ She stopped, her mouth open as she tried to articulate the degree of Tristan Romero’s absence from her life without making herself sound like a cheap tart. I barely know him…I don’t have his number and he made it perfectly clear that he wouldn’t want to hear from me again…It was meant to be sex without strings. A one-night stand.

Oh, God, maybe she was a cheap tart. She remembered the hunger with which she’d pushed him back on the moonlit bed and taken him in her mouth; remembered the despair that had sliced through her like forked lightning when he’d said they shouldn’t go any further, that he had no contraception, and the desperation with which she had assured him it was safe.

‘This is nothing to do with him.’ Her knuckles were white as she gripped the back of the chair. ‘It’s not his fault, or his responsibility.’

Dr Lee’s eyebrows rose. ‘Miss Alexander—’

‘It’s mine. My fault, my responsibility. My baby.’ The words sounded strange and unfamiliar, but as she spoke them the same peculiar, illogical sense of peace that she had felt that night in the tower, in Tristan’s arms, came back to her, shivering through her whole body like a delicate meteor shower. She lifted her chin, meeting the concerned gaze of the doctor with a determined smile. ‘It’s my baby. And I’m keeping it.’

‘A call for you, Señor Romero.’

Tristan looked up irritably from the computer screen. ‘Bianca, I told you I did not wish to be disturbed.’

‘Lo siento, señor, but it is Señor Montague. I thought you would wish to speak to him.’

Tristan gave an abrupt nod as he reached for the phone. ‘Sí. Gracias.’ He swung his chair round so that he was looking out over the Placa St Jaume and the sunlit grand façade of the City Hall opposite. The Banco Romero de Castelan was one of the oldest and most well established in Spain, and its main offices were in a grand and prestigious building in the heart of Barcelona. It was beautiful, but oppressive. The sun had moved across the square, so that the high-ceilinged rooms with their echoing marble floors were in deep shadow from lunchtime onwards, although that wasn’t the only reason Tristan felt permanently chilled when he was here.

‘Tom.’

‘At last. You’re impossible to get hold of,’ Tom grumbled good-naturedly. ‘Were you in the middle of ravishing some innocent from the accounts department or something? Your secretary seemed remarkably reluctant to let me speak to you.’

‘You pay too much attention to the gossip columns,’ said Tristan acidly. ‘I’m working. Believe it or not, banks don’t run themselves. Bianca was under strictest instructions not to let any calls or any visitors through, so I don’t know how you persuaded her.’

‘It’s called charm, old chap. It’s what those of us who can’t get women into bed merely by glancing at them have to rely on. Which one is Bianca? The dark haired one with the cleavage you could get lost in?’

Tristan grinned reluctantly. ‘No. Redhead, looks like Sophia Loren, although since you’re soon to be a married man I hardly think it’s relevant.’ His smile became a little stiffer as he said, ‘How is your lovely bride-to-be?’

‘Oh, you know; beautiful, sexy…and suddenly totally preoccupied with flower arrangements and bridesmaid dresses. I tell you, it’s a whole new world. In my darker moments I have actually found myself thinking that your commitment to anonymous, emotionless one night stands might not be so insane after all.’

‘At last you’ve seen the light,’ Tristan said dryly. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’

Tom laughed. ‘Oh, it is. Far too late. I’m at the mercy of forces way beyond my control—namely Scarlet and my mother. My mother’s decided that we have to have an engagement party and as best man I’m afraid you have to be there. That’s why I was phoning—can you manage the last Saturday in September? Scarlet thinks that a small dinner at Stowell will be the least alarming way for her family to meet mine.’

Tristan glanced at his BlackBerry. Parties in Madrid and Lisbon, a business dinner in Milan and an invitation to spend the weekend at the island retreat of some friends were already filled in.

‘What if I said no?’

‘Then we’ll make it October.’ Tom sounded completely unconcerned. Leaning back in his chair, pushing a hand through his hair, Tristan stifled a sigh, recognising that he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one easily, but not willing to examine the reason why he wanted to.

‘I’ll try,’ he said curtly. ‘But one of the projects is at a difficult stage at the moment. You know what it’s like. I can’t promise anything.’

‘No. Of course not. You never can.’ Across the miles Tristan heard the quiet resignation in Tom’s voice. ‘You are the undisputed world champion of not promising anything and not committing yourself. But pencil it in and try to be there if nothing more important comes up.’

‘I’ll get back to you,’ Tristan said coldly. Cutting the call, he stood up, staring for a moment at the phone in his hand as Tom’s words echoed reproachfully through his head.

Every one of them was true, of course.

He swore, slamming his fist down on the polished wood of the desk from which generations of Romeros had run their banking empire, exploiting their name, consolidating their power and their fortune, regardless of who they destroyed in the process. And he was as cold and ruthless as the rest of them. He never allowed himself to forget that or to believe any different, whatever he did by way of atonement. His blue-tinged blood ran thick with the sin and corruption of his fore-fathers. Of his father. The only way in which he differed from them was that he was honest about it.

Honest.

Honest enough to admit that he was beyond redemption. Honest enough to know that he was best alone.

He gave a short, harsh exhalation of laughter. OK, so while he was being so unswervingly truthful he might as well admit to himself the real reason that he was so reluctant to go to Tom’s party. Back to Stowell. Because, he thought in self-disgust, she would be there.

Lily Alexander.

The girl with the skin that smelled like almonds, and felt like velvet.

The girl who had caught him at a low ebb, and got past his defences in a way that had never happened before.

And wouldn’t happen again, he thought, steeling himself. What did it matter if she was there or not? He would treat her in exactly the same way he treated every other woman he had slept with and discarded. With distant courtesy. And then he would walk away.