There’s a whole church full of people beyond this alcove, but I’ve forgotten all about them, too lost in the heat of his mouth and the devastation of his kiss to care.
His body is pressed to mine, and it’s hot and so hard, and I’m rapidly forgetting all the lessons I’ve ever learned. How I can’t let anyone get too close, let alone someone I hate. How precarious my life has been, and how I can’t ever let anyone know that, especially not him. How this man could take everything away from me if he chooses to fight his father’s will, because even with Antonio’s money I don’t have the resources that he does.
He owns one of the biggest private research and development companies in Europe, with millions of dollars at his disposal. I have nothing except the last will and testament of the husband who only married me so his son didn’t end up with his assets.
Santiago reaches down again, sliding his hand over my thigh and back behind my knee, tugging my leg up and around his lean waist as he fits himself between my thighs. The length of his cock behind his fly presses against my sensitive clit, and he rocks his hips, causing sparks of a dark and dirty pleasure to light up every nerve-ending I have.
I can’t let him do this to me. I can’t. I ignored my desire for him, ignored the chemistry that I felt that night at the bar. I boxed it up and threw it into the darkest corner of my soul where I need never look at it again. Yet, despite all those ‘can’t’s, I can’t bring myself to push him away either.
I’ve never felt pleasure like this before, not once, and I want it with every fibre of my being, no matter how dangerous it is. And it is dangerous. Good things always are, because they can be taken away from you so easily. They can make you dependent, make you vulnerable, and that’s something I should never allow.
But I’m helpless against this. I want something good for myself. Something’s that’s just mine, that I didn’t have to give to anyone first or to work for. Everything I have I had to fight for, and I should be fighting for this too. But for the first time in my life all I want is to surrender.
‘Oh, my God,’ I whisper against his mouth as he rocks against me again, and I shiver in his grip, the pleasure splintering and fracturing inside me. ‘Please…’ I don’t want to beg, it’s too humiliating, but I can’t stop the words from pouring out of my mouth. ‘Oh…please…please…’
He does something to his trousers, then his hand is beneath my dress again and I feel him pull the fabric of my knickers roughly aside. Then he’s pinning me to the hard stone at my back, pushing inside me, the big, hard length of his cock stretching me wide.
His mouth swallows my scream of pleasure, his kiss blinding as he grips my thigh, pulling it higher, working himself deeper. My fingers are curled, taking fistfuls of his jacket, my mouth under his total command as he begins to move, hard and deep. He’s rough, urgent, desperate and so am I. Dimly I’m aware that we’re in public, that someone could walk by and find us at any moment, and that should horrify me. Yet right now the thought only adds extra spice to the already agonising physical pleasure.
I have never wanted anything more than I want him right now, and if I was in my right mind I’d be appalled at myself and what I’m doing. By how I’m losing my virginity to the man who’s technically my stepson, in the alcove of a church during my husband’s funeral.
But I’m not in my right mind and the movement of his hips as he thrusts into me, demanding and hungry, is making me want to scream. I cling to his jacket and sink my teeth into his full bottom lip as the pleasure turns me inside out. He growls, biting me back, his fingers around my throat tightening a fraction. Not enough to hurt or to choke, just enough to make sure I feel them like a collar around my neck. A collar denoting his ownership.
He moves faster, harder, changing the angle of his thrusts, and without warning the pleasure cracks and spiderwebs around me, glass under pressure breaking as the climax hits. I give another hoarse scream that he stems with his mouth, before shuddering as it takes him too, his rough groan of release vibrating against my lips.
There’s a moment of deafening silence and all I can hear is the thunder of my own heartbeat. He’s warm and solid, still gripping me tight, and for a second I forget who he is to me. When I only want to rest against him, let his heat and solidity protect me from the rest of the world.
Then slowly, but surely, reality winds a cold thread through me. This is Antonio’s funeral and we’re in a church, and I’ve just had sex with my stepson. And if anyone found us here like this…
If I’m hated now, that would be nothing compared to the hate I’d get for that. He would be fine—men always are—but I would be vilified. That shouldn’t matter to me—I have my armour after all—but all that hate gets to you after a while. Not being respectable enough. Not being well behaved enough. Not being good enough.
All I wanted after the funeral was to retire to the Veracruz estate and disappear from public view, safely insulated by Antonio’s money. Then what I’d planned, once the immediate battle for survival had been won, was to decide how I wanted the rest of my life to look. I want to go back to complete the education I never finished. I want to go to university. I want a career. I want a family…
But all of that won’t happen if I’m caught.
Panic sits cold and sharp inside me and I shove a little desperately at him. ‘Please,’ I murmur, in the exact opposite tone to how I begged him not five minutes ago. ‘Let me go.’
For a moment he’s still, then abruptly he withdraws, stepping back and tucking himself away, zipping up the fly of his trousers. I scrabble about, pushing my dress down to cover myself.
He’s staring at me and if I didn’t know any better the expression on his face looks like one of shock. But I do know better. This is Santiago Veracruz and I have just lost the virginity his own father never managed to take, to him. And he hates me.
I can’t bear to hear whatever words are going to come out of his mouth once his shock has worn off, so I pull down my veil and push past him, heading straight to the front of the church just in time for the service.
Chapter Four
Santiago
I stare downat my phone screen, at the words in stark black and white. It’s a text from Sofia, my family’s housekeeper, who still manages the Veracruz estate and who has had a soft spot for me ever since I was a child.
Every so often she’d pass on information to me, mostly about my father, since she never agreed with his demonisation of me, and she worried about some of his decisions regarding the estate. She has no love for the new Duchess either, which is presumably why she just texted me with:Señora Beatrix has been sick for the past six weeks and finally she went to the doctor. She said nothing when she returned, but the rumours in the village say she’s pregnant.
Something that has been nagging at me for the past four months now hardens into stone, with sharp edges that cut. And I know what it is.
Certainty.
I lean back in my chair and stare unseeing at the opposite wall of my office in the VZ Industries building, trying to force myself to sit still. There’s no need to leap into a helicopter and fly from Paris straight to Castile immediately, no need whatsoever. Just because it concerns Beatrix, it doesn’t mean the situation needs my instant and personal attention.
I grit my teeth, forcing the urge to go into submission, and eventually, when it doesn’t, I shove my chair back and start pacing. I always do my best thinking while in motion.
