The Ring The Spaniard Gave Her - Lynne Graham Page 0,23

nipples as well as the dryness of her mouth held her fast because she had never felt anything that powerful before and she was remembering that kiss, that brief but glorious adrenalin rush.

Dark golden eyes welded to hers, Ruy stalked slowly closer and her heart raced so fast it felt as though it were thumping at the foot of her throat. He reached for her and if he hadn’t reached for her she reckoned that she would have shamelessly grabbed him.

‘You want this?’ Ruy breathed in a driven undertone, easing her closer, one hand braced on her hip, the other braced against the wall behind her.

‘I want...you,’ she heard herself say and she didn’t know where the words came from, only that it was a truth so new to her that she had to say it, had to share it.

‘Gracias a Dios,’ Ruy groaned above her head, crushing her mouth under his with an urgency that shook her to her very depths. His mouth contrived to communicate everything she didn’t have the words to express and the explosive effect of his hunger meeting hers set her on fire.

It took a while in that passionate exchange of kisses for Suzy to notice that he was extracting her from her sweater and for a split second she stilled, checking with herself that that was all right. And because it was Ruy, because she was so worked up that she was wound up tighter than a spring, it was fine. She was a big girl now, she reminded herself abstractedly, not a teenager keeping a handsy first boyfriend within acceptable limits. Yes, she could take her clothes off now, of course she could.

‘Of course, you would have to have the boots on.’ Ruy sighed, lifting her up into his arms and bringing her down onto the side of the bed, crouching down lithely at her feet to remove her boots. ‘I love these boots. You’re going to wear them in the studio for me when you pose—’

‘Am I?’ Amusement softened Suzy’s gaze as she stared down at him, spearing her fingers into his black luxuriant hair, smoothing it back from his brow, admiring the dark slashing brows and the ridiculously long ebony lashes framing his gorgeous eyes. Absently she wondered what she had thought about before she met him.

‘In a wedding dress...but not the one you put on for him,’ he asserted, tossing aside the boots and gently pushing her back to embark on the zip of her jeans.

‘You have the most crazy imagination.’ Suzy sighed.

‘I’m not an imaginative man.’

‘But you’re an artist. You’ve got to be imaginative,’ Suzy told him, sensing that for some reason he was in denial of that reality. ‘I mean, imagining me posing in my boots and a wedding dress...how eccentric is th...that?’ She stammered to a halt as, with one hard yank, he succeeded in tugging the jeans down her long slender legs.

‘But that’s not imagination, that’s the reality of how I saw you in the woods,’ Ruy argued, lifting her dangling legs up onto the divan and coming down beside her. ‘We’re talking too much... I don’t talk in bed—’

‘Tough,’ Suzy whispered, touching a fingertip to his slightly reddened lips. ‘Two people here, two votes, not just one...you just revel in being bossy, Ruy.’

He hauled off his sweater and leant over her, shimmering dark golden eyes alight as flames against his bronzed complexion, the corner of his mouth hinting at a smile. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘I should’ve run like hell when you told me about buying into the pub,’ Suzy remarked with sudden anxiety. ‘Maybe you’re one of those controlling guys, who tries to own a woman.’

‘I’ve never tried to own a woman in my life. And you see this is why you don’t talk in bed—it gets too serious and now you’re freaking yourself out and stressing again,’ Ruy censured, dropping a kiss down on her parted lips, trailing his own slowly down her neck to her shoulder, lighting up a tingling trail of arousal through her trembling body.

‘I’m still furious with you!’ she protested, struggling to ground herself again and yet at the same time inwardly rejoicing at the concept of her own freedom from constraint, the precious ability to do as she liked for once.

All her life, after all, she had been the good dutiful daughter, instinctively tailoring herself to the role her father needed her to fill. She hadn’t had the liberty to choose a career once she had grasped that her father