Cassie told herself. If anything offended him it was the thought she might just be implying that his seduction technique was not the carefully honed skill that it was. The number of women, all of them beautiful, successful and rich, nearly as beautiful and rich as he was himself, who had passed through his life from the time that he had reached adulthood attested to his almost legendary prowess with the opposite sex, and he wasn’t likely to want to see that reputation threatened in any way.
‘No, I’m not claiming you forced me.’
‘Then what the hell is the matter with you?’
Joaquin was having a hard time adjusting to the woman he had discovered since he had come back into the room. He had left his bed reluctantly this morning, only forced out of it by the knowledge that there were business matters he had to deal with. Business matters that wouldn’t wait. And so, in spite of the fact that both his hungry body and his deepest instincts had been demanding that he stayed right where he was, taking Cassandra into his arms and kissing her softly awake, stern common sense and duty had forced him to get up and head for the shower.
He should have gone straight to work after that, aiming to reach his office well before the heat of the day really kicked in and made conditions much less tolerable. But he hadn’t been able to resist coming back into the bedroom to see Cassandra one more time before he left.
Only to find that she was no longer the softly sensual sleeper he had left curled up in the bed, as if still feeling his presence beside her. Instead she had turned back into the woman he had been having so much trouble with over the past weeks. The woman who was edgy, touchy, sharp-tongued and impossible to understand. The woman whose moods were difficult to predict, whose mind seemed so often to be elsewhere, lost in thoughts he couldn’t discover.
‘I thought—’
‘You thought that because we’d had a—a hot night—that I would be quite content to lie here, stark naked, and just wait for my lord and master to come back and take up from where we left off?’
‘Yes—no! Well—what the devil would be wrong with that?’
Okay, so he hadn’t expected her to lie there and wait for him, but he certainly wasn’t going to object to the idea of it! But how he wished she hadn’t said ‘stark naked’. He’d been aware of the fact that she had no clothes on, of course. No red-blooded male could look at that luscious body and not be aware of that. But they were often naked with each other, usually totally comfortably, and he was trying to be relaxed about it.
But the words stark naked, together with the implication of her just lying there, combined with heated memories of the night before, had served to scramble his brain. That was rubbing his nose in things, reducing his thought processes from efficient to single-minded so that they could run on only one track. And a very basic one at that—one that was in no way conducive to holding a rational argument with an illogically furious woman who was standing right in front of him stark damn naked!
‘What the devil…?’ Cassandra repeated, the words rushing through her teeth on a violent breath. ‘Do you really think that I would be prepared to do that?’
‘Well, you are still here in my room,’ Joaquin pointed out, ‘Waiting for me. And…’
He let his eyes drop, his gaze skimming over the soft curves, the slender limbs exposed to him, the shadow of curls between her legs. He immediately recognised his mistake as his body subjected him to a sharp, stinging twist of desire that changed the fit of his trousers from comfortable to way too tight in the space of a heartbeat.
‘And you are naked,’ he muttered, roughly, struggling with the feeling.
Cassandra’s reaction disturbed him.
For the first time since they had been together, she looked totally shocked, embarrassed at realising that she was wearing no clothes. Her hands came up to cross over her chest, her eyes darkening, and her mouth actually fell open slightly in horror. Not even on the first time they had slept together had she looked like this. This was new. And it was something he didn’t like at all.
‘Here…’
Reaching for the nearest thing to hand, he flung the black cotton robe at her.
‘Put that on.’
As she scrambled into the concealing garment, her haste betraying the way she was feeling, he had to admit to himself that he didn’t know whether he had offered her the robe to ease her evident embarrassment or to soothe his own disturbed state of mind. He just couldn’t think straight with her standing there before him. Totally nude. Indignation had put a spark in her eyes, brought a rush of blood to the surface of her skin—even her body was washed with the flush of pink—and it was damnably distracting.
In spite of the fact that she obviously wished it weren’t, her nakedness was pure provocation to any living, breathing male. Everything that was masculine in him urged him to respond in the most primitive, basic way. But he knew from Cassandra’s expression that to do so would be the most foolish move he could make.
So he had to get her covered up—and fast! And the black robe was the only thing he could find.
Not that it really helped, he acknowledged a moment later as Cassandra pulled the soft cotton firmly round herself, belting it tightly at her waist. The robe was his and it totally swamped her, coming almost to her ankles, the sleeves hanging way down at the ends of her arms, the wrap-over front gaping loosely at her throat and revealing the beginning of the curves of her breasts. In its own way, the item of clothing was a whole new form of torture, making her look even more feminine and vulnerable, emphasising the fragility of her bones at ankle and wrist, the slender, satin-skinned lines of her neck.
But it was the look in her eyes that stung so sharply.
‘Maldito sea!’ he muttered violently as she tied another knot in the belt for good measure. ‘There’s no need to act as if just my look will contaminate you!’
The dark savagery in his tone brought her head up, her eyes widening in shock. He supposed he should explain that his anger was more at himself, and the conflict that was going on between his brain and his groin, than at her. But the truth was that he didn’t think he could put it into words. And besides, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to try to explain something that he really didn’t understand himself. Didn’t want to reveal raw, unformed thoughts when he had no idea at all what her response might be.
‘I—I wasn’t thinking that.’
‘No—then what were you thinking, querida?’
He laced the term of affection with an acid that turned it into something the exact opposite of loving.
‘Why should my seeing your body—the body I have seen, touched, kissed a thousand times before now—why should that suddenly turn into a crime?’
‘I never said that!’
‘No, but you sure as hell implied it!’
His eyes raked over her now carefully concealed body and he didn’t trouble to try and hide the hot anger that was forcing its way up through his control, like lava pushing through the surface of a volcano, and pouring out down the sides.
‘But don’t you think that it’s a little too late to suddenly turn prim and proper? You weren’t so coy about being with me last night.’
‘Last night was last night!’ Cassandra flung at him, blue eyes flashing defiance. ‘It was different!’
‘Different how?’ he demanded. ‘And today is—what? A time for second thoughts?’
Her inability to answer, the way that her eyes dropped away from his, almost destroyed him. Holding on tight to what little was left of his shattered self-control, he forced himself to speak through lips that might have been carved from wood, they felt so stiff and unresponsive.
‘I thought you enjoyed it!’
The need to fight the