Honor-Bound Groom Read Free Page A

photos to prove it. She’d believed that adoration had deepened into love, love not dimmed by Alex’s vague tolerance of the scrawny kid who followed him like a shadow around the castillo that had been his family home for centuries.
    For as long as she could remember she’d plagued her father to repeat the story of how Alex’s dad, Raphael, had saved him from drowning on the beach below the castillo after a crazy dare between friends had almost turned deadly. And she’d hung on his every word as he’d reached the part where, in deepest gratitude, he’d promised his newborn daughter in marriage to Raphael’s eldest son.
    But her childish dreams of happily ever after withher fairy-tale prince were quite different from the virile, masculine reality of the man in front of her. Every move he made showed that Alex had a degree of sensual knowledge and experience she couldn’t even begin to imagine, much less match. It was exciting and intimidating all at once. Was she already in over her head?
    â€œBesides,” Alex said, his voice still low, pitched only for her ears, “it is time now that I marry and who better than the woman to whom I’ve been affianced all her life?”
    Alex’s dark brown eyes bored into hers, daring her to challenge him. But, surprisingly, beneath the dare, Loren saw something else reflected in their depths.
    While he’d appeared so strong and self-assured from the moment he’d alighted from the helicopter and strode toward their sprawling schist rock home nestled near the base of the Southern Alps, there was now a hint of uncertainty in his gaze. As if he expected some resistance from Loren to the idea that they fulfill the bargain struck between two best friends so long ago.
    The scent of his cologne wove softly around her like an ancient spell, invading her senses and scrambling her mind. Rational thought flew out the window as he took another step closer to her, as his hand reached for her chin and tilted her face up to his.
    His fingers were gentle against her skin. Her breath stopped in her chest. He bent his head, bringing his lips to hers—their pressure warm, tender, coaxing. His hand slid from her jaw to cup the back of her neck.
    Loren’s head spun as she parted her lips beneath his and tasted the intimacy of his tongue as it gently swept the soft tissue of her lower lip. A groan rippled from her throat and suddenly she was in his arms, her bodyaligned tightly against the hard planes of his chest, his abdomen. Her arms curved around him, snaking under the fine wool of his jacket and across the silk of his shirt. The heat of his skin through the finely woven fabric seared her hands. She pressed her fingertips firmly into the strong muscles of his back.
    She fit into the shape of his body as though she had indeed been born to the role, and as his lips plundered hers, all she could, or wanted to, think of was how it felt to finally be in his arms. Not a single one of her frustrated teenage fantasies had lived up to the reality.
    This was more, so much more than she’d ever dreamed. The strength and power of him in her arms was overwhelming and she clung to him with the longing of a lifetime finally given substance. It barely seemed real but the solid presence of him, his skillful mouth, the sensation of his fingertips massaging the base of her scalp, all combined to be very, very real indeed.
    Every nerve in her body was alive, gloriously alive, and begging for more. She’d never experienced such a depth of passion with another man and was certain she never would.
    She knew to her very soul that this connection, this instant magnetic pull between them, was meant to be forever, just as their fathers had preordained. And, with this one embrace, she knew she wanted it all.
    In the distance she heard the front door slam, its heavy wooden thud echoing down the hardwood floor of the main hallway. Reluctantly she loosened her grip