Santiago's Command Read Free

automatically settled into, the same expression that had earned her the ‘ice bitch’ tag. It was a struggle; the defensive action was by now deeply ingrained.
    There had been a time when she had been in danger of allowing her experiences to make her hard, cynical and—according to her mother—too scared to live. The worried accusation had shaken Lucy and she had been trying very hard of late not to assume the worst in any given situation.
    Caution was another matter and in the circumstances seemed only sensible!
    Arm crooked to hold back her hair from her face, she waded towards the riverbank, her gaze fixed on her feet to avoid stumbling on the rocky riverbed.
    Reaching dry ground, she climbed the slight incline that brought her level with the stranger and close enough, thanks to the prevailing wind, for her nostrils to twitch in response to the scent of leather and horse. She kept her distant smile in place and tilted her head up to look at him.
    It was a lot of tilting. He was extremely tall; broad of shoulder, narrow of hip and long of leg. She had an impression of power, raw and elemental. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes and her smile faded as, minus the direct dazzle, the man’s face became more than a dark blur.
    There was definitely nothing blurred about features that looked as though they had been freshly carved in bronze by the hand of an artist more interested in conveying a masculine ideal than reality. The rider’s face, bisected by an aquiline, masterful nose, was long with a broad, intelligent forehead, strong square jaw and high, dramatically chiselled cheekbones. Her gaze drifted to his mouth and paused. It was wide and sculpted, the upper lip firm, the lower sensually full.
    It was all jaw-dropping and deep-intake-of-breath stuff. Aware she had been staring and without the faintest clue of how long she had been standing there with her mouth unattractively open, she closed it with a snap and felt an embarrassed flush wash over her skin, struggling to maintain eye contact with the deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes that returned her gaze.
    She was an expert at hiding her feelings, but this man took impenetrable to another level entirely. His obsidian stare was totally unreadable. His eyes were incredible; framed by thick ebony lashes that were long and spiky, they were densely dark and flecked with silver. They made her think of a starlit night sky.
    Starlit skies …? She resisted the temptation to roll her eyes and thought,
Lucy, girl you need a sugar hit
. Sugar was not what her best friend, Sally—never afraid to call a spade a spade—had said she needed when she had told her she was off to Spain.
    ‘The fact is, Lucy, principles are great and true love is nice and all—but in fairy tales! How about a compromise while you’re waiting for your prince to climb your ivory tower? Enjoy a bit of head-banging sex with a sexy Spaniard. Let’s face it, you won’t be short of offers … God, if I looked like you …’
    Lucy, who knew nothing about head-banging sex exceptthat it wasn’t for her, pushed away the memory of the conversation, but not before her glance slid to the sensual contours of the stranger’s mouth. She found herself almost envying her friend’s pragmatic approach to sex as heat flashed through her in a warm squirmy mess. She cleared her throat but it didn’t stop her voice sounding husky and breathless as she said the first thing that came into her head.
    ‘How did you know I was English?’
    The last time she’d experienced this knee-sagging, heart-thudding sensation the cause had been an earthquake that had made the hotel rock and brought a nearby chandelier crashing to the floor! Was this what people called animal magnetism? Well, whatever it was he had it! And the earthy aura of maleness was not something she would choose to be this close to.
    The stranger soothed his horse with a casual pat of his hand on the glossy flank and raised a satiric brow as he allowed his gaze to