The Spanish Aristocrat's Woman Read Free Page A

course.”
    She had to smile at him. And he leaned down to once again touch his mouth to hers. She opened her mouth this time, hoping to taste him again. That first kiss had been too quick, too brief, and it left her wanting more of him.
    He angled his head and his tongue touched hers. She breathed into his mouth and felt the contact of his lips and tongue on hers all the way to her core. Chills raced down her body, making her breasts feel fuller and her nipples harden.
    She pulled back from him and held tightly on to his shoulders, having the very real feeling that she was in way over her head. This was different than asking a cute guy to dance…this was passion.
    Something that had always been lacking in her life.
    “Gui…”
    “Kara. You have the most kissable lips.”
    She shook her head. Her mouth tingled. Tingled! She wanted to touch her lips but knew she’d give away just how inexperienced she was to him.
    “Trust me,” he said, bending down to take her mouth one more time. She shivered in his arms. She knew the music changed, because the couples around them seemed to be moving, but time stood still for her as she stood there with Gui. As she felt the warmth of his big body next to hers. The way he wrapped his arms around her waist and let his hands drift lower to cup her buttocks and draw her more fully into his body.
    She melted against him. For the first time she felt like one of those delicate girls she’d always envied. In Gui’s arms she wasn’t too big. She didn’t tower over him. And when he touched her, his hands were strong and sure.
    She pulled back, afraid that she was losing her perspective, and looked up into his warm hazel eyes. But they weren’t the same light brown-green they’d been earlier. Now they were stormy with a bit of gray moving in around the rims of his irises.
    “Your eyes,” she said, raising one hand to trace his eyebrow.
    “What about them?”
    “They’re changing color.”
    He quirked an eyebrow, the one she wasn’t touching, at her.
    “They were this light earth tone…like a spring lake…earlier, but now there’s more gray in them…like the Northern Atlantic Ocean.”
    “Do you like the water, querida? ”
    He was calling her darling again. She told herself it was probably an affectation, something he did with every woman, but it didn’t stop the little thrill from going through her each time he said it.
    “I love it,” she said. In the water it didn’t matter that she was taller and bigger than everyone else. She felt svelte and slim.
    “Do you sail?” he asked.
    “Yes. I just ordered a new yacht,” she said. “I’m picking it up in Monte Negro soon.”
    “I love Monte Negro,” Gui said, stroking one finger down the side of her face. “Why there?”
    “One of my cousins took a job there. I am going to Italy in a few weeks with a group of inner-city teenagers who are interested in fashion design.”
    “Fashion?”
    She pulled away. “I know I might not seem like the right woman to guide them—”
    “I wasn’t questioning your fashion sense. You’re incredibly beautiful in this dress. It’s just not often that I hear about fashion design programs for the underprivileged.”
    “That’s precisely why I did it. I have a program for plus-sized girls, too. I hate the way that fashion magazines and the fashion industry just focus on skinny women.”
    She put her hand over her mouth. That comment was way too revealing. Why were they talking about her? She should be demanding to know why he’d said she was his fiancée.
    “We need to talk, Gui.”
    “I know, querida. ”
    “Please call me Kara. I don’t like being called by a generic endearment.”
    “ Querida isn’t generic when it’s applied to you,” he said.
    But he must use it for Elvira. Because she’d called him querido, which was the masculine version of that endearment. “All the same.”
    “You aren’t what I expected.”
    “Why would I be?” she asked. “You don’t know