Page 23 of Midnight Rider

“If there are, my grandmother would never admit it.” He searched her eyes a little worriedly. “You’re going to have a hard time with her, Bernadette. She won’t approve of my marrying outside the nobility, despite my mixed parentage.”

“It isn’t as if we’re different races,” she pointed out.

“And your father is wealthy. I know that. But it won’t matter to her. She’s old-fashioned about such things. Like your father,” he added curtly, “bloodlines matter too much to her.”

“My father said that she might not be able to find you another match in Spain.”

His eyes flashed. “Because my wife died under mysterious circumstances,” he added for her.

She reached up and touched his hard, thin mouth. “Don’t be angry. We can’t have secrets, not in a marriage such as ours is to be.”

He grimaced. His fingers caught hers and held them. “No, we can’t. But those secrets are for a time when you and I are less constrained with each other.” His fingers contracted on hers. “I didn’t kill Consuela,” he said. “That will have to do for now.”

“Your grandmother is to come this summer, isn’t she?”

“She’ll come the minute she knows there’s to be a wedding, and she’ll bring Lupe with her.”

That was a new name. “Lupe?”

“Lupe de Rias,” he said shortly.

“A man or a woman?”

“A woman. And my grandmother’s first choice of wives for me, after Consuela.”

Bernadette’s heart skipped. “You mean, there is a candidate to marry you, one of the nobility?”

He looked hunted. His dark eyes went to Bernadette’s breasts and he remembered the soft warmth of them under his mouth. They weren’t large at all, but they were pert and firm and sweet to touch. He wished he could see them through the fabric.

“What?” he asked, distracted.

“I said, you haven’t lost your chance to marry into the nobility?”

“I don’t want Lupe,” he said simply. “I prefer you.”

Her heart jumped and she laughed softly. “Do you, really, pitiful lungs and all?”

“Yes.” His head bent and his mouth found her soft breast.

She gasped and caught his face in her hands, but it was a halfhearted effort to restrain him.

“I want to look at you,” he murmured. His hands moved on her body and his face shifted to her soft neck, her cheek, her lips. He moved so that one long leg smoothed sensually over both of hers.

His mouth covered hers and her hands clenched at his neck while she fought for a little sanity. She didn’t find it. Her lips opened, as he’d taught them to the night before, and she reveled in the slow caress of his fingers.

He lifted his head to look at her rapt face and misty eyes. His hand covered her breast blatantly. “I would sooner cut off my leg than trade you for Lupe,” he said huskily. “Already you belong to me.”

She relaxed into the bedroll and stared at him hungrily, her body yielded, soft, patently enjoying his bold caresses.

He sighed heavily and glanced around them. “The day is getting away from us already,” he said regretfully and drew his hands away from her. “As much as I prefer to stay here and continue this delightful pastime, we have to face the music.” He stood and pulled her up with him, pausing to smooth back her disheveled hair. “You need a brush, and I haven’t one.”

She smiled. “It won’t matter. We’re in so much trouble already that my father probably won’t even notice.” She grimaced. “He’s going to be furious.”

“Do you think so?” He bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “I don’t think he will be, Bernadette.”

“Eduardo.”

He put a finger over her soft mouth. His eyes went down to her bodice and lingered there while he smiled wickedly. “I hope the heat will dry that swiftly,” he gestured, “long before your father sees it.”