Page 37 of Midnight Rider

He stared at her unblinking for several long seconds before he spoke again, with less belligerence. “She wept, you know,” he murmured. “My grandmother was very upset, as well. She said that your father most likely had a low opinion of Spanish people and distrusted our taste.”

“Bosh,” she said irritably.

“Bosh?”

She waved a hand. “I mean, he thought no such thing. It was my idea to go to New York,” she lied. “The dress was only a subterfuge I used to get my father to agree to the trip. I saw a specialist while I was there, Eduardo.” Her enthusiasm shone out of her green eyes like beacons. She leaned forward. “He gave me sedatives to take when I have an attack, and he told me how to build up my lungs so that the attacks lessen!” She wanted to tell him that she could even have a child without fear, but she was suddenly tongue-tied on the subject—especially as he wasn’t acting like the Eduardo she’d known for so many years.

“This is good news,” he said eventually. “But should you take sedatives when you can barely breathe?”

“He’s a very good doctor,” she replied. “One of the president’s relations is attended by him. He’s had many successes with his treatment.”

“Then I agree that the trip wasn’t wasted.” He put down his coffee cup. He looked tired, and not too happy.

“Aren’t things going well at the ranch?” she asked hesitantly.

His black eyes lifted to hers, then narrowed. “My grandmother is distressed that I decided to take a wife before I discussed it with her.” He leaned back. “She brought Lupe on the trip with her with the idea that we would become engaged.”

A cold chill went down Bernadette’s spine. She felt her body go numb from the impact of the words.

“Lupe is Spanish,” he continued. “She has poise and breeding and great wealth. And my grandmother believed that I would see now the error of my ways in rejecting Lupe and then marrying Consuela.”

Bernadette’s temper, never mild, exploded. She got to her feet in one swift movement and turned to march to the door.

“Where are you going?” Eduardo demanded, rising.

She opened the door and turned her furious eyes toward him. “Obviously your grandmother has more influence over you than I have. Marry Lupe, then. Perhaps she’ll turn out to be as wonderful a wife as Consuela. Your grandmother also chose her for you, I believe?”

She stomped down the hall, barely aware of hard footsteps behind her. When she was even with the pantry, a lean hand grasped her arm firmly and she was shoved gently into the pantry and Eduardo closed the door behind them.

“You uncivilized little tigress,” Eduardo muttered angrily, pressing her back against the shelves full of canned fruit and vegetables. The room was small and dimly lit, stifling with the heat. But neither of them noticed.

“Let me go!” she grumbled, struggling. “Lupe is everything you want. You said so. Why don’t you rush home and put a ring on her finger? Here, I’ll give it back!”

She tugged at the ring on her engagement finger, but as she lifted her hands to struggle with the tightly fitted piece of jewelry, Eduardo’s head bent. He found her soft mouth and opened it under the furious pressure of his lips.

She hit at him, but he caught her hands and drew them behind her, holding her helpless while his mouth fed on hers. Her knees felt as if they might collapse as the hard, ardent kiss went on and on. His strong hands went to her back and captured her, enveloping her against the power of his body.

“Oh, you rogue!” she ground out against his mouth.

He only kissed her harder. His hips pressed into hers, imprisoning her against the hard wood of the shelves. He moved even closer, one long leg going between hers so that she was in a new and startling intimacy with him. When his hips shifted, his arousal became quite noticeable.

She stiffened, despite the languor his kisses had invoked in her.

He felt her withdrawal and lifted his head. He was breathing as roughly as she was, and his eyes were glittering with desire as they searched hers.

“Now send me to Lupe,” he whispered, so close that his breath made tiny chills against her moist lips.

She could barely get words past her tongue. Her body felt swollen and trembly. She could feel how aroused he was, and she was embarrassed. “Please,” she whispered. “You must stop....”

“Must I?” He looked into her eyes and deliberately moved even closer, so that she felt him in a way he’d never permitted her to until now. “Do you feel it, Bernadette?” he taunted huskily. “Do you know what it wants?”

“Eduardo!” she gasped.

“All that magnificent passion, wasted in anger, when it could be so profitably employed in a quite different fashion,” he whispered, bending again. “Open your mouth, Bernadette. Put your hands against what you feel and touch me.”

“You...blackguard!” She spat, but it only made matters worse. He groaned and his ardor was suddenly insistent.

She moaned piteously against the penetration of his tongue. Her body clenched at the sensations the suggestive kiss raised in her virginal body. It was like that night in the desert, when he’d held her and caressed her so hungrily. But now her body found his familiar, and she welcomed the caresses that would once have torn her from his arms in shame.