Master of Her Innocence (Bought by the Brazilian) (6 page)

The unmistakable crunch of boots on the gravel floor at the cave’s entrance escalated Clare’s terror. Her instinct was to hide but she firmed her jaw, determined not to give in to her fear. If the men who had kidnapped her sister were here it was up to her to deal with them. For Becky’s sake she must be brave.

She stood up and hurriedly wrapped the sleeping bag around her.
‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me, of course.’ Diego strolled into the cave and the light from the fire illuminated his big frame. ‘Who did you think it could be? No one else is mad enough to spend a night in the jungle.’ He threw his sleeping bag down on the floor and tossed his hat on to a rock before raking his fingers through his hair that for some reason was wet although it was not raining outside.

Clare stared at him, hardly able to believe he was real and not a figment of her imagination. He had changed into clean jeans and a denim shirt that was unbuttoned to halfway down his chest, and he looked so ruggedly gorgeous that her heart rate rocketed.

‘I...I heard the Jeep and I thought you had driven on to Torrente,’ she stammered.

‘I noticed the wheels were sinking into the mud, so I moved the Jeep to firmer ground and then took a shower beneath the waterfall.’ He stepped around the fire and frowned when he saw tears on her cheeks. ‘You didn’t really think I would abandon you in the rainforest, did you?’

His sexy smile shattered Clare’s tenuous hold on her composure. The terror she had felt a few minutes ago had been needless. Diego was here and for now at least she felt safe. The sleeping bag fell from her shoulders as she gave an inarticulate cry and flew across the few feet separating them to launch herself at his chest.

‘I thought you had gone and I would never see you again.’ It was a sign of her emotional state that she did not consider how betraying her words were. All she cared about was that Diego had appeared, tall and strong, like a blond Viking. His bare skin revealed by his half-open shirt felt warm beneath her hands as she clung to him.

‘Clare?’ His voice was deeper than she had ever heard it as his arms came round her and enfolded her. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before he lifted her off her feet and crushed her to him. ‘
Deus
, do you think I could bear to leave you,
anjinho
?’ he murmured against her lips before he claimed her mouth in a searing kiss that plundered her soul.

CHAPTER FIVE

D
IEGO
BRIEFLY
FOUGHT
and lost a battle with his conscience. A saint would not be able to resist Clare’s passionate response, he told himself, feeling his erection strain against the constriction of his jeans as she parted her lips beneath his.

He was surprised to discover a vulnerable side to her. On the journey from Manaus he had been impressed by her determined spirit and amused by her dry sense of humour. But now she was clearly distraught and he felt her tremble as she burrowed against him like a frightened animal seeking shelter from danger.

She was so tiny. He felt a surge of protectiveness. ‘What’s the matter,
pequeno
?’ Instinctively he felt sure that her tears were not just because she had believed he’d left her alone at the cave.

‘I don’t know if I am doing the right thing.’ Clare’s iron control over her nerves crumbled and her fears poured out in a flood of tears. Maybe she should have gone to the police and asked them to find her sister’s kidnappers. Maybe she wasn’t brave but stupid and naïve to think that she could rescue Becky.

‘It’s natural for you to have doubts,’ Diego said gently as understanding dawned in him. Clare was facing the biggest decision of her life when she would make her final vows and commit herself fully to a nun’s life. Perhaps she was having second thoughts about the life she had chosen. His conscience told him he should step away from her and suppress his desire, somehow stifle the sexual chemistry that existed between them, which must add to her confusion about her future. But how could he resist her when she wound her arms around his neck and sought his mouth with hers, initiating a sensual kiss that stirred his body into urgent awareness?

She did not look like a nun. When he had walked into the cave and seen her wearing just a plain white bra and knickers, with her auburn curls tumbling around her shoulders, he’d been stunned by her beauty. She was a petite package of voluptuous curves and he could not stop himself from running his hands over her body, exploring the gentle flare of her hips and the indent of her slender waist.

She tensed when he slid his hands across her ribcage and lightly stroked his fingers over the underside of her breasts. But she did not pull her mouth away from his, and when he deepened the kiss she melted into him and parted her lips to allow him to push his tongue between them.

Diego heard a faint voice inside his head warning him that he must not take advantage of her innocent eagerness. But she had told him she’d had one serious relationship, he reminded himself, so she could not be completely innocent. The way she was kissing him with fiery passion and sliding her hands over his chest was heating his blood and evoking a primal hunger in him that obliterated all rational thoughts from his mind and left only an insistent throb of desire that demanded to be appeased.

* * *

Once again, the situation Clare found herself in seemed surreal. A week ago she had been engrossed in company spreadsheets and wondering what to wear to the Association of Accountants’ Christmas dinner. Now she was in a cave in the Amazon rainforest, dreading tomorrow when she would meet her sister’s kidnappers, but at this moment she was half-naked and the sexiest man on the planet had laid her down on a sleeping bag and was looking at her with a gleam in his eyes that blazed hotter than the flames of the fire.

Maybe it was all a dream, and if so she did not want to wake up from this part of it. The sensible, circumspect Clare Marchant from England had been transformed by the sultry heat of the Brazilian rainforest into a sensual siren who was burning up with desire. Diego incited in her a need for sexual fulfilment that she had never felt with any other man.

She realised she had been fooling herself by thinking that her decision not to sleep with Mark was because she had wanted to be sure of their relationship. He seemed like a preening, self-obsessed boy compared to Diego’s raw masculinity, and the truth was that Mark had not turned her on like Diego did. She had been unaware until now that she was capable of feeling such an intensity of lust. Every word of Aunt Edith’s advice about waiting to fall in love before she gave away her virginity was drowned out by the loud drumbeat of desire pounding through her veins.

Diego was kneeling above her, his thighs straddling her hips and his hands resting on the ground on either side of her head so that she was caged by his powerful body. In the firelight his blond hair looked like a golden halo, but he was a fallen angel with a wicked promise in his eyes to fulfil Clare’s wildest fantasies.

He bent his head and kissed her mouth again, slower this time, coaxing her lips open so that he could take his pleasure while he increased hers until she moaned softly and curved her arms around his neck. His blatant seduction intoxicated her senses and made her want more, more...

She snatched air into her lungs when he finally released her mouth and trailed his lips down her throat, but the sensation of him sucking the tender skin at the base of her neck where a pulse beat erratically made her catch her breath. The caress was outrageously erotic, but he did not give her time to assimilate the new sensations he was creating, for he was already sliding his lips lower, over the slope of one breast.

Clare felt his warm breath through the material of her bra cup and wished his mouth was on her bare skin. He must have read her thoughts because he slipped his hand beneath her back and, with a deftness that indicated plenty of experience in undressing women, unfastened the clasp and removed her bra.

His silver wolf’s eyes gleamed as he rested back on his haunches and stared at her naked breasts. Clare had always felt self-conscious of her curvaceous shape and compared herself unfavourably to her sister who was a model-thin size zero. But the undisguised hunger in Diego’s eyes made her glad that her breasts were full and firm, and for the first time in her life she felt proud of her feminine figure.

She did not feel apprehensive when she read the feral intent in his gaze. She felt as though she had been waiting for this, for
him
all her life. Sexual chemistry had sizzled from the moment they’d met and she felt a connection with him on a fundamental level that defied explanation.

‘Diego...’ She whispered his name like a prayer.

He gave her an oddly crooked smile and held his finger over her lips. ‘Don’t speak,
anjinho.
Maybe this isn’t real, and I don’t want to return to reality,’ he said softly.

Clare understood exactly what he meant. It was easy to sink into the dream and forget the world beyond the fire-lit cave; easy to sink into bliss as Diego lifted his finger from her lips and traced a feather-light path down her throat to her breast. She sucked in a sharp breath when he touched her nipple and it immediately hardened.

His husky laugh was rough with desire.
‘Bela.’
He was still kneeling above her and he cradled her breasts in his hands and flicked his thumb pads across her nipples in a repetitive motion that created such a storm of exquisite sensations in Clare that the pleasure was almost too much to withstand. Diego lowered his blond head and soothed one engorged peak with his tongue before he drew it into his mouth and suckled her until she moaned, and he transferred his lips to her other nipple and lavished the same delicious torment.

She tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged to bring his face close to hers. His smile should come with a government health warning, she thought, but then he claimed her lips in a possessive kiss that emptied her mind of all rational thoughts and left only the certainty that she wanted the kiss to last for ever.

His passion was scorching, yet he tempered his hunger with an unexpected tenderness that infiltrated her heart. When he slipped his hand between her legs it felt perfectly natural for him to caress the silken skin of her inner thighs. Clare’s lack of experience meant that this was uncharted territory for her, but she offered no resistance as his fingers skimmed inexorably higher and slipped inside her knickers.

‘Open your legs for me,
querida.
That’s right,’ he murmured his approval when she relaxed her thighs to allow him to gently part her and he discovered the slick wetness of her arousal. The first probing touch of his finger gently easing into her was enough to almost send her over the edge. Her body quivered but instinct told her to try to control the pulsing sensation deep in her core because it was only the start of a journey that she wanted to take with Diego.

To distract herself from her body’s response to him she concentrated on his body and undid the last few buttons so that she could pull off his shirt. He had an incredible muscular physique. In the firelight, the satiny skin on his shoulders gleamed like bronze and the hairs covering his chest were pure gold. She ran her hands down over his flat abdomen to the fuzz of hairs visible above his jeans and, after a second’s hesitation, she undid the button on the waistband. Her forwardness would have shocked her if she hadn’t been in a dreamlike state where anything was possible and nothing was shocking.

He kissed her breasts again, teased each swollen nipple in turn until she moaned and jerked her hips towards the heat and hardness of him in an unconscious betrayal of her need. The gossamer-soft brush of his lips over her stomach elicited a molten warmth between her legs, and when he kissed her
there
, where no other man had ever touched her before, and when she felt his tongue flick across her clitoris, she could not control the pulse waves of pleasure as her body juddered in a swift, intense climax.

She was spinning out of control. It felt as if she was riding a carousel and images and sensations were flashing past her faster and faster. She did not remember when Diego had removed her knickers or the rest of his clothes, and when he stretched out next to her and drew her against his naked body she was too absorbed in sliding her hands over his impressive abdominal muscles to care. He was a work of art and she delighted in tracing her fingertips down his flat stomach and powerful thighs until she came into contact with the solid length of his erection. Her breath left her lungs in a whoosh. He felt big and hard in her hand and she was curious to know what he would feel like inside her.

When she stretched her fingers around him he gave a low groan of primitive sexual need that stirred an equally primitive response in her. He lifted himself over her and it felt perfectly natural to guide the tip of his swollen shaft towards her moist opening. Instinctively she spread her legs wider to allow him to settle his hips between hers, and he slowly eased forwards, entering her inch by careful inch until he possessed her utterly.

Clare caught her breath as she experienced a moment of mild discomfort, but the brief stinging sensation was over before she really registered it. Diego hesitated, but she curved her arms around his back and pulled him down on to her at the same time as she lifted her hips in invitation for him to take her virginity that she offered willingly.

He waited until her breathing had steadied before he moved, slowly at first, pulling back so far that she thought he was actually going to withdraw. He laughed softly when she clutched his shoulders, and pushed forwards again, then drew back, then forwards, increasing his pace with each thrust and going deeper into her so that she was filled by him, overwhelmed by him and felt that he had taken ownership of her body.

In this primal dance of sex he was her master and her tutor. He slid his hands beneath her bottom and tilted her hips, forcing her to accept each devastating thrust of his body into hers. But he countered his strength with gentleness and there was no question of him forcing her to do anything she did not feel ready to experience. She wanted everything he gave her, wanted more, wanted quite desperately the something that hovered frustratingly just out of her reach.

‘Easy,
querida
,’ his deep voice soothed her. ‘Don’t be in such a rush. Relax and let it happen.’

She looked into his eyes and saw a familiar glint of amusement at her impatience. But as she watched him make love to her she saw heat and hunger in his predatory wolf’s gaze, and she heard the hoarse sound of his breaths coming faster and faster as he increased his pace.

And then it did happen. Suddenly. Spectacularly. He gave a powerful thrust that made her gasp, but before she could drag oxygen into her lungs, the tight knot of tension deep in her pelvis exploded without warning and sent her soaring and sobbing into the stratosphere. Her vaginal muscles contracted and released as wave after wave of intense pleasure swept over her so that she could not breathe or think, could only feel the shattering ecstasy of her orgasm.

Diego waited until she came down before he immediately took her higher again, driving into her with an implacable intent that made her realise he was nearing his own nirvana. She let him ride her fast and hard, instinctively knowing that he needed it like this and the time for gentleness had passed. His passion was raw and elemental. But when he paused and tipped his head back so that the cords on his neck stood out, before giving a harsh groan that sounded as though it had been torn from his soul, Clare was overcome with tenderness for him and pressed her face against his shoulder to hide the tears that inexplicably filled her eyes.

* * *

Diego pushed his hat off his face where he’d placed it over his eyes before he’d fallen asleep and was instantly aware of three things. The fire had gone out, the slice of sky that he could see through the cave’s entrance was a couple of shades lighter than pitch-black and Sister Clare was lying beside him, as naked as the day she’d been born and, fortunately, fast asleep.

Santa Mãe!
He’d found himself in some awkward situations in his life, mostly after he’d drunk more beer than was good for him. But he doubted that all the saints in heaven could help him out of this one. His eyes dropped to the delectable curves of Clare’s buttocks and he cursed softly beneath his breath and pulled the sleeping bag over her.