Free Santiago's Command by Kim Lawrence Page B

his black stare. He probably got some sadistic kick from seeing people squirm. No, she thought, there was no ‘probably’ about it.
    She was aware that anything she said now might be construed as a challenge … and he was obviously a man who could not resist any opportunity to prove himself superior. He was pathetic, she told herself, though actually
pathetic
was about the most inappropriate term imaginable to describe the man standing there. He oozed a raw masculinity. There was something raw and elemental about him that made her traitorous heart skip a beat and her mouth dry and her knees weak.
    A lot of other things were going on that she didn’t even want to think about right now.
Deep breaths, Lucy … deep breaths
.
    He held her eyes with a steady stare and watched the colour in her face fluctuate. Her skin fascinated him, so creamy he wanted to feel it to see if it felt as soft and satiny as it looked. He wanted to feel her naked underneath him. He had wanted it from the moment he had set eyes on her and, damn her, she had known it.
    His chest swelled. He had never wanted a woman thismuch in his life, so badly that he could taste it. He wanted to taste her so badly that … He embraced his anger just to stay in control.
    Lucy sucked in a deep, wrathful breath and blurted, ‘You are one manipulative—’
    He moved so fast that it seemed that one moment he was standing several feet away, the next he was beside her with his finger poised a whisper away from her parted lips. She felt the pressure building inside and felt totally helpless to do anything about it.
    ‘Think very carefully before you continue, Lucy. I am not my brother and I am not in the habit of turning the other cheek.’
    ‘You mean you haven’t mastered meek—imagine my amazement,’ she drawled, slapping his hand away and taking a shaky step back.
    Her heart was beating so hard it felt it might explode from her chest; the simple act of drawing air into her lungs required conscious effort … The musky scent of his warm skin lingered tantalisingly in her quivering nostrils.
    He laughed. The sound was not unattractive; actually nothing was unattractive about him but his personality.
    ‘Whereas you have.’
    She gritted her teeth in response to the silky sarcasm of his retort and wrapped her arms around herself.
    His brow furrowed as he watched her shiver. ‘You’re cold.’
    He faked solicitude well, but Lucy recognised this new tactic for what it was—an attempt to soften her up. She knew that she was not the sort of woman who brought out the protective instincts in the opposite sex. She was not small or delicate and she did not consider this a bad thing. She had never envied the fragile little creatures that made men feel macho and strong.
    ‘Look on the bright side—I might get pneumonia and die. Problem solved.’
    A spasm of impatience tightened the hard contours of his jaw. ‘Do not be stupid.’ But she wasn’t, anything but; the evening had proved that he had underestimated Miss Lucy Fitzgerald.
    For ‘stupid’ Lucy translated ‘anyone who didn’t act as though his every word was engraved in stone’. She watched as he began to shrug off his jacket. The shirt he wore underneath was white with a subtle silver stripe and in the moonlight it was possible to see the lean shape of his body beneath it as he held out the jacket towards her.
    She lowered her gaze but not before her insides had dissolved.
    ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
    His face was in darkness now, but bands of moonlight fell across his body. ‘You find old-fashioned courtesy amusing.’ His hand smoothed the contrasting silk lining of the jacket he had shrugged off.
    ‘In the light of the fact you’ve spent the entire evening being as rude as hell to me … yes, actually, I do!’
    Lucy planted her hands on her hips, her breasts under the red silk heaving as she glared up at him. ‘You know something—I feel sorry for you!’
    ‘Is that a fact?’ he drawled,