Free Nacho Figueras Presents by Jessica Whitman Page B

petals.
    The kitchen garden was the crown jewel, though, surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges of rosemary and partially shaded by an arbor covered in grapevines. It was packed with an astounding amount of fruit, vegetables, and flowers for cutting. Her mother hadn’t let a single inch of space go unused.
    Kat laughed when she found Sebastian standing amid the herbs, looking lost, while staring at a particularly brilliant patch of jade green plants.
    The exact color of his eyes, she thought to herself, and smiled.
    “I thought you said you knew what basil looked like,” she teased him.
    He looked up. “I do. This is basil, I’m sure of it. But”—he swept his arm toward another cluster of darker green—“I am fairly certain that this is as well. And that, too,” he said as he pointed to the other end of the garden. “I did not want to bring you the wrong kind.”
    Kat squinted and looked. He was right. “Oh. Maybe there’s more than one kind.”
    He raised his eyebrow. “Something you failed to mention.”
    She moved into the garden, feeling the round, warm pea gravel crunch underneath her feet. She bent and picked a large leaf of the herb and inhaled the spicy-sweet scent. “This kind will do.”
    “All this”—he waved his arms around as if to take it all in—“it’s like the Garden of Eden. So much…what’s the word? Abundancia. ”
    She smiled as she picked the basil. “My mother’s motto has always been ‘Why not more?’”
    He laughed and stepped toward her, wrapping his arm around her waist. “I like your mother,” he said. “We have a similar outlook on life.”
    Kat knew she should move away, but instead, she turned toward him, resting her hands full of basil around his neck and nestling her hips up against his.
    “Ah, linda ,” he murmured, smiling down at her and stroking her hair, “you look so pretty in this garden. Like a barefoot gitana —a gypsy queen.”
    Kat shook her head at his over-the-top poetics, but felt her cheeks warm, secretly pleased.
    He smiled at her some more, and she couldn’t help herself. “ Besame ,” she whispered.
    He laughed. A deep, seductive chuckle. “ Ay, mandona —bossy girl—using my own words against me. Are you always this demanding?”
    He leaned forward and placed his mouth close to hers. She could feel his breath tremble against her lips.
    “Of course I am,” she sighed. “I’m a director, after all.”
    He laughed again and closed the distance between them, kissing her tenderly—searching and slow—but she didn’t have patience for that. She didn’t need warming up. She wanted the deep, urgent kisses he had given her the night before. She wanted to be kissed so hard that it would leave her lips bruised and swollen. She felt flushed with need, as if she could throw herself into his arms and wrap herself around him, meld her body to his, and still not get close enough.
    He seemed to sense her craving because he suddenly pulled her toward him with a deep, masculine sound, and gave her exactly the kind of kiss she had been yearning for. He kissed her with such furious desire that she could practically taste blood in her mouth, and when she ground her hips against him and felt him throb in response, her entire body seemed to go up in flames.
    He broke the kiss and looked at her. “Katarina,” he panted raggedly, “you don’t know what you do to me.”
    But she did know. She knew exactly what she did to him. Because he did it to her .
    She wanted him. She wanted him right where they were standing, in her mother’s garden. She ached for this man in a way that felt almost dangerous. But she peeled herself away and forced herself to gather up the basil she had dropped and tried to calm her breathing. “Let’s eat lunch,” she said. “And maybe have a glass of wine. And while we eat, you can read me a little from Victoria’s journals.”
    “And after lunch?” he said. His voice was tight with desire.
    She met his eyes, and the