"One of each. I'm the youngest. My sister, Maureen, is thirty, and she's married. My dad made her husband a vice-president of Connelly Corporation, and now he can't wait to take over when dad retires. My brother, Mark, is twenty-five, and he's nice. He isn't nearly as ambitious and greedy as Maureen, who spends her life worrying that Mark may get a bigger piece of the family business when dad retires than she and her husband will. Now that you know the worst, do you want to come tomorrow? A lot of my parents' friends and neighbors will be there, too, and they're pretty much like my parents."
Ramon stubbed out his cigar and wearily leaned his head back against the chair. "Do you want me to come?"
"Yes," Katie said emphatically. "But it's selfish of me, because my sister will look down her nose at you if she finds out what you do for a living. My brother, Mark, will probably go so far out of his way to show you that he isn't like Maureen, that he'll embarrass you even more."
In the deep, velvety voice she was coming to adore, Ramon asked, "What will you do, Katie?"
"Well, I'll—I don't really know."
"Then I guess I will have to come with you so that I can find out." Putting his glass down, he rose to his feet.
Katie, realizing that he intended to leave, insisted that he stay for some coffee, for the simple reason that she couldn't bear for him to go yet. She carried it into the living room on a small tray and sat down beside Ramon on the sofa. They drank their coffee in a long, increasingly uncomfortable silence, which Katie was helpless to break or to understand.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked finally, searching his somber profile in the dim light of the single table lamp.
"You." Almost harshly he asked, "Are the things that are important to your parents, important to you also?"
"Some of them, I suppose," Katie admitted.
"How important?"
"In comparison to what?"
"In comparison to this," he said in a savage whisper. His mouth came down hard on hers, his lips moving roughly back and forth, forcing her lips apart for the invasion of his tongue, while he pulled her down on the sofa and twisted his body so that it was half-covering hers.
Katie moaned in protest and instantly his mouth softened, then began a slow, unbearably erotic seduction that soon had Katie writhing beneath him in wild hunger. His tongue tangled with hers, withdrawing, then plunging deep, slowly receding as she tried to hold it, until Katie was pressing her parted lips fiercely to his, lost in the soul-destroying kiss.
When he started to raise his head she curved her hand around it, trying to keep his mouth on hers, then gasped with shocked delight as he jerked the top of her bikini down, freeing her breasts and lowering his mouth to the pink peaks. Slowly he began sucking hard on first one and then the other, until Katie was reduced to a state of mindless, aching desire.
Ramon braced his weight on his hands and lifted slightly off her, his hot eyes restlessly caressing her swollen breasts, their nipples hardened and erect from his tongue and lips and teeth. "Put your hands on me, Katie," he rasped.
Katie lifted her hands, slowly moving her sensitized fingertips over the sinewy muscles of his chest, watching them flinch reflexively and then relax. "You are beautiful," she whispered, her splayed hands drifting from the taut planes of his bronzed hair-roughened chest, along his broad shoulders, then down the corded muscles of his arms.
"Men are not beautiful," he tried to tease, but his voice was thickened from the effect her hands were having on him.
"You are. The way oceans and mountains are beautiful." Unthinkingly, she let her fingertips trace the narrowing vee of dark hair on his chest toward the place where it disappeared beneath the waistband of the low-slung white trunks.
"Don't!" he ordered hoarsely. Katie stayed her hand and looked up at his face, dark with the passion he was fighting to keep under control.
"You're beautiful and you're strong," she whispered into his burning gaze. "But you're gentle, too. I think you are the gentlest man I've ever known—and I don't even know why I think so."
His control snapped. "Oh, God!" he groaned. His mouth took hers with an unleashed passion that sent tidal waves of desire crashing over her. His hands sank into the thickness of her hair, holding her head immobile for the endless plunder of his lips. Katie gloried in the feel of his stiff throbbing manhood pressing intimately to her, then moaned with feverish longing when he began slowly circling his hips against her. "Want me," he ordered roughly. "Want me more than you want the things money can buy. Want me as much as I want you."
Katie was almost sobbing with desire when he suddenly pulled away from her, sat up, and leaned his head against the back of the sofa, closing his eyes. She watched his labored breathing even out and, after a few minutes, she straightened her clothing, ran a shaking hand through her wildly disordered hair, and sat up. Feeling discarded and hurt, she squeezed herself to the farthest end of the sofa from him and curled her legs beneath her.
"Katie." His voice was bleak and harsh. Warily, Katie eyed him. His head was still back against the sofa, his eyes still closed as he spoke: "I did not want to say this to you while you were in my arms and we were both wild with desire for each other. I did not want to ever say this to you, yet I have known from the very first night that before I left I would still be saying it… “
Katie's heart stopped beating. He was going to tell her that he was married, and she—she was going to become hysterical.
"I want you to come back to Puerto Rico with me."
"What?" she whispered.
"I want you to marry me."
Katie opened her mouth, but it was several seconds before any words would come out. "I—I can't. I couldn't. I have a job here, and my family, my friends—they're all here. I belong here."
"No," he said angrily, turning his head and pinning her with his gaze. "You do not belong here. I watched you the first time I saw you in the bar, and I watched you tonight. You do not even like these people; you do not belong with them." He saw the growing apprehension widening her eyes and stretched his arm out to her.
"Come," he said softly. "Now I want you in my arms."
Too dazed to do anything but obey, Katie slid across the sofa and into his comforting embrace, leaning her head on his shoulder. Gently, he continued, "There is a
fineness in you that sets you apart from these people you call your friends."
Katie slowly shook her head. "You don't even know me, not really. You can't be serious about wanting to marry me."
His hand touched her chin, tipping her face up to his, and he smiled into her glazed blue eyes. "I have known what you are from the moment you knocked the flower I brought you on the ground, then nearly burst into tears with shame for what you had done. And I am thirty-four years old; I know exactly what I want." His lips clung to hers in a shattering kiss. "Marry me, Katie," he whispered.
"Couldn't… couldn't you stay in the States, in St. Louis, so that we could get to know one another better? Maybe then, after—"
"No," he said with absolute finality. "I cannot." He stood up and Katie stood with him. "Do not answer me now. There is time yet for you to decide." He glanced at the small glass clock beside the lamp. "It is late. I have to get dressed and then I have work that must be done tonight. When shall I call for you tomorrow to take you to your parents'?"
Numbly, Katie told him. "Oh, and I think my mother said it was a barbecue, so we may as well wear Levi's."
When he left, Katie wandered around, mechanically picking up coffee cups, turning off the lamp, and undressing for bed.
She lay down, stared at the ceiling, and tried to absorb what had just happened. Ramon wanted her to marry him and go to Puerto Rico with him! It was impossible, absolutely out of the question, too soon to even contemplate such a thing.
Too soon to contemplate it? Even if Ramon gave her time, would she ever really contemplate it?
She turned her head into her pillow and could still feel his hands caressing her with such violent tenderness, his mouth hungry and urgent on hers. No man alive had ever made her body come to life like that, and she doubted that anyone else ever would. It wasn't just practiced sexual technique with Ramon, it was instinct. It was natural for him to make love with such demanding, dominating sensuality; he was, by birth and culture, a dominating male.
Funny, Katie thought, she had liked being dominated by him. She had even felt a surge of excitement earlier today at the way he had ordered her into his arms with his quiet, "Come here, Katie." And yet, he was so gentle.