The Twelve-Month Mistress Read Online Free Page B

fast, struck out for the blue-painted edge.
    At first she had a noticeable lead, but a quick glance over her shoulder showed that Joaquin was coming up fast behind her. Exhilaration and excitement flooded her veins, pushing her into even stronger movement, putting all her heart and energy into it.
    She was holding her own. The finishing line was almost within reach. But Joaquin’s tanned arms, his dark head, were drawing level, matching her stroke for stroke.
    She saw him turn his head. Caught the swift, brilliant flash of white teeth against the dark olive of his skin as he grinned in wicked triumph. Another forceful kick from his muscular legs, an extra spurt of speed, and he had passed her, tanned fingers reaching out and touching the edge of the pool just bare seconds before her own paler ones.
    ‘Okay, you win!’
    Somehow all the uneasiness of earlier that afternoon had evaporated, leaving her with a rush along with her gasps for air as she regained her breath. Letting her feet sink slowly to the base of the pool, she stood upright in the shallower water, wiping her hands across her skin and back over her hair in order to brush away the lingering water, clearing it from her face and her eyes.
    Joaquin lounged just feet away, half in, half out of the water, his back against the tiled edge of the pool, his hair, jet-black and slicked back, clinging to the fine shape of his skull. Once more those white teeth flashed in a wicked, triumphant grin.
    ‘Show-off!’
    But of course he had every right to show off, she admitted inwardly. Unlike herself, he was hardly even breathing faster; the broad, muscled chest rose and fell as easily as if he had just had a short, casual stroll along theside of the pool and not powerhoused his way through the water after her.
    Glinting in the sunlight, tiny drops of water slid over the bronzed skin and came together in a tiny rivulet that trailed its way through the black body hair and down over the flat plane of his stomach. Cassie found that her mouth had dried suddenly, her throat tightening on a wave of response, and she tried to swallow as inconspicuously as possible in order to ease the constricting sensation.
    Joaquin treated her to another wide grin, eyes gleaming knowingly.
    ‘Maybe, but I still won! So now you owe me.’
    Something tightened deep in Cassie’s stomach, twisting sharply on a touch of nerves.
    It was no good trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he meant. From the very first time when he had discovered how much she liked to swim, and how fast she was in the water, he had issued a challenge, tempting her to race him.
    ‘And to make it interesting,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll compete for a prize. Whoever loses owes the winner a forfeit—whatever they demand.’
    So now, seeing that taunting smile, hearing the words ‘you owe me,’ Cassie knew just what was going through his mind.
    ‘It wasn’t a proper challenge!’ she hedged warily.
    ‘Which it wasn’t the last time—when you won,’ Joaquin reminded her. ‘But as I recall you still claimed your prize.’
    That gleam in his eyes brightened vividly, reminding her without words just what the prize she’d claimed had been, and letting her know that he remembered only too well. She felt as if her whole body must be blushing, her skin suffused with rich colour as she recalled the passionate way he had responded to her begging him to make love to her right here, in the pool, under cover of the darkness of late evening.
    But that had been over a month ago. It was five weeks since they’d last raced in this way. Five weeks since they had even swum together. Five weeks in which Joaquin had had little time for relaxation, little time for leisure, little time, it seemed, for her . So that now things seemed so very different. The unspoken split that had opened between them had turned into a gap and from a gap into a chasm, until she was beginning to wonder if it was possible to bridge it at all.
    And the