the soft half-darkness, illuminated only by the stars, she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I hadn’t wanted that.’
Damn it, he could taste the need, hot as sin, dangerously heady as any drug; wanting Lauren was an ache in his guts, a reckless loss of control that both excited and infuriated him.
And for the first time in his life he was being propositioned by a woman who had no idea who he was. Here in Valanu they knew him only as Guy Bagaton. Combined with the heated sexual appetite raging through him, Lauren’s offer was damned near irresistible.
‘Neither reward nor gratitude,’ Lauren said.
Was there a hint of nervousness beneath the polished surface? When she stopped a step away, Guy refused to reach out, although the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched with the effort to keep them still. Leaping on her with famished savagery was not the way to endear yourself to a woman, he thought derisively.
He asked, ‘So what is it?’
The taut seconds that followed his question didn’t give him enough time to impose control on his more primitive instincts. He could die wanting her, he thought, grimly fighting the physical longing that undermined his will-power, but he hadn’t come here for this.
Then she bent and fitted her mouth to his. Against his lips she said, ‘This.’
And kissed him.
She tasted of mystery and delight, of sex and truth, of daring and intensity and grace. An exultant, desperate need roared through him, and he said too harshly, ‘Good, because that’s what I want too.’
When Lauren began to straighten, he came up with her in a silent, purposeful movement that sent shudders through her.
‘Like this,’ he said.
He caught her against him, his mouth taking hers in a kiss that gave no quarter. Dimly, Lauren realised that it was a signal of dominant masculinity, and she gloried in it, demanding as much from him as he asked from her, her eager body thrumming with need.
He kissed her as though she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, as though they shared infinitely more than this transitory passion, this time out of time in the empty blue reaches of the Pacific.
Shuddering, she opened her mouth to his, and relished the wild kick of passion inside her—and the fierce hardness of his body against hers.
‘When I first saw you,’ he said, reluctantly giving her air, ‘I wanted you.’ That faint trace of accent flavoured each word, intriguing and different.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘You looked like a pirate. A very sexy pirate.’
His heavy eyelids almost covered his eyes, but she could see a gleam of laughter in their golden depths. ‘You have a thing for pirates?’
‘Stubble suits some people,’ she said demurely, nipping her way along his jawbone.
He laughed again, deep and low and triumphant, and kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulders, and then the warm swell of her breasts above her sarong. Pleasure raced through her in a dizzying flood; as he deftly untied the knot she knew that nothing in her previous life had prepared her for the ardent, honeyed recklessness of making love with Guy.
When the sarong fell away, he froze. Lauren gazed into his stunned face, and her heart tumbled into free-fall. She hadn’t known a man could look like that—a mixture of conqueror and supplicant, eyes glittering in a darkly drawn face while he gazed at the slender white curves and lines of her body.
And then he lifted his head, and there was no supplication in his expression now—he was all conqueror. Her breath locked deliciously in her chest when he cupped a small, high breast, tanned fingers shaping the pale curves with erotic confidence as his thumb brushed the tight pink bud at the centre, slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until she moaned deep in her throat.
Needles of pure desire ran along her nerves; she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him that he was killing her with sensation. Even her breath died when he bent his head and kissed the nipple his thumb had tantalised. Carnal sensation sparked an inferno inside her when the tight little nub peaked in a silent, evocative plea for more.
He gave it to her, his dark head drawing close. Lauren swallowed, and when he drew the nipple into his mouth her knees buckled.
Guy caught her before she fell, lifting her into his arms and stepping over the fallen sarong to carry her across to the bed. As her feet touched the floor, his free hand jerked aside the bright quilted coverlet and he put her down gently on her back.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked deeply, his gaze caressing her body, exposed now for his delight with only a scrap of cotton hiding her most secret parts.
They had so little time, Lauren thought desperately. Soon she’d be leaving for New Zealand.
And Guy? He’d go back to Sant’Rosa, and she had no right to ask him to stay away.
A smile trembled along her lips. ‘Utterly sure,’ she said like a vow.
Guy stood very still, then said, ‘So am I,’ and without haste he shrugged out of his shirt.
Her pulses drummed faster as she feasted her eyes on the clean, perfect symmetry of his body. But when he stood naked before her, her breath locked in her throat. He was, she realised on a note of primitive panic, big all over, and it had been a long time since she’d done this…
‘Relax,’ he said softly, and ran a deliberate forefinger from the centre of her breast to the soft, warm nest between her thighs. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
The path of that finger burned like a streak of fire, and her confidence returned in a rush. Her first glance had told her that he was an experienced lover. ‘I know.’
Solemnly she watched the play of powerful muscles beneath his sleek bronze skin as he untied the mosquito netting so that it fell around the bed in a billow of white, shutting them off from the rest of the world.
Then he came down beside her, dark to her light, sun to her moon, strength to her grace.
LAUREN had expected a slow, sophisticated wooing. Perhaps Guy had planned that, but when she smoothed her hand over his shoulder and down the flexible line of his spine, her fingers tracing out the vertebrae beneath the hot skin, he muttered a word she couldn’t discern. And followed it with another devouring kiss that set her afire with heady, primal intoxication.
A ferocious intensity wiped away the last pathetic shreds of her self-control. When she gasped and arched beneath him, her hips grinding into his, he took an importunate, demanding nipple into his mouth and suckled strongly.
Delicious arrows blazed through her body; groaning, she tightened her fingers around his head, holding him close to her breast while the craving intensified, burning hotter and hotter until she thought she might die of need.
‘Now,’ she muttered. ‘Now, for heaven’s sake… Guy, please—’
He
