herself, feeling all smug at his expense.
And it was only day two.
How nuts would he be by the end of it all?
Hell, how nuts would he be in a week?
Unless...
Rick pulled his head off the steering wheel as the cunning of a certain pirate came to his rescue. He sat ramrod straight.
What if he took control of the situation? Turned the tables on her a little?
What if he were to take some of those tantalising scenes from Pleasure Hunt and give them life? He’d already established that she wasn’t included in their little dare. Maybe he could have some more fun...
Vasco Ramirez had been determined to make the voyage with Lady Mary a pleasure hunt—maybe he should too?
Of course he’d never step over the line, the bondage scene would have to go begging, but what fun it could be seeing if he could get Stella all het up. After all, those scenes were written by her about him. Maybe he could indulge those fantasies for her just a little, give her a taste of the real thing?
It would be fun to see how she reacted.
Would she guess what he was doing or would she be unaware? Would she reject his boundary pushing or would she embrace it with the abandon with which she’d scribed it?
His gaze fell on the shower at the stern of the boat and he smiled.
* * *
Stella was putting the supplies away in the galley when she heard a loud splash outside the porthole in front of her. She frowned as she peered out into the night.
Maybe Rick had thrown himself overboard, the dare just too much?
‘Rick?’ she called, a smile on her face. No answer. ‘Rick?’
Still no answer.
Maybe it was one of Moresby’s infamous rascals trying to steal from them and he’d knocked Rick unconscious and into the water.
Her smile died as her heart started hammering in her chest. She reached for the nearest weapon, a heavy-based fry pan, and decided to go up and investigate. She climbed the spiral staircase, one tread at a time, an itch up her spine.
She took a deep breath, then popped her head above the deck line, like a meerkat.
‘Rick?’ she whispered while her eyes took a second or two to adjust from the bright light below to the low cloud-affected moonlight outside.
Still nothing.
She caught a slight movement towards the helm of the boat as the sound of running water defined itself from the gentle slap of sea against hull and the trilling of insects. She squinted to make out the shape, her vision slowly adjusting to its night capabilities.
It was a person...
A man.
Taking a shower.
Taking a shower?
The moon chose that moment to come out from behind the scudding clouds that had been hampering its brilliance all night and Stella was afforded a side view of the man standing beneath the shower spray as if someone had switched on a spotlight.
Rick.
A one hundred per cent, buck naked, Rick.
She stood there frozen to the spot for a long moment caught between two impulses. To get out now before he discovered she was staring at his naked body or just stop and take in every magnificent inch.
As the celestial spotlight continued to bathe him in milky brilliance the latter won out.
The shower head was behind him, his head tipped back, his face raised to the night as the spray bathed his shoulder-length locks into a sleek, silky sheath. His eyes were shut as if worshipping the moonbeams that painted him in alabaster.
He looked like a statue. A Michelangelo nude.
With all the beautiful symmetry of fluid muscles and the more subtle details of sinews, tendons and veins in living, breathing relief.
Water sluiced over his broad shoulders, his chest, his biceps. It ran down the planes of his back, following the curve of his spine, dipping into those two sexy dimples above the rise of his buttocks. It flowed down firm flanks and rippled like a waterfall across the defined ridges of his abdomen.
Rivulets of water ran down one powerful thigh pressed slightly forward, the knee bent, obscuring her view any lower, and Stella frowned.
Damn it, so close...
Vasco’s bath scene had been written over two years ago, and while a lot of it had been scripted out of her imagination some of it hadn’t. Having grown up with Rick wearing barely anything at all—boardies or a skin-tight diving suit being his everyday attire—she’d had plenty of inspiration for Vasco’s body and had been able to portray it with startling accuracy.
There had been some parts, however, that she’d had to... embellish.
It would be nice to know the truth of it. Had her fevered imaginings accurately represented all of Vasco or had it been pure whimsy on her behalf?
And then, as if he’d read her mind, he shifted, twisting his body slightly in her direction, straightening his bent knee and transferring his weight to his other thigh, and she no longer had to wonder if she’d got it right because the evidence that she had was right there.
Riccardo Granville was most definitely Vasco Ramirez in the flesh.
Rick turned so his back was to Stella and smiled to himself as he tilted his neck from side to side, letting the lukewarm water run over muscle that was surprisingly tense. The concentration it had taken to appear unselfconscious and relaxed, as if he were alone and being unwatched, had been much harder to carry off than he’d thought. But to see Stella’s head pop up and then feel her avid gaze on him as tangible as the water cascading from the shower head had made the exercise worthwhile.
He was back in control again and that was exactly the way he liked it. Even if he was playing games with someone he had no business playing games with.
But if she was going to secretly put him in a book and not expect him to have a bit of fun with that then she’d completely forgotten about his devilish sense of humour.
As long as he kept it light and remembered who she was—Nathan’s daughter, not a single, fully grown woman who wrote dirty books—and where the line was, it would work out just fine.
They’d both have a laugh at the end of the voyage and get on with their lives.
It was win-win as far as he was concerned.
* * *
The second Stella strained to see that birthmark she’d been fascinated with since she’d been five years old she knew that happenstance had turned into voyeurism. She forced herself to cease and desist. With one long last lingering look at possibly the most beautiful
