she said faintly. ‘Hang-gliding.’
‘You’ll love it. Seriously.’
‘Chances are I won’t,’ she murmured and Damon grinned. ‘I’m a guest, Damon. You’re meant to be indulging me, not trying to kill me.’
‘Yeah, Lena mentioned that too. She also mumbled something about best behaviour, picking up wet towels, keeping regular sleeping hours and not gaming on the computers half the night, and, oh, she said to tell you good luck. Sisters are wonderful, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t have any,’ she said smoothly. ‘Are we done with the household warnings yet? Any locked rooms I must never enter? Broom cupboard I should never open?’
‘By all means open the broom cupboard,’ he murmured. ‘Wouldn’t want to deprive you of the joy of household chores.’ His smile turned wry and his eyes grew serious. ‘It’s all right, Ruby. There’s nothing here you can stumble over when it comes to my work. I never bring it home and I never let it touch the people around me. That time in Kowloon with you was the exception, not the rule. It won’t happen again.’
‘Fine by me,’ she answered quietly, and turned her attention to her luggage and smiled up at him with a false sunshinery her mother would have been proud of. ‘I bought a gift for your household,’ she said, and withdrew from her hand luggage the duty-free Scotch and champagne she’d purchased at the airport. ‘There’s caviar somewhere in there too. I seem to have developed a taste for it. That would be your fault.’
Damon smiled and held something out towards her in return. ‘For you,’ he said.
It was a headband. A cluster of fresh frangipanis twined around a solid frame, only on closer inspection the frangipanis were made of porcelain.
‘Oh, yes.’ Ruby made no effort to hide her pleasure as she slipped off her old headband and replaced it with the new. ‘That’ll work.’
It was then that he kissed her. A meeting of lips that came fleeting at first, and then he returned for more and this time he savoured her.
He did that, she remembered belatedly.
He had a way of sliding into a moment and savouring whatever it might bring.
‘Well, hello,’ she murmured when their lips parted. And thank God. ‘I’ve been wondering where you were.’
‘I was giving you space.’
‘Little hint for when we next meet,’ she said, and punctuated her remark with the rasp of her tongue across his lower lip. ‘Presents are good, presents are wonderful, but as far as space is concerned … I don’t need it.’
Ruby smiled and wove her hands through his hair and let him drag her against his hard, rangy body. ‘Though I am very aware that I do need a shower,’ she protested as he slid her jacket from her shoulders. ‘I’m straight off the plane.’
‘Contrary, Ruby.’
‘Well, yes. Surely you hadn’t forgotten already?’
He had such busy hands. They slid beneath her skirt, and the next thing she knew he’d leaned back against the low-slung sofa and lifted her up, and her knees were finding purchase on it the better to plaster herself against him.
Damon’s thumb slipped between her panties and stroked.
Ruby gasped and he ate it straight from her mouth.
She pushed forward and they toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the cushions and it didn’t matter any more that she’d wanted to shower, she needed to feel Damon’s touch on her skin and his lips caressing hers.
‘I dreamed of you,’ she told him as he ran his hands over her thighs and positioned her exactly where she wanted to be. ‘You were lawless. Bad. And I wanted you even more because of it.’
He took her mouth again and this time his kiss held a hint of savagery in it. ‘I have ethics,’ he whispered. ‘Boundaries. I can even be hospitable when I really put my mind to it. You’ll see.’
His questing fingers slipped beneath the boundaries of her panties again and Ruby shuddered with need of less boundaries and more contact. He dipped a long finger inside her and Ruby gasped her pleasure and she held his hand in place and closed her eyes the better to concentrate on his touch.
‘I dreamed of you, Damon. Lord, how I dreamed of you.’
‘I dreamed of you too,’ he murmured as she dealt with the buttons and the zip at his waist and took him in hand.
‘What was I doing?’ she whispered as she slid her panties aside and positioned him for entry.
‘This.’ His voice guttural as he surged up inside her, his hands at her waist, vicelike as he held her in place. He slowly withdrew, and then rocked up into her again. ‘You were doing this.’
They swam in the surf much later in the day, and then showered together and she used the bubbles Lena had left for her on him, and after that he sat her down at the kitchen counter in her underwear and fed her a toasted BLT sandwich on sourdough with mayonnaise.
He was handy in the kitchen—not fussy about what he put together but competent nonetheless. He put things away when he was done with them. He knew where things lived.
Definitely a point of difference between Damon and the rest of the men in her life. Missing fathers and stepfathers and the like. Staff inhabited kitchens in their world—not them.
‘Have you ever surfed before?’ he asked her later that afternoon as they sat on the sand and watched the waves come crashing in.
‘I’ve skied before,’ she said lazily. ‘I have very fond memories of a winter in Switzerland where I was a fearless snowboard queen of the mountain.’
‘I’m very impressed,’ he said. ‘Then what happened?’
‘Then we went to live in Bahrain.’ A fond sigh escaped her. ‘I learned to drive in Bahrain.’
‘Please don’t tell me you learned to drive in a racing car unless you want to see me weeping with envy.’
‘Of course I didn’t.’ She stood up, brushed sand from her rear. ‘I learned to drive in a Hummer in the desert. My instructor’s name was Carl. Carl set my girlish heart aflutter with his commando impersonation but, alas, he wasn’t much of one for reckless endangerment. Even in a Hummer.’
‘Surfing could be a little sedate for you,’ said Damon in reply. ‘If the wind picks up this afternoon we’ll break out the kiteboards.’
Surfing was not sedate. Nor was the kite-surfing they attempted later that afternoon. The hang-gliding they did the following day didn’t qualify as sedate either. There was more swimming. More love-making. And for Ruby, plenty of naps and lazing about in between the next action-man adventure.
Damon didn’t nap. Not ever. He slept well through the night—when they slept—and needed no rest whatsoever during the day.
He wasn’t one for television
