her lips when he bent his head and bit the soft skin at the side of her neck was almost his undoing.
It was so fragile, so anguished, and a knot twisted in his belly at the sound. But the desire to turn her round and feel her breasts pucker against his chest was consuming any lingering sense he had left.
‘Dominic…’
Her whispered protest only added to the urgent need he had to touch her. The sinuous pressure of her thighs against his pelvis almost drove him crazy with need.
‘I want you,’ he said, his voice barely recognisable to his own ears, it was so thick and hoarse with emotion. ‘I don’t care about anything else. I just want to feel you naked in my arms.’
‘And then what?’ Cleo challenged him unsteadily, even as her treacherous body arched back against him.
She so much wanted to give in. But she had to remember who he was, what he was: a man who apparently cared for nothing but his own needs.
She took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking, like mother, like daughter. That I’m no better than Celeste. That just because a white man looked at her—a married man, moreover—she was happy to let him screw her brains out.’
‘No!’
Dominic swore then, his voice harsh with self-loathing. Hauling her round to face him, he grasped her tilted chin in one less-than-gentle hand.
‘D’you think that’s what all this is about?’ he demanded, trying to ignore her quivering lips, her eyes, that were the mirror of her soul. ‘Some sick desire to follow in my father’s footsteps?’ His jaw clenched. ‘For God’s sake, Cleo, I thought you knew me better than that.’
Cleo trembled. ‘But I don’t know you at all!’ she exclaimed, her hands gripping his biceps, feeling the muscles grow taut beneath the fine cotton of his shirt. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’
She was trying to hold him back, but it was a losing battle. He was so much stronger than she was, so much more determined to have his way.
‘You do know me,’ he said savagely. His thumb scraped painfully across her lower lip. ‘Dammit, you know how I feel about you.’
‘Do I?’
Her eyes widened and now he could see tears sparkling in the corners. And the desire he’d had to hurt her as she was hurting him was strangled by his need to comfort her.
‘Cleo—’
‘You want I should clear now, Mr Dominic, sir?’
Dominic couldn’t believe it. One of the yacht’s younger—less experienced—stewards had appeared at the top of the steps that led down to the domestic area of the vessel carrying a tray.
Forced to let go of Cleo, Dominic swung round, ready to deliver a cutting denial. But Cleo’s hand on his sleeve was a silent rebuke.
‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘Why not?’ He gave the youth an affirming nod. ‘I guess we’re finished here.’
Then, striding away towards the companionway, he cast a look back at Cleo. ‘Wait for me,’ he commanded harshly. ‘I won’t be long.’
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