by Miranda Lee
Rafe felt a wild rush of blood along his veins, swelling him further, compelling him to pump harder as he sought release from his agony.
And he'd thought he'd be more relaxed inside her.
Foolish Rafe!
'Rafe,' she cried out, her arms tightening around his neck, her lips breathing hot fire against his throat. 'Rafe...'
Her first spasm sent him into orbit, to a place he hadn't known existed. Was it pleasure or pain as his seed was wrenched from his body? Agony or ecstasy as her almost violent contractions kept milking him dry, making him moan as he'd never moaned before.
Rafe didn't know it he was experiencing heaven—or humiliation. All he knew was that no sooner did he feel himself falling away from that place she'd rocketed him to, than he wanted to be there again.
'You're right,' she murmured, kissing his throat and stroking his back, his shoulders, his chest. 'You didn't hurt me.'
His eyes opened to stare down at her.
'You looked so big,' she explained breathily. 'I haven't been with a man that big before.'
Rafe was startled. He'd always thought of himself as pretty average. What she'd been seeing was mostly her doing. Still, he was secretly flattered.
'I'd thought you were worried I might hurt you emotionally,' he said.
'Oh, no,' she said, shaking her head. 'No, that won't happen. I won't ever let that happen.'
Now Rafe felt piqued. Which was crazy. She'd spelled out what she wanted when she'd propositioned him and he'd agreed. Sex on tap for a fortnight without any strings and without any follow-up.
He'd thought such a set-up was every man's fantasy come true. Now, for some reason that he hadn't anticipated, Rafe wasn't so sure.
Oh, for pity's sake, stepped in the voice of cold reason. What's got into you! This is every man's fantasy come true. Stop playing the sensitive New Age guy and start being exactly what she thinks you are. Rafe the rake!
The trouble was Rafe wasn't really a rake. Never had been. Still, it might be fun. He could do every outrageous thing he'd ever wanted to do and get away with it. Make the most wicked suggestions. Play Casanova to the hilt, with a bit of the Marquis de Sade thrown in.
He had to smile at that. Him, into bondage and stuff? Wasn't his usual cup of tea, but that hammock had possibilities...
'Why are you smiling like that?' she asked.
'Like what?'
'Like the cat who got the cream.'
'Perhaps because I just did. You are the best in bed, sweetheart. Simply the best.'
She looked slightly uncomfortable with his compliment, as though she didn't like her performance being rated. Yet she must know she was good at sex.
She was a complex creature, and a maze of contradictions. Cool and ladylike on the surface whilst all this white-hot heat was simmering away underneath.
Rafe aimed to keep her furnace well stoked for the next fortnight. She wasn't going to be allowed to retreat into that ridiculous touch-me-not facade, not for a moment. She might think she'd hired him as her private toy boy, but in fact she was the one going to be the toy, to be played in whatever way he fancied.
Rafe might have been shocked by the wickedness of his thoughts under normal circumstances. But these were hardly normal circumstances, and it was what she wanted, after all.
'Hey, but I'm hungry,' he said. 'Aren't you?'
'A little. But I could do with a shower first. We've been travelling all day.'
'Mmm. Me, too. But why have a shower when there's that lovely big spa? We could pop in together. What say we take that picnic basket with us as well, kill two birds with one stone?'
'But...'
'But, nothing, honey. You just do what good old Rafe tells you and you'll have the time of your life.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAFE was right, Isabel thought two days later. She was having the time of her life. He was exactly what she needed just now.
Oversexed, of course. He never left her alone.
But she wasn't complaining. If she was brutally honest, she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He was wonderfully flirtatious and fun, with just the right amount of bad boy wickedness to his lovemaking which she'd always found exciting.
'So what do you think?' she said as she modelled her new red bikini for him.
Rafe was still sitting on the terrace in the morning sunshine, partaking in the slowest, longest breakfast. He was naked to the waist, a pair of colourful board shorts slung low around his hips. He was all male.
His eyes lifted and he stared at her. She hadn't worn this particular swimming costume for him as yet and it was scandalously brief. All the swimwear she'd bought with Luke's money was scandalous in some way, selected in a mood of rebellion and defiance.
And with Rafe in mind.
The white one-piece she'd worn yesterday went totally transparent when wet. Swimming had come to a swift end on that occasion, which was perhaps just as well, since her fair skin could burn too easily. As it was, she was slightly pink. All over.
'Turn round,' he ordered.
She did, knowing full well what the sight of her bottom in nothing but a thong would do to him. Still, that was the general idea. She'd been like a cat on a hot tin roof since he'd come up behind her as she'd been setting out breakfast on the terrace an hour ago, and proceeded to have her right then and there, out in the open. No foreplay whatsoever. Just him, whispering hot words in her ear as he lifted the hem of the sarong she was wearing, then commanding her to stand perfectly still whilst he quite selfishly took his pleasure.
She'd nearly spilled the jug of orange juice she'd been holding at the time. She hadn't come, of course. He'd been much too fast and she'd been much too tense. It had left her terribly turned on, though. She was still turned on an hour later. Hence the red bikini.
Isabel hadn't brought Rafe along with her to remain frustrated for long.
When he said nothing, she spun back round and glared at him, her hands finding her, hips.
'Well, what do you think?'
'I think you should come over here,' he said, and downed the rest of his orange juice.
A quiver ran all through her as she walked towards him. What was he going to do to her? Or make her do to him?
When he handed her the empty glass, she just stared at him.
'What's this?' she said.
'I've finished. I thought you might like to clear the table.'
"Then you thought wrong,' she snapped.
'In that case, what do you want to do? Or should I say, .what is it you want me to do to you! If you tell me in minute explicit detail, Isabel, I'll do it exactly as you describe. Anything you want, honey. Anything at all.'
Her mouth had gone dry. 'Anything?
'Uh-huh.'
'I...I don't know what I want...'
He took the empty glass out of her hands, put it back on the table, then drew her down onto his lap. 'Yes you do,' he murmured as he moved aside the tiny triangles which barely covered her breasts and began playing with her nipples. 'You know exactly what you want.'
'I...' She could hardly think with him doing what he was doing. Her nipples had tightened into twin peaks of heightened sensitivity, and he was rolling them with his fingertips in exquisite circles.
'Tell me,' he said, his breath hot in her ear. 'Tell me...'
She shuddered and squirmed. 'No,' she croaked. 'No, I can't.'
'Why not?'
'It's...it's too embarrassing.'
"Then I'll tell you what you want. You want me to give you a climax first. With my tongue. You want me to wait this time, till I'm climbing the walls like I was our first time together. Even then, you want to torment me some more with this sexy mouth of yours.'
His right hand lifted from her aching nipples to touch her lips, making them gasp apart. She automatically sucked in when he slipped a finger inside.
'Yes, just like that,' he said thickly, sliding his finger in and out of her mouth. 'You'd like to do that to me, wouldn't you, Isabel?'
She shuddered all over.
'And then,' he went on in a low seductive whisper, 'you want me to do it to you like there's no tomorrow. You want me to scatter your mind, to make you feel nothing but the wild heat of the moment, and the beautiful blissful oblivion that will follow afterwards.'
When his hot words finally stilled, so did that finger. A charged silence descended, with no sounds but the heaviness of his breathing and the waves on the beach.
Isabel wasn't breathing at all!
Suddenly, his chair scraped back and he was up and carrying her, not over to the bure and the bed, as she was desperately hoping, but down the path which led to the beach. She was startled when he dumped her into the hammock on the way past then continued on himself to run across the sand and plunge into the ocean. Meanwhile, she had to clutch wildly at the sides of the swinging hammock to stop herself from falling out.
When he returned less than a minute later, all wet and smiling, she threw him the blackest look. 'You did that deliberately, didn't you?' she growled, still clutching at the hammock. 'Turned me on, then made me wait some more.'
'Nope. It just happened that way. Perversely, I turned myself on even more than I was trying to do to you. I had no idea just talking about sex like that was so powerful. Had to go cool myself off before things became downright humiliating. But I'm back now, ready and able to put my words into action. So where shall we begin, lover? Right here in the hammock?'
'Don't be silly. The darned thing won't stay still. And you don't have a condom with you.'
'I wasn't going to have actual sex with you here, Isabel,' he said drily. 'If you recall, that doesn't come till much later in the scenario I outlined, by which time I'm to carry you back to the bure.'
Her mouth gaped open. 'You...you mean you're going to do what you...d...d...described?'
'Every single bit of it. And so are you.'
Her face flamed.
'You'll like it, I promise,' he purred as he pulled her round crosswise and began peeling off her bikini bottom.
She did like it. Too much. Way too much.
But he was wrong about afterwards. He might have fallen into blissful oblivion on the bed afterwards, but she lay there wide awake, her thoughts going round and round.
She wasn't going to be able to give him up after a mere fortnight. That was the truth of it. She was going to want him around for much longer than that.
Why? That was the question. Was it the way he could make her forget everything but the moment and the brilliant and blinding climaxes he could give her? Or was it something more insidious, something she'd vowed never to do, ever again?
Fall in love...
Rolling over onto her side, she looked at him lying there, sprawled naked on the lemon sheets, his arms flung wide, his silky brown hair. Leaning forward, she lifted one heavy lock from across his eyes and dropped it onto the pillow, then removed another which was covering his nostrils and mouth.
As if sensing that he could now breathe more easily, he sighed a deep, contented sigh, his mouth almost smiling in his sleep.
Isabel found herself smiling as well. Maybe she wanted to keep him around because she just liked him. And because he seemed to really like her in return.
Liking was good, she decided. She could live with that.
Finally, Isabel's worries calmed, she curled up to Rafe and went to sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
'NO RINGING for a dinner drop tonight, Isabel,' Rafe told her. 'We need to get up, get dressed and get away from here for a while. Do something else for a few hours. Have a change of scene.'
Isabel's head lifted and she smiled at him. 'Yes, Rafe darling, but surely you don't want me to get up and get dressed right at this precise moment.'
He stared back down into her cool blue eyes and wished he had the strength to tell her, yes, stop. Stop tormenting me. Stop enslaving me. Stop making me addicted to your body. And to you.
It was Wednesday, and they were back in bed, not long awake from an afternoon nap after a rather rigorous morning. They'd gone for a dawn swim after minimal sleep the night before and hadn't bothered with swim-wear. There was no one to see them, after all. No one to see what they did in the water. Or on the wet sand. Or in the hammock again.
The hammock...
Rafe swallowed as he thought of what he'd done to her in the hammock last night, how he'd used the silk sarong she'd been wearing to bind her hands to the rope up above her head. He'd never done anything like that before. And neither had she, if he was any guess.
But what a sight she'd been stretched out there, naked, in the moonlight. Rafe had been incredibly turned on. And Isabel...Isabel had been beside herself. She'd come so many times he lost count. In the end, she'd begged him to stop.
But he hadn't been able to stop, not for a long long time.
And now he wasn't able to stop her as she drew him deep into her mouth once more.
He moaned at the heat of it. And the wetness. It was like being sheathed in molten steel. He was going to come. He knew he was going to come.
His raw cry of warning stopped her, leaving him dangling right on the edge.
'You have a problem, lover?' she drawled huskily as she reached for one of the condoms they kept beside the bed.
He choked out a rueful laugh. 'You're cruel, do you know that?'
'Now you know how I felt last night,' she said as she protected them both. 'Just as well my perfume acts as an effective insect repellent or I'd have been covered with insect bites.?
'Instead, you have a few bites of another kind.'
'Beast.'
'You loved it.'
'And you're loving this. So why don't you just lie back and enjoy?'
He sucked in sharply when she bent to take him in her mouth once more.
'No, don't,' he groaned, and her head lifted, her eyes surprised.
'No?'
'No.' He shook his head. 'Not like that.'
He reached down and pulled her up and onto him, spreading her legs outside of his, then pushing his tormented flesh inside her once more. With a primal groan he grabbed her buttocks, kneading them as he rocked her quite roughly up and down on him. They came together, backs arching, mouths gaping wide apart, bodies throbbing wildly in unison.
'Oh, Rafe,' she cried, collapsing face down across his chest, her insides still spasming.
He held her to him till she stopped, though a shudder still ran through her every now and then.
Too much, he began thinking. This is all getting too much.
'I have to go to the bathroom,' he told her a bit brusquely.
'No, don't leave me,' she begged, clinging to him.
'Sorry. Nature calls.' He was out of her and off the bed in a flash, lurching across the sea matting floor and into the bathroom. Closing the door, he leaned against it for a few air-sucking seconds before staggering over to the toilet, not really needing it except to do some essential personal housekeeping.
When he went to do just that, he stared down at himself in horror.
'Oh, no...' he muttered.
Not once had Rafe had a condom break before on him. Not once!
Till now...
His heart sinking, Rafe inspected the damage and it was the worst scenario possible. The darned thing had totally failed. Ripped asunder. Right across the tip.
Immediately he thought of Isabel and in his mind's eye he could see millions of eager little tadpoles careering through her cervix and into her womb, swimming around with more energy than the Olympic water-polo team, watching and waiting to score a home goal.
What were the odds of their doing just that? he wondered frantically, his mind scouring his memory to recall what Isabel had said to him that Sunday just over two weeks ago. Something about her period being due that week. Probably early on in the week, he guessed. She'd said something about suffering from PMT that day.
Rafe did some mental arithmetic and worked out that if Isabel was a normal regular female with a normal mon
thly cycle, then she had to have already entered, or be entering, her 'most likely to conceive phase' right now.
Rafe sank down on the side of the spa bath. He might have just become a father!
His head whirled. So did his stomach. She was going to kill him when he told her.
Then don't tell her, came the voice of male logic. It will only spoil everything. And there's nothing you can do about it now. Besides, it might not happen. It might not be the right time. Even if it was, couples sometimes tried for years—hitting ovulation day right on the dot—and the woman didn't fall pregnant. Let's not be paranoid about this.
But what if Isabel had fallen pregnant. What then?
Cross that bridge when you come to it, Rafe.
Right. Good advice.
Rafe stood up, jumped into the shower and turned on the water. Picking up the shower gel, he poured a generous pool into his hands and slapped it onto his chest.
But a baby, he began thinking as he washed himself. His baby. His and Isabel's baby.
Talk about the best plans of mice and men.
Isabel lay there listening to Rafe in the shower and thinking she could do with a shower herself. She felt icky. But no way was she going to join him in there, not after the way she'd just carried on, clinging to him and pleading for him to stay with her like some lovesick cow.
How typical of herself! And how humiliating!
No wonder he'd bolted out of the bed.
Rafe was right. It was high time they did something else instead of have sex. She was beginning to fall into old ways.
Isabel sighed. If only he was less skilful in the love-making department. If only he didn't know exactly the sort of thing which excited her unbearably. If only he didn't always turn the tables on her such as just now.
She'd thought she was being the boss in the bedroom, as she'd used to be sometimes with Luke, but in a flash Rafe had whipped control out of her hands and she'd become his willing little love slave again, as she'd been last night.
Isabel's face flamed as she thought how crazy it had been of her to let him tie her up like that. But, ooh, it had been so deliciously thrilling. And really, down deep, she'd never felt worried. There'd been no fear in her, only excitement.