Emily nodded, understanding.
Her body was on fire, already missing its closeness to his, as he did what he had to do, fetching a condom from his wallet and putting it on with hands that were, she noticed, not completely steady.
‘I don’t take chances,’ he grunted.
‘And I can think of nothing worse,’ Emily agreed with heartfelt sincerity.
Leandro was suddenly, fleetingly jealous of the guy she was destined to marry—even if it was to be a marriage of convenience. ‘Sex with another guy when you’re engaged is one thing...but a baby would be quite a different matter...’
‘Catastrophic.’ She pulled him towards her. ‘Now, stop talking,’ she commanded, ‘and remember what I said about not being through with you...’
‘I remember.’ Leandro grinned with wicked pleasure. ‘Take charge. I’m completely at your mercy...’
At her sweet, sweet mercy.
He loved everything she did to him. He loved the way she lathered him with kisses. He loved the way she teased him with her tongue. He loved the way her hair brushed like silk against his chest when she was down there, sucking and licking and sending him to another planet.
And, boy, he loved her enthusiasm. This wasn’t lovemaking as an art form. She wasn’t out to impress him with her inventiveness or her clever techniques.
She wanted him, and she wanted to enjoy him, and she wanted him to enjoy her. Simple as that.
When she sat on him and began rocking he could no longer restrain himself. If he didn’t control the pace then he knew that the unthinkable would happen. He wouldn’t be able to hold off. He would come within seconds, like a horny teenager with no finesse and even less experience.
He rolled her beneath him and took charge, moving into her and thrusting deep, rearing up to watch her face as she responded to every thrust, her legs wrapped around his back.
Still maintaining his rhythm, he bent and covered her mouth with his. His tongue mirrored what his hardness was doing, thrusting and enjoying her slick wetness.
As he moved faster and deeper he rose up, supporting himself with his hands flat on either side of her. He seemed to take in every single little detail of her. The shiny golden softness of her face, the length of her lashes, the little mole just above her right eyebrow, the bleached blondeness of her hair spread across the pillow, the scattering of freckles on her collarbone, the tan lines from where her swimsuit had been...
He came on an explosion of sensation that drove every thought out of his head. From a long way away he heard her cry out with satisfaction and it mirrored his own.
They were damp with perspiration, and as he collapsed on her their bodies seemed to stick together. He hadn’t put the air-conditioning on and the overhead fan was inadequate when it came to cooling them down. It crossed his mind that nothing would have been adequate at cooling them down. They could have made love on an iceberg in the Arctic and they would still have been as hot as they were now.
‘Did the Earth move for you too?’ he asked huskily, and Emily nodded with a smile.
That was the understatement of the decade. The Earth had done more than just move! It had swivelled, spun in circles and done several loop-the-loops...
So this was what it felt like to be fired up with passion! Now she knew.
‘I want to hear you say it,’ he breathed, coiling his fingers into her hair and scattering delicate kisses on her mouth until she could feel her body getting fired up all over again.
‘I...yes...the Earth moved for me too,’ she breathed. ‘I mean, I’ve never...’
‘Never what...?’
‘I’ve never...’ She traced her finger along his chest, circled his flat brown nipple and watched it tighten at her touch. ‘Never felt like that before with a guy...’
‘And there have been lots...?’
Since when did he care how many lovers a woman had had before him? Insecure was something he most certainly was not, and yet now he wished he hadn’t asked the question, because he didn’t want to hear that he was just one in a long line of notches on her bedpost.
‘No.’ She laughed and brushed aside his question, because she didn’t want to think about how many women there had been in his life. ‘I’m not... I’ve never really fooled around...’
‘You should learn from your past—not allow it to influence your present and your future. Your father may have been a monster but he doesn’t represent the entire male sex...’
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ Emily said quickly.
It was a timely reminder of just how vastly different their worlds were. It was easy to simplify situations when you were speaking as a spectator to someone else’s world. Not only was she a prisoner of her own learning curve but she also had to remember where she was now—about to be married and with no room for her thoughts to be muddled by a man who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
‘Then let’s talk about what happens next...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
EMILY SHIELDED HER eyes against the glare of the sun and stared out at a picture postcard scene.
Overhead, the fronds of a palm tree blew lazily in the breeze and provided some welcome shade. If she looked up she would see the blue, cloudless sky, filtered through the branches of the tree. Now, looking outwards, her vista was one of the sea—bold turquoise gradually turning to a darker greeny-blue and then finally to midnight-blue where it was just a sharp line against the sky.
The sand was the consistency of caster sugar and almost the same colour. To her right, the little boat which had brought them here bobbed on the water. And in the distance Leandro was carelessly heading out towards the horizon, cutting a clean line through the calm water. He had no fear of all the things that panicked her when she thought about swimming beyond where she could touch the sea bed. Sharks...giant stingrays...barracuda... Various other unknown but deadly sea creatures waiting to pounce on the unwary swimmer.
He was completely naked. When he emerged from the sea she would feast her eyes on his gloriously masculine body and appreciate every line, every contour, every ripple of muscle. She would watch, fascinated, as he hardened for her. It amazed her just how much she turned him on.
She, likewise, was completely naked on a giant beach towel. They could afford to be here—gloriously naked—because the island was just an isolated dot. Sand, palm trees, flowering wild plants and accessible only by boat. They were the only two people on it, and when they had moored two hours earlier it had taken them under half an hour to walk its entire circumference.
Bliss.
Twenty minutes of walking and then making love in the open air—because this was what happened next.
They became lovers.
Just for a moment in time they agreed to give in to the crazy passion that had overwhelmed them. Why not? They were here and they fancied one another.
He hadn’t asked her how it was that she could do what she was doing—making love to him with abandon—while counting down the days to her wedding. She hadn’t stopped agonising over what his opinion of her would be, but she had acquired a skill for shoving it to the back of her mind. It was a skill she had been called upon to utilise many times over the past four days, during which they had made love like starstruck teenagers.
She had no inhibitions when she was with him. He had taken them all away from her and replaced them with a greedy craving that knew no limits. He didn’t have to tell her where to touch him. She just seemed to know.
She watched, smiling, as he began swimming back towards shore, his strokes even and certain, his body becoming more and more defined the closer he got.
Her breath caught in her throat when, after a few minutes, he stood up and raked his fingers through his wet dark hair.
Quite simply put, the man was beyond beautiful, and s
he never tired of looking at him.
Eyes firmly fixed on her rapt face, even though he couldn’t decipher the expression, Leandro lightly held himself and began walking slowly towards her.
He had cooled down after their earlier bout of lovemaking and now he was ready and raring for more. He could feel himself hardening in his hand, and by the time he was standing next to the towel, gazing down at her glorious body, he was rigid.
‘Now look at what you’ve done...’ He grinned, and then inhaled sharply as she sat up and took him in her mouth.
His hand behind her head, he stood completely still as she sucked and licked and teased his massive erection until he was groaning aloud and wondering if he should bother to try and control the orgasm that was hurtling towards him.
Never in his life had any woman been able to get him fired up to this extent.
Reluctantly he tugged her away and took a few seconds, trying to regain some kind of control over his body.
‘You’re a witch.’
He lay down next to her and drew her to him so that they were both on their sides, facing one another, their bodies fused. He nudged open her legs and felt her wetness against his thigh.
He could never have foreseen this. He could never in a million years have predicted that he and his secretary would end up in bed together. But now that they had he couldn’t quite understand how it had not happened sooner.
Making love to her felt like the most natural thing in the world.
He kissed her—a long, lazy kiss—taking his time. He moved from her lips to her neck and she arched back as he nibbled the tender skin, targeting just that area by her ear where he knew she loved to be kissed.
The thrust of her breasts proved too tempting, and he moved downwards to feast on one swollen nipple until she was whimpering and twisting underneath him.
She tasted good and he continued suckling, drawing the nipple into his mouth while he teased the rosebud tip of the other between his fingers.
‘You’re hot...’ Barely shifting, he reached into the cooler they had brought with them, dislodged the lid and fumbled until he had an ice cube in his hand. ‘You need cooling down. At least, these tender little nipples of yours do...’
He propped himself on his elbow and rolled the ice cube over the tip of her nipple, then circled it over her breast until she was moaning and giggling at the same time.
‘Now, tell me that doesn’t feel better...cooler...’ He tossed the ice cube aside and continued his ministrations, licking and teasing the stiffened buds and then covering her breasts with kisses, heading south along the flat planes of her stomach.
He dipped his tongue into the indentation of her belly button and smiled as she inhaled sharply.
Her body responded to his each and every touch with exquisite immediacy. He felt as though she was a woman being touched for the first time, and in a way she was. She was inexperienced. Her past two boyfriends had failed to satisfy her. And hearing that had turned him on in ways he could hardly define.
He had made it his mission to do just the opposite—to turn her on to the point where she couldn’t keep her hands off him, where she couldn’t be in his radius without wanting him.
It was a two-way street, because he couldn’t see her without touching her, couldn’t keep his hands off her, and couldn’t be bothered to try even when they were out in public.
He trailed his tongue lower, taking his time to explore the satiny smooth skin of her belly, and then he gently parted her legs with his hand, preparing the way for what he would do next. Taste her. Feel her shift restlessly under him. Hear her soft little whimpers of delight.
She tasted of the warmth of the sun, the saltiness of the sea. He burrowed between her legs, licking and exploring every inch of her soft femininity with his tongue. She was damp and slippery and he loved the way she wrapped her legs over him and kept her hands firmly at her sides, fists clenched, every muscle in her body tuned in to what he was doing to her.
It was as if she were concentrating, focusing with her whole body on what was being done to it, with no sensation being taken for granted.
He physically ached from the constraint of not doing what his body was screaming to do—which was to come in her, hard and fast, until he was satisfied.
In the past, however much he’d been turned on by a woman, he had always been able to break things off in the event of an emergency. His mobile phone had always been switched on. The demands of work, even in the throes of passion, had always come first.
With Emily, it was different. He switched off his mobile phone. For hours on end. He was irritated when he got a call that interrupted time spent with her.
He felt her body begin to stiffen as wave upon wave of pleasure washed over her, threatening to take her over the edge.
Reluctantly, he raised himself to kiss her.
‘I didn’t want you to stop,’ she complained, returning his kiss with little fluttery kisses of her own.
‘I know. Nor did I. Have I ever told you how delicious you taste down there?’
Emily grinned, her eyes slumberous with a passion waiting to be sated. She wished she could hold this moment for ever—bottle it, perhaps, preserve it in some way so that it could remain intact.
‘You may have...’
‘I can think of a thousand things I’d like to eat off your body... Not that I imagine I would be able to exert sufficient self-control to do it...’
Emily’s mind took flight at that. She watched as he reached across to the pile of clothes next to them, fumbling until he found protection, and all the while she could picture him licking ice cream from her stomach, honey from her nipples, all manner of sweet things from everywhere, until she was driven wild.
She pictured herself doing the same to him.
She was waiting, ready for him as he inserted himself inside her, big and powerful and filling every inch of her.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he began to move, thrusting deeper and deeper so that the beach towel was rucked underneath them. Eyes closed, she blindly sought his mouth and found it, and then she lost herself in a never-ending kiss as he continued to bring her faster and faster towards her climax.
When she came, she flung her head back and held her breath, before crying out as her orgasm took over her body, banishing all thought and carrying her away to another place completely.
He was holding her tightly, timing his own climax, holding off before allowing himself to let go, feeling her every reaction and responding to each one with unerring instinct.
They came as one and he groaned and stiffened as he spilled his seed into the condom, wishing with shocking unexpectedness that he could feel her without the protective sheath dulling the sensation.
‘I’m hot,’ she said sleepily as he disposed of the used condom and settled down on the towel with his arms around her, their bodies spent.
‘Perhaps we should give it a few minutes before we resume activity,’ he murmured, grinning. ‘I may be superhuman when it comes to making love, but even I have my limits...’
‘I didn’t mean I was hot for you. I meant that I was...hot...’
‘A man’s ego could be crushed...’
He kissed the side of her mouth and then decided to linger a little longer there. And holding her breast would, he decided, feel pretty good too. So small and delightfully soft.
‘Let’s go for a dip,’ he suggested. ‘Then lunch. I’ve had your favourite prepared.’
‘You don’t know what my favourite is...’
‘Of course I do! Sandwiches...brown bread...with ham...all fat cut off...lettuce and tomato, mayonnaise, no mustard. Or chicken salad...no celery... Fried fish is also on the menu...with ketchup and lots of it...’
‘How on earth do you know that?’
But she knew
how he did. They did a lot of talking, and sometimes about the most inconsequential of things. He had compiled a random set of facts about her just as she had about him.
She felt a stirring of unease blow over her like a cold breeze. She reminded herself that this was just time out—an adventure before she resumed the reality of her life back in England.
‘I seem to know a lot about you, my dear secretary. Maybe it’s been a process of osmosis over the many months you’ve worked for me...’
He heaved himself up and extended his hand, inviting her to take it, which she did.
His eyes roamed appreciatively over her naked body as she stood up, long and slender, with the grace of a ballet dancer. It was a body that should never have been concealed beneath dreary work clothes and prim, unappealing suits.
‘I think your pubic hair is going lighter in the sun,’ he commented.
Emily grinned and reddened. His fingers were curled into hers and it felt...comfortable.
‘I could say the same about you,’ she retorted, half running and dragging him along.
‘You couldn’t.’ He spun her round, held her tight and devoured her mouth in a long, leisurely kiss. ‘I’m brown and my hair everywhere is dark. Dark enough to defy all attempts by the sun to lighten it. What colour hair does the fiancé have?’
He hadn’t meant to ask that. In fact he had decided to avoid all mention of her fiancé. As far as he was concerned, as long as they were out here, the man didn’t exist. He had no idea if she spoke to him daily or not at all.
So how was it that the question had slipped out so easily? And, now that it had, how did it make sense that he was eagerly waiting for the answer? When he couldn’t care less?
‘Fair.’ She turned away, not wanting to prolong any conversation on the subject of Oliver.
She had spoken to him a couple of times since they had arrived on the island. Now and again her decision to marry him, for reasons that had made perfect sense before she had become involved with Leandro, jarred on her conscience, no longer seemed quite so clear cut.
She hit the water and dismissed her misgivings by diving in, enjoying the cool against her skin after the heat. She swam out and continued swimming, further than she would normally have done, and only spluttered to a stop when she felt Leandro’s arms around her.
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