Quiet—why quiet? he asked himself as he watched her walk over to the rail then stand looking out over the bay. There was nothing quiet about Eve Herakleides, not where he was concerned anyway. Her hair, her face, her wonderful figure—Even that sudden and unexpectedly shy expression on her face rang bells inside him as she turned and saw him standing there.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SORRY,’ she murmured in apology. ‘I fell asleep.’
‘That’s okay,’ he replied, feeling all of that restlessness ease out of him to be replaced with—damn it—sex. The thought of it anyway. ‘I’ve been working. Didn’t notice the time.’
‘This is a lovely view,’ she remarked, turning her attention back to the bay. ‘Nothing looks new or out of place; everything simply blends as if it’s been like this for centuries.’
‘That was the plan.’ After a moment’s hesitation he went to stand beside her and began to point out the different features the resort had to offer. She smelt of shampoo and something subtly expensive. Her voice, when she inserted a comment, played feather-like across his skin. ‘We haven’t even begun developing that area yet,’ he said, indicating toward one of the farthest edges of the bay, and went on to describe what would be seen there within the next year or two.
His arm caught her shoulder, his voice vibrated along her flesh, raising goose-bumps on her skin as she listened to him—no—that she absorbed with a breathless kind of concentration every detail he relayed to her and wished she could remember a single one of them.
But she couldn’t. It was the man who held her wrapped in fascination, the rest was just wallpaper pasted on for appearances’ sake. ‘Quite utopian,’ she murmured eventually. ‘And all your own?’
‘No.’ He denied that with a wry shake of his head. ‘I would love to say it was, but a very austere Spaniard called Don Felipe de Vazquez owns all the land. Victor and I are just the men who transformed his ideas into reality.’
‘All of this doesn’t reflect an austere temperament.’ Eve frowned. ‘I see the heart of a romantic at work here.’
‘Maybe he has hidden depths.’ But, by his tone, it seemed he didn’t think so. ‘It’s more likely he has a good instinct for what will return a healthy dividend on his land.’
‘You don’t like him,’ Eve said, presuming from that.
‘It’s not my place to like or dislike him.’ Ethan took the diplomatic line.
Turning against the rail, Eve folded her arms beneath her breasts then looked up at him sagely. ‘But you don’t like him,’ she repeated stubbornly.
Ethan laughed, it was a soft dryly rueful sound that brought his eyes down to meet with hers. It was a mistake; the wrong move. Things began to happen to him that he had been determined he would not let happen. Don Felipe was tossed into oblivion; San Estéban with all its beauty may as well have not been there at all. Eve the witch, the beautiful siren, was all that he was seeing. She had relaxed with him at last, was actually smiling with her eyes, with her lovely mouth. Don’t spoil it, he told himself. Don’t so much as breathe in case you ruin the mood.
This wasn’t easy, Eve was thinking. Maintaining this level of relaxed friendliness was tough when what she really wanted to do was kiss him so badly that it was like a fire in her brain. She’d fallen asleep thinking of this man, had woken up thinking of this man and didn’t dare look into what had gone on in between.
Dreams were ruthless truth-tellers, she mused. ‘Don Felipe,’ she prompted, though she wasn’t interested in the slightest in the Spaniard; it was important that she kept the conversation going, or she might give in and make an absolute fool out of herself.
His eyelashes flickered—long dark silky things that made her lips tingle as if they’d flickered against them. He took in a measured breath that expanded his ribcage and made her breasts sting into peaks. His mouth parted to speak but it wasn’t what he was going to say that held her captive.
‘You have to know a man to draw a considered opinion as to whether you like him or not…’ Ethan dragged his eyes away from her before he did something he shouldn’t. ‘He’s a strange man: very private, cold and remote. Rumour has it that he was disinherited by his father in favour of his half-brother, and didn’t take the decision very well. Went a bit mad for a while, got into a couple of fights, had an accident, which left him scarred in more ways than one. Since then he has been out to prove something—with this resort and all the other investments he has made during the last few years that have earned him a fortune big enough to throw in his family’s face. But does all of that make him a romantic?’ His tone was sceptical to say the least.
‘Then you must be the romantic at work here,’ Eve announced decidedly.
Me—a romantic? Sending a fleeting glance over San Estéban, Ethan shook his dark head. ‘I’m just an architect who likes to leave a place looking as untouched as it was before I arrived…’
Another silence fell. It had probably had to, because neither of them were really thinking about the discussion in hand. Words were appearing from within the mists of other things.
‘Drink,’ Ethan said, filling the gap again.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. Relieved to have an excuse to move, she straightened away from the rail at the same moment that Ethan shifted his stance and made the fatal mistake of looking down at her. That was all that it took to flip the mood right into that one place they’d both been trying to keep away from. Eve saw his eyes dilate, saw the breath grow still in his chest. Her smile began to die along with her relaxed manner, because she knew for certain now what was really going on inside his head.
His tension began to fight with hers. ‘And food,’ he added. ‘We need to eat. The kitchen is stocked with all the usual provisions, but we can eat out if you prefer.’
Eat in or out? Eve tried to make a decision, found she couldn’t because sexual desire lay too thickly in the atmosphere to think of anything else. It would take only one more move, one tiny gesture from either of them, to lick desire into a flame.
‘In,’ she said, choosing. ‘I’ve had enough of crowded places for one day.’ She even managed to send him a semblance of a smile to accompany the reply.
But the smile was the gesture. It made him look at her mouth. Eve released a soft gasp as if she’d just been surprised with a kiss. The flame was licked, her arms unfolded and he was taking their place. They went into each other’s arms without another sane thought, and all it took was the first light brush of their lips to plunge them right back to where they’d cut off on the plane over the Atlantic.
Hungry and hot, it was the kind of kiss that worked on every sense until she was trembling so badly she needed to hang onto something. That something was his neck where the tips of her fingers had curled and had dug in. And he was no better, taking what she offered with an urgency that fed the need. His hands explored her body, his touch sure with knowledge, sensually driven by man at his most practiced: He was not the fumbling boy Raoul had been the night before, a slave to his own urgent needs.
Eve knew the difference. And so Ethan should have understood that—being the sophisticated lover he was reputed to be. But he shot back so abruptly it was like being severed at the neck. ‘What am I doing?’ He began cursing himself. ‘Great move, Ethan,’ he told himself harshly. ‘Great damn move!’
‘You started it!’ Eve threw at him as if he’d implied otherwise.
It swung him round. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he tossed back harshly. ‘You suffered a bad experience only yesterday. If I took advantage of you now, it would make me no better than the bastard who did that to you! I apologise,’ he clipped out. ‘If I ever attempt anything like that again you have my permission to cry—’
Rape, Eve finished when he so obviously couldn’t. And there it was, she realised. In one ill-thought-out sentence Ethan had brought this whole ugly situation back to where it really belonged.
So it is me who makes this happen, she realised. You don’t get two men in one day thinking yo
u’re open to that kind of thing without you giving off something that tells them that!
‘You’re wrong, so stop thinking it,’ he said.
‘Why wrong?’ He had to explain that or it meant nothing!
Ethan made himself look her in the eyes, made himself take the slap of those pained tears that glittered there. ‘You wanted me,’ he explained. ‘You did not want him.’
It was true. Was it true? Too shaken to think straight, she looked away from his grim hard face, and down at her body where she could still feel the lingering pleasure of his touch. With Raoul she’d felt revulsion, only revulsion. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t asked for what he’d tried to do! Did it make a difference that she hadn’t known she’d been doing it? No, it did not. A flirt was a flirt. A tease was a tease. She looked back at Ethan through pain-bright eyes filled with a terrible self-disillusionment.
‘No,’ he denied, knowing what was raking around inside her head. ‘No!’ he repeated and walked back to take her by the shoulders and issue a gentle shake. ‘With him, you screamed, Eve,’ he pointed out gruffly. ‘Even under the influence of whatever he gave you, you screamed loud enough to waken me.’
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t bring it on myself! she thought painfully.
‘You’re beautiful, stunning—irresistible in many ways,’ he went on as if he could read the thoughts tumbling through her head. ‘But ninety-nine per cent of the male population will resist you—unless you don’t want them to.’
And I did not want you to resist me. ‘But you stopped it anyway,’ she whispered shakily.
‘Because it was wrong. Because it is not what we’re here for.’
‘You pompous swine,’ she said and turned to walk back to her room.
She didn’t get very far. He exploded so spectacularly it came as a shock. ‘What is it you actually want from me, Miss Herakleides?’ he roared at her furiously as he strode towards her. ‘I thought you wanted my help, so I gave it.’ His hands found her shoulders. ‘I thought you wanted my support with your lies, so I gave you that!’ Those hands spun her round to face the fury he was giving out. ‘You’re here. I’m here, living a lie that should never have been allowed to start in the first place!’ Cold steely eyes raked her face like cutthroat razors. ‘Now I can’t even honour that deal without you making me out to be some kind of rat!’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did,’ he cut in thinly.
‘I thought—’
‘You don’t think, Eve, that’s your trouble!’
‘Will you stop shouting at me,’ she yelled back. ‘I wanted what I thought you wanted! My mistake. I apologise. Now let go of me!’
He did. She staggered. His hands came back to steady her. She released a pathetic little sob. He muttered something. She looked up at him. Like lightning striking a volcano, a whole ocean of molten emotion came boiling out.
‘He was there; he hurt me. You were the last person on earth I expected to understand! I liked it—your kindness, your caring, the strength that you let me lean on.’ Stop trembling! she told herself. ‘I liked the way you could be so stern with me, but make love to me with your eyes at the same time. You’re doing it now!’ she choked out shrilly. ‘You’re angry but you want me. I am not misreading the messages! How dare you imply that I am?’
It was a damning indictment. She was right, every word of it. Standing there, watching this beautiful woman shimmer with anger, hurt and a million other emotions beside, Ethan took it all full in the face and wondered what he was supposed to say or do now.
Then, he thought, oh to hell with it. He even released a short laugh because he knew what he was going to do with it. He was going to throw off his high moral stance and surrender to Eve—as he had been doing since this whole crazy thing had begun.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ she protested unsteadily, hurt tears sparkling across dark green irises.
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ he denied. ‘I’m laughing at myself.’
‘Why?’
Ethan kissed those tear-washed eyes, ran his lips down her cute little nose and settled at the corner of her trembling mouth. ‘Because of this,’ he murmured huskily, and made his surrender, falling into it without allowing himself another sane thought.
‘If you’re playing games with me, I’ll—’
‘No game,’ he promised and, because they’d done enough talking, he moved his lips until they’d covered her own then gently parted them to receive the moist caress of his tongue.
It was different. Eve could feel it was different. Not just the kiss but the way he was holding her—not with anger nor that driving compulsion that had pulled their mouths together before. He was going to take what she had placed on such open offer, and for a fleeting, fleeting, moment Eve wondered if she had made a terrible mistake by making herself so easy for him. Then he lifted his head, and she saw the slightly awry smile he offered that told her he wasn’t thinking this was easy at all.
‘Beautiful Eve,’ he murmured and covered her mouth again, picked her up and carried her down the terrace, into her bedroom and over to the bed before he let her feet slide down to the floor.
Shy, she felt agonisingly shy suddenly, which was stupid after everything that had gone before. He cupped her face, felt the burn in her cheeks, brushed his thumbs across them gently and felt her small tremor as he tilted her head back enough to receive his next kiss.
Only, not just a kiss but a deep and desirous prelude to what was about to come. It was a warm and unhurried awakening of the senses that held her captivated and compliant, wanting to go only where he led her.
He noticed, of course he did. ‘A passive Eve?’ he mocked her gently.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Do you mind?’
‘No.’ But that awry smile was on his lips again. ‘Just so long as it doesn’t mean you’re having second thoughts and don’t know how to tell me.’
‘No second thoughts.’ And to prove it, she wound her arms around his neck and brought his mouth back to hers again, then mimicked his long seductive kiss.
He led her through an erotic undressing by drawing the zip of her dress down her spine with caressing expertise that took her breath away. His fingers trailed feather-light over exposed skin, sun-kissed shoulders, slender backbone, the shockingly sensitised concaved arch at the nape of back. She moved against him and could tell that he liked that. It emboldened her into pressing the bowl of her hips even closer to what was happening to him.
He released a sigh; it shook with feeling. Eve matched that too, and he caught the sound on his tongue then fed it back to her, while his hands drifted up her arms until they reached her hands still locked around his neck. Drawing them downwards he encouraged her dress to slither down her body, then laid her hands against his shirt front. ‘Undress me,’ he urged.
It was the calling song of a mating bird. Shy though she still felt, Eve complied, while the caress of his hands and his mouth urged her on. Did he know? she wondered mistily. Could he tell she’d never done this before, and was that why he was taking it all so slow and easy?
Shirt buttons slid from their buttonholes to reveal more and more of that wonderful chest she loved to look at so much. Now she allowed herself the pleasure of touching, placing her fingers on his chest where dark hair coiled into the hollow between tight pectoral muscles. Then, because she couldn’t resist, the moist tip of her tongue followed suit.
The air left his lungs on a heavy rush that brought her head up sharply. She looked up at him, he looked down at her, and the pace suddenly altered dramatically. They fell on each other’s mouths with a series of deep hot hisses while his urgent hands stripped her flimsy scrap of a bra away and hers pushed the shirt off his back.
Then it was flesh on flesh, pleasure tangling up with pleasure as the whole thing shot off on its own natural journey. His arms were crushing her, his kiss was deep, their laboured breathing hissed into the warm golden light of the slow-dying day as he manoeuvred her
down onto the bed. He came down with her, his skin was moist, she yearned to taste it but the kiss was just too good to break away from. His hands began caressing her with so much sensual expertise that she arched and flexed as sensation washed over her in waves and scraped restless fingernails over his shoulder blades with enough urgency to make him shudder in response.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered helplessly.
He released a thick laugh and said, ‘Do it again.’
The exchange of words broke the kiss. Without the kiss she was free to indulge herself by tasting him. He liked her nails so she ran them down his back, loving the feel of his muscles flexing pleasurably, loving the groan he uttered just before he claimed one of her breasts with his mouth.
Desire stirred and writhed like an unleashed serpent deep within her abdomen. He must have known, because his hand was suddenly playing her stomach, moving downward, fingertips slipping beneath the scrappy fabric of her briefs. She knew he was going to touch her, knew that this was it, the moment she had been waiting for for what seemed the whole of her life. A tight and tingling breathtaking anticipation sent her still, which made him lift his head and send her a sharp questioning look.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You,’ she said in a sexually tense little voice.
He understood. His eyes went black, his features tightening into a very male, passionate cast. The hand slipped lower, fingertips drifting through dusky curls to seek out warm moist tissue that was the centre of her world right now. She groaned then gasped as pleasure licked with stunning intensity through to her toes and fingertips. He murmured something she didn’t hear—it could have been her name or it could have been a curse because she knew she was rocketing right out of control here.
He encouraged her though. With the mastery of the seasoned lover, he orchestrated her pleasure trip through the senses. Did he know? He had to know. Surely no man took this much care to please the woman he was making love to without expecting some similar stimulation back by return, unless he knew that this was her first experience?
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