The Blackmailed Bridegroom

by Miranda Lee

  ‘Remember this, Antonio?’

  Her voice startled him, and the map he hadn’t even begun to examine fluttered from his fingers onto the floor. Antonio knew, before he even glanced over his shoulder, that he was in trouble again. When he did, his muttered oath told it all.

  Dear God, more bows! Two on her hips, a third between her luscious breasts, all three responsible for keeping that wretched excuse for a swimming costume from falling from her oh, so beautiful body.

  Antonio had seen some provocative bikinis in his life, but this was something else. It always had been, but it seemed even more so, now that Paige’s figure had matured.

  Ironic that the colour was shocking pink. The colour almost matched the wild pink in its wearer’s cheeks as she stood there before him in an obviously aroused state. Once again the temptation was there, to have her do things which his aching flesh craved.

  ‘Now I know why I had trouble keeping my hands off you all those years ago,’ he muttered darkly.

  ‘Did you really?’ she asked breathlessly, and actually began to walk towards him, movement doing things to those inadequately encased breasts which would have corrupted a saint.

  ‘How can you doubt it? But let me warn you, Paige, if you keep coming over here, things will happen which we both might regret later. I can see the headlines now,’ he added ruefully. ‘‘‘Houseboat runs amok! Naked lovers found drowned in river!’’’

  Her approach was halted, not by his warning, but by another houseboat suddenly passing close on their port side. A man was behind the wheel and three teenage children were sitting on the sunlit upper deck, swinging their feet against the sides and watching the world go by. They spied Antonio and Paige through the wide front viewing window and waved. One of the two boys wolf-whistled. All of them stared.

  Antonio lifted his hand to wave back. Paige stood rooted to the spot, blushing wildly.

  Soon they were alone again.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you going to do?’ He was no longer capable of resisting, if she insisted.

  ‘I…I think I’ll go cover up with some shorts and a proper top.’

  His body didn’t like the idea, but his brain did. ‘Sensible girl.’

  ‘Do you want me to be sensible, Antonio?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, and with a smug little smile on her flushed face she whirled and left him.

  He stared after her for a moment, then laughed.

  ‘Just you wait till we’re safely stopped somewhere!’ he called after her.

  She popped her head back into the sitting room, but only her head. ‘Can I expect my first comeuppance?’

  ‘You can depend on it.’

  ‘Before or after lunch?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Oooh…’ Her lips pursed into a provocative little circle.

  ‘Yes, that too.’

  ‘What too?’

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. You see, I have a feeling you’re the sort of girl who’s easily bored with a man. Can’t have that if we’re to make a commitment to each other!’

  Paige was on a sexual and emotional high for the forty minutes it took Antonio to find a mooring in a nice, quiet little cove. Her body burned for him, and her emotions soared.

  He wanted her, plus he wanted to make a commitment to her. Her love for Antonio no longer had to be ignored, or hidden or even controlled! Her feelings could be allowed to fly, to reach the dizzying heights which she’d always known were possible.

  She was just finishing making up two lunch plates of cold meat and salad when Antonio came inside from where he’d been securing the houseboat at the mooring. He stopped and just stood there, staring at her and saying nothing, a look of dark hunger in his hot black eyes.

  ‘What?’ she said, flattered and flustered at the same time.

  ‘Have you still got that bikini on under those shorts and top?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Care to join me for a quick dip before we eat?’

  ‘In the river? You have to be joking! It’ll be freezing at this time of year.’

  ‘That’s the idea. Cool us off a bit so we can eat first.’

  ‘Are you that hungry?’

  ‘Mmm.’ His eyes lanced hers, then raked down her body, seemingly stripping it as he went. Every nerve-ending in Paige’s body began to vibrate, every erotic zone immediately went on alert. Surely he couldn’t expect her to calmly eat lunch when all she wanted was him, not food.

  ‘Yes,’ he growled at last. ‘Yes, I’m that hungry.’

  ‘Oh…’ Her dismay was as sharp as her disappointment. Her eyes slid away from his, confusion in her heart.

  ‘So forget the damned salad and take them off.’

  Her eyes whipped back to his, and widened. ‘What?’

  ‘The shorts and the top,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘Not the bikini. I want the pleasure of doing that.’

  ‘H…here?’

  ‘Right here. And right now.’

  Her shorts had an elastic waist, and were easy to remove, but she still fumbled a little as she slipped them down over her hips. Letting them drop to the floor, she stepped very carefully out of them. Even then she swayed a little, and had to grab the cupboard-edge for support. The T-shirt had to be removed over her head. She felt as if she was doing it in slow motion, her breasts strangely heavy as the action of her arms lifted them upwards, pressing them together.

  It was weird, that second or two when her face and eyes were hidden from his yet her body not. She could still feel his eyes upon her, feel the heatwaves of his desire hitting her like lightning bolts. They ignited a return desire so strong that nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of its consummation this time. Not even people passing by.

  By the time she tossed the top aside and stood there, watching him watching her, she was his, totally, to do with as he willed.

  ‘God help me,’ was all he said as he visually coveted her curves.

  ‘God help me, don’t you mean?’ she countered.

  ‘Yes,’ he rasped, nodding slowly. ‘Yes, I would think that might be so. Now come here,’ he commanded roughly.

  She walked straight into his arms, and a kiss which bore no resemblance to the one she’d given him earlier. No tentativeness. Or tenderness. Just raw savagery, plundering her mouth and every misconception she’d ever had about lovemaking. And love.

  For if this was love that she was feeling for this man, then it was the most dangerous emotion in the world. So violent in its intensity, and so powerful in its potential for self-destruction. Neither experience with Antonio the other night had prepared her for this…this darkly powerful and all-consuming passion.

  She began kissing him back with an oral assault as brutal as his, raking her hands up into his hair, digging her nails into his scalp. He took her hair in return, winding it round one large hand and pulling her head backwards so that her mouth burst from his, her neck and back arching away from his body. With his free hand he tugged the bow between her breasts, Paige gasping when she felt the top part, then fall right away from her body.

  Their eyes met for a moment, and then he kissed her again, snaking his free arm around her waist and yanking her hard against him. Her own arms wound tightly around his neck, her naked breasts and erect nipples rubbing against his chest.

  She moaned under the thrust of his tongue, and the pressure of his penis against her stomach. It was so easy to imagine how it would feel, doing to her what his tongue was doing to her mouth.

  Before she knew it her feet had been lifted slightly off the floor and he was carrying her with him into the bedroom, her body still clasped tightly to his. But, once there, he disengaged his mouth and laid her down across the bed, where she lay in a helpless state of dazed arousal while he stripped himself, then stripped her.

  Stripping her proved amazingly quick, the bows on her hips as ineffective a barrier as the one between her breasts.

  Paige’s heart stopp
ed when he tugged away the scrap of pink, her face heating when he just stared down at her for what felt like ages.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said at last, and with unexpectedly gentle hands began caressing her where his eyes had been.

  Paige moaned softly, then bit her bottom lip. When he replaced his hands with his lips and tongue she did cry out…with the sharpest, sweetest pleasure she had ever known.

  Yet Jed’s attempt to do the same had made her feel physically sick.

  Antonio’s mouth made her feel nothing but beautiful and sensual and loved. Oh, yes, there was love in his lips, and love in her heart for him.

  ‘Antonio,’ she groaned, when that love began reaching for a physical release.

  ‘Antonio, please…’

  When he stopped, and drove deep into her burning, throbbing flesh, she cried out his name again. It echoed through the houseboat, and possibly across the waters. And he answered her, calling out her name as they came together, telling her in that shatteringly intimate moment how special she was to him, how it was her he wanted to make love with, not just any woman.

  ‘Oh, Antonio,’ she murmured as she hugged him to her afterwards. ‘That was wonderful. You were wonderful. Just wonderful…’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WONDERFUL.

  She was the one who was wonderful, Antonio was to think many times over the next few days. A wonderful companion. A wonderful lover. And a wonderful listener. She made him want to confide in her, to share things which up till now he’d kept hidden from others for fear of being denigrated or laughed at.

  A couple of days ago he’d actually found himself telling her all about his background, right back to his birth in a small village in the south of Italy, the illegitimate son of the black sheep daughter of his family. Named Gina, his mother had been a real disgrace, running round with lots of different men from the time she was fourteen. When she’d fallen pregnant, at eighteen, she hadn’t even been able to point a definite finger at any man, though most of the males for miles had run for cover. The only clue to his father was that he must have been very tall, which had rather ruled out the men in the village. Possibly a tourist, the villagers had speculated. Gina had a penchant for tall men. And short men. Fat men. Rich men. Poor men.

  Ashamed by the never-ending gossip, her peasant parents had finally thrown their notorious daughter and her bastard son out of the house. The man-mad Gina had gone to Rome, where she’d tried to raise Antonio herself, but it had been hard, and she’d finally turned to prostitution to make ends meet. Antonio recalled lying in a small bed against a thin cold wall, trying not to cry as he listened to the sounds of his mother being used or beaten, or both, in the next room. In the end, one night, when he was seven, she’d been bashed to death by a drunken client.

  ‘Oh, you poor darling!’ Paige had cried out at that point in his story, and had hugged him close. ‘You poor, poor darling.’

  He’d hugged her back and understood, perhaps for the first time, why he’d always reacted so badly to violence against women.

  He’d had no trouble telling her the rest of his childhood story after that: how his grandparents had been forced to take him in, but how they’d felt ashamed of his existence. By the time he was twelve he’d been shipped off to distant relatives in Australia. They hadn’t wanted him, either, but they’d tolerated his presence and at least sent him to school, where he’d put all his energies into learning languages, something he had a natural talent for. He’d left their home as soon as possible, much to their relief, and hadn’t been in contact since. His elderly grandparents, he’d found out some time back, were long dead.

  Paige had expressed sadness at this as well.

  ‘Oh, what a shame! I’m sure they would have been so proud to learn of the success you’ve made of your life.’

  Her sympathetic listening to his pretty sordid tale had touched him. She had a soft heart, a good heart. She would make a good mother, he’d realised at that point.

  He’d asked her about her own mother as well. But she didn’t know much more than he did. Just that the woman had been an orphan, brought up in foster homes. When she’d died she’d left behind no known relatives.

  Poverty and emotional neglect, Antonio imagined, had probably been responsible for making Paige’s mother ruthlessly ambitious. And hard. And selfish.

  Paige was nothing like her, thank heavens. Nothing like her father, either, except perhaps in her intelligence and lust for life.

  Lust for other things as well.

  Their main activity on the houseboat so far had been making love, in just about every place and position they could, except perhaps the top deck. Paige liked a degree of privacy for her passion.

  Occasionally they felt guilty, and cruised a little before dropping anchor in another perfectly private little spot. He’d started one of the novels he’d brought with him, and done the odd spot of fishing. Paige spent quite a bit of time cooking. They hadn’t been ashore for dinner as yet. They hadn’t wanted to. Yet it was already Monday. The days were flying by.

  Still, he’d rung and booked a table for the Wednesday night, since that was her birthday. And he had some special presents which he’d bought before they left Sydney, one of which he hoped would not be premature.

  But by then time would really be running out, and he would have to make his move regardless.

  Had she fallen in love with him as she’d said she might?

  She never used the words, but once or twice he’d caught her looking at him with that wonderfully soft, almost adoring look in her eyes, and his stomach had flipped right over. There again, she had also sometimes looked at him with eyes empty of everything but a glazed desire. Perhaps all she felt for him was lust.

  Surely not, he decided.

  ‘You’re doing it again!’

  Antonio’s head lifted from the towel he was lying on to stare, first at her slender ankles, then at her shapely calves.

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand as they worked their way higher.

  ‘Nothing!’

  His head lifted some more and he grinned up at her. She was wearing a pair of those short shorts of hers. Purple. And a purple and white striped midriff top which was an invitation in itself, being so bare that if she moved her arms slightly he was given tantalising glimpses of the undersides of her always bare breasts. Just looking at her excited him these days, which was awkward when he was only wearing a swimming costume. Fortunately, he was lying face-down on the top sundeck.

  ‘That’s why I came on this jaunt, isn’t it?’ he asked her. ‘To do nothing?’

  ‘Not all the time. What worthwhile activities have you got planned for the rest of today?’

  ‘Well…later this afternoon, I aim to do some serious fishing. We’re running out of supplies.’

  ‘It’s only one o’clock. The fish don’t bite till dusk. There’s a lot of time in between now and then.’

  ‘In that case why don’t you join me down here for some serious sunbaking? Pop off those clothes of yours and get yourself an all-over tan.’

  She didn’t exactly blush, but she looked scandalised at the idea, which rather amused him. Was this the same girl who, only last night, had prepared him dinner wearing nothing but an apron? Not the large barbecue kind of apron, either, which would have covered most of her. A saucy little tie-round-the-waist apron, with lace around the edges, which had left her naked from the waist up and totally nude at the back, except for the bow.

  She’d burned the dinner in the end.

  What was it about bows which turned him on so?

  Damn it all, he shouldn’t have started thinking about that now. Things were going from bad to worse in his nether region.

  He glanced up at her again, and decided suffering of this kind really was masochistic when the girl of his dreams was standing right next to him.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked a mite testily. ‘There’s no one about to see you. A bit of
nudity didn’t bother you last night.’

  ‘That was different,’ she returned rather primly. ‘That was night-time. Besides, I don’t want to have skin cancer in ten years. It’s all right for you Mediterranean born and bred people. You have heaps of melanin in your skin and go this lovely dark brown colour. We fair people get freckles, and melanomas.’

  ‘I have some sunscreen here,’ he suggested, determined not to give up. ‘I could rub some on your back, and all those other hard to reach places,’ he added suggestively.

  ‘That stuff?’ she scorned. ‘It’s downright dangerous. Mostly coconut oil and only sun factor four, and not worth spitting on.’

  ‘Fair enough. But it does for me, so how about rubbing some on my back, then? I can’t really reach.’

  He lay back down and waited, and waited, for some movement, or an answer. When there was nothing but silence, he glanced up at her again to find her staring down at him with a frown on her face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, puzzled by her lack of response. It wasn’t like her to turn down a chance of some action. Usually, she was insatiable!

  ‘Nothing. I…oh, all right, then,’ she said, and sighed. A strange sigh, full of an oddly weary resignation, as if she was doing something she really didn’t want to do, but would do it this once, just for him.

  Paige knew she should not do this. This was something which should remain a fantasy in her mind. This was something which might lead to trouble.

  Admittedly, she’d already touched him all over in the last few days. And kissed him all over. She’d even done that, up to a point. But this fantasy demanded much more. It demanded total sensuality and surrender to that sensuality. It demanded skill, and daring. It demanded total commitment. And total love.

  The danger lay in the unexpected, and the unknown. What if she lost control and blurted out her love for him? What if the intensity of her emotions sent Antonio running a mile? Again.