The helicopter flight to the mainland had been less traumatic than the one going to the island, Bella having been prepared for the uneven flight this time.
The long flight on the Danti jet back to England had been free of incident, too—probably because neither of them had suggested going anywhere near the temptation of the bedroom at the back of the plane!
Once they’d landed in England Bella had protested the need for Gabriel to drive her back to the cottage. She could find her own way, she’d said. But it had been a battle she had lost. As she lost all of her battles against Gabriel…
But having been delivered here safely, Bella now expected him to leave. In fact, she was counting on it. Mainly because if Gabriel didn’t soon go and leave her to her privacy, Bella knew she was going to give in to the hot tears that had been threatening to fall all day!
‘Are you not going to at least offer me a cup of coffee?’ Gabriel asked.
Her eyes widened. ‘It’s late, Gabriel, and I thought you had somewhere else to go.’
He frowned. ‘I did not say that.’
‘You implied it.’
Gabriel was well aware of what he had implied. As he was aware, now the time had come to part from Bella, that he was reluctant to do so.
‘I am not sure it is the right thing to do, to just leave you here on your own.’
She laughed humourlessly. ‘I’ve lived on my own for two years, Gabriel—’
‘You have lived here with Toby,’ he cut in firmly. ‘That is not the same thing.’
No, it wasn’t, Bella accepted ruefully, already aware of how quiet, how empty, the cottage seemed without her small son’s presence.
‘I’m a big girl now, Gabriel; I’m sure I’ll manage,’ she said dryly.
His eyes darkened in intensity, that familiar nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘I am well aware of the fact that you are a big girl, Isabella.’
‘Then I suggest you stop treating me like I’m six years old rather than twenty-six!’
His mouth flattened into a disapproving line. ‘Showing concern for your welfare is treating you like a child?’
Bella shook her head impatiently. ‘No, actually treating me like a child is doing that!’
‘How would you have me treat you, Isabella?’ Gabriel glowered his frustration with this conversation.
Bella became very still, very aware of the sudden tension in the room. She could almost feel the crackle of electricity that arced between herself and Gabriel…
She swallowed hard. ‘I think you should just go.’
Gabriel thought so, too. In fact, he knew so! Before he did something he would later regret. Something they might both have reason to regret.
Except…
Bella looked tired after their long journey, her eyes purple smudges in a face that was pale with exhaustion, and the fullness of her lips bare of lip gloss. But nevertheless there was a beguiling determination to the stubborn lift of her chin, that challenge reflected in the brilliance of her eyes and the proud stance of her tiny body.
Gabriel felt the throb of his arousal just looking at her.
Telling him it was definitely time that he left!
‘I should go, yes,’ he acknowledged huskily.
‘Yes.’
‘Now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bella—’
‘Gabriel…?’
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I need to go!’
‘You do.’
Except Gabriel moved towards Bella rather than away from her as he crossed the room in two long strides to pull her hard against him even as his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers in a need as primitive and as old as time.
As wild and primitive as his fierce, uncontrollable desire to possess Bella again…
Gabriel’s hands moved to become entangled in her hair as he kissed her hungrily, fiercely, his lips parting hers and allowing his tongue to plunge deeply into the heat beyond. Bella’s mouth tasted of honey, and was hot, so very hot, as she drew him deeper inside her.
Gabriel curved her body into the hardness of his as he continued to kiss and claim her. His hands spread over her bottom as he pulled her against him and pressed her to the ache in his thighs, his arousal hard and pulsing, demanding, the need to possess her so strong that Gabriel could think of nothing else, feel nothing else but Bella.
He wrenched his mouth from hers to bury his face against the satin smoothness of her throat, licking, tasting, biting. ‘We should stop this now, Bella!’
‘Yes,’ she breathed shakily.
‘I cannot be gentle with you!’ Gabriel groaned, knowing it was true. He had waited too long. Wanted her for far too long!
Bella already knew that, had felt his urgency the moment he took her in his arms. An urgency that she echoed, that had ignited the moment he’d touched her. No, even before he’d touched her! This physical awareness had been there between them all day, Bella realised now, burning just below the surface of even the most mundane of conversations.
‘I won’t break, Gabriel,’ she encouraged, her throat arched to the erotic heat of his questing mouth, her fingers entangled in the silky softness of his hair. ‘Just don’t stop. Please don’t stop…’ She quivered with longing, several buttons ripping off her blouse as Gabriel parted it to bare her breasts to his lips and tongue, drawing one swollen tip into the heat of his mouth hungrily as one of his hands cupped and squeezed its twin.
Bella sobbed low in her throat as the pleasure ripped through her, to become centred as a hot ache between her thighs. She was so swollen there, so needy as she pressed against Gabriel’s arousal, she could barely think straight.
He moved against her, his hardness, his length and thickness, a promise of even greater pleasure. A pleasure Bella had no intention of letting Gabriel deny either of them. She wanted him inside her. Wanted to look up at Gabriel, to watch his face as he stroked long and hard inside her. Wanted to hear his groans of pleasure as they matched her own. To hear his cries as they reached that pinnacle together.
‘Not this time, Gabriel.’ She moved away as his hand went to open the fastening of her jeans. ‘I want to touch you first. Kiss you. All of you,’ she added huskily, her gaze deliberately holding his as she unbuttoned his shirt before slowly slipping it down his arms and dropping it onto the carpeted floor. Her fingers looked much paler than the darkness of Gabriel’s skin as she touched the hard wall of his chest. ‘You’re so beautiful, Gabriel…!’ she whispered before she began to kiss each and every one of his scars, her tongue a delicate rasp against the heat of his skin as she tasted him.
Gabriel knew that his scarred body was far from beautiful, but he ceased to care about anything else as Bella’s lips roamed across him freely, her tongue flickering against him even as her hand flattened against the hardness of his arousal, his erection responding immediately as that hand moved against him slowly, rhythmically. Gabriel felt his blood pulsing, pounding, increasing in urgency.
They had spent five weeks together before their wedding and two days alone on a romantic Caribbean island. And yet it was here, and now, in Bella’s tiny cottage, when he knew they would be apart for several hours, that Gabriel completely lost control!
‘I need—Bella, I need—’ He broke off with a groan as Bella unfastened his jeans and pushed them out of the way so that she might fulfil that need.
Her mouth was so hot as she took him inside her, her tongue moist and her fingers curling about him as she caressed the length of him.
Gabriel became lost in the pleasure of this dual assault upon his senses, his neck arched, his muscles tensing, locking, as he fought to maintain control.
Just a little longer. He wanted—needed to enjoy being with Bella just a little longer, and then he would leave, Gabriel promised himself silently as Bella manoeuvred him gently backwards so that he sat down in an armchair, her hair a wild tumble about his thighs as she knelt in front of him.
Just a few minutes more of being inside the heat o
f Bella’s mouth. Of her wicked little tongue moistly caressing the length of his shaft. Of her fingers about him as he instinctively began to move to that same mindblowing rhythm.
Bella raised her lids to look at Gabriel, deliberately holding his gaze with hers as her tongue swirled provocatively about the head of his pulsing erection. Licking. Teasing. Tasting.
Gabriel’s face was flushed with arousal, his eyes fevered, his jaw clenched, and the muscles standing out in his throat as he fought not to lose that control.
‘No more!’ he growled even as he reached down and pulled Bella away from him, grasping her arms to lift her up so that his mouth could capture hers. Bella straddled him as they kissed wildly, feverishly, Gabriel’s hands hot against her back as his mouth made love to hers.
Gabriel stood up, their mouths still fused wildly together. His hands cupped about Bella’s bottom to lift her up with him before he lay her down on the carpeted floor, lifting his head to part her already ruined blouse and then feast on her naked breasts.
He kissed first one nipple and then the other, Bella whimpering softly when he finally raised his head to look down at the swollen fullness of her breasts. His gaze deliberately held hers as he moved to his knees beside her to brush the pads of his thumbs over those achingly sensitive nipples, watching the way Bella’s eyes darkened and she groaned low in her throat even as she arched up into that caress.
Gabriel continued to hold that gaze as he unfastened her jeans and peeled them down her thighs to remove them completely, parting her legs so that he could move in between them. His hands were big and dark against her abdomen as he caressed her in slow swirling movements in a deliberate path to the soft, dark curls that were visible to him through the cream lace of her panties.
Bella was breathing hard as she watched Gabriel touching her, his fingers warm and gentle. A low moan escaped her as he swept one of those fingers against the lacy material that covered the cleft between her legs, her hips moving up to meet that tantalising caress.
That finger moved against her again.
Again Bella moved up to meet that caress.
And again.
Teasing her. Pleasuring her. Torturing her.
‘Yes, Gabriel…!’ Bella finally pleaded as she moved against him in frustration.
He peeled her panties down her thighs and legs to discard them completely, his eyes intense as he looked down at her before slowly lowering his head. First his hands touched her, then his lips, softly, tenderly as he kissed the scar that hadn’t been there five years ago.
But Bella had no time to dwell on that as his fingers parted the dark curls beneath and his mouth moved lower…
Dear God!
Pleasure unlike anything she had ever known before radiated out to every part of her body as the sweep of Gabriel’s tongue against that pulsing nub brought her to the edge of release and then took her crashing over it in wave after wave of such intensity it was almost pain.
Bella was mindless with pleasure, her breath releasing in a sob as she felt Gabriel part her sensitive folds and enter her, first with one finger, and then with two. As his tongue continued to caress that aching nub her head moved wildly from side to side and her hands clenched as Gabriel took her to a climax that was even more intense than the first.
It wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough!
Bella surged up to push Gabriel down onto the carpet and pull off his remaining clothes before moving up and over him, her hands resting against his shoulders as the heat between her thighs became a hot caress against the hardness of his shaft, her breasts a temptation just beyond his reach as she bent slightly towards him.
‘No, Bella—’ Gabriel broke off with a groan as she opened herself to him and took him into her, inch by slow inch, until he was completely inside her. Her heat, her tightness wrapped around him. ‘We must not do this—’
‘I must,’ she insisted.
Gabriel ceased breathing altogether as Bella began to move with an agonising slowness that sent the pleasure rocketing into his brain and down to his toes.
Gabriel felt himself grow even harder, bigger, no longer able to bear the torment of her breasts above him as he moved his head up and captured one of those rose-tipped breasts into his mouth.
Bella plunged down to take him deeper, before moving up so that only the very tip of him remained inside her. Before plunging down again and again. Gabriel was so big now, so long that it felt as if he touched the very centre of her.
His hands moved to grasp her hips and guide her movements as he felt his imminent release, hearing Bella’s cry as she reached a climax at the same time as he did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WE SHOULD not have done that!’
Bella had collapsed weakly against the dampness of Gabriel’s chest as the last of the pleasure rippled through her body, but she raised her head now to look down at him incredulously. ‘What did you just say?’
Gabriel’s expression was grim as he returned her gaze. ‘I should not have done this, Bella—’
She gasped in shock, moving abruptly back and then away from him, clasping her ruined blouse about her nakedness as she disengaged their bodies before standing up. ‘Get out, Gabriel,’ she choked.
‘Bella—’
‘Just get out!’ she repeated shakily, turning away to find her panties, her legs trembling slightly as she tried to balance before pulling them on over her nakedness.
How could Gabriel do this to her? How could he?
What she had thought of as being something beautiful, utterly unique, had now become nothing more than something she wished to forget.
To wish had never happened!
‘Would you just put some clothes on and leave, Gabriel?’
He rose slowly to his feet, magnificent in his nakedness, his hair tousled about his shoulders, his chest broad and muscled, thighs powerful still, his legs long and elegant.
Bella turned away from looking at all that raw, male beauty. ‘I don’t want you to say anything, Gabriel. I don’t want you to do anything. I just want you to get dressed and leave. Now,’ she insisted.
‘Bella—’
‘Now!’
‘You misunderstood my reasoning just now, Bella—’
‘Don’t touch me!’ She moved sharply away from the hands he placed on her shoulders, shying away from even that physical contact.
Gabriel frowned fiercely as he saw her expression. ‘You did not seem to find my touch so distasteful a few minutes ago,’ he rasped.
‘Any more than you did mine,’ she retaliated. ‘I guess we both just got so carried away with the moment we forgot to look at the broader picture!’
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what might that be?’ he asked softly.
‘Will you just get some clothes on?’ she repeated impatiently. ‘I find it a little disconcerting talking to a man when he’s completely naked.’
‘I’m not just any man, Isabella, I am your husband,’ he pointed out harshly as he swiftly pulled his jeans back on and fastened them.
‘I know exactly who and what you are, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘What I meant, Gabriel, is that the only reason you married me was because of Toby—’
‘Isabella—’
‘Would you have even thought of offering me marriage if not for Toby?’ she challenged.
‘Neither of us will ever know now what would have happened after we met again in San Francisco—’
‘I know,’ Bella said scornfully. ‘I very much doubt we would ever have seen each other again after San Francisco if you hadn’t learnt of Toby’s existence!’
Gabriel drew in a deep, controlling breath. ‘This is perhaps not the time to talk about this. You are distraught—’
‘I’m angry, Gabriel, not distraught. With myself,’ she added. ‘For falling—yet again!—for your seduction routine!’
‘My seduction routine?’ he echoed incredulously.
Bella nodded. ‘No doubt honed over years spent o
n the Formula One racing circuit! And don’t bother trying to deny it,’ she warned. ‘I still remember the practised way you seduced me five years ago!’
He scowled. ‘That was five years ago, Isabella—’
‘Then you must be pleased to know that you haven’t lost any of your seductive skills!’ she snapped.
Gabriel studied her closely, wanting to take her in his arms, to explain his fears for her—
‘Insulting me is only making this situation worse, Bella,’ he told her softly instead.
‘Worse? Could it be any worse?’ she cried. ‘We’ve just ripped each other’s clothes off in a sexual frenzy—in my case, literally.’ She looked down at her gaping blouse, the buttons scattered on the carpet at their feet. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more, Gabriel,’ she told him flatly, her expression bleak. ‘All I want is for you to leave.’
Gabriel’s mouth firmed. ‘I will return tomorrow—’
‘Don’t hurry back on my account!’ she exclaimed.
‘We need to talk.’
‘I very much doubt that there’s anything you have to say that I will want to hear,’ she told him wearily.
A nerve pulsed in Gabriel’s clenched jaw. Bella looked so beautiful with the darkness of her hair tangled about her shoulders, and her lips still swollen from the heat of their kisses, so utterly desirable, that all Gabriel wanted was to take her in his arms and make love with her again. And again.
‘Nevertheless, I will return later tomorrow,’ he bit out with grim determination.
She raised mocking brows as he made no effort to leave. ‘I hope you aren’t waiting for me to tell you I’ll be looking forward to it!’
‘No, I am not expecting you to say that.’ Gabriel gave a humourless smile. ‘Your honesty is one of the things I like most about you, Bella.’
‘One of the few things, I’m sure,’ she said knowingly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, now?’ She turned away. ‘I would like to take a shower and then go to bed.’
Alone, Bella could have added, but didn’t. What was the point in stating the obvious?
She raised her chin defensively. ‘Goodbye, Gabriel.’
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