Her breath was hot and dry in her mouth; impatience zipped through her. She dropped her lips, kissing his throat, running her tongue along his collarbone, while her hands continued to push at his shirt. He helped, shaking his arms out, freeing himself from its confinement, revealing himself to her so that she could touch all of his torso. His strong, powerful, honed torso.
She ripped her head back, to stare at him, her eyes hungrily devouring the sight of him, something she’d been denied for far too long. God, he was so handsome. So perfect. But his face, oh, how it was filled with derision. With scathing distaste, even as his fingers found the hem of her dress and pushed it up, over her naked body, revealing all of her to his gaze.
Her nipples were taut, her flesh covered in a fine sprinkling of goosebumps, and her knees buckled forward, swaying her to him without her knowledge or consent.
The second her breasts connected with his naked chest, her insides melted away. So too her doubts that this was right. It would always be right with them. Perfect. No matter what words they threw at one another, no matter what he said he felt, bodies didn’t lie, and theirs were as perfectly in-sync as ever.
You were easy to replace in my bed, Addie.
His statement flooded her brain out of nowhere, and she pushed aside the coldness that threatened in the wake of that memory. She didn’t want to think about Guillem – her Guillem - being with anyone else. She didn’t want to imagine that he’d known this blissful pleasure, this soul-deep connection, with another woman. No, he was hers, all hers. This, the intensity of their coming together, was uniquely theirs.
She knew it.
“It was good sex, I’ll admit,” he muttered roughly, reaching for his pants and undoing the button, pushing them down his legs with fiery impatience, bringing his mouth to hers urgently once he was naked, lifting her, wrapping her legs around his waist as he carried her through the yacht.
The moon was high in the sky and its light cut through a window optimistically, carving a line of silver in the middle of the boat. Addie was bathed in it as they crossed.
She didn’t notice.
Her fingers knotted in Guy’s thick hair, luxuriating in every single feeling he sparked inside of her. The closeness of their bodies, the feeling of their mouths dueling, the smell of his skin, the taste of him, the sound of his heart that she could hear in her own blood.
Everything.
He backed against the door to his room, fumbling against his side table without breaking their kiss, before dropping her down onto the mattress. He stood then, his eyes glittering as he stared down at her, his face all angles and planes, hardened by a determination Addie couldn’t analyse.
“How can I want you even now?” There was loathing in his voice; loathing for her? For himself? She somehow suspected the latter and a ball of tears gathered in her throat, along with a desperation to relieve him of that pain.
It was all so hard when it should have been simple. So complex and knotty when it should have been straight-forward. She remembered the clarity and perfection that came of their love-making. The sense of complete togetherness and rightness, the certainty that they could take over the world, side by side. She always felt it when he moved inside of her, and that same sense was tantalizingly near now.
He towered over her, close, naked, clearly as desperate for her as she was for him, all of him hard and imposing. There was no denying that his body craved her touch, and she wanted to give him that.
Not just because of the physical ache that was tightening her nipples into taut buds, and slicking her insides with warm heat, but because touching him, kissing him, moving with him, was a way of setting everything to rights within the universe.
She pushed up off the bed, kneeling on its edge, running her fingertips over his chest tentatively at first, as though she no longer had the right to touch him as if he were an object that belonged to her.
His eyes bore into her, but she felt the satisfying snag of his breath, the proof of how her touch affected him, and her lips curled into a small smile, moved by the delicious knowledge that she was doing this to him. That it was her. Them. What they were.
“Make love to me, Guy.” She threw the challenge at him, her eyes slowly lifting to meet his, all her hopes beating within her breast, begging him to be kind to her.
She saw the way something flared in his expression, dark emotions that writhed through him, contorting his masculine beauty for a moment into something else, a hardness and a pain. And then his hands reached down, long, confident fingers curving around her wrists and pushing her hands away, holding them beside her.
Addie’s lungs worked overtime, pushing breath out and sucking it in, in shallow, raspy beats that did little to inflate her body. Her head was spinning.
And then, he was kissing her, his lips a challenge and a torment as they moved over her mouth, pushing her back to the bed, his hands holding her arms wide as his body, so large and heavy, so strong and toned, pressed down on her.
Oh! The pleasing weight of this; she had forgotten that this alone, the sense of safety and security, could curl her toes. Her breathing was no easier when he paused to protect them from any unplanned consequences of this night, a precaution Addie was far too gone to consider. She was glad he had the forethought she lacked, though.
“This was always just sex and lies,” he murmured against the curve of her neck, the words so gentle, like little, fiery emissaries dipped in his bold, Spanish accent, so that she didn’t hear them at first for what they were: ruthless daggers that pierced the fabric of her soul.
“No,” she denied, her head flinging around to face his, her hands lifting to cup him on either side. “You’re lying to yourself if you think that, Guy.”
For a moment, their eyes held, and she hoped – with no reason for hope – that he would believe her. That he would start to listen to the truth of what they were. But then his lips curled in a derisive sneer and he pushed inside of her in one slow, determined thrust. A mark of ownership that was as undeniable as it was perfect. Addie’s moan emerged in a long, slow husk, a sound of total surrender and completion, all wrapped into one.
“Sex,” he withdrew himself before taking her once more. “And lies.”
She whimpered beneath him, but pleasure was a wave, washing over her, removing any of the pain that his insistence should have inspired. She pressed her fingers into his back, holding him, kneading the muscles that ran against his spine, her whole being transformed and relieved by this. How long it had been, and how badly she’d needed him.
She had missed all of him, over the past six months, but she had never realized how much she’d come to depend on this. Having been denied any kind of physical closeness for so long made her particularly reliant on it now, and Guy had answered all her silent, unspoken needs. Her desperation had met its perfect match. For a time. And then he’d gone away again.
She pushed the heartbreak aside. It had no place in the bliss of Guy’s bed, in the midst of what they shared. She lifted her hips, rolling herself closer, a fine bead of perspiration running between her breasts. His raven black head dipped forward, his mouth taking a nipple into his mouth with urgency, his tongue flicking against it in time to his body’s possession of hers, so that a spark of electricity started in her stomach, just a bundle of light and nerves, before radiating through her whole body, pulsing with a white-hot heat that made her breath stretch and her voice quiver.
“Guy,” she cried out, digging her nails into his sides as the electricity moved to her head, to behind her eyes, making her see only bright white lights as momentum built and an explosion locked into place, pressing against her every nerve ending, careening through her body. She said his name over and over and over again, like an incantation that held magic and more. And then, the electricity surged through her with a final, paralyzing intensity, searing her with its power.
She cried out, the words no longer comprehendible, and he pushed harder, his own body racked with the intensity o
f his relief, his body giving way to the same current that had driven Addie, the same inevitable pull of satisfaction that made them move as they did, in this ancient, spell-binding dance.
The room was filled with the sounds of their breathing, the throb of awareness and the dizzying relief that was surrounding them. It was filling Addie, making her lips smile, her body weak.
And yet, there was awkwardness, too. This wasn’t like before, when there’d been such easy familiarity and comfort. It wasn’t the same as when she’d arrived in his apartment in London, after finishing a night shift, tired but energized by adrenalin and need. Those nights, when he would throw open the door and pull her into his arms, their bodies rasping with the heat and need that had arisen after twelve hours apart.
That had been different.
There’d never been awkwardness afterwards. Addie had never wondered what to say, or how he felt, or what he was thinking. She had been confident, then, that they were on the same page, and it was easy and perfect.
It was hard to know what he was now feeling, but she did know he was withdrawing from her. Physically, mentally, emotionally. In every way, he was putting space and distance between them, his manner completely at odds with the man who’d just dragged her to his room and made her heart soar.
“Well,” he drawled, disposing of the condom in a waste-paper basket before reaching for his pants and pulling them over his long, lean legs. He zipped them up but didn’t do the button, leaving the taut, hair-roughened expanse of his abdomen exposed to her. “That was unexpected.”
He sounded so in control, so scathing! A frown tugged Addie’s lips downward. “Was it?” It hadn’t been for Addie. From the moment she’d arrived at his home in Spain, a month earlier, she’d felt the beginning of the storm building up, pressure increasing, heat building, until this – the breaking – had been inevitable. Addie pushed up on her elbows, uncaring for her nakedness, too distracted by his.
“Still,” he said, already moving towards the door, “There might as well be some silver lining to having you here.”
The words flew across at Addie, stinging her as they landed inside of her, pulling apart the warmth that his love-making had spread through her body. She pushed up to standing, unable to comprehend his sudden shift in demeanour.
Only, it wasn’t sudden. They’d been arguing before.
Sex had come out of that argument. He was still angry with her. So angry.
“Wait,” she murmured, her brain trying to process this, to think of what to say or do. He paused, his hand on the door, but his body was tense, his broad shoulders squared. He didn’t look at her.
“You asked me to come here,” she said softly.
“You asked me for help,” he spun around then, his eyes locking to hers accusingly.
“Yes,” she nodded jerkily. “For help. Not to be blackmailed into pretending to be your girlfriend.”
He glared at her, silently, for a long moment, his expression giving nothing away. He was tense and he was angry. She didn’t know how she was going to crack through the hardness that had overtaken him, but she knew that she had to. “Nothing comes for free, Ava,” he lifted a finger, running it over her cheek, before dropping it to her breast and circling her nipple.
Her traitorous body responded instantly, a shiver of anticipation running down her flesh. It angered her, that he could stir her desire even as he spat derision at her feet.
“At least now I know your price.”
*
He stared at the stars with a sinking feeling in his gut. Every blink brought her face to mind. The hurt there. The pain.
And then, the knowledge he’d done that.
Guilt feathered through his body, at the way he’d tormented her. At the way he’d accused her of little more than prostitution when he knew that what they’d just shared had moved her as much as it had him. Damn it! It wasn’t about love, it wasn’t about anything emotional, it was a purely physical lust that had driven them into bed. A lust he should have been able to control!
Only watching her all night, seeing her charm his parents and grandfather, seeing her smile and laugh and lean close to him, knowing that tiny red dress hid a body that was almost naked, tension had stretched between them, and finally snapped.
He’d sworn when she’d come to the island that he would control this – that he’d show her how over her he was. Last night had been an aberration; a mistake. One he wouldn’t and couldn’t make again…
CHAPTER NINE
ADDIE WAS A BUCKET of nerves. How could she be anything but? She’d hardly slept. Their fight kept chasing itself around and around her head, and in the end, she’d given up on sleeping altogether. Only being awake didn’t mean she didn’t think about Guy. It just meant she thought about him with more clarity and precision.
She had to talk to him – to insist he listen to her explanations. She couldn’t tell him about her mother – she would never betray that confidence – but she could explain about her father and Greg. She could make him see what she’d been running from on the night she met Guy.
And she had the perfect way to get through to him.
They were going to look at the pirates’ caves. Surely that would leave them alone, secluded, and he would have no choice but to listen to her. Because deep down, surely he wanted to know the truth? Surely he wanted her to find a way to make him understand, so that he could get past the fact she’d lied to him?
She’d lied about her name! Her job! But everything else she’d told Guy had been the truth.
She gnawed on her lower lip as her own brain dismissed that. No, she’d lied about a lot of things. Little tiny fibs that hid the truth of her heartbreak, because she hadn’t wanted it to colour what they shared.
Guy was the first purely-good thing she’d ever known. Was it wrong that she’d wanted to revel in that pleasure? To simply enjoy the happiness of what they were without the complications of her loss?
Addie dressed with care, pairing a bikini with a simple cotton t-shirt and a pair of white shorts that just barely covered her bottom, and slid her feet into elegant, gold sandals. Her hair she pulled into a loose braid. Other than a little sunscreen on her nose and gloss on her lips, she didn’t bother with makeup.
Butterflies were dancing inside of her stomach as she made her way through the yacht, in search of Guy. He wasn’t in his room, or the large lounge area that had panoramic views of the island.
With a small frown, she took the stairs, moving onto the deck.
And almost bumped right into Guy! He swore in his own tongue, a curt word, as he reached a hand out to steady Addie. Her eyes flew to his, panic in them, her heart in knots.
“Guy.” It was just a croaky sound of acknowledgment. “I was just coming to look for you.”
“You appear to have found me,” he said cynically, dropping his grip on her arm and moving backwards, allowing her the space to move properly onto the deck.
Her smile was tight. “I wasn’t sure what time you wanted to leave. I wanted to tell you that I’m ready when you are.”
Guy frowned. “Ready?”
“For the pirates’ caves?”
He pulled a face of surprise. “You aren’t serious?”
Addie lifted her face, skimming his expression. “What do you mean?”
“I have no intention of scampering around like your personal tour guide, Ava.”
“But last night, you said…”
“I was acting, Ava! Playing a part, just like we discussed. What was I meant to do? Tell my mother I didn’t want to spend any more time with you than I absolutely have to?” He drew his thick, dark brows closer together. “You know why you are here. To fool my family. That’s it. I want nothing from you beyond that, particularly not to go running around the island with you, as though any of this is real.”
Addie’s heart cracked wide open, pain flooding in. Disappointment engulfed her, making it hard to breathe suddenly. “But Guy…”
“What?” A sharp
hiss, and then, a movement over his shoulder caught Addie’s attention. A golf buggy, drawing up along the sand.
Only Guy had his back to the beach, and so couldn’t have known that they were on the brink of having company. Addie opened her mouth to point the fact out, but he spoke first.
“I should have thought you’d recognize my sentiment.”
“Sentiment?” She repeated, her eyes darting nervously to the beach. Was that Santiago, stepping out of the golf buggy?
“Acting. Pretending. Faking.” He brought his mouth closer to hers. “I was faking, just like you.”
“I told you,” she whispered back urgently, as Santiago approached the deck. “Nothing about this is fake for me.”
He whipped his head up and she saw anger in every line of his body. “Lying to me is going to get you nowhere. I learned my lesson about women like you a long time ago, and you have certainly given me a refresher course. I suppose I should thank you…”
“Thank me later,” she snapped. “Your grandfather is here.”
For a moment, there was a look of complete surprise on Guy’s face and then, she thought, fleetingly, guilt. But it was all gone again within a nano-second. Guy turned away from her, moving towards the entrance to the yacht, his back ramrod straight.
Addie didn’t immediately follow him. She needed a moment to regroup, to regain control of her senses before plastering on a façade of happiness she was far from feeling. She caught their voices without being able to distinguish any words.
Balling up all her grief and ramming it deep inside of her, she stuck a smile on her face and made her way along the boat, towards the two men. Seeing them standing side by side, she felt for herself how similar they were.
“Santiago,” she smiled at the older man, unable to look in Guy’s direction. She felt his gaze on her though, and her skin pricked all over.
“Ah, bella dama,” he grinned. “I hope you will not resent an old man crashing your day?”
“Of course not,” Addie said, frankly relieved at the idea of company. Was it wrong that she felt that way? To know that in the presence of his grandfather, Guy would be charming and kind, and her heart would be – temporarily – safe?
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