Jacqueline Baird - Mediterranean Tycoons

He circled her navel with his tongue, and suddenly her hands were free as he parted her legs. His head dipped to nuzzle at the junction of her thighs, his tongue slipping between the dewy folds to taste her.

Selina had never experienced such intimacy before and, shocked, instinctively reached for his shoulders to push him away. But shock gave way to intense sensual delight, and her slender fingers threaded through his hair, holding him closer.

She was totally oblivious to the guttural cries and moans that escaped her as Rion, with wicked expertise, drew every atom of pleasure from her body until she abandoned herself to the tumultuous waves of sensations rocketing through her slender frame.

Vaguely she heard Rion groan, ‘I dreamt of you like this …’ and her passion-hazed gaze sought his.

He was kneeling between her thighs, his eyes dark orbs of molten desire, and was lifting her hips. Her body arched like a bow string, her head fell back, and she grabbed at him with desperate hands as with one long, powerful thrust he filled her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she clung as he plunged deeper and sent her soaring into the dizzying heights of sensual overload with a white-hot passion that consumed her.

‘Yes—oh, yes!’ she moaned, her hands grasping, caressing his sweat-slicked satin flesh in a delirium of need as he drove hard and deep, then slowed and stilled, again and again, until finally with one mighty thrust he drove her to the peak of fulfillment and she soared over the edge. His hard, sweat-slicked body bucked and shuddered as he joined her in a sublime explosion of release.

Selina lay beneath him, shaking in the aftermath of passion. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she gloried in his weight, in the erratic thud of his heart against her own as the shudders faded and a hazy glow of repletion enveloped her totally supine body.

It was a low throbbing sound in her head that woke Selina—or was it in her body? Selina thought drowsily, stretching and aching in places she never had before. Slowly she opened her eyes, and was immediately dazzled by the fierce light of the sun shining on her face. Closing them again, she turned away from the blinding light. It was then she realised the throbbing was the sound of the yacht’s engine. She was naked in bed, and everything came flooding back.

She stared around at the spaciousness of the master cabin, panelled in walnut with a cleverly built-in closet, a cabinet and a desk. A luxurious sofa and a large chair flanked a polished wood occasional table. The whole effect was elegant and very masculine. As were the navy Egyptian cotton sheets that were rumpled over the enormous bed.

‘Oh, God, no,’ she groaned.

‘Hardly the reception I was hoping for.’

A deep, dark voice laced with amusement echoed in her head.

She opened her eyes again. Rion was standing in the open door, a tray loaded with cups in his hands and the scent of fresh coffee floating in the air. Bare-chested, with khaki shorts riding low on his lean hips, he looked gorgeous, vital and wide awake, while she felt like death.

‘You did not say no last night,’ Rion drawled and, crossing to the bed, placed the tray on a side table. He sat down on the bed. ‘Quite the opposite at one point, I recall,’ he said, and chuckled.

‘Good morning,’ she murmured, ignoring his comment.

Self-loathing was flooding through her at her abject surrender to Rion. But maybe it was to be expected after being celibate for years, she told herself fatalistically. The alternative—that it was only Rion she could not resist—she didn’t dare contemplate. She sat up, dragging a sheet with her and tucking it under her armpits. Taking the coffee cup he held out without looking at him, she took a sip and then drained the cup.

‘So formal, Selina, and not actually true.’ He reached and ran his fingers through the tumbled mass of her hair, smoothing the silken strands back from her shoulders to curl down her spine, sliding his hand down her arm. His touch was light as a feather, creating tiny tremors beneath her skin. ‘I thought you needed the rest.’

‘What time is it?’ she asked and finally glanced at Rion.

She saw the half smile pull at his sensual sculpted mouth, saw the intimate knowledge in his twinkling dark eyes, and her traitorous heart squeezed. The twinkle she had thought long gone was back, and she knew a half-naked smiling Rion was infinitely more dangerous to her emotional health than the ruthless cynical man she knew him to be …

‘Noon—but relax.’ He took the empty cup from her hand and placed it on the tray. ‘Lunch will be served in an hour or so. Plenty of time.’ And before she’d realised his intention, he had flipped the sheet down to her waist.

‘No, I need a shower,’ Selina snapped, and tried to grab the sheet. But he caught her hand in his and held both to her stomach.

As if she had never spoken he continued, ‘Last night was great, Selina, but it will be even better now I know what you are capable of.’ His free hand reached for her throat, tipping her head back. ‘The shy innocent has long gone, and you delighted in seducing me with your sweet mouth … and the rest.’

His hand slid down the soft hollow of her throat and continued its downward journey, brushing the rosy peak of one breast and then with elegant fingers manipulating the tip to pouting hardness.

‘Rather like this,’ he mocked softly, his fingers playfully walking across to her other breast and delivering the same treatment. ‘I appreciate the more experienced Selina, and that innocent blush is quite a clever trick.’

‘No!’ She was protesting against his assumption and the sensual intent she saw in his dark eyes even as her pulse rate leapt at his wandering hands. ‘I didn’t know it was you. I was half asleep,’ she said without thinking—and knew as soon as the words left her mouth she had said the wrong thing. ‘I mean …’

‘Too much information, Selina,’ he mocked, his lips curving in a sardonic smile as his hand reached up to tangle in her hair, jerking her head towards him. His face was inches from her own. ‘This time you will know it is me.’ He spoke with a deadly calm that was belied by the barely leashed anger in his dark eyes.

‘You don’t understand—’ she said, but his mouth slammed into hers, kissing her with a domineering savage passion that—humiliatingly—she could not help responding to with an aching need. Then somehow she was on her back and Rion was straddling her, propped up on his strong forearms either side of her body, studying her as if she was some fly under a microscope.

‘Your sex education, Selina, while having improved in the physical sense is sadly lacking in etiquette,’ he grated. ‘First lesson: never tell your partner you were thinking of someone else during sex.’

Selina, her heart racing, heard the inimical anger in his tone, saw his tight mouth and the dull flush on his high cheekbones, and realised too late what she had invited with her careless remark. Rion was hanging on to his fabled control by a thread.

‘I never …’ She choked incoherently as scorching dark eyes raked over her face, her upturned breasts. Lowering his head, he caught a throbbing peak lightly between his teeth to lash the swelling tip with his tongue. The breath whooshed from her lungs in a gasping groan, warmth pooled between her thighs, and involuntarily her slender hands reached for him.

What followed was a master class.

Selina had had no idea the human body was capable of such unfettered passion … no idea she was capable of behaving like an untamed being, willing to follow Rion’s inventive eroticism down pathways she had never dreamt of—until she thought she might pass out from the force of the incredibly emotional storm raging between them.