Olivia Gates - One Night In…

Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he turned to look out over the serene ocean, and that was when the light from below caught his attention.

Or not the light, exactly. The shadow.

The lamps from the saloon spilled out on to the deck below, throwing a perfect silhouette of Anna on to the smooth boards, like a screen projection.

She was dancing.

Not just dancing … She was …

Dio mio …

It should have been sleazy, but it wasn’t. Watching her, he was astonished by her graceful strength, by the smooth, elegant precision of her moves. She snaked around the pole with catlike neatness. Like a ballerina.

She’d surprised him again, he thought bleakly as the music came to an end. Surprised him and intrigued him, while all the time evading him. The girl was like a nuclear explosion in the centre of his well-ordered life.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

She scrambled to her feet, her chest rising and falling quickly, a thin sheen of sweat on her skin. Angelo crossed the deck with swift, savage strides. His face was as impassive as always—glacial in its calm—but she could see a muscle flicker in the lean plane of his jaw.

He stopped in front of her.

She tilted her chin defiantly, but behind her back her hands gripped the pole to stop her knees from giving way beneath her. The look in his eyes was blistering.

‘I was bored.’

He gave an incredulous rasp of laughter and ran a hand through his unruly mane of gold.

‘Bored?’

And then their mouths met and his hands were on the pole above her head, trapping her in a cage of his body. Her fists flew to his rock-hard chest, beating against the solid wall of muscle, while their tongues fought and meshed in the hot cavern of their mouths. She felt her hands slide round his back, her fingers helplessly kneading his silken flesh, her nails convulsively digging themselves into his skin.

Still he held on. Apart from his mouth, he wasn’t touching her at all, his arms braced against the metal pole, his head bent to hers. But his kiss was hot, savage and full of hunger.

Suddenly she ducked under his arm, stooping low and swinging out from the pole as he had seen her do as she had danced. Straightening up on the other side, she looked at him with naked desire.

‘Yes. Bored. You’re always working.’

He took a step backwards and gave her a hard, appraising smile. His eyes glittered with lust.

‘I have to try to stay one step ahead of you and your friends.’

Idly, slowly, lazily she shinned up the pole and swung around at the top, arching herself down towards him.

‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘Am I?’

He reached out a hand and traced a languorous finger around her belly button, flicking the silver bar there, never taking his eyes off her face. He saw her eyes darken and her eyelids flutter at his touch and was ready for her as she shivered and faltered. Snaking an arm around her waist, he lifted her down. Her legs closed around his waist as tightly as they had gripped the pole, her strong dancer’s muscles squeezing him.

‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t wast any more time, then,’ he said harshly, carrying her through the saloon. His mouth was set in a grim line, his fingers hard on her ribs. She felt a delicious flutter of fear and anticipation as he kicked open the door to her cabin. He looked down at her for a moment, his expression dark and savage.

‘I might not know who you are, Anna Field, but I know what you want.’

She whimpered. And then, almost without knowing how, her hands were in his hair, her mouth crashed and ground against his as he dropped her on the bed and tore at the fastening of his shorts. Her fingers closed around the back of his neck and she pulled him down beside her. Holding his face in both hands, she looked into his eyes with an expression that threatened to tip him over the edge of desire into total abandonment.

Her mouth closed over his again while her hands slid down the length of his arms to his wrists. Her fingers circled them in a steely grip as she hauled herself up so she was sitting on top of him. Without tearing her mouth from his, she edged her hips upwards until her knees rested on his outspread arms. The kiss deepened. They were tearing at each other’s face with their mouths, grinding, rasping, devouring.

Then suddenly she threw her head backwards, gasping triumphantly. Her knees pinioned his arms to the bed on either side of him. Eyes glittering, she looked down on him.

‘Got you’ she whispered throatily.

He gazed up at her as a slow smile curved his bruised lips, making those little brackets at each corner of his mouth. Sinuously he edged downwards beneath her, so that her crotch was centimetres from his mouth.

He breathed out. Heavily.

She moaned as the heat of his breath fanned the fire raging through her pelvis and caressed her more intimately, more delicately, more thoroughly than she had thought possible. Her eyes closed in blissful submission, then flew open again as she felt the first stroke of his tongue.

‘Oh, God. Oh—oh, Angelo—’

He felt the shudder that shook her whole body.

‘Take them off,’ he breathed.

Her hands went to her bikini bottoms and she rose up on her knees as she frantically tugged them downwards. He watched her, waiting for the moment when she would have to lift her knees to remove the tiny scrap of white fabric, and as she did so he flipped her over so she rolled on to the bed beneath him.

In one fluid movement he was astride her.

‘Got you.’

She jerked and bucked under his thighs, half rising up on her elbows, wanting to fight, but wanting to surrender more. He inserted a knee between her hot, writhing thighs, separating her legs and spreading them wide open. Growling, snarling, she pushed her hips upwards, questing for the hardness of him that she could see but not touch, almost deranged with the need to feel him inside her.

Watching him slide on a condom was almost more than she could bear.

With one slow thrust he entered her, and felt a sudden shock, like lightning through his veins at the momentary look of vulnerability that passed across her face, the soft gasp that sprang from her sweet mouth. Surely she couldn’t be…?

‘Anna?’

He withdrew, and she let out a cry of pure desperation, arching her hips up towards him again. Her eyes locked into his, any trace of hesitation vanished in the blistering heat of her need. Sensing his uncertainty she pressed her fists against his chest, clawing, beating, every blow an expression of her longing. He thrust slowly into her again.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered harshly, almost despairingly.

Her eyes were a dark abyss from which she looked at him with hopeless desire.

‘I don’t know. I’m—oh, God—’ He thrust into her again. ‘I’m whatever … you want me … to be.’

He leaned forward, low over her face, brushing her lips with his as he withdrew again.

‘Or everything I don’t want you to be.’

He thrust into her again. Through a haze of ecstasy she looked up at him.

‘That’s …’ she breathed out, closed her eyes and slid a hand around his neck, pulling his head down to hers so that her lips caressed his ear ‘… that’s what you like. That’s why I’m here.’

With a primitive growl he gathered her to his chest and then they were rolling and fighting and writhing together in a tangle of limbs and hands and mouths, until finally Anna arched her back and let out a shout of rapture that drifted across the dark ocean. In silent joy Angelo held her shuddering body and let go, feeling his own release like a triumph.

Her hair fanned out on the pillow, black and pink. He looked down at her, at her heart-shaped face, her flushed cheeks, her swollen mouth with its perfect Cupid’s-bow lips smudged and reddened. Silently she looked back. Defiant, but defeated by her own need.