Michelle Reid - Mediterranean Tycoons

And his hands were gliding everywhere now, caressing and learning what made her cry out and what made her writhe in shimmering pleasure. And his skin was like hot satin against her anxiously restless palms. She had never felt so totally out of control of her body and senses. She was panting and whimpering against his mouth and he was breathing fast and unevenly.

Reality should have arrived with the burgeoning thrust of his powerful erection pushing against her thigh at the same moment as he slid his hand between her legs and made that final intimate claim—but reality was nowhere. She was lost in a storm of heated pleasure. It sang along her veins and her flesh and it was all she could do to cling to him as his long fingers cupped and moved against her, his other hand buried in her hair, and the heat of his kiss was so deep and potently passionate she was almost beyond recovery when he lifted his mouth to mutter, ‘I knew you would do this to me,’ and eased her last scrap of mesh out of his way so he could glide the length of a finger inside.

Nothing prepared her for the power of this heated intrusion. There was just no way she could control her response. She arched and squirmed and found her mouth locking onto his as if it were the only way she was going to survive what was racing through her blood. He was whispering things she couldn’t hear, and filling her with sensations she hadn’t known she could feel.

Then he moved to strip the panties from her body and it was the rasping curse he uttered that brought her crashing back down to earth.

Panic erupted from her like a heaving monster, and she pushed him away from her with the agonised strength helped by the stinging shot of adrenalin singing through her blood. She caught a glimpse of his face, his shocked confusion, then she’d slithered out from beneath him to land in a mess of shaking limbs and whirling senses on her feet by the bed.

The pulsing silence that followed held the small cabin in a death grip except for the sound of her broken breathing. Her eyes felt so big and dark and glazed she was barely even able to see him through them.

‘Y-you said—’ she finally just about managed.

‘I know what I said,’ he coolly cut in.

Lizzy blinked, her eyes daring to focus on him still lying there with his long body so magnificently naked to his long brown feet. He had covered his eyes with an arm and the mouth beneath it was closed and tight. Unable to stop her eyes from raking over him, she stared at the potent evidence of his desire thrusting up from a thick cluster of virile dark hair.

Shocked by the blinding rush of heat that burned through her, she turned dizzily away with absolutely no idea what she was going to do next.

Jump on him, a wicked voice inside her suggested. ‘Oh, God,’ she choked, lowering her head to cover her burning eyes with her hands. She couldn’t believe she’d ever let it go that far—she couldn’t believe she’d trusted the promise he’d made!

‘You have the sexiest backside,’ he drawled suddenly, making the tumble of her hair slither down her spine as she arched upright. ‘Creamy white and smooth and tight and deliciously framed by the lace edges of your pretty useless pants.’

Feeling the sting of total embarrassment, Lizzy reached behind her to hook the green mesh back into its rightful place.

‘You think that helped?’ he mocked.

She shook her head and wished she still had her bra on, because she just might have found the courage to turn around and spit something vile at him. But she didn’t and her breasts felt heavy and throbbed, the fiercely distended tips stinging like aliens with the power to reach down deep inside her and pluck at other senses she wished she didn’t have.

‘You think, then, it is good fun to call a stop when things were becoming—passionate?’

He was angry. It hit Lizzy like a blow that arched her aching spine some more. ‘Y-you don’t understand.’

‘I know a tease when I encounter one,’ he said cynically.

She heard movement behind her to say he was getting off the bed, and like a wild thing she snatched up the only thing she had available—her wraparound top, which she dragged on. He too was pulling his clothes on; she could hear the rustle as she wrapped the top around her and tied it in an angry, tight, finger—trembling knot.

‘A man who can’t honour his promises deserves to be switched on—and off,’ she responded once she felt safer to do it with her upper body covered up.

‘No natural instincts at work in you, then,’ he scorned that.

Snatching up her skirt and shimmying into it, she finally felt brave enough to turn around. He was standing on the other side of the bed, with the bulkhead almost touching his broad shoulders. And he was still so boldly naked she wished her ravished senses would just curl up and die. The soft light from the bedside lamp played across the flexing muscles in his shoulders as he pulled on his trousers, the taut clench of stomach and his hair-roughened chest.

Dragging her eyes away from him, she missed the way he lowered his own eyes to the burgeoning fullness of her breasts moulded by fine knit fabric so the tight peaks of her nipples pushed against the cloth.

‘I’m not going to apologise for calling a stop to what you said was not going to happen,’ she tossed back her hair and said.

He hooded his eyes, the old cold cynicism back with a vengeance. Bending down towards the bed, he picked up something. ‘Here…’ He tossed it at her. ‘You had better put this on before you walk out of here, or my steward will suffer an apoplectic fit.’

With that ruthless cut into her bravery, he pulled the black tee shirt on over his head, then strode towards the door. It didn’t slam—it wasn’t designed to slam, Lizzy realised as she watched it seal into place.

But he’d wanted it to slam, the grim, spoiled, arrogant devil.

Then she looked down at the bra she now held in her fingers, glanced at her body and blushed to the roots of her hair.

They finished the rest of the journey in a state of cool withdrawal from each other scattered with super-polite snatches of conversation now and then. Lizzy ate, he didn’t, instead he drank coffee, and no hint of alcohol in any form put in an appearance.

Eventually he produced a bulging briefcase and settled into his chair to concentrate—Lizzy wished she had something similar so that she could do the same thing.

But she didn’t. She was now the pampered wife of a very rich man and her job as her father’s secretary had gone. Her new role in life was to look the part of a rich man’s wife—learn to look the part, she amended. And to be quiet when the rich husband was concentrating, because the look on his stern profile told her that was what he expected her to do.

Eventually she dozed again, curled into her seat with her shoes slipped off and her feet tucked beneath her and her head resting against the corner of the chair. When she awoke it was to find herself covered with a soft blanket and Luc was still sitting beside her working away.

She watched him for a while, sleepy eyes following the sudden flick on his pen when he scrawled something on the document he was reading, long fingers deft and supple and precise in their link with his brain. It was the same fountain pen she’d used to sign the prenuptial contract, she noticed, black, with a ring of gold circling its slender body, the platinum tipped nib feeding ink onto the paper like liquid silk.

‘You’ve spelt indecisive wrong,’ she murmured without knowing she was going to say it, or even that she’d been reading as he wrote.

The pen stopped and lifted. He turned to look at her, golden eyes not angry any more, just coolly detached. ‘I do not misspell,’ he informed her arrogantly.