Catherine Spencer: Dante's Twins

Unable to resist, she slid her hands over the planes of his chest and up around his neck. “I know,” she said. “It’s the same for me. I could hardly sleep for thinking of you and when I did finally drop off—”

Inching closer, he smothered the rest of her confession in a kiss. Long and slow and full of sweet fire, it stole her breath away. And just like fire, it consumed her until she was nothing more than one pliant, aching flame that left her professional aspirations in ashes, along with sound judgment and any intstinct she might once have possessed for self-preservation.

He pulled her into a tighter embrace, sliding his hands around her hips and molding her to him. Clinging together, they rode the gentle waves, oblivious to everything but the rhythm of their own passion. Caught in a current entirely of their own making, their legs tangled, mating with an intimacy that flooded her with a desire as overpowering as it was alarming.

What had happened to the woman whose signature trademark had always been the restraint and modesty with which she lived her life? Where had she gone? Until Dante, she’d never allowed a fully dressed man to take such brazen liberties.

Yet here he was now, practically naked and certainly making no secret of his arousal, twining around her with such potent effect that she was ready to offer herself to him without reservation, in full view of anyone who might happen to notice. To beg him to bury himself in her once again and ease the heavy, throbbing ache he’d awakened.

Before she could act on the impulse he pulled away from her, his eyes darkening with anger. “For Pete’s sake, someone’s watching us through binoculars from one of the front verandas!”

The blood, which seconds before had run rampant throughout her body, rushed to her face. “Oh, Dante, how mortifying!”

“I’d call it pathetic.” Furiously he raked his hair back from his brow. “What the hell kind of nerve does it take for someone to pull a stunt like that?”

Backing away from him, she circled around until she was facing the shore. “Can you tell which room it is?”

“No. Whoever it was has gone back inside the house. But if I find out who—”

She was pretty sure she knew who. This was precisely the sort of action to which Carl Newbury would stoop. He’d justify it as—how had he phrased it?—“running interference... saving Dante from himself” and from a woman “willing to hand it to him on a plate.”

“You won’t,” she said, starting back toward the beach. “The kind of person who resorts to voyeurism isn’t likely to come forward and admit it.”

Dante kept pace with her, slicing through the water in a side crawl which, for all its smooth execution, couldn’t disguise the anger coursing through him. His expression, the sparking blue-green of his eyes, the compressed line of his mouth, painted a formidable portrait. In his present mood he was not a man to be crossed. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll tolerate being spied on by my own people, though why anyone cares how I choose to spend my free time, or with whom, is beyond me.”

It’s not beyond me, she could have told him. Men like Vice President Newbury didn’t take kindly to a woman who parachuted over the heads of favored employees to grab a plum overseas assignment, especially if that same woman wasn’t disposed to show a proper appreciation of her good fortune.

Should she tell Dante how unconscionably his vice president had behaved during those few days she’d spent in the office before she flew to the Far East for her buying trip? Would spelling out exactly what Newbury’s idea of extending a welcome to the newcomer had entailed, help or hinder the present situation?

Had she and Dante not already become lovers, Leila would not have hesitated. But what she’d found with him—the unexpected, altogether miraculous meeting of heart, body and soul—was too new, too untried, to risk exposing it to the mud Newbury would sling around in a confrontation.

She’d heard firsthand his opinion of her, yesterday afternoon. But of what use was it to know that his hostility stemmed from her sharp reprimand just a few days after she’d been hired when he’d caught up with her in the library after everyone else had gone home for the day? It was unlikely he’d temper revenge with discretion if Dante called him to account on the matter. Hadn’t he threatened as much?

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