A Clash With Cannavaro (9 page)

As if that were the only signal he had been waiting for, he wound an arm around her middle and caught her against the pulsing strength of his body.

Sensations flooded through her like the night sounds were flooding the air—the distant steel band, the chirruping crickets, the muted laughter from the bar and its happy couples along the far side of the wharf.

She didn’t care what they must look like as Emiliano’s mouth came down over hers, only visualising their dark silhouettes as she leaned into him with all the desire she had kept locked tightly inside her since that wild afternoon on the beach the day after they had arrived.

His hands ran over her body with a possessiveness that left her weak and wanting—wanting him like she had never wanted anyone or anything in her life.

She wanted to resist, but she didn’t know how to.

‘Come to bed with me,’ he whispered against her hair, and she was lost.

CHAPTER SIX

‘W
HERE
ARE
WE
going
?’
Lauren asked as they came back along the jetty and onto the wharf, not separately now, but with Emiliano’s arm locking her to his side. ‘The car’s in that direction.’ She was pointing back towards the bar.

‘So is home. And about an hour’s drive away.’ There was exciting purpose to his face, illuminated by the lights along the quayside. ‘But I don’t think I—that either of us—can wait that long.’

Lauren looked at him questioningly, her excitement rising with her heightening anticipation.

From this distance the music and laughter from the bar had all but diminished, the only immediate sounds now the slap-slop of Lauren’s flip-flops on the concrete over Emiliano’s soft-soled, almost silent tread, and the creak of cooling timber and chink of metal from the moored boats with the water lapping against their hulls.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked again, more huskily this time, after he brought her along another jetty and was handing her down into an inflatable black dinghy, the same one, she was sure, she had seen being brought to shore earlier in the evening.

‘To bed,’ he answered uninformatively after he had stepped in beside her and started the engine, but there was laughter in his voice as he added, ‘Where else?’

* * *

The yacht they were racing towards was the one she had seen come in when they had been sitting at that restaurant table, and Lauren’s mouth dropped open as Emiliano brought the dinghy alongside the steps at its impressive stern.

‘This is
yours
!’ she exclaimed, with her jaw dropping open. A sleek white vessel of eye-popping proportions, she remembered thinking how it would need the skill of a fully trained crew to handle it.

He didn’t answer. He was addressing two male members of his crew who, wearing black T-shirts and built like rugby forwards, had appeared on the platform above them. Emiliano was conversing with them in his own language and, apart from a curt nod from each of the men that acknowledged Lauren’s presence as Emiliano helped her aboard, they went about dealing with the vacated dinghy.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he offered as he guided her through a pair of glass doors into the boat’s luxurious interior.

Only a minute to recover from what I should have expected!
she thought, struck by an immediate impression of soft leather and polished maple and carpets that seemed to swallow her underfoot. Yet she hadn’t even dreamed that this yacht could be his when she’d seen it arrive.

When she shook her head, he said, ‘In that case...’ He was gesturing towards the stairs leading to what was clearly the sleeping quarters and Lauren’s pulse-rate soared.

‘I feel like a pirate’s bounty!’ Ahead of him, she laughed nervously over her shoulder with her stomach doing funny things because it was easy to imagine his dark Latin face scarred by plunder and pillage, his bare contoured chest gleaming as he plucked an unsuspecting maiden from some unfortunate vessel he had just claimed as his own.

‘A pirate, mmm...’ His smile was feral and his eyes didn’t leave hers as he opened the door to what was obviously the master cabin. ‘Is that how you see me?’

Lauren had to stifle a gasp at the sheer opulence of the room.

Dark, highly polished surfaces reflected the soft light given off by state-of-the-art wall-lamps, and this room too was thickly carpeted in pale cream to match the cream and black curtains and cushions scattered around the cabin and over the creamy satin coverlet on the king-size bed.

Had he planned this? If he had, she didn’t think she wanted to know.

‘I see you as devious,’ she murmured, keeping her fanciful thinking of a few moments ago purely to herself.

He laughed as he waited for her to precede him. ‘I’m not sure I like that.’

‘You aren’t supposed to,’ she told him with a sudden dryness in her throat as she heard the door click closed behind them, shutting out the world.

She was in his world now—and his alone—captured like a moth in the all-consuming heat of a dangerous flame.

‘Wow!’ she expressed, overawed by his wealth and power and a lifestyle that mere mortals like her could only dream about. ‘When you take a woman to bed—you take her to
bed!
’

‘So come to bed.’ His voice was sensuously soft from just behind her.

Glancing back, she saw him holding out his hand.

‘What are you thinking? Wondering?’ he asked, coming silently over the carpet towards her. ‘How many other women I might have...
ravished—
’ it was said with deliberate emphasis ‘—in this room?’

Faint colour touched her cheeks because she had been.

‘None,’ he murmured, surprising her with that declaration. ‘It’s a corporate yacht, which I am having delivered to Barbados as a conference vessel. So if you are looking for...What is it they call them in English? Ah, yes! Notches,’ he remembered, smiling, ‘on my metaphorical bedpost, I am afraid you will not find any here.’

Relieved to know that, much more than she’d expected to be, Lauren gave him a tense little smile. She had known him so intimately and yet, despite what he had said, the thought of all those other, far more sophisticated women he must have known—whether on land or off it—when she hadn’t had so much as a casual fling with anyone since that embarrassing episode with him in the past, had her suddenly fearing that she might disappoint him now.

‘Emiliano...’ Her eyes were resting on his, her green irises, like that one word, laid bare with longing.

‘Don’t say anything,’ he whispered, and closed the distance between them.

His body was like a rock she could only cling to as she gave herself up to the blinding passion of his kiss. But it was a passion that matched hers, and she pressed her body closer to his, close enough to recognise every tensing muscle as he caught her hard against his warm and dominating strength.

His hands were moving over her as though they couldn’t get enough of her, while their mutual breathing came hard and fast and their mouths fused and separated and met again with a hunger that made Lauren cry out from the intensity of her need.

‘Easy,’ Emiliano breathed, drawing back a little, slowing down the pace. ‘We have all night for this and I want to savour every moment I can with you,
cara mia
.’

Until it was over?
They
were over? She didn’t even want to think about that.

‘Emiliano...’

‘What is it?’ he prompted, sensing her hesitation, the slight change in her mood.

‘I’m...not protected,’ she murmured, feeling almost ashamed to be admitting it.

‘You don’t need to be,’ he reassured her, which obviously meant that he would take care of things. ‘Unless, of course, you are having second thoughts about sleeping with me,’ he suggested softly, ‘in which case I shall have to respect your wishes and order my crew to go full steam ahead.’

And always see her as—at worst—a tease? And at best someone fickle? Unsure of what she wanted? When it was him she was unsure of? When she was afraid of getting hurt?

‘No!’ She said it a little too quickly, desperate as she was to keep him with her and, trying to be like one of those sophisticated women who didn’t mind when the time came to leave his bed, in a soft demand she breathed, ‘Take off your clothes.’

He laughed softly, catching one of the hands stroking his chest in the comparatively dark grasp of his. ‘Why don’t you do it for me?’ he invited silkily.

He had said those words to her before, when she’d suggested he bathe his wound after he’d helped her untangle Brutus, and the memory of how he’d appeared, like a dark rescuer out of nowhere, filled her with an overwhelming intensity of emotion.

Even so, she had never undressed a man before, even over those crazy two days when they had been as intimate as any couple could be, and nervously she brought her tongue across her top lip.

Now, controlling her trembling fingers, she started slipping the buttons of his shirt, loving the way his breathing deepened with every inch of bronzed chest she exposed.

‘You’ve done this before,’ he murmured heavily and with deep-sounding satisfaction.

Laughing tensely, Lauren said, ‘Oh, yes. Many times!’ And knew from the faint smile that touched his mouth that he wasn’t fooled.

Right then, though, she didn’t care if he believed it or not. All she wanted was to please him and for him not to realise that there had been no one in her life that she had come remotely close to making love with since she had encountered his unforgettable and tutoring skill. No one who had ever made her feel like he did—ever!

Slipping her hands inside his shirt, she pushed the light fabric off his shoulders. His flesh was warm and satin-smooth beneath her fingers and a little frisson ran through her from actually being able to touch him like this again.

His groan seemed to reverberate from his chest as she pressed her lips against it, inhaling the stirring fragrance of his masculine cologne and that other more personal scent that was wholly his. More boldly then, she ran her tongue along the valley of his sternum, allowing it to stray across first one flat, dark masculine nipple and then the other.

‘I think it only fair to tell you, darling. There are rules in this cabin.’ His chest rose and fell heavily beneath its smattering of dark hair. ‘Captain’s orders,’ he outlined, his voice gravelly, husky. ‘Whatever you do to me,
mia cara
, I will do to you.’

A sensually inspired little laugh escaped her. Oh, he was clever!

With her hands splayed against his flesh, she pressed her cheek against the cushioning pillow of his chest, then tilted her face to his with tantalising eyes before turning back to claim one tight masculine nipple with her mouth.

He groaned again, sounding almost in pain from the pleasure it gave him.

‘I never knew you liked that,’ she whispered, surprised.

‘How could I not like anything you do t—’ His words were broken by the shivering breath he dragged in, his fingers twisting in the wild tumble of her hair.

Excitement drove her on, licking and nipping his chest, his ribcage and his hard lean flanks, the feel and scent and taste of him exciting her as much as the sensual tensing of his body as her kisses continued to descend, caress, explore.

His waist was firm and tight beneath her fingers and, like the rest of his long frame, without an ounce of surplus flesh to mar its perfection.

‘I’m warning you,’ he promised as she slid the zip of his trousers, but made no attempt to stop her in her determination to please him.

‘You’re amazing,’ she whispered when he stood there in his unashamed nakedness. A huge hunting animal. Comfortable with the way nature had made him. Dominant. Predatory. And aroused!

His thighs were heavily muscled and felt like silk-sheathed granite beneath her fingers. He tasted slightly salty against her tongue...

His breath shuddered violently through him as though it were almost too much to bear. The next instant he pulled sharply away from her with his face flushed and his eyes tightly closed as he battled for control.

‘And now it’s my turn,’ he breathed with heart-stopping determination, drawing a gasp from her when he suddenly lifted her off her feet. ‘Don’t worry. It is perfectly soundproofed,’ he assured her, aware of the concerned glance she shot towards the cabin door. ‘A pirate needs privacy when he’s savouring his bounty. And am I going to savour mine,
carissima
.’

Wild responses leaped through her from the determined purpose in his voice, stirring a breathless excitement in her as she felt the mattress on the big bed depress beneath their joint weight.

With his hair falling forward, he was lying across her, this man who was both a sophisticate and an untamed animal, and the combination of the two was incredibly arousing.

Closing her eyes, measuring him only with her tactile senses, she revelled in the perfect structure of bone and muscle, of hair-coarsened velvet and smooth satin over iron and steel.

‘Emiliano...’

She whispered his name as his hands ran over the flimsy fabric of her dress, and that was an unbelievable turn-on too because he seemed in no hurry to undress her.

Her body rose to meet the warmth of the hand skimming over her breast, over the dip of her waist and the curve of her hip. But when it touched the apex of her thighs she bucked convulsively towards him, inviting the ultimate contact. Needing it. Craving
him
like an addict.

Ignoring her silent supplication, he let his fingers trail along the length of one smooth silken leg and then the other, before drawing his hand away to repeat the same exquisite torment all over again.

‘Please...’ Her nails grazed along the warm, flexing muscles of his back. ‘Oh, please, Emiliano,’ she begged.

* * *

She was pleading because of him, because of what he was doing to her, he realised, with his masculine pride swelling.

‘What is it?’ His eyelids were heavy with desire, but there was sensual teasing in his voice too. ‘What is it you want,
carissima
?’

‘You know very well.’ Her tone was lightly scolding and her green eyes were darkened from the depths of her need.

‘Oh, this...’

When he slipped the thin straps off her shoulders, pulling the dress down over her breasts and the gentler curve of her hips, the sight of her beautiful body, with the way those lovely breasts moved as she wriggled to make it easier for him to remove it, seemed to suck the air out of Emilano’s lungs.

‘
Mia bella...
’ He had had his share of beautiful women, but never one so perfectly tantalising or so sensitive to his touch. Sensitive emotionally, too, he was beginning to appreciate, wondering how he could ever have been so wrong about her, misjudging her character so completely. In the world he moved in, he couldn’t afford to make mistakes about people. And yet he had, he realised, much to his disconcertion and his shame.

But she was whimpering softly just from the slide of his hand across her ribcage, offering him the beautiful gift of her body as she had done so many times before.