Making a face, she set it aside. Then glanced back at it. The little thrill of naughtiness surged higher the longer she eyed the garment.
She was tired of being sensible. Especially at one o’clock in the morning. Deciding to add a little bit of spice to her illicit swim, she quickly donned the bikini and threw a white linen tunic over it.
The villa was quiet, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she passed Romeo’s empty study.
The path to the waterfall was softly lit by garden lamps. Snagging a towel from the stack near the swimming pool, she skirted the villa and hurried through the short tunnel and cave that opened into the stunning rock pool. Disrobing, Maisie dived into the pool, submerging for several seconds, hoping the heavenly cool water would wash away her turbulent thoughts.
The strong compulsion to make the most of what she had now before it was taken away from her wouldn’t dissipate. On the contrary it grew stronger the harder she willed it away, the harder she swam from one end of the pool to the other.
Finally, wrung out emotionally and physically, she perched on the rock beneath the waterfall, leaning her head back to catch the edge of the cascading water, and sighed at the delicious sting of the warm water on her face.
‘You insist you have no illusions of pursuing a life as a mermaid, and yet here you are again.’
She jerked at the sound of Romeo’s voice and nearly fell into the water. Righting herself, she stared at his imposing, braced-legged stance at the opposite end of the pool. And swallowed hard.
He was dressed, like her, for swimming, his trunks hugging thick, hair-dusted thighs. But whereas she’d worn a tunic, he only wore a towel around his neck. Her breath strangled and died in her lungs, her pulse racing at the sheer magnificence of him.
She was doomed.
She knew it even before he dropped into the pool and swam lazily towards her. Halfway, he ducked under the water, struck out in a powerful crawl and emerged at her feet. Hands braced on either side of her thighs, he stared wordlessly at her, his gaze intense, broodingly ravenous. Maisie stared down at his breathtaking face, the droplets of water glistening on his skin in the moonlight like tiny diamonds.
Raw sexual energy leapt where their skin connected, firing arousal so strong she could almost touch it.
‘Did sleep elude you, as it did me, gattina?’ he enquired with a husky rasp after an endless throb of silence.
She nodded dumbly, her fingers reaching out of their own accord to trace his eyebrow, his cheekbones. His jaw.
‘Have you grown tired of fighting the inevitable?’ he pressed.
Her blood roared in her ears, drowning out her every resistant thought. ‘I’ve grown tired of fighting you.’
The gleam in his eyes dimmed for a moment. ‘It’s not me you’ve been fighting, but yourself. If nothing else, be true to yourself about that, before this goes any further,’ he growled, his stare telling her he wouldn’t accept anything but her agreement.
And he was right.
She had been fighting this purely for her own self-preservation. How could she not? The consequences should he reject her a second time would be even more devastating than before. She knew it deep in her soul. With the passage of time her feelings towards him were changing, morphing into something deeper, stronger, that she couldn’t seem to control.
The movement of the water jerked him a tiny fraction. The result was a slide of her fingers across his hot, beautiful skin, bringing her to the here and now, to the almighty need pounding through her blood.
‘I’m tired of fighting,’ she whispered raggedly.
‘Then surrender,’ he urged thickly. ‘Just let this be.’ His hands moved, sliding over her thighs to capture her knees. Tugging them open, he surged closer, his eyes so fierce and intense they seemed aflame from within. ‘I can’t stand another night of wanting you and being denied. Of imagining the many ways of having you, without going out of my mind. Surrender, gattina. Surrender now.’
Desire, wild and unfettered, wrenched through her, rendering the last of her resistance useless. Her fingers speared into his wet hair, using her hold to tilt his face up to hers.
Bending, she took his mouth in a greedy kiss, intent on gorging herself on a feast she’d stalwartly denied herself but couldn’t resist another moment longer.
Somewhere down the line the devastation would be great. When she was back in her role of single mother far away in Ranelagh, her shredded emotions would have time to mourn, to berate her for her choices.
But here...now, in this heavenly place with this man who put the very gods to shame, she would live in the moment. She would just...live. As she had that night in Palermo, she would give as much of herself as she could and take what Romeo offered.