Defying Her Billionaire Protector

Kissing, touching, exploring Marietta while immersed in the tepid sea water was the most erotic build-up to sex Nico had ever experienced.

He’d fooled around in water before—taken a woman against the side of a pool more than once—but this...

This was different.

Or maybe it was simply that he was wound so impossibly tight with need for her that he felt as if he might explode at any moment?

God help him.

He hadn’t even buried himself inside her yet.

He gave a low, tortured groan, reached between their bodies and pried her fingers from his hard, engorged length before he embarrassed himself and came in the water.

The action earned him a small, petulant frown, but when she reached under the surface, he again seized her wrist.

‘Chérie,’ he growled, ‘it will be over before it starts if you keep doing that.’

Her smile was playful, naughty, dialling up the heat in his blood and at the same time reinforcing his sense of relief.

This was the Marietta he knew.

Confident. Spirited. Pushy.

The way she’d challenged him on the beach—her boldness, the things she’d said, even her scars—had made him want her even more, until resisting his desire, resisting hers, had been impossible. And yet the woman who had frozen beneath him had been vulnerable, insecure—a version of Marietta he hadn’t seen before—and his chest had ached with a fierce need to reassure her. To chase the uncertainty from her eyes and bring this woman—the one who fired his blood, who challenged him at every turn—back to him.

She wound her arms around his neck now, clinging to him like a silken-skinned mermaid, pressing her lush, caramel-tipped breasts against his chest. He had sucked on those responsive nipples at every opportunity, enjoying her gasps of pleasure as he’d coaxed them into tight, sensitive nubs.

They were ten metres or so from the shore, the water chest-deep, and his feet on the seabed prevented them from drifting.

He kissed her, savouring the warm, salty taste of her mouth and the erotic playfulness of her tongue as it dived between his lips and then retreated, duelling with his.

After a minute he pulled back. Despite his previous claim about the point of no return, he needed to make certain she understood what this was—and wasn’t. To offer her one last chance to change her mind. Even though it would kill him if she did.

‘This is all I can give you,’ he said. ‘These few days—’

Her fingers landed across his lips. ‘I’m not looking for anything more,’ she said. ‘Here and now—this is all I want...’

And with that the final barrier fell. He dropped an open-mouthed kiss onto the wet, satiny skin between her neck and shoulder and slid his hand under the water, seeking out the silky curls and the velvety V of flesh he’d briefly explored once already—and planned to do so more thoroughly now.

‘Tell me where it feels good,’ he urged, eager to learn her pleasure points. To understand where she had sensation and where she didn’t. He slid his fingers along the seam of delicate flesh, parting, probing, locating the precise spot that made her throw her head back and arch those magnificent breasts against him.

‘Oh, Dio... There, Nico... There...’

He hoisted her higher in the water and clamped his mouth over her nipple, sucking hard while increasing the pressure and movement of his fingers. Her nails sank into his back and the sound she made as she came—something between a purr and a little feminine roar—was the sexiest damn thing he’d ever heard. His body throbbed urgently, almost painfully in response. She dropped her head onto his shoulder, her body going limp in his arms, and cursed in Italian.

Satisfaction rocked through him. ‘Was that on your wish list, chérie?’

‘No...’ she mumbled into his neck. ‘But I think I’ll add it, just so that we can do it again and cross it off.’

‘I have some other ideas for your list.’

She lifted her head, her dark eyes slumberous. ‘Tell me.’

Nico shook his head, shifted her onto his back and started towards the shore. ‘I’m going to show you instead.’

CHAPTER NINE

MARIETTA HAD EXPECTED Nico to lay her down on the cushions beneath the awning and take her right there on the beach—and she’d have been lying if she’d said a part of her hadn’t wanted him to. But he had muttered something about sandy blankets and comfort and now they were in his bedroom—a huge room characterised by clean lines and simple masculine decor—lying naked on soft cotton sheets in a bed so enormous it could have slept an entire family.