He reached up to touch her breasts and she slapped his hands away. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No touching... I want to pleasure you now...’
‘I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from touching...’
Emily laughed. She might have been on some kind of drug, so heady did she feel.
She bent down to kiss him and her long hair fell in a silky canopy around their faces. His lips were hot and hungry and she smiled against his mouth because, strangely, she felt all-powerful. This unbelievably sexy man, her boss, was so turned on by her that he could scarcely control himself. His erection was an insistent rod of steel against her. He was so big that she wondered how on earth she would be able to accommodate him. And just thinking about that made her even wetter than she already was.
Her breasts brushed against his chest, setting off a series of chain reactions that were gloriously titillating. She had had no idea that her nipples were that sensitive.
She straightened and then wriggled herself so that she was sitting on his thighs and could hold him in her hand.
‘Now it’s my turn to watch,’ she said.
She pushed her tangled hair away from her face impatiently. Squatting on him, her legs on either side, she made sure that as she stroked him his hardness also rubbed against her. His lazy, drowsy eyes regarded her with amusement.
He was anything but shy. He was a man who was completely comfortable in his own skin, she realised. Indeed, he was a man who was completely comfortable in the person he was.
It was why, she now knew, he could afford the luxury of romance. It was why he believed in marriage. It was why he thought that there was the right person out there for him.
Whereas she...
She breathed in deeply and slammed the door shut on the person she was—the person she had never expected to be once upon a time.
Leandro stilled her hand. Had he missed something? For a second he could have sworn that he had lost her, and yet now, as she gazed down at him with a half-smile that would have driven any man crazy, she was as she had been before.
‘You...have...to stop...’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean a baby is not something I want...’
Emily nodded, understanding.
Her body was on fire, already missing its closeness to his, as he did what he had to do, fetching a condom from his wallet and putting it on with hands that were, she noticed, not completely steady.
‘I don’t take chances,’ he grunted.
‘And I can think of nothing worse,’ Emily agreed with heartfelt sincerity.
Leandro was suddenly, fleetingly jealous of the guy she was destined to marry—even if it was to be a marriage of convenience. ‘Sex with another guy when you’re engaged is one thing...but a baby would be quite a different matter...’
‘Catastrophic.’ She pulled him towards her. ‘Now, stop talking,’ she commanded, ‘and remember what I said about not being through with you...’
‘I remember.’ Leandro grinned with wicked pleasure. ‘Take charge. I’m completely at your mercy...’
At her sweet, sweet mercy.
He loved everything she did to him. He loved the way she lathered him with kisses. He loved the way she teased him with her tongue. He loved the way her hair brushed like silk against his chest when she was down there, sucking and licking and sending him to another planet.
And, boy, he loved her enthusiasm. This wasn’t lovemaking as an art form. She wasn’t out to impress him with her inventiveness or her clever techniques.
She wanted him, and she wanted to enjoy him, and she wanted him to enjoy her. Simple as that.
When she sat on him and began rocking he could no longer restrain himself. If he didn’t control the pace then he knew that the unthinkable would happen. He wouldn’t be able to hold off. He would come within seconds, like a horny teenager with no finesse and even less experience.
He rolled her beneath him and took charge, moving into her and thrusting deep, rearing up to watch her face as she responded to every thrust, her legs wrapped around his back.
Still maintaining his rhythm, he bent and covered her mouth with his. His tongue mirrored what his hardness was doing, thrusting and enjoying her slick wetness.
As he moved faster and deeper he rose up, supporting himself with his hands flat on either side of her. He seemed to take in every single little detail of her. The shiny golden softness of her face, the length of her lashes, the little mole just above her right eyebrow, the bleached blondeness of her hair spread across the pillow, the scattering of freckles on her collarbone, the tan lines from where her swimsuit had been...
He came on an explosion of sensation that drove every thought out of his head. From a long way away he heard her cry out with satisfaction and it mirrored his own.
They were damp with perspiration, and as he collapsed on her their bodies seemed to stick together. He hadn’t put the air-conditioning on and the overhead fan was inadequate when it came to cooling them down. It crossed his mind that nothing would have been adequate at cooling them down. They could have made love on an iceberg in the Arctic and they would still have been as hot as they were now.
‘Did the Earth move for you too?’ he asked huskily, and Emily nodded with a smile.
That was the understatement of the decade. The Earth had done more than just move! It had swivelled, spun in circles and done several loop-the-loops...
So this was what it felt like to be fired up with passion! Now she knew.
‘I want to hear you say it,’ he breathed, coiling his fingers into her hair and scattering delicate kisses on her mouth until she could feel her body getting fired up all over again.
‘I...yes...the Earth moved for me too,’ she breathed. ‘I mean, I’ve never...’
‘Never what...?’
‘I’ve never...’ She traced her finger along his chest, circled his flat brown nipple and watched it tighten at her touch. ‘Never felt like that before with a guy...’
‘And there have been lots...?’
Since when did he care how many lovers a woman had had before him? Insecure was something he most certainly was not, and yet now he wished he hadn’t asked the question, because he didn’t want to hear that he was just one in a long line of notches on her bedpost.
‘No.’ She laughed and brushed aside his question, because she didn’t want to think about how many women there had been in his life. ‘I’m not... I’ve never really fooled around...’
‘You should learn from your past—not allow it to influence your present and your future. Your father may have been a monster but he doesn’t represent the entire male sex...’
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ Emily said quickly.
It was a timely reminder of just how vastly different their worlds were. It was easy to simplify situations when you were speaking as a spectator to someone else’s world. Not only was she a prisoner of her own learning curve but she also had to remember where she was now—about to be married and with no room for her thoughts to be muddled by a man who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
‘Then let’s talk about what happens next...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
EMILY SHIELDED HER eyes against the glare of the sun and stared out at a picture postcard scene.
Overhead, the fronds of a palm tree blew lazily in the breeze and provided some welcome shade. If she looked up she would see the blue, cloudless sky, filtered through the branches of the tree. Now, looking outwards, her vista was one of the sea—bold turquoise gradually turning to a darker greeny-blue and then finally to midnight-blue where it was just a sharp line against the sky.
The sand was the consistency of caster sugar and almost the same colour. To her right, the little boat which had brought them here bobbed on the water. And in the distance Leandro was carelessly heading out towards the horizon, cutting a clean line through the calm water. He had no fear of all the things that panicked her when she thought about swimming beyond where she could touch the sea bed. Sharks...giant stingrays...barracuda... Various other unknown but deadly sea creatures waiting to pounce on the unwary swimmer.
He was completely naked. When he emerged from the sea she would feast her eyes on his gloriously masculine body and appreciate every line, every contour, every ripple of muscle. She would watch, fascinated, as he hardened for her. It amazed her just how much she turned him on.
She, likewise, was completely naked on a giant beach towel. They could afford to be here—gloriously naked—because the island was just an isolated dot. Sand, palm trees, flowering wild plants and accessible only by boat. They were the only two people on it, and when they had moored two hours earlier it had taken them under half an hour to walk its entire circumference.
Bliss.
Twenty minutes of walking and then making love in the open air—because this was what happened next.
They became lovers.
Just for a moment in time they agreed to give in to the crazy passion that had overwhelmed them. Why not? They were here and they fancied one another.