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He stayed for so long that Lauren, preparing a meal of fish and salad in the kitchen, wondered whether he was indulging in a ritual of cleaning war’s filthy detritus from his body.
It wouldn’t be so easy or so quick to rid his mind of the horrendous images.
She listened to the soft swish of the tiny waves brushing the sand a few feet away and tried to sort out her emotions. Send him off to the resort, common sense urged. Now—before it’s too late.
But it was too late. He’d issued a challenge and she’d accepted it. Beneath Guy’s tight control she sensed a darkly primitive hunger; remember the traditional recreation of the warrior, she thought—banishing unbearable memories in the pleasure of a woman’s body.
But she didn’t fear him; instinct told her that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she wanted him with a heated desperation that fogged her mind, turning the unthinkable into the inevitable.
Oh, she could blame the heat and danger of the tropics—the perfume floating on the moist air, a sultry, sinful fragrance breathed out from the hearts of the crimson flowers on the vine wreathing the terrace. But the tropics hadn’t produced the smouldering intensity that sent the blood singing through her veins.
Her teeth gnawed her lip as she went on with the dinner preparations. She wanted Guy, but even more important than that, she suspected that tonight he needed her.
When he emerged, clad in the clean shirt and his trousers, she was sitting on the terrace with the second can of beer and a plate of sliced fruit. She didn’t hear him come up behind her, but some instinct switched her gaze from the geckos creeping ever closer to the lamp, intent on picking off the moths that danced in dazzled swirls around the dangerous, alluring light.
Her heart blocked her throat. He’d shaved, and in the soft light he was beautiful, the boldly carved framework of his face a miraculous, exotic blend of Mediterranean machismo and the northern-European angularity that nagged at her memory.
‘That food looks good.’ His voice was cool and noncommittal.
He didn’t fall on it like a starving man, but by the time he’d told her of the situation in Sant’Rosa he’d almost cleared the platter.
When he finished she observed, ‘So the Republic was behind it. Are they likely to try again?’
‘I don’t think so. They lost too many men.’
She said quietly, ‘And if they don’t know by now that they can’t ignore world opinion, they will once the Press gets there.’
‘I’m surprised that a local fracas, however bloody and determined, was interesting enough to attract the attention of foreign correspondents.’ His tone was satiric. ‘There can’t be much happening in the rest of the world.’
‘A meeting of heads of state has just finished in Australia.’ She looked up as a plane flew overhead.
‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Guy said sardonically. ‘And Sant’Rosa is an interesting detour on the way home. As for waking the world up to what’s happening here—it’ll be relegated to obscurity once the next flashpoint explodes.’
Unfortunately he was right. She said, ‘I’d like to be sure that the hotel staff on Sant’Rosa survived. And how did the village in the mountains fare? It was right in the thick of things, surely?’
‘No. As far as I know they didn’t come off any worse than any other village. You’re not going back,’ Guy responded in a flat, lethal tone.
A cold shiver scudded down her spine. ‘But—’
‘No buts,’ he said implacably. ‘You won’t be allowed anywhere near the South Coast. It’s still a sensitive area. Civilians and sightseers—even well-intentioned ones—are nothing but a damned nuisance in a post-war zone unless they’ve got skills to help the victims.’
‘Are you going back?’ She held her breath until he answered.
‘Yes.’
Something about his intonation and the formidable expression made her say, ‘Why? What skills do you have to help?’
His left brow rose, as mocking as the smile that curved his mouth. ‘I have contacts—I know who to apply to for the kind of aid that’s needed, and I can act as go-between.’
An odd, aching foreboding clutched her with a cold grip. Ignoring it, she got to her feet and said, ‘Dinner’s ready. I’ll go and get it.’
Over the meal Lauren set herself to switch Guy’s mind away from the horrors of the past few days. She filled him in on the latest headlines, culled from the newspaper stand outside the immigration office, then skimmed over a couple of juicy financial scandals and the spectacularly spicy meltdown of a singer’s marriage.
He knew what she was doing, but he went along with her and by the end of the meal he was laughing and the lines of tension scoring his lean face were slightly less deep.
Whereas she was now racked by taut expectancy.
‘Coffee?’ she asked, shielding herself with the banal little rituals of everyday life. ‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid.’
‘It’ll be fine.’ He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck, the easy flexion of his big body sending a shivering little ripple of anticipation through her. ‘But before you make it, I’ll go and collect the other parcel I have for you.’
‘What—’
‘You’ll see,’ he said coolly.
It took him about twenty minutes, the longest twenty minutes of Lauren’s life. When he came back she was sitting out on the terrace waiting for him, the friendly darkness pressing against her.
‘Here,’ he said, tossing a parcel onto the table.
‘Oh.’ Another plastic bag. ‘What is it?’
‘Clothes.’
Her clothes from Sant’Rosa. She said, ‘Thank you. I thought they’d have been looted.’
‘They’re new.’ He paused, then said, ‘I should go.’ He spoke abruptly, the words falling stark and curt in the heavy air.
Lauren got up and walked across to the tiny kitchen. With her back to him she filled the battered electric kettle and plugged it in, then set two cups on a tray with sugar and milk. Only when she’d made the coffee and picked up the tray did she ask coolly, ‘Why?’
Guy watched her carry the tray across to the table. She walked as he’d dreamed of her in the hot, foetid jungle nights—with the lithe, easy grace that set off her long, lovely legs and the sensuous little sway of her hips that had dragged him temporarily out of hell.
He waited until she’d sat down and picked up the milk jug before saying in a deliberately prosaic voice, ‘Because if I stay it will be in your bed, and I doubt if either of us will sleep much.’
Guy regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Pragmatism was doing its best to convince him that making love to a woman he’d forced into a temporary marriage was a stupid thing to do.
For once, pragmatism could go bury itself.
Her hand shook so much she had to set the milk jug down. She kept her head down too so that all he could see was the lovely curve of her cheekbone. After a moment she poured the milk in, then got up and turned off the lights.
In the soft half-darkness, illuminated only by the stars, she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I hadn’t wanted that.’
Damn it, he could taste the need, hot as sin, dangerously heady as any drug; wanting Lauren was an ache in his guts, a reckless loss of control that both excited and infuriated him.
And for the first time in his life he was being propositioned by a woman who had no idea who he was. Here in Valanu they knew him only as Guy Bagaton. Combined with the heated sexual appetite raging through him, Lauren’s offer was damned near irresistible.
‘Neither reward nor gratitude,’ Lauren said.
Was there a hint of nervousness beneath the polished surface? When she stopped a step away, Guy refused to reach out, although the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched with the effort to keep them still. Leaping on her with famished savagery was not the way to endear yourself to a woman, he thought derisively.
He asked, ‘So what is it?’
The taut seconds that followed his question didn’t give him enough time to impose control on his more primitive instincts. He could die wanting her, he thought, grimly fighting the physical longing that undermined his will-power, but he hadn’t come here for this.
Then she bent and fitted her mouth to his. Against his lips she said, ‘This.’
And kissed him.
She tasted of mystery and delight, of sex and truth, of daring and intensity and grace. An exultant, desperate need roared through him, and he said too harshly, ‘Good, because that’s what I want too.’
When Lauren began to straighten, he came up with her in a silent, purposeful movement that sent shudders through her.
‘Like this,’ he said.
He caught her against him, his mouth taking hers in a kiss that gave no quarter. Dimly, Lauren realised that it was a signal of dominant masculinity, and she gloried in it, demanding as much from him as he asked from her, her eager body thrumming with need.
He kissed her as though she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, as though they shared infinitely more than this transitory passion, this time out of time in the empty blue reaches of the Pacific.
Shuddering, she opened her mouth to his, and relished the wild kick of passion inside her—and the fierce hardness of his body against hers.
‘When I first saw you,’ he said, reluctantly giving her air, ‘I wanted you.’ That faint trace of accent flavoured each word, intriguing and different.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘You looked like a pirate. A very sexy pirate.’
His heavy eyelids almost covered his eyes, but she could see a gleam of laughter in their golden depths. ‘You have a thing for pirates?’
‘Stubble suits some people,’ she said demurely, nipping her way along his jawbone.
He laughed again, deep and low and triumphant, and kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulders, and then the warm swell of her breasts above her sarong. Pleasure raced through her in a dizzying flood; as he deftly untied the knot she knew that nothing in her previous life had prepared her for the ardent, honeyed recklessness of making love with Guy.
When the sarong fell away, he froze. Lauren gazed into his stunned face, and her heart tumbled into free-fall. She hadn’t known a man could look like that—a mixture of conqueror and supplicant, eyes glittering in a darkly drawn face while he gazed at the slender white curves and lines of her body.
And then he lifted his head, and there was no supplication in his expression now—he was all conqueror. Her breath locked deliciously in her chest when he cupped a small, high breast, tanned fingers shaping the pale curves with erotic confidence as his thumb brushed the tight pink bud at the centre, slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until she moaned deep in her throat.
Needles of pure desire ran along her nerves; she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him that he was killing her with sensation. Even her breath died when he bent his head and kissed the nipple his thumb had tantalised. Carnal sensation sparked an inferno inside her when the tight little nub peaked in a silent, evocative plea for more.
He gave it to her, his dark head drawing close. Lauren swallowed, and when he drew the nipple into his mouth her knees buckled.
Guy caught her before she fell, lifting her into his arms and stepping over the fallen sarong to carry her across to the bed. As her feet touched the floor, his free hand jerked aside the bright quilted coverlet and he put her down gently on her back.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked deeply, his gaze caressing her body, exposed now for his delight with only a scrap of cotton hiding her most secret parts.
They had so little time, Lauren thought desperately. Soon she’d be leaving for New Zealand.
And Guy? He’d go back to Sant’Rosa, and she had no right to ask him to stay away.
A smile trembled along her lips. ‘Utterly sure,’ she said like a vow.
Guy stood very still, then said, ‘So am I,’ and without haste he shrugged out of his shirt.
Her pulses drummed faster as she feasted her eyes on the clean, perfect symmetry of his body. But when he stood naked before her, her breath locked in her throat. He was, she realised on a note of primitive panic, big all over, and it had been a long time since she’d done this…
‘Relax,’ he said softly, and ran a deliberate forefinger from the centre of her breast to the soft, warm nest between her thighs. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
The path of that finger burned like a streak of fire, and her confidence returned in a rush. Her first glance had told her that he was an experienced lover. ‘I know.’
Solemnly she watched the play of powerful muscles beneath his sleek bronze skin as he untied the mosquito netting so that it fell around the bed in a billow of white, shutting them off from the rest of the world.
Then he came down beside her, dark to her light, sun to her moon, strength to her grace.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u88f76df3-e888-5052-864b-e224043d63bd)
LAUREN had expected a slow, sophisticated wooing. Perhaps Guy had planned that, but when she smoothed her hand over his shoulder and down the flexible line of his spine, her fingers tracing out the vertebrae beneath the hot skin, he muttered a word she couldn’t discern. And followed it with another devouring kiss that set her afire with heady, primal intoxication.
A ferocious intensity wiped away the last pathetic shreds of her self-control. When she gasped and arched beneath him, her hips grinding into his, he took an importunate, demanding nipple into his mouth and suckled strongly.
Delicious arrows blazed through her body; groaning, she tightened her fingers around his head, holding him close to her breast while the craving intensified, burning hotter and hotter until she thought she might die of need.
‘Now,’ she muttered. ‘Now, for heaven’s sake… Guy, please—’
He kissed her again, and a second later he was buried to the hilt in her, his big body so rigid she thought he might not be able to control himself any longer.
But he dragged a quick, impeded breath into his lungs, and slowly, deliciously eased out of the slick passage until she gasped his name again, and once more her hips jerked in involuntary provocation.
On a harsh, feral sound, he thrust even deeper inside her, and she met the powerful rhythm and matched it until every thought fled her brain, lost in the sensual tidal wave of Guy’s mastery.
It was like drowning in rapture, and for a sudden moment she fought it, wondering where it would lead, what it would take from her.
‘Relax,’ he said, the words purring roughly into her ear. ‘Let go, Lauren—it won’t hurt. It can’t hurt.’
Yes, it can, she thought wildly, her head tossing back and forth on the pillow, but it was too late. She could no more resist this blatant bewitchment of her senses than she could push him off; she had never before felt so much a woman, so much herself, as she did when Guy made love to her.
Anyway, she couldn’t speak. The pleasure that had been threatening her since her first sight of him boosted her into some stratosphere of sensation. Her lashes flew up and she stared into his face. Lean and dark, every arrogant bone prominent, eyes glittering like the heart of the sun, he looked like a corsair intent on plunder.
And she was it, and she wanted it as much as he did. Lauren abandoned every last inhibition and surrendered to passion, rocking herself against him and tightening her inner muscles in an ancient, provocative rhythm every time he pushed into her.
She saw the moment his control cracked and shattered, registered the split-second of understanding in his aristocratic face, and then the torrent of ecstasy rolled over and through her in waves from the centre of her body.
Savage, merciless, exquisitely arousing, they hurled her into an alternate universe where all she saw was the golden gleam of Guy’s eyes and all she felt was an ineffable rapture that lasted too long and not long enough, where its slow fading was at once a tragedy and a glory.
And then Guy followed her into that secret, bewildering place, a low, hoarse sound torn from his throat as he fought for that peak, his beautiful body like steel against her and in her.
As the savage physical longing ebbed into sweet sorrow, Lauren linked her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. Yielding to her conviction that he needed her had brought her wild ecstasy, but she’d chosen to break through an invisible barrier into another world where invisible chains linked her to him.
How would she ever forget him?
Mouth still holding hers captive, Guy rolled onto his back, scooping her with him so that she was lying on him.
When they could both breathe again, both speak, he asked, ‘When are you leaving Valanu?’
