With a softly uttered, tense expletive, he came back to her mouth, his hand sliding beneath her to draw her up against him. The next thing she knew, the clasp of her bra had sprung free, and he was lying her back against the pillows again, and the scrappy bit of mesh was being trailed away."You are exquisite," she heard him rasp through the hazy mists of her ravaged senses.Then he was taking her mouth once again, crushing the pulsing softness of her lips and dipping deep and hungrily with his tongue at the same time that his hand closed around her breast again, naked now and so alive to his touch that she cried out in half protest, half sense spinning pleasure, and grabbed blindly at his head, her fingers clawing into the glossy thickness of his hair.He kneaded and shaped and kissed her breathless. She could feel the tremors attacking him, the fevered flush of his body, and the tension in him. She trapped his groan with her tongue when he pressed the distended tightness of her nipp

If Charley said it to shock Dami out of his cool composure, then she certainly succeeded, she saw, as burning dark color swept across his high golden cheekbones and he launched to his feet, sending paperwork scattering as he accidentally knocked against the table."Is that your idea of a damn joke?" His eyes flashed out a blaze of blistering fury that made her reach for and pull up the blanket."I just thought I should mention it before things go too heated again," she explained, blushing herself because now that she’d said it she felt silly and stupid and—"A virgin," he snapped out from between his clenched teeth. "Where in hell did you get the idea to throw something like that at me from out of nowhere?""Well, what would you have preferred me to do?" Charley reacted hotly. Have it written into that stupid prenuptial contract so you could take your time getting used to the idea?He was pale with anger now, not flushed. "We just almost made love.""No, I stopped it," she reminded hi

Ten minutes later, she walked back into the bedroom, wryly unsurprised to find that the maids had been in and finished the unpacking while she’d been showering.Wrapped in one of the toweling bathrobes she’d found hanging behind the door, she rubbed at her wet hair with a towel as she wandered over to the window to look out. On impulse, she tried the handle and found that the window was unlocked. Pushing it open showed her a bleach-boarded veranda with white slatted rails. The wood was warm beneath her bare feet as she stepped onto it; the heat of the night was kind of soothing, and she stood leaning lightly against the rail and rubbing her hair while she tried to make out what the view in front of her was like.It was truly pitch-dark out there, but she caught the frothing white roll of a wave as it came into shore. It wasn’t far away—perhaps a few hundred yards at most. And as her eyes grew more used to the darkness, she managed to make out the shape of a white-painted gazebo not fa

So the tense curse that left his chest meant nothing to her until he used the superior strength in his arms to bring her tumbling halfway back down to earth."I said slowly," he hissed at her. "I will not ravish you, Charlotte."But she didn’t know the difference between fast and slow. Her own wild senses were ruling her actions; the sweet, tight pulse of desire was controlling the pace. The fingers she sent spearing into his neck so she could bring his mouth back to hers were fierce and urgent. "I want to be ravished," she whispered to him.His kiss-heated lips twisted into a grim smile. "You don’t understand the concept, and I will not give you an excuse to accuse me of ravishing you once it is done and your conscience decides to torment you."Her eyes widened in protest. "I wouldn't do that.""You would," he insisted. "You want me, but you don’t want to want me; you have simply allowed yourself to forget that." In fact,’ he added, sending a sardonic gleam to her liquid green eyes,

Charley drifted asleep in the warm cocoon of his arms and awoke late the next morning to find an empty place beside her in the bed. In a way, it was a relief. No awkward moments having to face him while her defenses were down; no stumbling around trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t come out sounding silly, vulnerable, and gauche. She could shower at her leisure and get her act together.No, she couldn’t. Instead, she sank down on the edge of the plunge bath and let the whole high-octane event of her wedding night rush through her head and her body in small explosions of remembered feelings, few of which made her feel good about herself—or about him.What were they doing to each other? Why were they doing it? All Charley knew as she sat there remembering the hot tempo of their passionate coupling was that somehow, in the last week leading up to last night, she had allowed Dami De Santis to become a terrible fever of desire that had built and built inside her until it had