Lose the paranoia. Enjoy your weekend. It makes sense to have a crew on a boat this large, especially since you know nothing about sailing. Tamping down her misgivings, she reached for her bag.
Seduction on the Mediterranean Sea. Damon had delivered nothing less in the hours since they’d left Monaco behind.
Madeline stood beside him on the front—bow—of the anchored sailboat with the deck rocking gently beneath her feet. She sipped her wine and feigned calm when every cell in her body quivered with eagerness for the night ahead. Lights on shore flickered on the ink-dark horizon. She didn’t know from which city or even which country.
She turned her head and found Damon’s blue gaze locked on her face in the pale moonlight. Sexual energy radiated from him. The entire day had been one long session of foreplay. She’d been wined and dined and tantalized from the moment she’d joined him in the kitch—galley. He’d massaged sunscreen into her skin and painted erotic designs on her body with the end of her braid. But he hadn’t allowed her to return the favor. He’d kept his shirt on and insisted she keep her hands to herself. Whatever blemishes he was hiding beneath that fabric, she’d prove to him that they didn’t matter.
Damon opened his mouth and took a breath as if preparing to speak, but closed it again as he’d done a few times today. He stared at the wine he swirled in his glass, finished it in one gulp and looked at her again.
He wasn’t getting shy on her, was he? She never would have pegged him as the reticent type. But then what did she know about him except that he was drop-dead sexy, could drive her to the brink of orgasm without touching the usual parts and that the concierge trusted him?
She slipped an arm around his waist, rose on tiptoe and kissed his chin because she couldn’t reach his lips. Damon dipped his head and covered her mouth, parted her lips and swept inside. He tasted like wine, sunshine and the promise of passion. And then he pulled away, cupped her face and pressed it to his shoulder. “Not here. Let’s go below.”
He laced his fingers with hers and quickly led her inside. There was no sign of Ian and Makos, the crew, in the sitting area or galley. The men must be in their cabin at the rear of the boat. Her worries about them had been unfounded. They’d efficiently done their jobs without encroaching on her and Damon’s privacy although she’d been aware of their presence. How could she not be when both men were built like football defensive linemen?
Damon deposited their wineglasses on the counter before leading her into the bedroom at the front of the craft and closing the door behind them. Moonlight seeped through the narrow windows, bathing the room in silvery light. He didn’t turn on the lamp and she wondered if that was because of the scars or whatever he hid under his shirt. She could scarcely hear the smack of the waves against the hull over her thundering heart.
Damon’s expression turned serious and he seemed a little uneasy. He cupped her shoulders. “Madeline—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “It’s okay. I’m nervous, too.”
He opened his mouth to speak again, but she shook her head and traced his soft bottom lip with her fingertip. “Would you believe I am thirty-two years old and I’ve only had one lover?” His eyes widened and she cringed. “I’m not telling you that because I want a proposal or anything. I don’t. This affair is about here and now and that’s all. I just want you to know I might be…limited skillwise. But I’m a fast learner. Now please, kiss me. You’ve driven me insane all day. I want to do the same for you and I can’t wait another second.”
But he made her wait ten seconds before banding his arms around her and hauling her close. He took her mouth in a hard, hungry kiss, shifted his head and stole another and another until she clung to him because her legs no longer felt steady. She broke the connection to gasp for air. Their gazes locked and panted breaths mingled.
After a day of not being allowed to touch him, Madeline seized the opportunity to run her hands over him. His shoulder and arm muscles flexed beneath her fingers, and then she shaped his broad back, his narrow waist and finally, his tush. His groan vibrated over her like thunder. He splayed his hands over her bottom and yanked her against the ridge of his erection. Whatever deficiencies he thought he had, that wasn’t one of them.
He shoved off the jacket she’d put on after dinner and then bunched the fabric of her top in his hands and whisked it over her head. Her white lace bra glistened in the moonlight and then with a flick of his fingers that, too, was gone and his warm hands shaped her br**sts. With a whimper of delight, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Pleasure radiated from the n**ples he buffed with his thumbs and coalesced into a tight, achy knot of need beneath her navel.
He dipped his head and circled her aureole with his tongue. Hot. Wet. Her knees weakened. She fisted her hands in his shirt and held on. And then he suckled and she whimpered as currents of desire swirled wildly inside her.
“Hurry. Please.” She’d never been so aroused in all her life, and he’d barely touched her. She blamed it on the drawn-out foreplay of the day, his scent, his heat, his unique flavor. Her fingers fumbled on the buttons of his shirt, and then finally the last one separated and she pushed the shirt out of her way. The room was too dim to see more than a shadow of chest hair, but his muscles were taut and tight and rippled beneath her questing fingers. No raised or puckered scar tissue marred his supple skin. Nothing to be ashamed of. She found the fastening on his waistband.
He captured her other nipple with gentle teeth, hastily unzipped her skirt and pushed it to the floor. Frantic with need, she sent his shorts and briefs on the same path. She wanted him nak*d and inside her before she came without him. She’d never been a multiple-o’s girl, and she wasn’t wasting her one and only on a solo trip. His hand covered the satin front of her panties, stroked, teased. She clenched every muscle and fought off cli**x, but she was close, too close.
Slapping her hand over his to still him, she gasped, “Condoms. In my beach bag. Now.”
His smile gleamed white in the near darkness. “Impatient?”
“Yes.”
“I want to taste you.”
“Next time. Please, Damon. I’m about to come unglued.”
His smile vanished. He hesitated a second before reaching for her beach bag and handing it to her. She dug until she found the new box of condoms, dropped her bag on the floor and ripped the box open. He reached to take the packet from her.
“No. My turn.” She tore the wrapper and reached for him, encircling his thick erection with her fingers and stroking his hard, satiny length. A deep growl rumbled from him.
Mike, the twit, would have a serious case of penis envy if he knew how much better endowed Damon was.
But then Damon tweaked her n**ples and thoughts of Mike evaporated in a hot rush of desire. She applied the protection, yanked the covers from the bed and scooted backward toward the headboard. Damon followed, crawling across the mattress like a stalking panther. Impatient for him to pounce, she shimmied her panties over her hips. Damon hooked them with his fingers and tugged them the rest of the way down her legs and tossed them over his shoulder.
“Loosen your braid.” His raspy voice against the inside of her knee gave her goose bumps.
She did as he ordered. The moment she finished he plowed his fingers into her hair, cradled her head and devoured her mouth, demanding a response which she was more than happy to give. His body lowered over hers, and hot skin melded to hotter skin from her ankles to her nose. The sheer eroticism of his hair-spattered flesh against hers sent a shiver of delight over her. His masculine scent filled her nostrils, his taste made her crave more. She hooked a leg behind his hip. “Please.”
He angled to the side. His fingers parted her curls, found her wetness. And then he did the unforgivable. With only three strokes he made her come. Without him. Damn it, she railed even as ecstasy convulsed her body and emptied her lungs.
Before she could protest he filled her with one deep thrust. She’d scarcely caught her breath before he withdrew and returned. Harder. Deeper. Again and again he pounded into her. Instead of relaxing and cooling down the way she usually did after cli**x, her heart continued to race and her muscles coiled tight again.
She couldn’t. Could she?
Not believing what her body was telling her, she dug her nails into his h*ps and her heels into the mattress and urged him to go faster. And then it happened. Orgasm broke over her like the waves that had crashed over the bow this afternoon, sprinkling sensation on her skin like droplets of seawater.
Smiling with surprise and delight, she buried her face in his neck and then nipped his earlobe. Damon groaned against her temple. His back bowed and he thrust deeper as his cli**x shook him. And then he collapsed on top of her.
She savored his weight, his warmth, his sweat-slickened skin against her chest and beneath her palms. The sound of water smacking the hull slowly replaced the roar of her pulse.
“Wow,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Damon braced himself on his elbows and lifted, his satisfied gaze locking with hers. “Good?”
“Oh yeah.” Had her responsiveness been a fluke? She couldn’t wait to find out. “Wanna do it again?”
Life didn’t get any better than this. With anticipation dancing across her skin Madeline opened the bathroom door and eased into the bedroom. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding sunlight flooding through the cabin windows.
Damon rolled over looking smug, sexy and disheveled beneath the rumpled covers. He’d earned the right. They’d made love three times last night, and he’d made a multiple-o’s girl out of her each time. In fact, he’d made her wish for a few fleeting moments that this could be more than just a vacation fling. She liked him, and the man was divine in bed.
His hungry gaze raked her nak*dness, inflaming her and making her feel sexy, desired and special. He flipped back the sheet and patted the mattress. “Come here.”
Something wasn’t right. Madeline’s steps faltered. The hair on Damon’s head was a rich tobacco-brown, but the curls on his chest and surrounding his impressive erection were dark golden blond.
Like the beard stubble on his chin.
Like the hair on his arms and legs.
Not sun bleached.
Huh?
“You’re a natural blond?”
Guilt flashed in his eyes. “Yes.”
“Damon, why would you—”
He grimaced and shook his head. “Dominic. My name is Dominic. Not Damon.”
Warning prickles danced along her spine. She wrapped her arms around her nak*d middle. “Your—What?”
“I can explain.” He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, stood and stepped toward her.
She held up a hand to halt him and backed away from his rampant masculinity while she struggled with the facts. One corner of her mind registered that he had a body worthy of the cover of a fitness magazine or a centerfold, but the other…
“You lied to me?”
“Other than my name, everything I’ve told you is true.”