‘Theos,’ he breathed as his senses locked into overdrive. He’d seen many women in many different stages of undress. He’d seen them deliberately playing the temptress in an effort to capture his interest but he never expected to see this woman do it—never expected to see her wearing anything so damned outrageous!
Maybe she did not know of his presence. Maybe she was playing the siren like this because she truly believed there was no one to see!
Then he remembered Yannis—warned to follow her every move because he did not trust her not to find some way to flee again. The idea of any other man enjoying the sight of his wife parading herself in what could only be called a couple of pieces of string had a red-hot tide of primitive possessiveness raking through him and sent his head shooting round, glinting black eyes flashing out a scan around the area, hunting out places a silent guard could watch unseen.
Then she dropped out of the stretch and his attention became riveted on Nell again as she began to run down to the sea, light steps kicking up soft, dry sand then leaving small footprints in the wet as she went. She hit the water at a run, her beautiful hair flying out behind her. In a smooth, graceful, curving dive, she disappeared beneath the smooth crystal water, leaving him standing there hot, damp in places, feeling as if he had just imagined the whole thing!
Nell swam beneath the surface until her lungs began to burst then she bobbed up like a seal, took in a deep breath then struck out with a smooth, graceful crawl towards the edge of the little cove where the rocky landscape on this side of the island rose up in a sheer slab for several feet she’d always thought would be great to dive from but had not yet found a way to reach the edge up there.
The tiny cove was perfect for swimming in because its two flanking outcrops gave her something to aim for when she swam across the cove. Making a neat racing turn, she started back in the other direction. She loved swimming, always had from being small. She’d swum for her school and won a few gold medals too. In Canada she’d scared her mother by swimming in the Kananaskis River, and before getting married had been a regular visitor to the local public swimming pool. When she’d married Xander, he had changed all of that by closeting her at Rosemere, which had its own pool, so she did not have to leave home to swim. On the rare occasions he’d turned up at the house unexpectedly to find her using the pool, she’d glimpsed him standing by the bevelled glass doors watching her cut a smooth line through the water—not that she’d ever let him know that she’d known he was standing there. When you hated and resented someone you ignored them as much as possible then they could never know what was really fizzing around your insides.
She made sure she did not look his way now, though the fact that she knew he was there watching her filled her with a mad, crazy, excited exhilaration as she cut through the water with smooth, darting strokes that barely caused a ripple on the ocean surface.
She was halfway across the cove when he struck, swimming beneath her and closing his hands around her waist. Nell let out a shrill, high-pitched scream and almost drowned as she gulped salt water into her lungs just before Xander lifted her high out of the water, rising like a big, black-eyed Poseidon out of the sea with his catch gripped between his hands.
‘You shameless, ruthless provocateur!’ he bellowed at her, then brought her sliding down the length of his body until her face was level with his.
Still coughing and choking, and almost hyperventilating with shock, Nell felt her skin slither against hard, tough, hair-roughened skin, legs, breast—hips! ‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped out. ‘You’ve got no clothes on!’
‘I have no clothes on?’ he bit out angrily. ‘What the hell do you think it is that you are wearing?’
Clutching at his satin-tight shoulders because she had to clutch at something, Nell lowered her eyes from the fury burning in his, then wished she hadn’t when she saw to her horror that the two wet triangles of silk that should be covering her
breasts had shifted and now two tight pink nipples were pouting at her like reckless taunts. Colour pouring into her wet cheeks, she flicked her wide eyes back to his blazing eyes and opened her mouth to retaliate with something—but he got there first, slamming his mouth onto hers with all the angry passion that had driven him through the water, submerged and unseen until he could grab her from underneath.
It was a kiss like nothing she had ever experienced. Open-mouthed, hot, frenzied and deep. It didn’t help that they were both still panting from their energetic swim, both hearts pounding like thunder, both straining wildly against each other, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, his like clamps around her slippery waist.
The rough sound of masculine desire ground from his throat and he broke the kiss to lift her high again, eyes like burning black coals as he dipped his head and latched his mouth onto one of her breasts. The greedy suck dragged a shocked cry of pleasure from her, and sent him in search of the other breast.
When he lowered her to recapture her mouth he moved his hands to her wriggling hips, used long, sensually sliding fingers to urge uselessly flailing legs apart then wrapped them firmly around his hips. She took the new intimacy with a breath-gulping quiver, felt the bold thrust of his penis, rock-solid and probing against her flesh. The G-string was no barrier. She was going to lose her virginity right here in the ocean to a man balanced on the edge between violence and passion, and what was worse, she didn’t care.
His hands were moulding the tight curve of her bottom now, her fingers buried in the wet silk of his hair, fingernails clawing at his scalp. The kiss was so wild and hot and urgent she felt dizzy from it, then it was gone.
With an angry growl he thrust her from him, sending her floundering into the sea. She dropped beneath the surface. By the time she’d gathered enough sense to make the push back to the surface he was already pounding his way back to the beach.
It was the worst, most devastating rejection he had ever dealt her. For a horrible few seconds Nell thought she was going to faint. If she could she would be turning and swimming out to sea just to get away from the fresh burn of rejection she was feeling but he’d sapped her strength, taking it with him like some lethal, heartless virus, leaving her with this hot, sensual, dragging feeling that was so new to her she didn’t know what to do to ease herself out of its grip.
She watched him rise out of the water, a beautiful, wide-shouldered, long-bodied, bronze-skinned male without a hint of shame in his own nakedness. Toned muscles that moved and flexed in lithe coordination were caught to perfection by the water clinging to his flesh and the loving glint of the sun. He did not look back, and Nell could feel his anger emanating towards her back across the calm ocean and she hated herself for responding to him. Her breasts felt heavy, their tips tingling and tight. Even as she trod water in an effort to keep herself afloat her thighs had clamped together as if to hold in their first experience of a fully aroused man thrusting against the hidden flesh.
It took every bit of will-power she could drum up to make herself follow him, dipping beneath the water in an effort to cool the heat from her face and her body then angrily resettling her bikini top before she allowed herself to surface again then make deeply reluctant strikes for the shore.
By the time she reached it he’d pulled on a pair of smooth-fitting trousers, muscles clenching tightly across his glistening back when he heard the splash of her feet as she waded through the shallows to the beach.
Bending down, he scooped up her sarong, half turned and tossed it to her. It landed in a floaty drift of white on the damp sand at her feet, and he was already snatching up his shirt and dragging it on over his glinting wet skin.
Xander thought about apologising but he’d played that hand before and too often to give the words any impact. Anyway, he was not sorry. He was angry and aroused and he could still feel her legs wrapped around him, could still taste her in his mouth. He had an ache between his legs that was threatening to envelop him.
‘You will not flaunt your body in get-ups like that excuse for a bikini,’ he clipped out, heard the words, realised he sounded like a disapproving father, hated that, uttered a driven sigh that spun him about.
She was trying to knot the sarong with fumbling fingers. Her beautiful hair was slicked to her head. She had never looked more subdued or more tragic.
‘And when we get around to making love it will not be out in the open for anyone to watch us,’ he heard himself add.
‘Behind a locked bedroom door on a bed, maybe,’ she suggested. ‘How boringly conventional of you.’
Subdued but not dead, Xander noted from that little piece of slicing derision. He could not help the smile that twitched at his mouth. It eased some of the passion-soaked aggression out of his voice.
‘More comfortable too,’ he agreed drily. ‘I was treading water out there. I don’t know how I kept us both floating. Add some of the really physical stuff and I would likely have drowned us in the process.’