He glanced up at her face. She blinked in surprise. He realized he’d been snarling a warning at Ari.
“Yes?” he asked, forcing his face into impassivity.
She bit her lip in a gesture he recognized as an anxious one. “Should I take off my top?” she whispered.
He blanched, his gaze unerringly lowering to her breasts. Her nipples were erect against the relatively insubstantial fabric of the bra. Was she growing as aroused as he was, touching her? Or did she enjoy Ari’s attention on her? The thought scalded him. He poured more lotion onto his hand and began to apply it to her arms.
“Do you want to?” he asked evenly, rubbing up and down on both her upper arms at once, the rhythmic movement striking him as sexual. Everything was striking him as sexual. His cock swelled tighter. Damn it. What was wrong with him? The hot summer air surrounding him suddenly felt thick and electrical. He couldn’t get enough oxygen in his lungs.
“I don’t know. I just feel . . . so American.”
“You are American,” he replied drolly.
“I’ve never equated the word with feeling like a Puritan until now,” she said under her breath.
“I like your Americanness just fine,” he said stiffly, rubbing some lotion on her chest, “but if you want to go topless, do it. As you see, it’s the custom.”
He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Why didn’t he just tell her to take off the top? He’d sunbathed with girlfriends going topless hundreds of times while he was in the South of France, never thinking more of it than Niki did about Georgia.
Emma was no different.
The emotion he’d been tamping down since this morning threatened to swell higher. He gritted his teeth. She was different. He liked everything about her. He adored her freshness and sexy sweetness and otherworldly wisdom. So how come he wanted to punish her for those things she’d said this morning? How come he wanted to hurt her a little for hurting him? He knew she hadn’t meant to cause him distress. He knew she was kinder and just . . . better . . . than anyone he’d known since he was an adult.
Ever known.
But he still wanted to see her undone, just a tad anxious . . . not to mention writhing with excitement, whimpering in pleasure.
His fingertips brushed across the tops of her firm, thrusting breasts. He felt the pulse in his cock. In the distance, he noticed Niki get up and ask everyone if they wanted refreshers on their drinks. He didn’t look around even when his friend called, “Van? Emma?” Vaguely he was aware of Emma shaking her head. He stared fixedly at the pales mounds of her breasts as he rubbed them with his fingertip. Her nipples were growing more and more erect beneath the fabric. He glanced up to her face and saw that her lips were parted as she stared down at him. She was so exquisite.
Too exquisite. She was a threat, somehow.
He reached up abruptly and untied the strings at her neck. “I
t’s not a big deal,” he lied. He lowered the fabric, exposing her creamy, firm breasts and tight nipples. The vision taunted him. They looked so delicate . . . so naked. In the periphery of his vision, he noticed Ari start slightly and place his hands on the arm of the lounger as if in preparation to spring up. Every muscle in Vanni’s body tensed.
“Fuck,” he muttered savagely, jerking the strings back up around her neck and tying them off hard. He’d been willing to expose her to assure himself it didn’t matter . . . to convince himself she didn’t matter.
“Vanni?” Emma asked, clearly bewildered by his actions. He flung himself off the lounger and grabbed her hand. She rose and he headed with a single-minded purpose toward the stairs. He ignored the others when they looked around. They didn’t exist. Only Emma did, and this strange, boiling need inside him that was about to erupt.
* * *
Emma’s gaze skimmed across the others’ startled faces as Vanni pulled her to the staircase. Estelle whipped off her sunglasses and followed their progress across the deck with a livid scowl. Her husband, however, looked pleased.
“Van?” Niki stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding a bag of ice. He looked from Emma’s dazed expression to Vanni’s rigid, furious one. “Oh,” he said, blinking in amazement. “Downstairs, first door on the right.”
Heat flooded her cheeks when without another word, Vanni pulled her down the next level of stairs. Emma looked back at Niki.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
A strange expression broke over Niki’s handsome face. He looked pleased. “Don’t be,” he said emphatically.
Vanni marched across the living room, a man on a mission. Her heart was about to pop out of her chest, it was thundering so fast against her breastbone when he pulled her into a room and slammed the door shut behind her. The snick of the lock in combination with his burning gaze sounded ominous . . . thrilling.
Emma had a fleeting impression of a luxury suite with gleaming mahogany wood and a king-sized bed. Then Vanni was reaching behind her neck and tearing open the knot he’d just made up on the deck. He jerked the bikini top down over her breasts and pushed her toward the bed. Emma spilled backward, her knees at the edge of the mattress. He came down over her, his hands planted next to her shoulders, elbows bent, his lower body pressing her down into the bed. One second she’d been standing, and the next his mouth was enclosing her breast. She gasped at the impact of him, his hot suck on her sensitive flesh, his rigid, laving tongue on her nipple. Liquid heat flooded her, answering his fierce, wild demand. She felt his cock jump against her thigh. He flexed his hips, grinding himself against her, unapologetic in his need.
She understood this was the same fire that had raged in him on the dock. It leapt up even stronger now, more furious because it had been banked and forced to simmer under wraps. She was more than willing to be the focus of his distilled desire and chaotic emotions. She wasn’t afraid of him; her own need more than matched his.
He gathered both of her breasts in his hands and plumped them for his ravening mouth. He lifted his head after a moment and switched his target, latching on to her other nipple and drawing on it so precisely, so sweetly, that she clutched at his head in rising desperation and flexed her hips, pushing her sex into the bed to get an indirect pressure on it. As if he felt the give in her flesh, he ground against her, his cock feeling like a long, heavy poker throbbing beneath the thin layer of his trunks.