‘Amelia.’
She laughed softly, the sound carrying across the room to
wards the ocean.
‘Santos,’ she said his name sternly. Then grinned. ‘Relax.’
‘Not bloody likely.’
She laughed again but, a moment later, neither of them was laughing. She moved faster, completely captivated by the intimacy of this and the ancient, feminine rush of power that trilled in her veins. Driving him beyond wild was possibly the most addictive thing she’d ever done. His fingers dug into her shoulder, and his voice filled the room, but she didn’t stop, not until he’d surrendered to her completely, his pleasure exploding through her, his hoarse groan wrapping around her.
Lifting on to her haunches, she then straddled him, smiling, settling herself on his waist and pressing her hands to his chest.
He captured one of her hands as it trailed towards his nipple, lifting it to his lips instead and pressing a kiss against the inside of her wrist. ‘Have you tried contacting your parents?’
For a moment, pain lanced her chest. She met his eyes then looked away towards the dawn sky and the shifting ocean beneath it. ‘I call them a few times a year. They don’t answer, and never return my calls.’
Her pain was obvious; she could feel it spreading through her and she forced a smile to her face. He didn’t return it. ‘Don’t look at me like that, please.’
‘How am I looking at you?’
‘Like you feel sorry for me. Like you’re working out how to fix it.’
His frown was a flash in his face. ‘It seems strange that your parents would choose not to have you in their lives. And stranger still that you would accept it.’
‘What can I do? You can’t force someone to love you, Santos. It’s taken me a long time to accept it, but at the end of the day my value to them was always tied up in my academic success, and how that translated financially for them. I—as a person on my own—don’t particularly matter.’
‘If that’s true, then they don’t deserve to have you in their lives.’
She couldn’t respond to that. She’d come to a similar conclusion years earlier but that didn’t take the sting out of it. She tried another smile and squeezed his hand. ‘It’s fine.’ She wasn’t sure if she was saying that to herself or him.
He was quiet for a time, so that only the sound of the ocean rolling towards the island broke the silence. A moment later, she shifted her weight away from him. ‘I should get back to my room.’
‘Oh, no you don’t.’ He grabbed her arms and tumbled her to the bed, his body weight on top of hers now.
She laughed, pressing a palm to his chest. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You can’t wake a man up like that without giving him the honour of repaying the favour.’
‘I think I’m still well and truly in your debt,’ she said, her lips twitching with amusement, her heart hammering with anticipation.
‘But who’s keeping score?’
She couldn’t reply. Not when his mouth wrapped around one of her nipples and his fingers moved between her legs, pushing all thoughts from her mind completely.
* * *
‘What are you doing tonight?’
He watched as she pulled her clothes on, each movement unknowingly graceful, her body lithe and beautiful.
‘I’m going to double-check some equations before I email them off, and then Talia and I had talked about taking Cameron to look for shells.’
He nodded distractedly, the activity perfectly suitable for a day such as this. And he had a mountain of work. But, in the back of his mind, he was conscious of the days racing past. Nights were a sensual blur, nights in which he could indulge his cravings for this woman piece by piece until—momentarily—he was satisfied. But mornings broke faster than he’d have liked, and she was always gone, a phantom of her in the throbbing of his pulse and the hardness of his body. In two weeks, she’d leave the island for good, and he was mostly relieved by that, because already he could see how easily he could become addicted to her. Addicted to her body, he reminded himself forcefully, because that was what he found himself waking up craving.
Sex.
And sex was something he understood. But there was something different with Amelia, the way being with her made him feel. Perhaps it was simply her presence on his island, a haven he generally kept private. Or perhaps her fierce intelligence added another dimension to their dynamic—he certainly found them sparking off each other in a way that was wholly new. Or perhaps it was everything about her.