The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,52

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, not really even listening, his reasoning dissolving into a red haze as her mouth and tongue slowly devoured the fruit.

Vasco had fed Lady Mary, taunting her with slithers of pear, inching them closer, stroking them against her moist lips, watching her as she sucked them inside her mouth, her gaze not leaving his face.

He itched to pick the mango up and re-enact the scene. Cut off thin slices and feed them to Stella one by one. Watch her pupils dilate and her breath become shallow just as Lady Mary’s had.

Maybe even hear that whimper again at the back of her throat. The whimper that was all Stella.

Stella’s breath hitched as Rick’s eyes seemed to suddenly glitter like moonbeams on sapphires. She swallowed her mouthful of mango but juice escaped to her lips and she ran her tongue around them to capture the errant moisture.

Rick shut his eyes and groaned as all his noble intentions from last night faded to black with each revolution of her tongue. ‘Stella,’ he murmured, his eyelids fluttering open to find her staring at him.

Stella blinked at the ache in his voice. Had he edged closer? Or had she? She looked at his mouth, remembered how it had felt against hers. How it had been so much better than she’d ever fantasised. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered, mango forgotten.

Rick nodded, his gaze fixed on her mouth, inching his own closer to hers, drawn to her as if she were a homing beacon, his heart rate pulsing to the beat of the sea. ‘Certifiable.’

Stella felt his pull as a physical force, which seemed only fitting beneath a canopy of stars with the rhythm of the ocean lulling away the insanity of it all. ‘What about the memories, Rick?’

Her voice was low and husky in the quiet of the night as she tried to hang onto the one thing that made sense between them, even though her pulse coursed like an ocean squall through every inch of her body.

Suddenly her mouth felt dry.

So dry.

As if she’d been drinking sea water for days and, not only was her thirst unquenchable, it was sending her slowly mad. She swallowed and licked her lips to ease the dry, parched feeling.

Rick’s pupils dilated as her tongue darted out. ‘Screw ’em,’ he muttered as his final shard of resistance melted away. ‘Let’s make better ones.’

R-rated ones.

And he closed the distance between them, capturing her mouth. There was a moment, ever so brief, when she could have pulled away, could have protested and he would have been capable of letting it slide. But when she opened to him instantly on a deep-in-his-bones moan the moment passed in a blink of an eye and her mango and coconut essence wrapped him in a sticky web of desire that was impossible to break free of.

Even if he wanted to.

Which he didn’t.

His heart crashed in his chest, his breath sawed in and out. Her hands crept around his neck and she made that noise at the back of her throat and somehow, some way, he had her on the deck, her breasts pressed against his chest, her hand shoved in his hair.

Where his beer or her mango had ended up he didn’t know and he didn’t care. All he knew was she smelled like paradise and felt like every erotic dream he’d ever had, and when she moaned into his mouth her desire tasted sweet like mango and he wanted to devour every drop.

He was hard and needy and something in his head insisted that he touch every inch of her, smell every inch of her, know every inch of her.

His hand drifted south to the wild flutter at the base of her throat and she moaned. It moved further to the top button of her wrap, where the swell of her breast was emphasised by the taut fabric of her bikini top, and she gasped.

It fanned down over her ribs and came to rest on the gentle rise of her belly and she arched her back and undulated her stomach and sighed, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

Rick pulled away, breathing hard. Her face was soft and full of wonder. If he were an egotist he might even have called it rapture.

‘Let’s go to my cabin,’ he murmured, kissing her eyes and the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth.

Stella opened her lashes, seeing nothing but Rick’s face crowned by about a million stars—when had they come out?

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I