The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,57

time and thrust all the way in. So did he. ‘I have a confession,’ she murmured.

Rick felt his orgasm drawing nearer and beat it back. ‘You do?’ he panted.

She nodded as his pulsing became thrusting once again. ‘When you had a shower the other night at the yacht club in Moresby...’ her teeth sank into her lower lip and she clenched his shoulder as he picked up the pace ‘...I was spying on you.’

Rick pulled out all the way this time, pushing back in until she gasped and arched her back. He was a perfect fit.

‘I have a confession too,’ he said as a more urgent rhythm took over, nudging the slow inexorable build into something much harder to control. He withdrew quickly and just as quickly plunged back in. ‘I saw you.’

If she hadn’t been about to come Stella might have been angry. Embarrassed certainly. But the fact that he’d known, that he’d turned so she could see all of him, was inexplicably arousing. That combined with the continual in-and-out thrust of him was a heady combination.

‘Pervert,’ she gasped as he hit the spot that made her shudder and quiver and cling.

Rick grunted as her fingernails dug in and everything started to unravel. ‘Look who you’re calling pervert, my lovely.’

Stella was going to say something else, but all that came out was a gurgly whimper as she let the hypocritical protest fly up and become stardust. ‘Ah-h-h,’ she cried out as time and space blurred and all that remained was him and her and the silent permission of the ocean.

Rick felt things heat and boil as his belly tensed to an unbearable rigidity. He pulled her into him and crooned, ‘Yes, Stella, yes,’ directly into her ear as she threw back her head and called out his name, clamping tight around him, falling apart in his arms.

It was all that he needed and he bellowed into her chest, thrusting with none of the finesse of earlier as he rode the savage dictates of his body to their final release.

* * *

After a long night of getting acquainted in a way they never had before, Stella woke late the next morning to find Rick propped up on his elbow looking down at her. His eyes seemed even bluer in the morning sunshine slanting through his undressed portholes, his eyelashes longer. His hair seemed shaggier as it hung around his face and brushed his broad bronzed shoulders. His lips fuller.

He should look girly but he didn’t.

He looked utterly masculine with nothing but a white sheet riding low on his hips.

‘Good morning,’ she murmured, blushing as she remembered just what lay beneath that sheet and the things he’d done with it.

She’d done with it.

Rick smiled at the pinkness in her cheeks, surprised that someone who knew him so carnally was capable of such modesty. ‘Good morning to you too,’ he replied, dropping a kiss on a bare shoulder.

His smile slackened as a feeling he wasn’t familiar with washed over him and took up residence in his gut like a lead sinker. Nothing like how he usually felt the morning after—loose and light with all his kinks ironed out. Stella wasn’t some bar hook-up or one of his many port calls. He wasn’t sure what came next.

Stella noted his pensive look. ‘I hope that’s not buyer’s remorse,’ she murmured.

Rick shook his head. If she slapped him in the face and swam back home to England right this moment and refused to see him again he would never regret last night. ‘Never.’

He lowered his head again and kissed her on the mouth, a long, slow, lingering kiss that tasted of them and left him hard beneath the sheet and aching for more.

Stella sighed as he pulled back, brushing her fingers along the soft bristles of his perpetual three day growth. ‘So what’s up?’ she murmured.

He turned his face, kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘I guess,’ he said, looking down into her sleepy olive gaze, ‘I’m not sure what comes next...’

Stella smiled. ‘Breakfast, I think. Unless you want to—’ she dropped her hand to his chest, traced her index finger down his belly to the interesting bulge in the sheet ‘—fool around a bit more?’

Rick captured her hand before it hit her target and thinking wouldn’t be possible. ‘Stel,’ he said. ‘I’m serious. Normally I’d kiss you and tell you I had to be somewhere in a couple of hours but...this is you and...I don’t have a well-rehearsed morning-after plan for this. Frankly I’m