The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,59

mind at ease.

His obviously misleading comments.

‘This is Diana’s copy,’ she said as she thumbed through it. She’d have known it without the benefit of her autograph on the title page. She’d know this dog-eared copy anywhere—she’d seen Diana reading it often enough.

‘Yes. She gave it to me just before we left your house that day.’

‘Oh, did she, now?’ Stella murmured, her ire rising as she formulated a rather stinging email rant in her head. But then another thought hit and she sat bolt upright. ‘Oh, God,’ she said as the most important thing of all occurred to her. She turned her head and looked down at him. ‘So you know...’

She couldn’t even finish the statement, it was so embarrassing.

Rick grinned at her mortified look as he crossed his ankles and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘That I’m Vasco Ramirez?’

The pink she’d gone earlier was nothing to the deep red that currently suffused her cheeks. She opened her mouth to deny it but she couldn’t. If he’d read it, he’d know. There was too much of him in it. Not just that tantalising birthmark but the essence of him. His mannerisms, his way with words, his sense of humour.

His sense of honour.

She looked away, her fingers absently stroking the raised lettering on the cover. ‘Well, there’s no need to get too big-headed about it,’ she huffed. ‘I needed a pirate of Spanish descent. It made sense to...model him on someone I knew.’

Whatever happened she couldn’t let him know that she’d been fantasising about him for a long time before Vasco had come on the scene. That Vasco had walked into her head fully formed because of him. He was already freaked out enough about the development in their relationship.

‘But any resemblance to person or persons alive or dead...’

Rick vaulted upright, fitting himself in behind her, his front to her back, covering her mouth with his hand, cutting off the lawyer speak as he kissed her shoulder. ‘Shh, Stella,’ he murmured. ‘I love it that you modelled him on me.’

He brushed a string of kisses up higher as he dropped his hand to her shoulder. ‘I’m not going to sue you, I’m...flattered. And impressed how...accurate...’ he smiled against her skin ‘...your descriptions are. That bath scene...’ He nuzzled her ear; his hands moved to cup her breasts, his thumbs brushing over the already erect nipples. ‘It was like you’d painted a portrait of me.’

Stella arched her back and felt her eyes roll back in her head as his mouth and fingers turned her insides to mush.

Rick kissed up her jaw and when she turned her head towards him he feathered kisses along her lips. ‘Like you’d actually seen me naked,’ he whispered against her mouth as one hand left her breast bearing south.

His words triggered a thought and Stella opened her eyes. ‘You knew,’ she murmured. ‘You’d already read the book when you spied me watching you have that shower.’

He chuckled unashamedly in her ear as both hands stroked her thighs. ‘Guilty,’ he whispered.

Her brow wrinkled as she remembered how cannily familiar some things on this trip had been. The shower incident. When he’d tended her wounds as Vasco had done. When he’d squeezed mango juice all over her body.

But he’d turned her whole body into an erogenous zone and when he urged her thighs apart she didn’t object.

‘Have you been deliberately enacting scenes from the book?’ she murmured, raising both arms and linking them around his neck, arching her back as his finger slid between her legs.

‘What did you expect me to do for fun when you took away all my recreational flirting? Anyway, do you care?’ he whispered, his erection pressing into the cleft of her soft round buttocks.

‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘I’m mad as he...ll.’ And she would have sounded much more convincing had he not driven a finger deep inside her.

He chuckled at her breathy whimper. ‘Are you telling me you haven’t been taking advantage too? That you didn’t think about the book when you were spying on me in the shower? Or when I was tending to your wounds? That bringing those scenes to life didn’t excite you?’

Stella knew he was right. Knew that it would be hard to take the moral high ground when she’d been using him to indulge a few of her own fantasies.

But she was damned if she was going to let him have it all his way. ‘It’s just a story,’ she panted as he stroked between her legs. ‘They’re what excited