gaze up and down him. “And, you’ll remember, I also have had the fascination of seeing you stripped. It wouldn’t hurt you to pump a little iron, Douglas.”
“Obvious muscles get in the way. I’d rather be subtle.”
“You certainly are.”
He shot her a look as he tossed a coconut shell aside. “You like biceps and triceps bulging out of a sleeveless T-shirt?”
“Masculinity,” she said lightly, “is very arousing. A confident male doesn’t find it necessary to ogle an over-endowed woman who chooses to wear tight sweaters to disguise the fact she has a very small brain.”
“I guess you don’t like being ogled.”
“Certainly not. I prefer style to cleavage.”
“Good thing.”
“There’s no need to be insulting.”
“Just being agreeable.” He remembered too well the way she’d wept in his arms the day before and how helpless he’d felt. Now, he found he wanted to touch her again, watch her smile, feel the softness. “Anyway,” he said, working his way back from a long drop. “You might be skinny, but I like your face.”
Her lips curved in that cool, aloof smile he found maddeningly alluring. “Really? What about it?”
“Your skin.” Going with the impulse, he ran the back of his knuckles down her jawline. “I came across this alabaster cameo once. It wasn’t big,” he remembered as he traced a finger down her cheekbone. “Probably wasn’t worth more than a few hundred, but it was the classiest thing I’d ever picked up.” He grinned, then let his hands roam into her hair. “Until you.”
She didn’t move away, but kept her eyes on his as his breath feathered over her skin. “Is that what you did, Douglas? Pick me up?”
“You could look at it that way, couldn’t you?” He knew he was making a mistake. Even as his lips brushed over hers he knew he was making a very big mistake. He’d made them before. “Since I did,” he murmured, “I haven’t known exactly what to do with you.”
“I’m not an alabaster cameo,” she murmured as her arms wound around his neck. “Or the Sydney Diamond or a pot of gold.”
“I’m not a member of the country club and I don’t have a villa in Martinique.”
“It would seem…” She traced the outline of his mouth with her tongue. “We have very little in common.”
“Nothing in common,” he corrected as his hands slid up her back. “People like you and me can’t bring each other anything but trouble.”
“Yeah.” She smiled and the eyes beneath the fringe of long, luxurious lashes were dark and amused. “When do we start?”
“We already have.”
When their lips met, they were no longer a lady and a thief. Passion was a great equalizer. Together they rolled onto the soft forest floor.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen, but she had no regrets. Attraction that she’d felt from the moment he’d removed the sunglasses in her elevator and looked at her with his clear, direct eyes had been edging toward something deeper, broader, more unsettling. He’d begun to touch something in her, and now with passion, he released a great deal more.
Her mouth was as hot and hungry as his. That had happened before. Her pulse raced—no new experience. Her body stretched and arched at the touch of a man’s hands. She’d felt those sensations before. But this time, this first and only time, she let her mind go and experienced lovemaking as it was meant to be. Mindless, liberating pleasure.
Though the surrender of her best defense, her mind, was complete, she wasn’t passive. Her need was as great as his, as primitive, as overwhelming, as elemental. When they undressed each other in a frenzy, her hands were as quick as his.
Flesh against flesh, warm, firm, sleek. Mouth against mouth, open, hot, hungry. They rolled over the soft ground with no more inhibitions than children, but with passion full-grown and straining.
She couldn’t get enough of him and tasted, touched, as if she’d never known a man before. In that moment, she could remember no others. He filled her, heart, mind, threatening to stay so that there would never be room for another. She understood, and after the first fear, accepted.
He’d wanted women before, desperately. Or so he’d thought. Until now he hadn’t known the full meaning of desperation. Until now, he hadn’t known what it was to want. She was seeping into him, pore by pore. Women were allowed to pleasure and be pleasured, but they weren’t allowed intimacy. Intimacy meant complications a man on the run couldn’t afford. But there was no stopping