‘Are you going back?’ She held her breath until he answered.
‘Yes.’
Something about his intonation and the formidable expression made her say, ‘Why? What skills do you have to help?’
His left brow rose, as mocking as the smile that curved his mouth. ‘I have contacts—I know who to apply to for the kind of aid that’s needed, and I can act as go-between.’
An odd, aching foreboding clutched her with a cold grip. Ignoring it, she got to her feet and said, ‘Dinner’s ready. I’ll go and get it.’
Over the meal Lauren set herself to switch Guy’s mind away from the horrors of the past few days. She filled him in on the latest headlines, culled from the newspaper stand outside the immigration office, then skimmed over a couple of juicy financial scandals and the spectacularly spicy meltdown of a singer’s marriage.
He knew what she was doing, but he went along with her and by the end of the meal he was laughing and the lines of tension scoring his lean face were slightly less deep.
Whereas she was now racked by taut expectancy.
‘Coffee?’ she asked, shielding herself with the banal little rituals of everyday life. ‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid.’
‘It’ll be fine.’ He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck, the easy flexion of his big body sending a shivering little ripple of anticipation through her. ‘But before you make it, I’ll go and collect the other parcel I have for you.’
‘What—’
‘You’ll see,’ he said coolly.
It took him about twenty minutes, the longest twenty minutes of Lauren’s life. When he came back she was sitting out on the terrace waiting for him, the friendly darkness pressing against her.
‘Here,’ he said, tossing a parcel onto the table.
‘Oh.’ Another plastic bag. ‘What is it?’
‘Clothes.’
Her clothes from Sant’Rosa. She said, ‘Thank you. I thought they’d have been looted.’
‘They’re new.’ He paused, then said, ‘I should go.’ He spoke abruptly, the words falling stark and curt in the heavy air.
Lauren got up and walked across to the tiny kitchen. With her back to him she filled the battered electric kettle and plugged it in, then set two cups on a tray with sugar and milk. Only when she’d made the coffee and picked up the tray did she ask coolly, ‘Why?’
Guy watched her carry the tray across to the table. She walked as he’d dreamed of her in the hot, foetid jungle nights—with the lithe, easy grace that set off her long, lovely legs and the sensuous little sway of her hips that had dragged him temporarily out of hell.
He waited until she’d sat down and picked up the milk jug before saying in a deliberately prosaic voice, ‘Because if I stay it will be in your bed, and I doubt if either of us will sleep much.’
Guy regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Pragmatism was doing its best to convince him that making love to a woman he’d forced into a temporary marriage was a stupid thing to do.
For once, pragmatism could go bury itself.
Her hand shook so much she had to set the milk jug down. She kept her head down too so that all he could see was the lovely curve of her cheekbone. After a moment she poured the milk in, then got up and turned off the lights.
In the soft half-darkness, illuminated only by the stars, she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I hadn’t wanted that.’
Damn it, he could taste the need, hot as sin, dangerously heady as any drug; wanting Lauren was an ache in his guts, a reckless loss of control that both excited and infuriated him.
And for the first time in his life he was being propositioned by a woman who had no idea who he was. Here in Valanu they knew him only as Guy Bagaton. Combined with the heated sexual appetite raging through him, Lauren’s offer was damned near irresistible.
‘Neither reward nor gratitude,’ Lauren said.
Was there a hint of nervousness beneath the polished surface? When she stopped a step away, Guy refused to reach out, although the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched with the effort to keep them still. Leaping on her with famished savagery was not the way to endear yourself to a woman, he thought derisively.
He asked, ‘So what is it?’
The taut seconds that followed his question didn’t give him enough time to impose control on his more primitive instincts. He could die wanting her, he thought, grimly fighting the physical longing that undermined his will-power, but he hadn’t come here for this.
Then she bent and fitted her mouth to his. Against his lips she said, ‘This.’
And kissed him.
She tasted of mystery and delight, of sex and truth, of daring and intensity and grace. An exultant, desperate need roared through him, and he said too harshly, ‘Good, because that’s what I want too.’
When Lauren began to straighten, he came up with her in a silent, purposeful movement that sent shudders through her.
‘Like this,’ he said.
He caught her against him, his mouth taking hers in a kiss that gave no quarter. Dimly, Lauren realised that it was a signal of dominant masculinity, and she gloried in it, demanding as much from him as he asked from her, her eager body thrumming with need.
He kissed her as though she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, as though they shared infinitely more than this transitory passion, this time out of time in the empty blue reaches of the Pacific.
Shuddering, she opened her mouth to his, and relished the wild kick of passion inside her—and the fierce hardness of his body against hers.
‘When I first saw you,’ he said, reluctantly giving her air, ‘I wanted you.’ That faint trace of accent flavoured each word, intriguing and different.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘You looked like a pirate. A very sexy pirate.’
His heavy eyelids almost covered his eyes, but she could see a gleam of laughter in their golden depths. ‘You have a thing for pirates?’
‘Stubble suits some people,’ she said demurely, nipping her way along his jawbone.
He laughed again, deep and low and triumphant, and kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulders, and then the warm swell of her breasts above her sarong. Pleasure raced through her in a dizzying flood; as he deftly untied the knot she knew that nothing in her previous life had prepared her for the ardent, honeyed recklessness of making love with Guy.
When the sarong fell away, he froze. Lauren gazed into his stunned face, and her heart tumbled into free-fall. She hadn’t known a man could look like that—a mixture of conqueror and supplicant, eyes glittering in a darkly drawn face while he gazed at the slender white curves and lines of her body.
And then he lifted his head, and there was no supplication in his expression now—he was all conqueror. Her breath locked deliciously in her chest when he cupped a small, high breast, tanned fingers shaping the pale curves with erotic confidence as his thumb brushed the tight pink bud at the centre, slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until she moaned deep in her throat.
Needles of pure desire ran along her nerves; she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him that he was killing her with sensation. Even her breath died when he bent his head and kissed the nipple his thumb had tantalised. Carnal sensation sparked an inferno inside her when the tight little nub peaked in a silent, evocative plea for more.
He gave it to her, his dark head drawing close. Lauren swallowed,