‘Are you sure?’ he asked deeply, his gaze caressing her body, exposed now for his delight with only a scrap of cotton hiding her most secret parts.
They had so little time, Lauren thought desperately. Soon she’d be leaving for New Zealand.
And Guy? He’d go back to Sant’Rosa, and she had no right to ask him to stay away.
A smile trembled along her lips. ‘Utterly sure,’ she said like a vow.
Guy stood very still, then said, ‘So am I,’ and without haste he shrugged out of his shirt.
Her pulses drummed faster as she feasted her eyes on the clean, perfect symmetry of his body. But when he stood naked before her, her breath locked in her throat. He was, she realised on a note of primitive panic, big all over, and it had been a long time since she’d done this…
‘Relax,’ he said softly, and ran a deliberate forefinger from the centre of her breast to the soft, warm nest between her thighs. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
The path of that finger burned like a streak of fire, and her confidence returned in a rush. Her first glance had told her that he was an experienced lover. ‘I know.’
Solemnly she watched the play of powerful muscles beneath his sleek bronze skin as he untied the mosquito netting so that it fell around the bed in a billow of white, shutting them off from the rest of the world.
Then he came down beside her, dark to her light, sun to her moon, strength to her grace.
LAUREN had expected a slow, sophisticated wooing. Perhaps Guy had planned that, but when she smoothed her hand over his shoulder and down the flexible line of his spine, her fingers tracing out the vertebrae beneath the hot skin, he muttered a word she couldn’t discern. And followed it with another devouring kiss that set her afire with heady, primal intoxication.
A ferocious intensity wiped away the last pathetic shreds of her self-control. When she gasped and arched beneath him, her hips grinding into his, he took an importunate, demanding nipple into his mouth and suckled strongly.
Delicious arrows blazed through her body; groaning, she tightened her fingers around his head, holding him close to her breast while the craving intensified, burning hotter and hotter until she thought she might die of need.
‘Now,’ she muttered. ‘Now, for heaven’s sake… Guy, please—’
He kissed her again, and a second later he was buried to the hilt in her, his big body so rigid she thought he might not be able to control himself any longer.
But he dragged a quick, impeded breath into his lungs, and slowly, deliciously eased out of the slick passage until she gasped his name again, and once more her hips jerked in involuntary provocation.
On a harsh, feral sound, he thrust even deeper inside her, and she met the powerful rhythm and matched it until every thought fled her brain, lost in the sensual tidal wave of Guy’s mastery.
It was like drowning in rapture, and for a sudden moment she fought it, wondering where it would lead, what it would take from her.
‘Relax,’ he said, the words purring roughly into her ear. ‘Let go, Lauren—it won’t hurt. It can’t hurt.’
Yes, it can, she thought wildly, her head tossing back and forth on the pillow, but it was too late. She could no more resist this blatant bewitchment of her senses than she could push him off; she had never before felt so much a woman, so much herself, as she did when Guy made love to her.
Anyway, she couldn’t speak. The pleasure that had been threatening her since her first sight of him boosted her into some stratosphere of sensation. Her lashes flew up and she stared into his face. Lean and dark, every arrogant bone prominent, eyes glittering like the heart of the sun, he looked like a corsair intent on plunder.
And she was it, and she wanted it as much as he did. Lauren abandoned every last inhibition and surrendered to passion, rocking herself against him and tightening her inner muscles in an ancient, provocative rhythm every time he pushed into her.
She saw the moment his control cracked and shattered, registered the split-second of understanding in his aristocratic face, and then the torrent of ecstasy rolled over and through her in waves from the centre of her body.
Savage, merciless, exquisitely arousing, they hurled her into an alternate universe where all she saw was the golden gleam of Guy’s eyes and all she felt was an ineffable rapture that lasted too long and not long enough, where its slow fading was at once a tragedy and a glory.
And then Guy followed her into that secret, bewildering place, a low, hoarse sound torn from his throat as he fought for that peak, his beautiful body like steel against her and in her.
As the savage physical longing ebbed into sweet sorrow, Lauren linked her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. Yielding to her conviction that he needed her had brought her wild ecstasy, but she’d chosen to break through an invisible barrier into another world where invisible chains linked her to him.
How would she ever forget him?
Mouth still holding hers captive, Guy rolled onto his back, scooping her with him so that she was lying on him.
When they could both breathe again, both speak, he asked, ‘When are you leaving Valanu?’
Her heart wept, but she answered steadily, ‘When funds come through for a plane ticket.’
‘I’m returning to Sant’Rosa three days from now,’ he said. ‘Would you like to spend those days with me?’
Lauren lifted her head to stare into his eyes; she saw the pupils dilate, and the fracture in her heart widened as she pulled back. Although the residual heat of passion still smouldered in the golden depths, she realised that once she left Valanu she’d never see Guy again. At least, she thought painfully, he made no promises, offered no inducements. ‘Here?’
‘A little further along the coast.’
‘On a desert island?’ she asked, putting off the moment of decision.
His smile was a sensual challenge. ‘Deserted,’ he said. ‘Not exactly an island.’
Although she hesitated, she knew what answer she’d give him. ‘Yes. But I’ll have to ring my parents and tell them what’s happening.’
He kissed her collar-bone. ‘Everything?’ he asked wickedly.
And although it hurt, she smiled. ‘Not everything,’ she admitted, and yawned.
‘You can tell them when we get there.’
‘You’ve got a telephone on your deserted not-island?’
He tucked her against his shoulder. ‘Yes. Now, go to sleep. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow morning.’
But he woke her once more, and towards dawn she woke him, and both times they made love with slow, sweet passion that culminated in white-hot savagery, leaving them sensually replete.
Sputtering across the lagoon in a banana boat, Lauren turned to look at Guy. Something about his stance, his expression as he frowned into the sun and steered, sent a shiver across her nerve ends. Dismissing the momentary unease, she said lightly, ‘Where did you learn to run a departure like a military exercise?’
The canoe met the oncoming wave a little clumsily, splashing a sparkling cascade of water over the bow. ‘I did army training for a couple of years,’ he said. ‘It’s a tradition in my family. Look, can you see the frigate birds?’ He pointed to a pair of long-tailed birds that