Walking around the pole, she grasped it high up and stretched her legs out wide, twisting her body around and spinning gracefully to the ground. She repeated the move, this time curling around the pole in a foetal position, her knees tucked up. The music informed her movements—slow, indolent, but ripe with sensuality. Shinning to the top of the pole, she wrapped her thighs tightly around it, gasping in exquisite pain at the pressure of the cool chrome on her burning flesh. The memory of Angelo’s hands on her waist as they danced last night filled her head, driving her to the brink of oblivion. Eyes closed, head tipped back in an agony of remembrance she spread her legs wide and swivelled down before climbing up again.
Her body pulsed with longing for his touch, the warmth of his breath on her neck. The music held her in thrall, throbbing through her as she let her body twist and curve almost of its own volition, every move an expression of desperate need. Dropping backwards in a sinuous arc, she gripped the pole near the floor and cartwheeled back to her feet as the music finished.
For a second there was silence.
Then Angelo’s voice, cold and steel-edged.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
He was on the deck above, waiting for another call from London, when he heard the music. Recognizing it, he gave a wry smile as remembered sensations from last night crowded into his mind, driving out all thoughts of business.
He got up and walked over to the railing, leaning his back against it, reliving the dance. How long had they swayed together like that, oblivious to the rest of the world? Minutes? Hours? He didn’t have a clue, he realised, and in his rigidly timetabled, efficiency-driven world that was unheard of. He’d let go of everything, in a way that was completely alien to him. He’d felt young. Carefree.
And Angelo Emiliani had never done young or carefree.
He couldn’t afford to do them now either, he reflected ruefully, trying to re-focus his brain on the matters in hand. Countless phone calls to just about every contact in his address book had failed to come up with anything concrete on an Anna Field, and Ifford’s solicitors were being extremely vague about when the contract on the château could be signed. French law dictated that the signatures of all interested parties had to be obtained, and it was taking some time to make the necessary arrangements. Angelo sneeringly assumed that the English aristocracy didn’t work to the same imperatives as the rest of the business world.
Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he turned to look out over the serene ocean, and that was when the light from below caught his attention.
Or not the light, exactly. The shadow.
The lamps from the saloon spilled out on to the deck below, throwing a perfect silhouette of Anna on to the smooth boards, like a screen projection.
She was dancing.
Not just dancing … She was …
Dio mio …
It should have been sleazy, but it wasn’t. Watching her, he was astonished by her graceful strength, by the smooth, elegant precision of her moves. She snaked around the pole with catlike neatness. Like a ballerina.
She’d surprised him again, he thought bleakly as the music came to an end. Surprised him and intrigued him, while all the time evading him. The girl was like a nuclear explosion in the centre of his well-ordered life.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
She scrambled to her feet, her chest rising and falling quickly, a thin sheen of sweat on her skin. Angelo crossed the deck with swift, savage strides. His face was as impassive as always—glacial in its calm—but she could see a muscle flicker in the lean plane of his jaw.
He stopped in front of her.
She tilted her chin defiantly, but behind her back her hands gripped the pole to stop her knees from giving way beneath her. The look in his eyes was blistering.
‘I was bored.’
He gave an incredulous rasp of laughter and ran a hand through his unruly mane of gold.
‘Bored?’
And then their mouths met and his hands were on the pole above her head, trapping her in a cage of his body. Her fists flew to his rock-hard chest, beating against the solid wall of muscle, while their tongues fought and meshed in the hot cavern of their mouths. She felt her hands slide round his back, her fingers helplessly kneading his silken flesh, her nails convulsively digging themselves into his skin.
Still he held on. Apart from his mouth, he wasn’t touching her at all, his arms braced against the metal pole, his head bent to hers. But his kiss was hot, savage and full of hunger.
Suddenly she ducked under his arm, stooping low and swinging out from the pole as he had seen her do as she had danced. Straightening up on the other side, she looked at him with naked desire.
‘Yes. Bored. You’re always working.’
He took a step backwards and gave her a hard, appraising smile. His eyes glittered with lust.
‘I have to try to stay one step ahead of you and your friends.’
Idly, slowly, lazily she shinned up the pole and swung around at the top, arching herself down towards him.
‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘Am I?’
He reached out a hand and traced a languorous finger around her belly button, flicking the silver bar there, never taking his eyes off her face. He saw her eyes darken and her eyelids flutter at his touch and was ready for her as she shivered and faltered. Snaking an arm around her waist, he lifted her down. Her legs closed around his waist as tightly as they had gripped the pole, her strong dancer’s muscles squeezing him.
‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t wast any more time, then,’ he said harshly, carrying her through the saloon. His mouth was set in a grim line, his fingers hard on her ribs. She felt a delicious flutter of fear and anticipation as he kicked open the door to her cabin. He looked down at her for a moment, his expression dark and savage.
‘I might not know who you are, Anna Field, but I know what you want.’
She whimpered. And then, almost without knowing how, her hands were in his hair, her mouth crashed and ground against his as he dropped her on the bed and tore at the fastening of his shorts. Her fingers closed around the back of his neck and she pulled him down beside her. Holding his face in both hands, she looked into his eyes with an expression that threatened to tip him over the edge of desire into total abandonment.
Her mouth closed over his again while her hands slid down the length of his arms to his wrists. Her fingers circled them in a steely grip as she hauled herself up so she was sitting on top of him. Without tearing her mouth from his, she edged her hips upwards until her knees rested on his outspread arms. The kiss deepened. They were tearing at each other’s face with their mouths, grinding, rasping, devouring.
Then suddenly she threw her head backwards, gasping triumphantly. Her knees pinioned his arms to the bed on either side of him. Eyes glittering, she looked down on him.
‘Got you’ she whispered throatily.
He gazed up at her as a slow smile curved his bruised lips, making those little brackets at each corner of his mouth. Sinuously he edged downwards beneath her, so that her crotch was centimetres from his mouth.
He breathed out. Heavily.
She moaned as the heat of his breath fanned the fire raging through her pelvis and caressed her more intimately, more delicately, more thoroughly than she had thought possible. Her eyes closed in blissful submission, then flew open again as she felt the first stroke of his tongue.
‘Oh, God. Oh—oh, Angelo—’
He felt the shudder that shook her whole body.
‘Take them off,’ he breathed.