He told her how he had taught himself to read and write, how he had educated himself from newspapers, how the business section had always fascinated him and how easily he had read the figures that seemed to daunt others. And he told her how he loved Brazil—for there you could both work hard and play hard too.
‘Can I get you anything Mr Dos Santos …?’ Worried that their esteemed passenger was being disturbed, the steward checked that he was okay.
‘Nothing.’ He did not look up. He just looked at Meg as he spoke. ‘If you can leave us, please?’
‘Dos Santos?’ she repeated when the steward had gone, and he told her that it was a surname often given to orphans.
‘It means “from the Saints” in Portuguese,’ he explained.
‘How were you orphaned?’
‘I don’t actually know,’ Niklas admitted. ‘Perhaps I was abandoned, just left at the orphanage. I really don’t know.’
‘Have you ever tried to find out about your family …?’
He opened his mouth to say that he would rather not discuss it, but instead he gave even more of himself. ‘I have,’ he admitted. ‘It would be nice to know, but it proved impossible. I got Miguel, my lawyer, onto it, but he got nowhere.’
She asked him what it had been like, growing up like that, but she was getting too close and it was not something he chose to share.
He told her so. ‘I don’t want to speak about that.’
So they talked some more about her, and she could have talked to him for ever—except it was Niklas who got too close now, when he asked if she was in a relationship.
‘No.’
‘Have you ever been serious about anyone?’
‘Not really,’ she said, but that wasn’t quite true. ‘I was about to get engaged,’ Meg said. ‘I called it off.’
‘Why?’
She just lay there.
‘Why?’ Niklas pushed.
‘He got on a bit too well with my parents.’ She swallowed. ‘A colleague.’ He could hear her hesitation to discuss it. ‘What we said before about worlds being too small …’ Meg said. ‘I realised I would be making mine smaller still.’
‘Was he upset?’
‘Not really.’ Meg was honest. ‘It wasn’t exactly a passionate …’ She swallowed. She was so not going to discuss this with him.
She should have just said so, but instead she told him that she needed to sleep. The dimmed lights and champagne were starting to catch up with both of them, and almost reluctantly their conversation was closed and finally they slept.
For how long Meg wasn’t sure. She just knew that when she woke up she regretted it.
Not the conversation, but ending it, falling asleep and wasting the little time that they had.
She’d woken to the scent of coffee and the hum of the engines and now she looked over to him. He was still asleep, and just as beautiful with his eyes closed. It was almost a privilege to examine such a stunning man more intently. His black hair was swept back, his beautiful mouth relaxed and loose. She looked at his dark spiky lashes and thought of the treasure behind them. She wondered what language he was dreaming in, then watched as his eyes were revealed.
For Niklas it was a pleasure to open his eyes to her.
He had felt the caress of her gaze and now he met it and held it.
‘English.’ He answered the question she had not voiced, but they both understood. He had been dreaming in English, perhaps about her. And then Niklas did what he always did when he woke to a woman he considered beautiful.
It was a touch more difficult to do so—given the gap between them, given that he could not gather her body and slip her towards him—but the result would certainly be worth the brief effort. He pulled himself up on his elbow and moved till his face was right over her, and looking down.
‘You never did finish what you were saying.’
She looked back at him.
‘When you said it wasn’t passionate …’
She could have turned away from him, could have closed the conversation—his question was inappropriate, really—only nothing felt inappropriate with Niklas. There was nothing that couldn’t be said with his breath on her cheek and that sulky, beautiful mouth just inches away.
‘I was the one who wasn’t passionate.’
‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘Well, I wasn’t.’
‘Because you didn’t want him in the way that you want me?’
Meg knew what he was about to do.
And she wanted, absolutely, for him to do it.
So he did.
It did not feel as if she was kissing a stranger as their lips met—all it felt was sublime.
His lips were surprisingly gentle and moved with hers for a moment, giving her a brief glimpse of false security—for his tongue, when it slipped in, was shockingly direct and intent.
This wasn’t a kiss to test the water, and now Meg knew what had been wrong with her from the start, the reason she had been rambling. This thing between them was an attraction so instant that he could have kissed her like this the moment he’d sat down beside her. He could have taken his seat, had her turn off her phone and offered his mouth to her and she would have kissed him right back.
And so she kissed him back now.
There was more passion in his kiss than Meg had ever tasted in her life. She discovered that a kiss could be far more than a simple meeting of lips as his tongue told her exactly what else he would like to do, slipping in and out of her parted lips, soft one minute, rougher the next. Then his hand moved beneath the blanket and stroked her breast through her blouse, so expertly that she ached for more.
Meg’s hands were in his hair and his jaw scratched at her skin and his tongue probed a little harder. As she concentrated on that, as she fought with her body not to arch into him, he moved his hand inside her top. Now Niklas became less than subtle with his silent instructions and moved his hand to her back, pulling her forward into his embrace. She swallowed the growl that vibrated from his throat as beneath the blanket he rolled her nipple between his fingers—hard at first, and then with his palm he stroked her more softly.
To the outside world they would appear simply as two lovers kissing, their passion indecent, but hidden. Then Niklas moved over her a little more, so all she could breathe was his scent, and his mouth and his hand worked harder, each subtle stroke making her want the next one even more. Suddenly Meg knew she had to stop this, had to pull back, because just her reaction to his kiss had her feeling as though she might come.
‘Come.’ His mouth was at her ear now, his word voicing her thought.
‘Stop,’ she told him, even if it was not what she wanted him to do, but she could hardly breathe.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ she answered with his mouth now back over hers, ‘it’s wrong.’
‘But so nice.’
He continued to kiss her. Her mouth was wet from his but she closed her lips, because this feeling was too much and he was taking her to the edge. He parted her lips with his tongue and again she tried to close them, clamped her teeth, but he merely carried on until she gave in and opened again to him. He breathed harder, and his hand still worked at her breast, and she was fighting not to gasp, not to moan, to remember