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For a moment darkness clouded his eyes, before he blinked it away and flashed a mocking grin. ‘Don’t tell anyone else that.’
She looked at him carefully, looking for a clue as to what could have caused that brief cloud. Apart from a gleam in his eye there was nothing to be found.
She shoved the image away to be pondered another time. Right then everything was perfect, and she didn’t want anything to intrude and mar it.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone. After all, we have your reputation to protect.’
Hooking an arm around her waist, he lowered her onto her back and nuzzled her neck. ‘Speaking of protecting reputations, you do realise it has been a whole four hours since this bad Russian playboy has made love to his beautiful English wife?’
‘Then I suggest we do something about it,’ she said, her words coming out in tiny gasps as she felt his erection press against her thigh.
Her gasps soon turned into soft mews when Nico divested her of her bikini and got down to some serious reputation-salvaging...
* * *
After a day spent exploring King Island and each other, and a mammoth, exhilarating ride on the jet ski, they’d returned to the yacht for dinner, which they’d eaten on the sundeck.
Now they were both sprawled on the bed, as naked as the day they had been born, watching Dr Zhivago on a cinema screen which was connected to the internet.
‘How many times have you watched this?’ Nico asked, carefully placing a trail of cherries along her spine.
She shrugged and pressed a foot against his leg. ‘No idea.’
He tapped her bottom. ‘Don’t move.’
She cocked her head back and speared him with a look. ‘You’re distracting me.’
‘That was my intention.’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘Carry on.’
Carry on? He could make love to her all night.
Luckily they still had another four days together. That would be plenty of time to get this mass of unprecedented desire out of his system. Life could then return to normal, with the added bonus of sharing his beautiful wife’s body every night when he was in the UK. Unless, of course, he could convince her to take a permanent role as his PA.
One by one he ate the cherries off her back, then got down to some proper distraction business.
Even the moon had disappeared by the time they were finally spent and he turned the light off.
Sleepily, she prodded him with her foot. ‘Keep it on.’
‘Right. Sorry.’ He fiddled with the switches until he found the bathroom light and turned it on, filling the cabin with a dim, warm glow. Curiosity finally got the better of him. ‘If you’re not afraid of the dark, why do you like to have the light on?’
‘I can see if anyone sneaks into the room.’
Thinking she had made a joke, Nico started to laugh, but then he remembered all the times he had passed her room at night and seen a dim glow seeping from under her doorframe. He had always assumed she was reading or watching television. How many times had he fought his yen to open the door...?
He blinked the thought away.
‘Do I take it someone once came into your room in the dark and scared you?’
She yawned and snuggled into him. ‘Nico, it’s late and I’m shattered. Can we have this conversation in the morning?’
‘No.’ He should be shattered too. Physically, he was. But his brain was still fully wired. ‘You always shy away from discussing your past or anything personal.’ So did he. Normally. But right then he did not feel normal. Not by a long chalk.
‘That’s the way we always liked it.’
‘If someone has hurt or scared you it is my business to know.’ And when he learned who had hurt and scared Rosa he would track that person down and give them the fright of their life. No one hurt his wife. No one.
‘It was a long time ago. All children are hurt and scared at some point.’
He forced his voice to stay even, trying to control the wild flurry of his thoughts. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened,’ she said quietly. ‘There were a couple of bullies in one of the children’s homes I lived in for a while. They thought it was funny to sneak into the younger kids’ rooms and scare us.’ She raised her head and rested her chin on his chest. ‘One particularly well-executed torment was to hide under our beds and then, after the lights had been turned out, to grab our legs. In my case, the monster under the bed was two fourteen-year-old girls.’
The hairs on his arms rose. Everything she had said made his skin crawl, but out of everything one pertinent fact leapt out at him. ‘You lived in a children’s home?’
‘Yes.’
