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‘Comfort isn’t what you’re after—not the girl who was perched precariously on a boulder above the sea with a wild tide coming in,’ he drawled. ‘No, I think you were looking for a little excitement.’
‘Not the kind of excitement you’re talking about,’ she responded, already feeling her speeding pulse crank up an extra notch. ‘We’ve done that before, and it didn’t work out.’
‘Didn’t work?’ he purred, leaning close to her ear so that his breath mingled with the droplets of shower water that were still splashing on her neck. ‘Are you telling me you weren’t satisfied with my lovemaking?’
‘That’s not what I said,’ Claudia managed to say, feeling her cheeks blaze.
‘So you were satisfied?’ he said, tugging her closer still. ‘I thought so.’
‘We can’t go there again,’ she said, trying to pull away from him, but he was so effortlessly strong that physical resistance was futile. She had to rely on her wits, which were totally addled by the feelings of desire that were engulfing her.
‘Why not?’ he asked, slipping his hands under the hem of her top. She drew in her stomach muscles instinctively, letting out a long shuddering breath as his fingers skimmed over her skin. But then he took hold of the fabric, as if he was about to pull the top up and over her head.
‘No. Please don’t take my clothes off.’ Her voice was no more than a whimper, husky with blatant sexual desire. Even to her own ears it sounded more as if she’d said, Please, rip off all my clothes and ravish me right here and now.
To her surprise, and sudden crushing disappointment that was totally out of the realm of sensible thought, he let go of her top, leaving her fully dressed. Then, in one fluid movement, he divested himself of his own T-shirt.
‘Oh!’ she gasped and stared at his naked chest. The sight of his golden skin, slick with water droplets, made her mouth run dry. She swallowed hard, overwhelmed by just how much she wanted to reach out and slide her hands over the muscular expanse of his chest.
She closed her eyes and leant back aga
inst the tiled wall of the shower, inadvertently passing her head directly under the full force of the gushing water. She reached up to wipe her eyes, trying not to think about the magnetic lure of his perfect masculine form, when suddenly she heard a sound that could only be Marco undoing the zip of his trousers.
Her eyes flew open in time to see him stepping free of the garment, so that he was standing next to her wearing nothing but a pair of black silk boxers. The fine fabric was so wet that it clung to his proud, viral form intimately, leaving virtually nothing to her imagination.
‘You may want to shower with your clothes on,’ Marco said. ‘I find I’m more comfortable without them.’
CHAPTER THREE
A SLOW, sensual smile spread across Marco’s face as he watched Claudia’s reaction to him stripping off.
A misty veil of steam surrounded her, softening her features in an utterly alluring way, but that didn’t hide the flash of pure desire that lit her golden eyes, or the rapid rise and fall of her breast as she started breathing even more quickly than she had been a moment before.
He knew that it wouldn’t take much to shatter her control. If he pulled her roughly into his arms, giving free rein to the passion that was surging through his body, it would only be a matter of moments before she surrendered to him and to her own growing desire.
But simply making love to Claudia was not his ultimate goal. He wanted to make her trust him, as he had trusted her before she’d betrayed him. And he wanted to make her desperate for him—physically. Sexually.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, taking her face in his large, warm hands and kissing her quickly on the mouth.
A powerful feeling ripped through him, although he couldn’t have identified what emotion it was, and he suddenly found that the words he’d chosen with the intention of drawing her in were closer to the truth than he would care to admit, even to himself.
‘Why did you follow me to Wales?’ She repeated the question she’d asked on the beach one more time, staring up at him with wide eyes, filled with a mixture of confusion and undisguised sexual need.
‘I told you—I wanted to see you again.’ He lifted a hand to smooth a lock of wet hair back from her face and he felt a tremor run through her. But he knew she wanted to hear that it was more than just desire for her that had made him follow her. ‘I’ve thought about you every day we’ve been apart.’
She was standing bolt upright in the shower, with water pouring down over her shoulders and across her breasts, but she seemed completely oblivious to her surroundings and was looking at him intently, hanging on every word.
‘After you’d gone yesterday I couldn’t get you out of my mind.’ He smiled and brushed his thumb gently across her cheekbone.
‘It’s a long way to come on a whim.’ Claudia looked up at him, wishing she knew for sure why he had come to the cottage.
‘In the circumstances, I think it was lucky I came,’ he replied.
She thought back to the beach. An involuntary shudder ran through her. Despite her earlier denials, she knew she’d had a lucky escape from the incoming tide. And she had Marco to thank for that.
‘I could have been sucked down between those rocks when I fell,’ she said, remembering the panic that had filled her when the cold water closed over her.
‘No,’ Marco said. ‘The gap wasn’t big enough. Most likely you would have bashed your head on the rock. Knocked yourself unconscious.’
