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No one would see me but me. No one else would be up yet; our team didn’t have to assemble for the morning briefing about today’s activities—and the rundown of who to concentrate on and who Dante had already eliminated from his roster of possible investors—for another two hours. And none of the guests usually emerged until at least noon. But still, wearing the skimpy swimwear and going for a swim alone felt reckless, exciting, exhilarating.
I found the partially hidden entrance to the steps behind one of the garden follies—a Japanese pagoda with a pond full of koi carp. I rushed down the steps hewn into the rock-face, then stopped dead as I came to the platform above the cove.
Someone else was here, swimming across the inlet. His broad shoulders and dark head sliced through the waves in smooth, purposeful strokes.
Dante.
I recognised him instantly because of the way he moved, eating up the water, his powerful body forging its own path regardless of surf or tide.
I noticed the small pile of clothes on the sand. Was he swimming naked?
My breathing stopped at the errant thought, my heart thundering so hard against my ribs I became light-headed. I shrunk back against the warm rock-face, behind a lavender bush that grew out of the crevice, so that I could see him clearly but he could not see me.
I devoured the sight of him, those strong steady strokes echoing in my abdomen and making my breasts feel swollen and heavy, barely confined by my bikini.
At last he swam back towards the shore. And walked out of the surf, slicking his hair back. His body emerged from the sea and my breathing speeded up. The pounding in my chest plunged deep into my abdomen.
His torso was hard and contoured like a work of art; the water shining on his bronze skin shimmered in the sunlight and made him look like some sort of god. A sea king like Poseidon, powerful and indomitable. I was less than fifteen feet away from him but thankfully, because of the sound of the waves buffeting the shore, he couldn’t hear my ragged breathing, which was becoming heavier by the second as I waited for him to emerge the rest of the way. From this distance I could see the white marks of scars that marred his skin and the dark ink of a tattoo that covered his left shoulder then looped around his neck. My heart hit my chest as I recalled his devastating revelations about his childhood four nights ago, and the guarded, wary way he had responded to my sympathy for that traumatised child. As if he had regretted revealing so much.
I swallowed down the thickening in my throat as I revisited the emotions that had bombarded me that night—horror for what that little boy must have endured, and huge admiration for the man he had become.
But then all coherent thought fled as Dante walked the rest of the way out of the water.
He was naked. And he looked utterly magnificent. I knew I should look away—I was spying on him—but I couldn’t seem to detach my gaze from the masculine beauty of his nude body. The lean waist, the narrow hips, the muscular thighs and long legs, the bunch and flex of his abdominal muscles as he moved in sinuous motion. Adrenaline surged through me in a heady wave of arousal so fierce I felt giddy. My mouth dried to parchment as my gaze finally arrowed down through the magnificent V of his hip flexors to the nest of dark hair at his groin.
Mon Dieu.
He was very large. And long.
Weren’t men supposed to shrink in the cold water?
Excitement and arousal warred with panic in the centre of my chest, but did nothing to counteract the deep throbbing in my sex at the sight of his naked penis.
My mind screamed at me to move, to flee, to scurry back up the beach steps before he caught me.
If I stayed, if he became aware of my presence, I knew that all bets would be off. I would be incapable of protecting myself from this rush of need. I would be forced to make the choice he had given me four days ago—and finally feed the hunger which had been building inside me for weeks, ever since our first and only kiss.
I tried to debate the pros and cons of taking that step, as he lifted a towel from the pile of clothing and dried himself in rough efficient strokes.
I still had a chance here. To escape this need, this longing.
But the insistent pulse in my sex refused to be silenced. And suddenly all I could think about was discovering what it would be like to become Dante’s lover. Would I be totally overwhelmed again by the hunger that had thrilled me and frightened me ever since I had met him? Did I even care any more if I was?
This was not the man I had run from in Monaco. Back then he had been a distant, frightening figure. A man who could destroy me with a click of his fingers. But he had chosen not to do that; instead he’d given me a chance, a way out, when he didn’t have to. He’d told me more than once that he wasn’t a kind man, or a nice man, and on some levels I knew he wasn’t kidding about that. He could be ruthless, he was ambitious and driven, because he’d had to be. He would be a difficult man to love, if not impossible. But this wasn’t about love, I told myself staunchly as my heart all but choked me. This was about feeding the hunger, allowing myself to take something for myself. And I knew, whatever else happened, I trusted him. He would make this exciting, special, important—he’d promised me that much and I believed him.
No, he wasn’t a nice man, or a kind man, but I sensed, beneath the scars and the tattoos, the rough upbringing and the dogged pursuit of power and status, and wealth, he was a good man.
And that was all I really needed him to be. He couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let him.
When would I ever have a chance like this again? To take a man as hot and magnificent as Dante Allegri to be my lover? My first lover?
I was by nature a cautious person. I’d had to be. But as I stood there in the warming sunlight, my whole body alive with sensation and gripped by the deep visceral tug of longing, I knew I didn’t want to be cautious any longer. Not about this. Because of my upbringing, because of spending so much of my childhood watching my mother falling in and out of love with powerful men, I was sure I could keep my heart safe while my body reached out to this man. And took everything it wanted. Everything he had promised me.
He had tugged on his shorts and was busy running the towel over his hair as I stepped out of my hiding place. As if he sensed me, his head rose suddenly and his movements stilled.
I could feel his gaze burning over every inch of my exposed skin—and there was a lot of it—as I walked down the last of the steps to the beach on shaky legs.
He didn’t stop looking at me, his gaze roaming over me as his hand fell to his side and the towel dropped to the sand.
