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There was such a sense of magic in the caves, in the air around them, that Addie felt it run across her flesh, causing her veins to sparkle with something that felt a lot like power. Determination and strength.
“Guy,” she murmured, staring up at him.
He waited, poised above her, his eyes holding hers without showing her a hint of his soul.
“This isn’t a lie.” And she pushed up, her elbows digging into the coarse sand, so that her mouth could claim his.
His denial screamed through his body, she heard it in the guttural curse he swore into his mouth, in the way his kiss was angry, and yet he didn’t pull away.
He kissed her back, and he stripped their clothes, and with a desperation that answered Addie’s he took her once more, his body commanding hers, making it sing and making it fly, until she was adding her voice to all the voices that had sung inside these caves before. Pirates, corsairs, buccaneers, and Addie, her words drenched by love and passion, and hope heavy in her heart.
*
Guy swam deeper into the cave, his arms pulling him away from Addie, away from the scene of their crime, and mentally he wished it were so easy to forget her as it was to remove himself physically from her.
This had been a mistake.
While it had been rewarding to see his grandfather’s relief, Guy wasn’t at all sure it had been worth it. A week with Adeline was nowhere nearly as open and shut as he’d expected. For while he hated and despised her, he could no longer deny that his feelings were anything but clean cut.
Desire, yes. But so what? Sex was sex.
Only it wasn’t.
He’d never shared this with another woman. There was something rare and unique between them. He’d felt it when he was in London, the first time they’d made love. It was like a part of him had been blown wide open, and re-formed itself in a new way, a way that Adeline had given him. He had craved her from that moment on, and he craved her even now, minutes after they’d been together. It was never enough.
He didn’t want to sleep with her hastily, like scratching a mutually-urgent itch. He wanted to chain her to his bed and make her his in every way, to possess her as he’d never done before.
But could he do that and then send Addie packing? Still end this madness when the time came?
Of course he could, because there was no other option. Guy wasn’t the same man he’d been in London, and she sure as hell wasn’t the woman he’d thought he cared for.
He could satisfy their desire, satisfy it completely, without wanting anything more from her.
And that’s just what he planned to do – starting as soon as he could get Santiago off his boat.
CHAPTER TEN
THE WATER IN THE caves was sublime. Cool and somehow thicker seeming than that of the ocean.
“The tunnels go for almost a mile,” he said, though Addie hadn’t realized he was even aware she was swimming behind him. “Though I’m sure there are more I never got around to discovering.”
The water was becoming shallower, so that her toes could just scrape along the bottom. “How fascinating,” she said, thinking how manifestly insufficient that praise was. “I’d love to map them.” Her hands reached up and ran along the roughened wall as they went.
She didn’t see the way Guy’s lips flickered into a small smile. “I have a very rudimentary map,” he said softly. “Drawn when I was about ten years old.”
“Were you really allowed to explore these caves on your own?”
His laugh was short. “Do you think anyone could have stopped me?” He turned, standing comfortably with his extra height, facing Addie. “I was a ten year old boy, querida, with the whole island to explore.”
Addie’s heart prickled, imagining him as he’d been then. “You came here often?”
“Si.” The word was accompanied by a simple dip of his head and, for some reason, Addie felt a tension in the response. As though he were hiding something from her. Curiosity arrested her.
“In the holidays?”
There was a pull in his eyes, a look of concentration, and then he blinked, clearing it. “School holidays, yes. Sometimes for longer.” He shrugged. “My grandfather employed tutors to maintain my schooling, though I had negligible interest in the curriculum.” His grin was more of a self-disparaging grimace.
“I can’t imagine that,” Addie murmured, swimming closer.<
