Lovers Never Lie (13 page)

With a powerful kick, Andrew propelled them back to the surface. With a gasp, she shook the water from her eyes.

"Kissing you can be dangerous," Andrew murmured hoarsely.

Breathless, she pushed him away again.

"Just friends?" he asked. His eyes told her how crazy he thought that particular pretense was. She stroked toward the flat rock. If she was to resist the lure of his eyes and body, she had to keep moving.

"Lunch," she said, in a voice as firm as possible, thinking that if she spoke more she might break the spell.

He caught up to her and swept past, found the footholds in the rocks before she did and pulled himself out. He turned and offered his hand, but she got out herself, trying not to look in his direction.

She raised her face to the sun instead, and prayed its brilliance would hide the flush heating her cheeks.

A warm, fluffy towel dropped over her shoulders.

"I hate to cover you up," Andrew said, "but you mustn't catch cold." He ran his hands down her arms.

His touch drew fire, making her understand it wasn't the cold causing her to tremble, but the heat that flowed from his body to hers.

"Lunch," she repeated, the word more an entreaty than a suggestion.

"Soon," he said, stepping in front of her, his eyes darkening to the color of the sea at midnight. "Later," he amended. He stared at her hungrily, as though she stood before him naked.

She knew she should protest, should insist they stop tantalizing each other with what could never be, but the words wouldn't come.

He slowly leaned toward her, so slowly a drop of water rolled down his temple and was caught in the blue-black shadow of his chin. As though she were a puppet in the hands of a master, she met his lips with hers.

His kiss stole her breath.

He explored her mouth, softly, at first, then with increasing urgency. She held herself stiffly, knowing if she reached for him, she would be lost.

She shut her eyes. Surely nothing that felt this wonderful could be wrong. Then slowly, dazedly, she opened them again, and slid toward passion on the wings of enchantment.

His eyelashes brushed her cheek as he nuzzled his way to her hairline. Something within exploded that was too powerful to ignore and too wonderful to wish away.

The distance between them closed and the hairs on her arms rose as though reaching for him.

He pulled her closer, stroking her back in a long caressing sweep. Her skin on fire, her body melted against his harder edges. His fingers slid beneath the edge of the towel and unhooked her bikini top.

Uncountable nerve-endings blasted their message to her head and heart. From both the response was immediate. She wanted him, needed him, no matter who he was or what he was. She wanted to lie with him here under the Mediterranean sun and feel his hands on her breasts and along her body, wanted danger, and excitement, and an end to all safety.

She moaned and the sound seemed to intensify Andrew's passion. He pulled her bikini straps away from her shoulders and slid them down her arms. Then catching her to him, his hands cradled her bottom. Her nipples hardened, then squashed flat against his chest. His pelvis thrust against hers, filling her with fire.

His lips traveled across her temple to the pulse below her ear, trailing a line of heat. He gently nibbled her ear lobe, the soft pain stoking her desire. She arched against him, wanting him closer, needing him to be a part of her.

With a groan, he rained kisses down her neck to the base of her throat. At the swelling of her breasts, he lifted his head and stared deep into her eyes. He seemed to be giving her the final choice, seemed to demand she meet his lovemaking with desire of her own.

With a smile she kissed the line of his jaw, giving him her answer with her lips.

He cupped her breasts with his hands and pressed them to his mouth, stroking her inflamed and hardened nipples with his tongue. Then he swept her into his arms and deposited her gently on the sun warmed blanket. He lowered himself beside her, his body blocking the sun. But the heat blazing through her did not diminish. It came from him and from her, from both of them together, a furnace of fiery flesh and desire.

Her breath, when it came, erupted in short gasps. She was not even certain she was breathing at all. Andrew breathed for her, his mouth covering her lips as his length did her body, pinning her to the ground. But she was a willing prisoner, one whose only punishment would be his departure.

He placed one hand beneath her head, cradling and protecting her from the ground. The rock on which she lay should have been hard, but its hollow contoured her curves, provided the most natural of mattresses.

Andrew lingeringly explored her body from her breasts to her belly then moved to the scrap of cloth lying wetly between them. He eased her bikini bottoms over her hips, then down her legs and off.

Weak with need, she ran her fingers around the waistband of his swimming trunks. His skin was warm velvet, but the hard muscles beneath snagged her breath in her throat. She tugged at his trunks, and with urgency, he helped her.

He rose above her, the sun splitting around either side of his face. His eyes were soft with want but his lips were firm and sensual. Reaching for his shorts, he extracted a packet from its pocket. She closed her eyes and felt his body shift as he slid on protection. She curved up and he thrust down, easing into her with caring and skill. A searing heat spread through her loins and he thrust faster.

He was in her, and on her, through her, and around her. Everywhere she was, he was, too. Partners in ecstasy, equals in love.

For one long shuddering moment, she heard only the sound of his passion and her own answering cry. She shut her eyes, but couldn't shut out the light. It penetrated her consciousness as he penetrated her body, lit her from without, as he lit her from within. Burned into her fears, and dismissed them with disdain.

A wave slapped the rock not far from her head, and somewhere on the cliff side, bees buzzed over flowers. But here on the rock, none of that mattered. Andrew's passion was her passion, her joy, his. In a crescendo of sound they met and joined, then blazed together in an explosion of sensation.

For a long moment afterward he didn't move, simply stayed where he was, his weight warm and welcome. His head rested on her chest, and he curled his tongue around one nipple, teasing and enticing it, encouraging it again to tautness.

She chuckled with pleasure, a low, throaty sound she was unused to hearing from her own throat. But she was just as unused to feeling like this, as contented as a cat in sunshine, as satiated as a kitten with a belly full of cream. Joy bubbled up as though from a spring, filling her with effervescence. An unfamiliar sensation, but one she liked.

He covered her mouth with his and kissed her again, not urgently this time, but slowly as though he savored her taste.

"Friends?" he whispered, kissing his way up her cheek to her eyes.

She shut her eyes and shivered, relishing the touch of his lips on her eyelids and the feel of his manhood stirring within.

"More than that," she whispered back, afraid to say the word lover, as though even now the magic might end. Moving her hands across his back, she found his skin slick with passion. His eyes closed and she moved to meet him once again as he thrust into her body with a rhythm as old as time.

He seemed to know instinctively what gave her pleasure, and she was stunned that two virtual strangers, two
friends,
two lovers, could produce such ecstasy.

She loved him, she suddenly realized, with her body, soul, and mind, but most frightening of all, she loved him with her heart.

She stared into his face and memorized each plane and line, held dear the tiny scar marring his jaw.

Everything was perfect; this moment, this man, this feeling of love.

Chapter 8

Andrew stared down at her, the passion in his eyes giving way to concern. His eyes grew darker and darker, as though one idea after another tumbled through his brain and not one of them had anything to do with love. He rolled off her onto his side, facing her, but apart.

"What is it?" she whispered, joy spiraling away like water down a drain, dread filling the emptiness left behind.

He ran his finger down her throat to her breast, then, as though forcing himself, he pulled his hand away.

Aching with loss, she pulled her discarded towel across her chest. The sun still blistered down, but suddenly she felt cold. For all the sun's fiery touch, it couldn't penetrate the ice forming around her heart.

Andrew stared at his hand, the one that had touched her, then into her eyes, his expression deadly serious.

"Perhaps—" He paused, as though to choose his words carefully. "—remaining friends was better."

No,
her heart protested, but she trapped the word with her lips.

"We're lovers now," he said.

The word
lovers
held no warmth, though the magic of their lovemaking still hung in the air around them.

Involuntarily, the muscles in her pelvis contracted.

"It's time you told me the truth." His voice was emotionless and he seemed to hold himself in, as if reserving judgment in some way.

Relief trickled through her. He didn't find it easy to speak the words of love. She didn't either. Wasn't it enough that they felt the love? Did either of them have to admit it out loud?

Loving wasn't safe. Admitting it wasn't safe. Love could be lost, and she'd lost enough.

She stared into his eyes, and searched for strength, needed his assurance to say the words.

Andrew suddenly rose to a sitting position.

She struggled to her elbows then sat up also. Eyeball to eyeball was the only way she could face him head on. But when her eyes met his, her heart quailed. It would take all the strength she possessed just to hold her own.

Andrew looked past her across the sunlit cove toward Agios Nikolaos. His lips tightened and he turned to her again. "What's in the package Stacia?"

Her breathing died to a shallow gasp. Obviously making love to her had meant nothing to him. While she'd been struggling to admit her love, he was thinking about something else entirely. His father's will?

She'd been a fool to think she could trust this man, a fool to ignore her own suspicions. In the end, as in the beginning, it all came down to the package.

It was as though they had never made love at all, as though she peered through tinted glasses into the darkest corner of the ocean. The sunlit cove seemed suddenly shadowed, the welcoming rocks, hard and bumpy, the food in the picnic basket, foreign and tasteless, the blanket on which they lay... No. No more.

Andrew was right about one thing. It was time she knew the truth.

His eyes had hardened into slate-blue orbs, eyes of a prosecutor and a judge. From the look on his face, the decision he'd rendered was guilty.

"What's the package got to do with you?" she demanded, swallowing the bile rising in her throat.

He rose to his feet, his movement fluid.
Her
body felt battered and sore, as if her bones were all broken and her flesh bruised. Continuing to sit was suddenly as untenable as remaining without clothes, but her right leg buckled beneath her as she rose. She staggered against an out-jutting promontory on the rocky wall. Tears filled her eyes, threatened to spill over.

He took hold of her shoulder as if to steady her, and a trembling began that buffeted her body. With a forceful shrug, she pulled herself free.

"I want to get dressed," she said firmly. If she was going to hear his answer, she needed the armor of clothing.

His hands dropped to his sides, clenched once, then hung still, the effort of that stillness evident on his face.

She yanked on her shorts, ignoring the panties she'd packed in her bag. She would be exposed for the time it took to put them on. She'd already given him her body. Now she wanted it back.

She turned her back to him and reached for her brassiere, fumbling with the clasps as though she were a novice. She couldn't bear to look at him and see in his eyes that he'd only made love to her to get the will. Then his hand touched hers and she froze to the spot.