The Ultimate Seduction (11 page)

“Does this hurt?” he asked, tracing where her scar licked like a flame up the side of her breast.

“I can barely feel anything. Just a bit of pressure. Nerve damage. You know how your face feels after the dentist and the freezing is just starting to come out?”

“Good to know. I’ll focus where you can feel it.” He cupped her breast and flicked her nipple with his thumb.

The sensation was sharper than she anticipated, and she flinched.

“No?” he prompted.

“I— No, it’s good, just really...” She blushed. This was surreal, lying in full light with a gorgeous man naked against her. Twin desires to curl into him and to stop and give herself time to take it in accosted her.

He lowered his head to lick, and her inner muscles clenched like a fist, tearing a sound of reaction out of her.

Almost experimentally, he switched to her other breast, teasing and making her shift restlessly. It felt incredible, but wasn’t quite as intense as the other.

He moved to her left one again and another shot of extreme sensation went through her, flooding her loins with a heated rush of pleasure. She didn’t know if her nerve endings were compensating for others nearby that had ceased to work, but the way his tongue toyed so delicately made her pinch her thighs together.

“That one is really sensitive,” she panted, smoothing her hand over his short, thick hair and clutching at his shoulders, not sure if she wanted him to stop or take her over the edge.

“I can tell,” he said with smoldering approval. Opening his mouth on her, he sucked delicately, nearly levitating her off the bed.

“Ryzard,” she cried, knee bending and thighs opening as she tried to grasp more of him. With a growl, he slid down and bit softly at her inner thigh. “Do you know how many things I want to do to you?”

Moaning, she threw her arm over her eyes and surrendered. “Do anything. I love everything you do to me.”

For a second he did nothing. She wondered if she’d done something wrong and started to drop her arm away. Then she felt his touch delicately parting her. His mouth. Pressing the back of her wrist against her open mouth, she muffled her throaty groan of abject joy. To be wanted like this, so deliciously ravished, brought tears of happiness to the seams of her closed eyes.

And
oh
that was nice. Pleasure coiled and built on itself through her middle, winding her into the sweetest tension. She wanted release and she wanted this to go on and on. Then he slid a testing finger in her, and she knew exactly what she wanted.

And told him.

“I can’t wait, either,” he said in a raw voice, as if the truth stunned him. In a sliding lunge across her, he nearly yanked the bedside drawer from its table and seconds later smoothed latex down his length.

When he pressed into her, she welcomed him with a gasp, nails tightening into his skin as he possessed her with ruthless care, slow and inexorable. Through her lashes, she watched him watching her and bit her lip, feeling deeply exposed, but moved by the intimacy at the same time.

“I can’t believe I’m the only man who knows how amazing you are,” he said gutturally, hands holding her head as he rocked side to side, settling deep inside her, sealing their connection.

Her body didn’t feel like her own. She trembled in arousal, limbs both weak and strong, clinging to him. Her mouth offered itself, parting and begging for his.

* * *

With a tortured growl, Ryzard kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her, wanting more and more of her. All of her. Indelibly.

But that intense, deep possession couldn’t be sustained forever. Eventually, he drew back enough for ecstasy to strum through him as her sheath stroked and clenched around him. She smelled incredible, felt even better, tasted like forbidden substances. He became animalistic, purely in his physical state, senses captured and held by this creature who entranced him. Nothing entered his vision except the expression of exquisite torture against the unique pattern on her face.

In a rare moment of unguarded openness, he removed his internal shields so he could fully absorb the pure, sweet light of her. His only thought was to fill her with the same all-encompassing rapture that held him in its grip.

She sobbed his name and he increased his tempo, reacting to her need and compelled to fulfill it. She met him thrust for thrust, their bodies so attuned they scaled the cliff together and soared into the abyss with perfect affinity. Clutching her tight under him, buried deep in her shivering depths, he let out a ragged cry of triumph as he gave in to pulse-pounding release.

CHAPTER SIX

R
YZARD
ROLLED
AWAY
, then settled on his back, his body brushing hers, but only incidentally. He wasn’t embracing or meaning to touch her that Tiffany could tell.

She turned her head to see his profile was unreadable. Not displeased, but not...

Oh, she didn’t know what she was looking for. A spear of inadequacy impaled her. While she had been caught up in their lovemaking, she’d been fine, but now she was back to being scared and self-conscious of her scars. She sat up.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, hand loosely cuffing her wrist.

Ha. Where could she go? They weren’t allowed back into the club.
Hello, big brother, can you pick me up at the docks?

Glancing over her shoulder, she tried to read his mood behind his heavy eyelids, but his spiky lashes made it impossible.

“You seem...” She didn’t want to reveal how sensitive she was to disapproval right now. They might have been intimate in other ways before, but this was different. It wasn’t just the physicality or revealing of her scars. She’d been incredibly uninhibited, exposing the very heart of herself.

“It’s probably best if I go,” she managed in a husky voice.

“I don’t know what I seem, but I’m only trying to assimilate something that—” He breathed a word in his own language. She suspected it was a curse, but his tone was kind of awed and self-deprecating at the same time.

Facing forward, she closed her lids against a sudden sting, biting back an urge to beg him to continue what he’d almost said. It sounded as if he was as moved by their lovemaking as she was, which was balm to her tattered soul.

He released her wrist to stroke her lower back, making her lift her head from where she’d let it droop to rest on her knees.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Just trying not to act like a first-timer.”

“This is unique for both of us.”

She tried not to drink too deeply of that heady assessment. She was already falling for him in little ways and couldn’t afford to become too enamored. This was merely an extension of their one-night stand.

“You keep condoms in the drawer by the bed,” she pointed out. “I’m not that unique.”

A beat of dark silence, then, “
I
never claimed to be a virgin.”

She wanted to glare at him, but couldn’t risk him seeing how hard it was for her to acknowledge his experience. Why? What right did she have to possessive feelings? She was lucky to be included in his special club at all.

“And this won’t be the only bed I’ll ever be in, so—hey!”

He had her on her back and under him before she realized he could move that fast.

“Here’s a tip for someone new to this,” he growled. “We don’t discuss past and future lovers, particularly when we’re still making love to each other.”

She blinked in shock, heart hammering.

His aggression fell away to a baffled, tender caress that he smoothed along her good cheek. “Don’t make me feel guilty for my life before I met you. How could I have known that what I thought was pleasure...” His expression clouded with a look of such angst, it made her heart hurt.

“It’s just chemistry,” she assured him, teetering inwardly against her own words even as she attempted to comfort him with them. The remark went directly against her girlish desire to hear that she was actually very special to him.

She held her breath, hoping against logic that he’d offer such a pledge.

“Exceptional chemistry,” he agreed. His hungry gaze followed his hand as he caressed from her lips to her collarbone, across the damp underside of her breast and down to her hip where his thumb aligned to the crease at the top of her leg. “But you do understand this is simply an affair? It can’t lead to anything permanent. I’m not the sort of life partner you’re looking for.”

His blunt statement fell between them like a metal wall, softened only by the expression of regret on his face.

“Glad you said it first,” she said with a poignant smile, hoping it hid the way she tensed internally. She was as wary of certain fantasies as he was, but not nearly as adept at cutting her emotions out of her heart. “I told you what I think of being the woman behind the man. You’re merely a guilty indulgence, like cheating on a diet.”

His brow winged, indignant but amused. “Let’s fatten you up then.”

* * *

Ryzard gave up trying to work. They’d been sailing three hours already, so he had another word with his captain, then remained at the helm while his instructions were carried out. As the wind whipped his shirt through the open windows of the pilothouse, he once again congratulated himself on having the wisdom to switch from a single-hulled sailboat to the double construction of a cat. The three-sixty views and flexibility with anchorage were worth the ribbing he received from traditionalists.

Hell, if he had allowed his concentration to wander like this on his old schooner, they’d all be dead, but here he could indulge himself with recollecting every delicious minute of his day. He’d devoted several hours to learning each and every one of Tiffany’s pleasure triggers, stimulating both of them as he expanded both of their educations in physical delight. Sweetest of all had been her generous straddling of him, broken voice asking for direction as she tugged him along her path to bliss.

They’d been like drunkards at that point, sheened in perspiration. Her eyes had been glassy, her pouted lips reddened by a thousand kisses. Her breasts had swayed with their undulations, her hips an instrument of torture he wielded on himself as he guided her with hands clamped tight in ownership.

He’d been sure he would die, it had been that good.

Rubbing his face, he dragged himself back to reality, yanking open his collar in search of a cool breeze to take his libido down a notch. They were flying over the waves, skipping at a light angle, demanding he pay attention, but all he could think was, how could he be this aroused again? She’d drained him dry. They’d collapsed into unconsciousness, utterly exhausted from making love.

He’d woken soon after, sweaty and thick with recovery, wanting her again.

When he’d shifted, she’d grumbled without opening her eyes, “Don’t move. My hip hurts. I need to keep my leg propped.”

He didn’t doubt it. His joints had protested his rising from the bed, and he’d never crashed and burned in a roadster. He’d substituted a pillow under her thigh and watched her settle back into sleep before taking his insatiable libido for a cold shower in a spare cabin.

Then he’d made a decision he was still second-guessing, but it was done. She was his.

I love everything you do to me.
The power of that statement unexpectedly exploded in his mind again, but that first bit,
I love...

He scratched his chest where a sensation gathered like sweat trickling. The tickle was behind his breastbone, uncomfortable and impossible to erase.
It’s just chemistry,
she’d said as he’d been reeling from a depth of pleasure he’d never experienced before.

He’d agreed with her, clinging to that simple explanation, but it was harder to blame chemistry when he’d found himself unable to wake her and send her on her way.

Why not? Why was his response to her, on every level, so much more intense than it had been with the woman he’d loved, the one he’d pledged to marry? He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t deny it.

He and Luiza hadn’t had the luxury of time and privacy to soak themselves in sexual intimacy, though. Their bond had been forged by shared secrets and ideals. She had loved him when he’d had no one else. Her vision had become his.

She’d died before her dream could become reality, but he was still striving to make it come true. There was no reason to suffer pangs of infidelity just because he wanted to play out an affair with a particular woman for a little longer than a weekend.

He clenched his hands on the wheel, telling himself that the fact Tiffany had been a virgin weighed into his decision to extend their association. No man wanted to be a woman’s first and her worst. He owed her more time and consideration than the average jaded socialite.

And she happened to have a sexual appetite to match his own. He kept mistresses when it suited him for that very reason. This was still a temporary arrangement, and Tiffany understood that’s all he ever intended to have with any woman. His heart belonged to Luiza. If he couldn’t marry her, he wouldn’t marry anyone.

Having relegated Tiffany to her rightful place in his mind, he was ready to see her again. He nodded at the first mate, and the young man swung the sail to catch more gust.

* * *

Tiffany was falling out of bed.

She woke with a cry and a start, arms splayed to orient herself on the mattress. The room glowed a brassy yellow, the bed was a wreck and her body felt as if she’d been thrown down a flight of stairs. She held very still, trying to come to grips with the odd feeling the boat was not just bobbing in its slip, but moving.

It was. They were at sail!

She’d been on sailboats, but unlike the sharp angle that resulted in stumbling around to grip her way across a deck, this catamaran was only a hair off level, allowing her to rush the window and snap up the blind. Yep. Not another boat in sight. Just a speck of land on the horizon and glittering waves in every other direction.

“What the hell, Ryzard?” she said aloud.

Glancing around for her clothes, she caught sight of herself and cringed. Her hair was naturally straight, and all that sweaty sex had weighed it down into a droopy haystack. The side of her breast felt raw where it had been abraded by stubble and when she turned her nose to her shoulder, she could swear she smelled Ryzard’s unique scent on her skin.

An odd, sexy feeling overcame her, making her want to loll in bed and call him to her, but she gave herself a firm shake. Where the hell was he taking her?

A very quick shower later, she dressed in her pants and sleeveless top to go in search of him. She forced herself not to be so cowardly as to wear the mask, but she still peered around corners, avoiding his staff.

She found him lounging in the shade of the aft deck, taking up all the cushions of the built-in sofa as he read his tablet and sipped a drink made with tomato juice. A stalk of celery rested against its salted rim. He set it down when she appeared.

“I thought a few sharp turns might shake you out of bed,” he said.

“Are you familiar with the term
kidnapping?
”

“I have business in Cuba.”

“You’re taking me to Cuba?” She gave a wild look around. Nope, not one hint of assistance in sight.

“Much as I’d love to anchor somewhere private and shirk my responsibilities, I can’t. My weekend was booked for
Q Virtus,
but now we’ll have to carve out our time around other commitments.”

“Commitments like the one I made to get on a plane with my brother two hours ago? He’ll be frantic.” Dumbfounded, she braced a hand on her forehead trying to gather her scattered wits enough to formulate a plan.

“My staff spoke to him when they collected your things.”

“Your staff collected my things. And brought them here?” She pointed to the deck, so astounded she could barely form words. “After they informed my brother that I was carrying on with you?”

“They’re discreet enough to simply say you’re my guest. Naturally he needed to be told why you weren’t meeting him as arranged. Why are you upset? Relax. I realize you avoid the sun, but you can enjoy the view from the shade. I have a masseuse aboard, if you need.”

“Ryzard,” she said with a ring of near hysteria in her tone. “You said we’d stay in dock.”

“For a few hours. We did. You overslept.”

“You should have woken me! Not said things to my brother. He doesn’t need to know about this. No one does. It’s nobody’s business but mine!” She splayed a hand on the place in her chest where he was taking up way more room than he should. Where he was lodged very close to places no one was allowed to go.

“When you called me your dirty little secret, I didn’t realize you meant it,” he replied stiffly.

Oh, she would
not
feel guilty. Maybe she was overreacting, but he didn’t realize what kind of firestorm he would have set off with her family. This was bad.

“You should have asked me,” she insisted. “And let
me
talk to my brother. Is there some way I can contact him?” Panic gripped her.

“If your mobile doesn’t work, ask the captain for the ship to shore.” He still sounded stung, but dealing with Ryzard came second to smoothing things over with Christian. What would he think of her?

She’d left her mobile in her room at the club and found it in her purse in the cabin where her things had been unpacked. Not Ryzard’s cabin, she noted, but a separate one—and why did that bother her? She was upset with him, not supposed to be mooning about what it meant if he set her up to sleep apart from him.

Keying her code into her phone, she saw that her brother had left her a dozen messages.

“What the
hell,
Tiff,” were his first words when she reached him.

“I know.” She closed her eyes. She really should have thought this through before dialing. She was just so frantic to undo what had been done. But how?

“How does something like this even happen?” he demanded.

His askance reaction crystallized the confused self-consciousness inside her, so she felt very fragile and very brittle all of a sudden. Ryzard, despite his assumptions and autocratic ways, was not the villain. The problem with her family knowing about their affair, she realized, was the impossible vision she was supposed to live up to.

“You’re the expert on picking up women. You know how it works,” she retorted. “He came on to me with a great line. I fell for it.”

The door clicked and Ryzard entered in time to hear most of what she said.

She averted her gaze from his darkening expression, prickling as her brother said, “You’re too smart for that.”

“Am I? Maybe I’m weak and desperate. Maybe I’m grateful for attention from
any
man.”