She was lost to all reason, her eyes burning like molten gold clung to his. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she pleaded, and involuntarily she lifted her long legs and wrapped them around his lean waist. Lucas thrust into her in one strong stroke, and she cried out at the power of his possession. He was there, where she ached for him.
He filled her, and moved in her in a wild pagan rhythm. Her legs wrapped tighter around his thrusting body as she soared ever higher and higher. Her arms reached for him, pulling his head down close enough for her mouth to meet his. Her tongue sought to repeat the rhythm of their bodies.
Lucas threw back his head, his battle for restraint evident in the damp sheen on the taut bronzed f
eatures. He watched her eagerly, as he drove feverishly harder, his hands grasping her buttocks, holding her in a grip of steel as she reached the peak. Her keening cry rending the air as the incredible tension snapped, her tight, pulsing muscles convulsed inside her taking Lucas with her in a fierce dynamic surge of powerful release that shook his great body, totally out of control.
It was a frantic coupling and together they clung in the shuddering aftermath, until finally, their sweat-slicked bodies entwined, they both fought to breathe air into laboured lungs, the pounding of two hearts together.
Amber let her arms fall weakly to the bed as reality intruded. But it wasn’t love and she had to remember that, and she tried to move.
Lucas rolled off her, and, lying down beside her, he gathered her tenderly into the curve of his body. She tried to ease away, but he hauled her closer. ‘Lie still and let me hold you for a while,’ he rasped in a throaty voice. ‘My Amber, my sexy wife,’ and the satisfaction in his tone was unmistakable.
‘Wife,’ Amber murmured, her golden eyes widening in surprise as she glanced up at him. The sexy she did not like at all—it reminded her too much of their past affair. But the wife she did like. Amber Karadines had a nice ring to it.
‘Why the surprise?’ Lucas grinned and, leaning over her, he kissed her very gently. ‘We have just consummated our marriage, and that does make you my wife,’ he drawled huskily. ‘And if you give me a moment I will prove it to you all over again.’ His eyes held hers, glinting with amusement, and Amber could not look away.
His suggestion of a repeat performance was enough to make her stomach curl and her breasts tingle, in shameful awareness of his promise of more sensual delights to come. ‘I thought we were supposed to be going out to sea,’ she reminded him, to take her mind off more erotic thoughts.
‘I know,’ he declared with a rueful grin. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if a cruising holiday was such a great idea with only me to steer the boat.’
‘Serves you right.’ Amber laughed. ‘You will be stuck at the wheel all day and night.’
‘No way.’ His head bent and he captured her mouth with his own.
Her lips parted, and her senses stirred again, a slow, deep, salacious curl of excitement that unfurled from her belly to ignite every nerve-end in her body. Lucas thought she was sex mad, always had. Why try to deny it? she wondered with stark reality—after all, this was what she wanted. She let her hands slide up over the bulging biceps to the wide shoulders and up to tangle in the thick black hair, and she held his head to hers and returned the kiss with equal fervour.
It was dark when Amber opened her eyes. She rolled over onto her stomach and discovered she was alone in the big bed. Then she realised the low noise she could hear was the sound of the engines, and the gentle motion of the boat told her he had put out to sea. Struggling to a sitting position, she surveyed the tangled mass of sheets, and her own slightly bruised naked body. She was just reaching for a sheet to cover her with when a light flicked on. Blinded by the light, she blinked for a moment.
‘Good, you’re awake. Come on.’ Lucas smiled, walking over to the bed and lifting her bodily out of it.
‘Wait a minute, what do you think you are doing?’
He lowered her down the length of his long body, and, with her feet on the not-so-firm floor, she glanced up at him. ‘What time is it?’
‘Time you started work, sailor. Hurry and get dressed and meet me on the deck. If I stay here much longer—’ his sparkling black eyes slid lasciviously over her naked body ‘—the boat will probably run aground.’
Ten days later, Amber leant on the rail of the boat with a cup of coffee in one hand, idly surveying the approaching shoreline. She had just showered and put on a fine lawn sarong skirt in blue and white with a blue bandeau around her breasts. Her long hair hung down her back in wet strands, because Lucas’s precious boat with all mod cons did not possess a hair-dryer.
Stifling a big yawn, she lifted the cup to her mouth and took a sip. She grimaced as she swallowed. She needed the caffeine—an unrestricted diet of sex, sex and more sex could be pretty exhausting. For the first four days of their honeymoon, Lucas had anchored the boat in a secluded cove and they had lived on sex and the provisions on board. Lucas was almost insatiable, more so than she remembered, and, being brutally honest, she was no better herself.
He only had to look at her a certain way and they were straight into bed, or not necessarily the bed—the salon, the galley, the deck, a beach, even the sea, which she was surprised was possible. Maybe Lucas had been right about her all along—maybe she was a sex fiend, but then what did that make him?
She drained her coffee-cup and sighed. He certainly did not love her, the word hadn’t been mentioned. Sometimes when she felt him deep inside her, possessing her, devouring her completely, she had to bite her tongue to stop crying out her love for him.
The tour of the Greek coastline had been a joke. The only sites Amber had seen were the sea and a naked Lucas. Her lips curled in a secretive smile—not that she was complaining. Lucas was fun to be with, and an experienced and inventive lover, and no woman could have dreamed of a more passionate honeymoon. And they had actually managed to travel through the Corinthian canal a couple of days ago.
They had stopped in the town of Corinth, and dined out for a change, and now they were heading for Karadines Island, and home.
Home was such an emotive word, and Amber felt longingly of her own little house in England. Amber was beginning to have severe doubts about lazing around all summer. It was all right for Lucas—he was going back to work after the weekend. He had told her last night. He had everything arranged: they would live on the island, and Lucas would travel into Athens most days by helicopter, but when he had to travel further afield Amber would go with him—at least until the children arrived, he’d laughed.
Amber had been stunned to think Lucas was actually considering her as the mother of his children. Or had he been joking…? She wasn’t sure and so she’d mumbled something and changed the subject.
Before she’d left England she’d visited her doctor and started taking the pill, because, though loath to admit it, she’d known a platonic marriage was never going to work between them. And she wasn’t fool enough to risk getting pregnant, much as she would love to have his child, until she was sure their relationship was going to last beyond the probate of Spiro’s will. Lucas had let her down before, and she still didn’t trust him…
Two large hands slid around her slender waist. ‘Time to take up position.’
‘What position would that be?’ Amber queried teasingly as she turned in his arms to face him. He looked good enough to eat, showered and shaved and dressed in white tailored shorts, and pale blue short-sleeved shirt, and his sensuous mouth curved in a wicked smile.