“I found him.” His hand flipped over to hold hers. “Gary Steele remained a bachelor and became extremely successful in advertising. Quite an irony as far as my mother’s ambitions were concerned.”
Nina shifted uneasily. Gabriel was almost gloating that his father had avoided what could have been a messy relationship with Darlene. But his mother had disappeared from her son’s life by the time Gabriel was four. Hadn’t he ever wondered about his father during that time?
“Why didn’t your aunt try to find your dad?”
“She sent a letter a while after my mother vanished but never got a reply. Gary said he’d moved from that address years before to live in the UK briefly and never received it. Faith believed, right or wrong, that she’d best leave good enough alone. I didn’t blame her. Not at all. She sacrificed a lot to make sure I had what I needed.”
“Is that why you’re so focused on success now?”
His chin tipped up. “Hmm?”
“To prove to the ghost of your mother,” she murmured, “that you’re a real man?”
He gave her a wily look. “Big leap.”
“Not really. My father was the same. He worked like a dog to prove himself to his father.”
Her grandfather had been a tyrant, with beady eyes, a bushy beard and not a kind word for anyone other than his financial advisor and his bridge partner. Whenever the family had frequented his mausoleum of a house she and Jill had stayed glued to her father’s side.Anthony had said Grandad was Blackbeard come back to life, only meaner.
“My dad built on an already successful engineering empire,” she went on, “then spent every moment worried about holding it together.”
His thumb rubbed the back of her hand and his head angled. “What happened to the money?”
“After my father passed away my mother went through the lot like tap water.”
“Hate to speak ill of your mother, but I bet your dad’s rolling over in his grave.”
“Meredith always had a champagne taste. My father loved her extravagant nature and bought her way too much. Jewellery, cars, holidays at the best resorts around the world. She got used to over-the-top. Difference was, when my father was alive he’d been able to step on the brakes when need be.”
“Poor guy. Worked his entire life for nothing.”
“If he hadn’t worked so hard maybe he’d still be around. Stress is a killer.”
His pale eyes darkened as he leaned closer. “I vote no stress today.”
Nina’s skin flashed hot. The intent in his voice, in his eyes, said only one thing. He wanted to kiss her. Way more than kiss.
But, no matter how the air snapped and crackled whenever they were together, she’d made herself clear the other day. Sex was best kept out of the equation. Firstly, she was a distraction he didn’t need right now. Secondly, unfairly or not, he’d dismissed her from her job. Thirdly, if she got any more involved—if she fell any deeper—he’d most likely take her heart too.
She shucked back her shoulders. “I won’t play this game. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Tell me.”
He tipped nearer still and, heart beating fast, she tipped back. “I thought we’d put this behind us.”
His eyes smouldered. “Guess you thought wrong.”
As his gaze flicked over her lush parted lips, he slid a hand around her nape to bring her close. But she pulled back, and the first inkling of suspicion faded up in her eyes. She blinked rapidly, as if her mind was catching up with the evidence at hand.
“You planned this, somehow, didn’t you?” She snapped a glance at the sky, the sail. “I mean mooring here, when the breeze was set to run out.”
He pressed a sensual kiss to her bare shoulder. “Now, how could I do that?”
“You knew I wouldn’t be able to escape.”
“Do you want to escape?”
She growled in her throat, but this time didn’t pull away. “You’re twisting things.”
He wound her arm around his neck.
“Organising this boat,” she said. “Sailing out here…All the time you were planning, saving this up—”
His mouth caressed the sensitive spot below her collarbone. “And I’m about to blow.”
She stiffened against him. A tense moment passed before the pressure building between them seemed to ignite, expand and then release. After letting out a long-suffering sigh, she trembled and finally furled her fingers up the back of his hair.
Sighing softly, she grazed her cheek against his. “Oh, Gabe, I’m about to blow too.”
He smiled to himself.
Score one for the weather man.
He lovingly nipped her chin. “What happened to putting this behind us?”
“What happened to no escape?”
He was about to kiss her the way he’d dreamed of kissing her these past drought-ridden days when something—or someone—seemed to tap him on the shoulder. When he tried to ignore it, the tap came again.
He swore to himself. What a time to get the guilts.
He held her arm and asked, in all earnestness, “Nina, I want to know if you have any real concerns about this…”
Her lips feathered over his. “I’ll let a real man kiss them away.’
When she pulled him down on top of her, he happily fell.
“Lord above, I’ve missed this,” he murmured, snatching kiss after kiss while her sexual hunger spiked and relapsed into that raw, lethal need. “I missed you so much.”
She ground herself up against him while her fingers dug into his biceps, and all thought but for him dropped away.
Drunk with passion, they rolled over on the blanket, one way then the other, their mouths locked as their hands sought out places that ached for attention. Her breasts burned to know the stiff, moist stroke of his tongue. Her sex throbbed to feel him deep inside her. When he ripped her bikini top off, the thrust of her desire for him hit like a nuclear blast.
His mouth on her throat, he dragged off her bikini bottoms. She yanked at his fitting trunks while her other hand fanned the warm rock of his chest. When more of his scent filled her lungs she felt almost too dizzy with longing to breathe.
He found her wet and hypersensitive. With one mighty arcing action he swept the plates of food well aside and then kissed her again, his tongue edging over hers, probing deeper, as if no matter how long or how hard they stayed connected he could never get enough.
She held him close, one knee measuring his side before his mouth left hers and his head lowered. When his lips suctioned around her nipple, drawing her deeply into his mouth, bright fountains of colour were released in her head. Her fingers knotted in his hair and that leg coiled over his back.
As the fever took hold, and her arousal clamoured at the ceiling, she reached, trying to tug again at his trunks. He wrangled out of his wet shorts. A second later his pulsing erection pushed against her hip, then cooler air brushed her body as his heat drew away.
Dizzy with need, she opened her eyes. Craning up onto her elbows, she was ready to cry out—Don’t you dare leave me now.
But he was kneeling over her, his fists coming down either side of her shoulders. His eyes were stormy and his nostrils flared with the effort to take in enough air. Then he slowly lowered, to tease her, rubbing the head of his erection over her intimate folds, making her bloom and throb all the more. When she moved provocatively beneath him, teasing him back, his control snapped in two. He entered her more roughly than he’d intended, hitting a place that made her jump and rock her head to one side.
Concerned, he grabbed her shoulder. “Nina, are you all right?”
She wet her lips and sighed long and loud. “Do it again.”
A hot, lazy smile curved his lips before he filled her once more, and a jet of high-octane sparks showered up, setting every part of her alight. Nina was washed away on the climbing tide. The energy spiralled higher, condensed tighter, until the heart of her cried out for release. But another part of her wanted this ecstasy to last—wanted this fire to rage on and on and out of control.
When he sank into her again, the force of her orgasm ripped a cry from her lips. Pulsating energy contracted, then tore her apart, spraying sparks of pleasure through her blood. She was vaguely aware of his release too, of his fingers digging into her hip, of his chest rubbing high against hers as he shuddered and let his heat flow.
Curling her arms up over her head, Nina pressed against her lover’s hard, slick body, soaking up the peak of their magic. And exhausted moments later, when he lay beside her and pulled a corner of the blanket over them both, she knew she’d never felt more content.
She was never more herself than when Gabriel held her like this.
He was the perfect rogue. A fantastic lover. But anyone could fathom why he wasn’t after long-term. Why marriage was scary.
Scars from his past. No belief in happily-ever-afters. He’d lived his whole life knowing his mother had put her ambition before her little son’s best interests. He’d deserved to know his father. He’d deserved a mother who hadn’t roamed around searching for her fantasy meal-ticket at night. No wonder he was cynical.
But Nina hoped he would discover real love one day. She could imagine him standing at the altar, wearing a crisp black suit, his tanned hands clasped before him, his smile serene. She could see the love in his eyes, the boundless commitment on his face and wished…a silly romantic’s wish.