“That you’ll find out soon enough.” He turned toward the bedroom. “Come. It’s late and I’m tired.”
Tired?
She was still struggling for breath as she watched him go. Her knees were rubbery and her head was spinning. Her heart was racing and at the core of her, she felt hot and achy. A barely there kiss had reduced her to this—and hadn’t seemed to affect Rico at all.
She was tangled up in knots and he was tired.
Teresa pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly as she followed Rico. Whatever he had planned for her, it looked as though it wasn’t going to happen tonight. So it seemed she was just going to have to learn to live with the jittering nerve endings and the screaming hormones. Because she wasn’t about to let him know just how much his kiss had awakened in her.
He already had the power here. No point in crowning him a true King.
* * *
For the next few days, Rico was like a man holding on to a live electrical wire. His body was in a constant state of burning. He was touchy. Jumpy. And so damned horny he wondered if a man could die from want.
The plan had been to keep Teresa with him at all times, taking every chance to touch her. To kiss her. To make her so crazy she’d beg him to take her. Joke was on him though, as he was the one suffering.
He walked into the tropical bar, glancing around at the crowd gathered beneath rainbow-colored umbrellas. Not far away, waves rushed to shore, leaving frothy footprints in their wake. Surfers rode the waves and tanned beauties lay stretched out under the sun on royal-blue chaises that looked like sapphires on the white sand. And here in the bar, conversations were loud, laughter was bright and liquor flowed as freely as the sea.
He scanned the faces gathered there and finally found the one he sought. Teresa was behind the bar, helping Teddy, the bartender, serve drinks. Rico wasn’t sure why it irritated him to find her there, helping. But it did. Hell, she was supposed to be miserable. Instead her eyes were shining, her smile wide and welcoming, and when she laughed at something a customer said to her, everything inside Rico tightened into a fist.
Before he could go to her, though, a hand came down on his arm and he looked to his left. Serenity James, Hollywood’s latest darling and Rico’s current annoyance, smiled up at him.
She tossed her caramel-colored hair back from her shoulders to make sure her no doubt surgically enhanced breasts in her impossibly small bikini were displayed to their best advantage.
“Rico, I’ve been hoping to see you,” she said, her voice a breathy promise of sex in silk sheets. “I wanted to thank you for finding my diamonds.”
The diamonds she was wearing right now. Apparently in the young actress’s eyes, beachwear also demanded accessories clearly worth more than half a million dollars. The stones glittered against her tanned skin and she ran one fingertip over the diamonds, as if to reassure herself they were still where they belonged.
“It was my pleasure,” he said politely, though it cost him. He flicked a glance at Teresa, still laughing with her customer. She was supposed to be suffering, he told himself. Instead, she was making herself at home on Tesoro. He’d noticed over the last few days just how often she lent a hand to one of the staff. The bar today, yesterday it had been some crisis in the kitchen and before that, he’d caught her helping one of the maids whose service cart had been upended by a drunken guest.
Teresa was ingratiating herself with everyone on the island. Including Sean and Melinda King. He knew that Melinda and Teresa had spent some time together since their shared dinner that first night. According to Sean, Teresa was wonderful, being good company and keeping Melinda from worrying about the unknown terrors of her impending labor.