She wanted to remind him that she had been up since half past four in the morning, battering doors, posting ‘help’ notes through the container roof, while he had slept until noon, but she couldn’t find the energy. And he seemed to understand for he sat up and pulled her with him, and a minute later she was wrapped in a fleecy towel. Like a child she stood there, dead on her feet, while he patted her dry and pulled something over her head— something crisp and cotton and clean-smelling.
And then she was sinking into a warm bed without even caring how she had got there, sighing with pleasure as’ every limb relaxed. Voices spoke over her head. The smell of food briefly flared her nostrils but even that couldn’t push back the sleep enclosing her.
In the darkness, a long time later, Bella shifted against a warm, hard body and curved instinctively closer, her hand splaying over a hair-roughened chest, her cheek resting against a smooth shoulder.
“Rico,” she breathed sleepily in instant recognition combined with instant contentment, and she would have drifted away again had he not tangled a hand in the mane of her tumbled hair, tipped her mouth up and kissed her.
It was like coming alive when you thought you were dead. Every skin-cell suddenly flamed into red-hot life, a kind of frantic, feverish hunger possessing her. Her response was so intense that it swallowed her alive.
“Rico…” She gasped again as he pinned her to the mattress beneath him and kissed her breathless, his mouth, hard, hungry, hot, exciting her beyond bearing.
He freed her and wrenched the nightdress off. In the darkness there was no warning before his mouth closed round the engorged bud of one swelling breast. The sensation hit her with stunning effect. Her neck extended in an arch, a stifled moan torn from her when she felt the erotic brush of his teeth and his tongue as he pulled on her taut nipples. And there was no time for anything, not a single thought, nothing but the raw, driving intensity of need screaming through her veins.
His lips skimmed a tormenting path over the quivering muscles of her belly, his hands parting her thighs, and then he was doing something . something so intimate that she tensed in sudden alarm before the power of simple sensation tore her every inhibition away.
And then she was lost again in a hot, swirling fire, conscious of nothing but the incredible, torturous excitement roaring mindlessly out of her control as he employed the same technique on the most sensitive flesh of all.
She was at screaming-point when he moved over her, every shred of physical awareness cent red on the ache of emptiness between her thighs. And then he thrust into her and she moaned and arched in one taut movement, her body
clenching on a pleasure so intense that she was utterly possessed by it. Her fingers raked down his back in reaction and her teeth nipped at the strong brown column of his throat in instinctive revenge for the ragged laugh he gave vent to.
After that there was nothing but the long, pulsing drive for satisfaction. It went on and on and on. She hit the heights fast, unable to rein back the flood of release, but he didn’t stop. She had barely hit ground level again before the frantic climb back up began, and in all her life she had never felt so controlled, never dreamt she could enjoy that reality so much. And when the second climax whooshed up inside her she was wiped out.
He shuddered above her, every muscle clenching taut, and she put her arms round him, happiness flooding through her like a rejuvenating drug. There was only one thought in her mind as she sank back into sleep. She would never let go of him again.
CHAPTER SIX
“SOME more tea, Mrs da Silva?”
Out of the corner of her eye Bella noticed Rico tense just as he had the last time their hostess had addressed her as his wife.
“Please call me Bella,” she said tightly, politely refusing the offer of a refill for her cup.
Rico had wakened her when he was already dressed. That had been her first shock. Shaven, his shirt immaculately clean—thanks, no doubt, to Mrs Warwick’s ministrations—his tie reinstated and his exquisitely expensive suit pressed and only a little limp from yesterday’s soaking, this was not Rico as she remembered him during their captivity—it was Rico the intimidating international financier she had faced at the bank.
“A car will pick us up at eight. We will make our statements to the police as soon as possible,” he had murmured smoothly before leaving her alone to rise and dress.
Her attention had fallen on the nightgown which had been discarded on the carpet the night before, and suddenly Bella had felt as though she was dying inside. How could she have made love with him again?
The fevered, driving passion of the night haunted her now. He had a bruise from her teeth a halfqnch above his collar and it seemed to scream at her like a badge of public shame every time she looked at him.
In the dark he was one hundred per cent sexual predator and she was one hundred per cent victim of her own wanton nature. Recalling that she had been all over him like a rash afterwards only intensified her sense of humiliation. There was a new distance between them and it wasn’t coming from her side of the fence. Rico had an aloof quality that he hadn’t had the night before. It had been there from the first moment she’d set eyes on him again.
And she understood, wished she didn’t, wished she were wrong, but knew she was right. The real world was about to reclaim them again.
Their time together in that container had been time outside the real world. Now they were back to being the people they really were. He was Rico da Silva, rich, influential financier . and she was Bella Jennings, an illegitimate waitress who wanted to be an artist but who might never make the grade. The gulf was enormous and Rico had been the first to recall it.
Her inner turmoil was so intense that it threatened to swallow her alive. Suddenly she was wallowing in terrifying confusion, not knowing what she felt, not knowing what she thought. Involuntarily she collided with the dark density of Rico’s flashing gaze and her heart stopped beating altogether. Was it possible that he was enduring the same conflict?
But then she watched him smoothly turn his dark head and speak calmly to Mrs Warwick, and her heart beat again and sank simultaneously.
Rico was in control. Rico knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. Confusion and Rico da Silva were not a credible combination.
Why had he made love to her again last night? Why had he pounced and moved in when she had been half-asleep, her every defence mechanism at rest?
P for predator, P for passionate, P for prey. Her stomach heaved. He was a very virile male. When he wanted sex he was used to taking it.
She had just been a willing female body in the bed and, as he had once reminded her, he was not a corpse, devoid of all sexual response. And if he was now wishing that he hadn’t bothered, she had no doubt that he had the cold will to ensure that she didn’t form any silly ideas about their possibly having embarked on a continuing relationship.
The four-wheel drive that picked them up arrived early, hastening their departure from the farmhouse. Two men were seated in front. They hadn’t even reached the end of the lane before she realised that they were policemen driving an unmarked car—a chief superintendent and an inspector, no less. The taut questions came flying within seconds.
Every time a question came in her direction Rico stepped in to answer it for her. In another mood, in another situation and with other companions, Bella would have roundly objected. But right now she felt detached from everything, everybody. Rico and the police included. ” and she didn’t care—she really didn’t care—if sitting there in silence, letting him do the talking for her, made her look like the dumbest cluck of all time.
Her mind had already leapt forward to the parting of the ways ahead.
Her thoughts stayed there, frozen in intense shock at the image of forthcoming loss and departure that unexpectedly tore at her.
“Miss Jennings?” a voice said loudly.
Dredged from her inner conflict, Bella jerked and flinched, and found herself staring wordlessly at the older man in the passenger seat, who had turned round and was studying her intently.
“Sorry, I—’ A hand suddenly closed tightly round hers where it lay clenched on the seat.
“Bella’s still in shock,” Rico delivered with chilling bite, and ‘leave her alone’ was writ large in his assertion.
Shaken by that hand on hers and that cold intonation, Bella saw the senior policeman’s gaze drop and linger on their linked hands, and abruptly a tide of burning colour flushed her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” she said tremulously, shielding her eyes with her lashes.
“We do require some form of statement from Miss Jennings. Of course, I understand what a devastating experience this must have been.” Even so, there was the merest edge of wry amusement in the older man’s voice and she knew then that he knew that, whatever their relationship might have been before they had ended up in that container, it was now one of intimacy, and that stifled her natural effervescence even more.
She did not want anyone else to be aware of what she could barely deal with herself. She snaked her fingers free of Rico’s, denying herself that warmth although every treacherous sense longed to maintain it.
There was a town not many miles from the farmhouse, complete with police station. They were practically smuggled into the building through a rear entrance.