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‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.
She propped a fist on her hip and glared back at him. So much for the sweet and cheerful act. That didn’t last long. The surge of adrenaline only irritated him more. He would not be aroused by her snotty attitude again, because it was infuriating, notintriguing. He wanted her gone now. What was she still doing here? Ruining his break and stopping him from getting the rest he so desperately needed?
If she hadn’t got him all riled up last night he wouldn’t even have been here, he would have been lying comatose in his suite!
‘Really?You want to know what I’m doing on your private island?’ she snapped, misunderstanding his perfectly reasonable question deliberately, the little minx. ‘I’m stranded here,’ she said, her voice rising with indignation. ‘Or did you forget already you kidnapped me last night?’
He dragged in a furious breath, and a lungful of her delicious scent—flowery shampoo and musky female sweat—got lodged in his solar plexus.
The heat rose. Along with his anger.
‘I know why you’re on my island. I want to know why you’rehere, in this cove.’ He strode to the fibreglass sailing dinghy beached on the sand and grabbed a towel from the supplies his staff had left for him. ‘Perhaps I should add stalking to the ever-growing list of your misdemeanours,’ he added. But as he rubbed his hair, he could hear her soft footsteps following him.
‘I’m here because I can’t leave Estiva without your say-so, according to Marco.’
He swung round to see her standing behind him. But the belligerent expression dissolved as her gaze dipped to his bare chest. Her throat contracted as she swallowed. The heat in his groin flared as the whisky colour of her eyes darkened...
The same vivid awareness he had noticed the night before, when she had stared at him in his guest bedroom, made her look a little dazed.
‘A-and...s-stop pretending you’re going to call the police,’ she managed, although her voice had lowered to a husk, her gaze still anchored to his chest. ‘B-because we both know you’re not,’she finished, struggling to sound outraged, when all he could hear was desire.
She wanted him... And he wanted her.
Damned if he knew why that was, she was hardly his type. Not elegant and sophisticated and compliant, but feisty and fierce and quite frankly a complete pain in the backside since the moment he’d set eyes on her.
But he couldn’t deny the surge of heat any longer.
He tucked a thumb under her chin, tilted her face up.
‘Stop staring at my chest,’ he said.
She blinked, a vivid blush firing across her cheeks and highlighting her exceptional bone structure. She really did have the most compelling face, the gold nose ring adding to her funky appeal.
‘I—I’m not,’ she said, but the protest was weak at best. And didn’t fool him for a second, her expression as transparent as her desire.
‘You know, I’d have a lot more respect for you if you admitted why youreallyfollowed me here...’ he goaded, enjoying the way the fiery blush spread down her neck to explode along her collarbone. And those expressive eyes lit with a combination of desire and confusion.
Why did her dazed arousal only make him want her more? The chemistry between them made no sense—she was a complication, her connection to Cade only making his knee-jerk decision to bring her here more problematic. But after an hour and a half spent attempting to drown the spark she had created, he was through fighting it.
‘I—I don’t know what you mean...’ she murmured, but he could see the lie in her eyes. She knewexactlywhat he meant, because she felt it too, even if she was unwilling to admit it.
He swept his thumb across her bottom lip, the last of his anger releasing in a rush of longing when she shuddered and stumbled back.
He let his hand drop, but he kept his gaze locked on hers and embraced the surge of awareness that had driven him here in the first place.
The long swim was supposed to have controlled this incessant, inexplicable desire, and ensure she was gone when he returned to the villa—because he’d decided during the night, when he woke aching for her, that he had no intention of pursuing this inconvenient attraction. But she’d ruined his best-laid plans. So now, they would both have to deal with the consequences.
‘Stop playing the clueless virgin, Milly,’ he murmured. While he found her confusion intriguing, he wasn’t fooled by it. She was as drawn to him as he was to her, last night’s arguments had been foreplay, so why not see exactly where this would lead? ‘We both know why you really followed me here.’
She stared at him, dazed and wary, but not denying the obvious any more.
Then her tongue flicked out to moisten dry lips, and his gaze zeroed in on her mouth. The plump bottom lip, the slight overbite, the cupid’s bow at the top that had tempted him beyond bearing the night before, although he’d been too damn mad to admit it.
He didn’t feel mad any more. He felt vindicated. By the answering awareness in her eyes.
‘Now that you’ve gone to considerable trouble to track me down,’ he said, spotting the bike on the sand behind her. ‘What do you want to do about it?’ he asked, goading her, deliberately.
They were both consenting adults, and they wanted each other. Sometimes it was just that simple. But he’d be damned ifhe’d do all the work. Or if he’d let her play the kidnapped virgin sacrifice.
