SILENT DESIRES

“He touched you?” Dash asked.

The deadly softness of his voice warned her that she had phrased that very badly. She spun in her chair to face him and regretted the action at once. First and foremost because it made her dizzy, but secondly because his expression was frightening. He looked like he wanted to kill someone and she thought that person might be Dean. She didn’t want to cause any problems between the two men, especially when the younger one had been so nice to her.

She glared at Dash. “Not like that. I’m not like your other girlfriend, Olivia. I don’t go about kissing men in public places.” She said,Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

Dash ignored the reference to Olivia. “How did he touch you, Tess? Tell me.” His voice was deadly soft.

“He kissed my hand and he called me beautiful. If you want the truth, it made me feel nice.” She replied.

A lot nicer than having Dash dump the suntan lotion in his sister’s lap and leave with the speed of an Olympic athlete when Stefan signaled for him. “Now go back to your Playboy Bunny and let me finish my game of solitaire in peace.”

Had she really said that? She sounded like a truculent child, or a jealous woman. Which she was, she admitted.

“I have no interest in other women and I do not wish to leave you alone.” Dash said.

She rolled her eyes. Right. “Why not?” she asked. He had a very strange way of showing his supposed singular interest in her. “You left me alone by the pool.”

“I left you with my sister.” He sounded and looked driven. “Stefan wanted to discuss something with me.”

“So, go back and talk some more business with him. I don’t care.” She should be used to it by now. She’d been ignored for her father’s business interests all her life, but if Dash thought she was going to marry a man who did the same thing to her, then he was a fool. She had had enough of that.

But it isn’t his business interests that have you so on edge, her inner voice reminded her. She pushed that inner voice away.

“Clearly you do care.” He had that superior-male-dealing-with-a-recalcitrant-female expression on his face. “You are upset.”

So, he’d noticed.

“Am I?” She asked sarcastically. She turned back to the cards and saw where she could uncover an ace. She did it. She was even better at solitaire than gin rummy. She’d played a lot of it growing up. It was something she had used to keep herself busy back then.

Gentle fingers played softly over the bare skin of her shoulders. “What is it, Tess? Are you upset by Olivia’s kiss? It was nothing, I assure you that. All is over between us. She was just joking with me.” Dash said.

He sounded so sincere and Tess had this really craven desire to lean back into his touch. “That’s not the way it looked to me.” She said.

“So, this is about Olivia’s forwardness?” The masculine complacency in his voice grated on Tess’s nerves. He liked the idea of her being jealous, the fiend.

“This is about nothing. I felt like coming inside. End of story.” She lied. Was prevarication becoming a habit?

“And playing a game of cards with an inveterate rake?” he asked. The complacency was gone.

“Dean is very nice.” she replied.

“Yes he is. He kissed your hand and told you that you are beautiful.” The fingers on her shoulders were tense now, but they weren’t hurting her. “You liked this,” he said.

If he had sounded angry, she might have remained defiant, but he didn’t. He sounded confused and disappointed. In her.

“I’d rather you did it,” she admitted. Darn that champagne anyway. The next thing she knew she would be telling him she loved him.

He pulled her up from the chair and around to face him. She kept her eyes focused on the hair-covered bronzed skin of his chest rather than looking up. It was damaging to her breathing pattern, but better for her pride. She didn’t want to see his smug reaction to her admission.

He took her smaller hand in his large, dark one. Lifting it toward him and bending at the same time, he touched his lips to the back of her knuckles. “You are very beautiful,” he said softly.

He also told her she was sweet, the woman he wanted to marry and that her skin tasted like honey.

She was entranced by the litany of praise.

But he did not stop with words. He kissed each of her fingertips with tiny biting kisses, repeating the word beautiful after each kiss. Her eyes slid shut as sensation washed over her and then he pulled her into his body, saying something else that sounded like, “I knew this would happen,” but that made no sense. And she wasn’t sure she heard him well because she couldn’t only concentrate on how he was making her feel at that moment.

She stopped trying to figure it out when he tilted her head up and covered her mouth with his.

The first touch of his lips sliding against hers had the impact of a knockout drug on her willpower. She couldn’t resist even if she tried to.

She’d been starved for the taste of him for days and flicked her tongue out to sample his lips without thought or any hesitation. He groaned and she found herself in his arms, their lips and bodies locked passionately together. It was like that time at Athens, but better. She knew what to expect now, what pleasure awaited her in his arms.

She wound her arms around his neck and pulled herself up his body, standing on her very tiptoes, pressing herself as close to him as possible.

He swung her up into his arms, never breaking the kiss. She opened her mouth, inviting him inside and he took the invitation with the power of an invading army. He decimated her every defense and left her helpless against his desire and her own.

He was moving. She didn’t care where he was taking her. She just wanted him to keep doing what he was doing, showing her he wanted her more than other women. Because he certainly hadn’t responded to Olivia this way when she’d tricked him into that kiss by the poolside.