Groom By Arrangement

With a sigh of weary exasperation, she laid down her hat and her book, and, rising to her feet, almost snatched the tube from him. ‘Turn around, then,’ she ordered grudgingly, squeezing out a pool of cream into the palm of her hand.

She began at the nape of his neck, working out along his wide shoulders, smoothing the cream briskly into his warm skin. Beneath her hand, those well-defined muscles were firm and resilient over the steel hardness of bone. She had been right about how fit he was, she mused absently—this was all prime male, not a trace of softness in him.

Slicking the cream across his back, she continued to rub it in, circling slowly, over and over, all her attention focused on her task as she worked her way over the smooth ridges of muscle and down the long cleft of his spine. Last night, even with the three-inch heels of her evening sandals, she had been aware of how tall he was, but now, barefoot in the sand, his six-foot plus seemed to tower over her.

Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and the sun seemed to have grown hotter, making her feel a little light-headed. And some kind of strange magnetic force was drawing her closer, closer, until she could have slid her arms around his waist, leaned herself against him, felt the raw power in that hard male body next to hers…

Abruptly she drew back, startled. She had been within an inch of actually doing it, of making a complete fool of herself.

‘There you are.’ Her voice was stiff from the effort of suppressing the slight tremor in her throat. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Thank you.’ He turned, smiling slowly—and she was quite sure that he knew exactly what effect he was having on her. At least she still had her sunglasses on—he couldn’t see her eyes. But he must be aware of how ragged her breathing was, the way her hand was trembling as she tried to put the lid back on the cream. He was much too close—and that wide chest, hard-muscled and hair-roughened, was much too male. She just had to touch…

‘There’s a bit there you haven’t rubbed in properly,’ she excused herself awkwardly, putting up her fingertips to a melting streak of white just above his heart, where that fascinating smattering of rough hair curled over the sculpted curve of a well-defined pectoral muscle.

‘Thank you.’ His voice had taken on a huskier timbre, and with an odd little frisson of excitement she realised that he too was aware of that strange sizzle of electricity between them…

But he had deliberately engineered this, the warming voice inside her brain reminded her sharply—it hadn’t happened by chance. He was sly, devious, manipulative—in short, a man. She drew back, retreating behind her usual façade of icy disdain. ‘There. You shouldn’t get sunburned now, so long as you don’t stay out too long.’

He laughed that lazily mocking laugh. ‘I’m very obliged to you. You can go back to your book now.’

‘Thank you!’ she retorted snappily, sitting down again and slapping her hat on her head, snatching up her book and focusing all her attention on the page.

But she could no more forget his presence than fly to the moon. A few minutes later, she glanced up to see him floundering around on the sailboard, lurching from one side to the other. She watched with growing impatience, until finally she sighed, and shook her head. ‘Don’t over-compensate,’ she called to him. ‘You’re gripping the bar too tight.’

He glanced over his shoulder, wobbled, but by some miracle didn’t fall in.

‘Stand up straight. Hold your head up,’ she instructed. ‘You don’t need to watch your feet.’

He wobbled again, righted it, and wobbled the other way. ‘The darned thing just seems to go all over the place!’ he protested wryly.

‘Don’t think about it too hard. Bend your knees a little, and let the board ride.’ She put the book down and walked to the water’s edge. ‘Don’t watch the front of the board—keep your eyes on where you’re going.’

He sped along nicely for a moment, but then seemed to hit a lump in the water and lost it again. ‘Damn—I just can’t get the hang of it,’ he complained. ‘I seem to have rotten balance.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously—he didn’t look the sort who would be poor at sports. He turned clumsily, letting the board run in towards the shore.

‘It might be better if you showed me,’ he suggested hopefully.

The look she slanted him warned him that she was pretty sure he was playing games, but she received only the most innocent smile in response. With nothing else to say, she took the board from him. ‘The first thing is to balance the board and up-haul the sail,’ she explained. ‘Don’t bother about sinking—snap it up and sheet it in as quickly as you can.’

She felt the familiar tug as the wind caught in the sail, felt the bounce of the waves beneath her feet, and instinctively turned the rig to gybe around and skim out across the water. ‘See? You keep your shoulders forward, lift onto your toes…’

‘What…?’ he called from the shore. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Lift onto your toes…’ Impatiently she realised that it was no good—the wind was carrying her words away. Reluctantly she swung the board around again, and headed back to the beach. ‘Get up behind me, and I’ll show you.’

He accepted the invitation with an alacrity which confirmed her suspicion that he had planned for just such an outcome, stepping up behind her and reaching around to grasp the bar, listening attentively as she instructed him how to hold it. With two of them on it the board was a little less stable, but as soon as the breeze caught the sail it began to scud out across the water, as graceful as a bird.

Natasha had always thought that this swimsuit was perfectly respectable—soft shades of blue and green, with a satiny sheen, and not cut particularly low. But now, with Hugh Garratt’s bare chest against her bare back, his bare thighs brushing against hers, she was rather too conscious that all he had to do was glance down over her shoulder and he would have an unhindered view into the soft shadow between her breasts. And she was heatedly aware of their ripe swell, and the way the tender peaks had puckered into taut buds, their contours clearly visible beneath the damp, clinging Lycra.

As she stiffened in tension, the board snatched and started to topple. Instantly Hugh righted it, the small movement not the sort of instinctive reaction she would have expected of a beginner.

‘You suddenly seem to be getting very good at this,’ she remarked, a sardonic inflection in her voice.

‘I am, aren’t I?’ he responded with simple pride, his breath warm against her hair. ‘You must be a good teacher.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ she retorted. ‘You’ve been on a sail board before.’

‘A few times,’ he conceded, his laughter soft and husky. ‘But with you sitting there so frosty, frowning at me over your sunglasses, I couldn’t think of any other way of getting close to you.’

And close he was, much closer than was necessary to keep the sail board afloat—folded around her, every inch of his body seeming to touch hers somewhere. ‘You’re…nothing but a fraud!’ she protested, the tremor in her voice betraying the confusing responses she didn’t know how to control.

He chuckled, a low, sensuous sound that she could feel as well as hear. ‘Oh, no—I assure you I’m a lot more besides that, when you get to know me.’

‘I don’t want to get to know you,’ she insisted. ‘You probably cheat at cards.’

‘I can’t be a very good cheat, then,’ he countered promptly. ‘I lost all that money.’

In spite of herself, she was forced to laugh. ‘Are you never lost for words?’ she demanded, exasperated.

He didn’t answer at once, and she glanced briefly up at him over her shoulder—to find him gazing down into her eyes, holding them in a strangely hypnotic spell. ‘I am now,’ he murmured smokily. ‘Do you know, you’re even more beautiful when you laugh?’

She felt something inside her beginning to melt…but then the folly of flirting while balanced on a sail board was brought home to her forcefully as it started to tilt.

‘Whoops…’ She corrected it with small movement, but the weight of the two of them was upsetting the balance. It swayed the other way, jolting as it hit a wave, and Natasha knew it was going to dump them both in the water.

Hugh’s arm slipped around her waist as they tipped backwards, holding her close against him. They went under with a splash, both shrieking with laughter. The water was warm and clear, sunlight turning the spray to a sparkling cascade of diamonds. Her hair streamed around her as he turned her in his arms, and they surfaced together, body on body, legs entwined, their mouths so close…

When had she ever said he could kiss her? But as his lips brushed over hers she made no effort to push him away. Maybe she had been hoping that he would, wondering what it would be like…

But the compelling heat of his mouth was far more than she could have dreamed, dizzying her senses, driving any last shreds of rational thought from her mind. Slowly, languorously, his tongue lapped along the full curve of her lower lip, arousing a sensuous response from somewhere deep inside her, turning all her bones to jelly.

All her defences were designed to keep men at arm’s length—they were of no use at such close quarters. His wicked tongue slid again across the silky membranes just inside her lips, and then sought to plunder deeper, swirling into all the most sensitive corners of her mouth in a flagrantly erotic invasion.

Her whole body was curved against his, her aching breasts crushed by the hard wall of his chest, their tender peaks sensitive to the friction of every tiny movement between them. Her arms had somehow tangled themselves around his neck, and his hand had slipped slowly down over her bare back, holding her close enough to warn her of the tension of male arousal in him.

But the rational part of her brain had been stunned into silence by the unexpected impact of that kiss. She was kissing him back, a fierce hunger awakening inside her like nothing she had ever known before, a temptation so sweet that she didn’t know how to resist it.

Her head tipped back as she gasped raggedly for breath, and his kisses trailed a hot path down the long, slender column of her throat, into the sensitive hollows at its base, as his hand stroked up over her slim midriff to cup and mould the ripe, aching curve of her breast, crushing it beneath his palm, the taut bud of her nipple sizzling beneath that delicious abrasion.

She was floating in a world of pure sensation, the soft, warm waters of the Caribbean lapping around her part of the magic of his caresses. But suddenly her foot touched the sandy bottom, her toes grazing against a jagged edge of broken coral, and the sharp sting brought her abruptly to her senses.

Shocked by her own wantonness, she pulled back out of his arms, suddenly aware that he had eased the strap of her swimsuit down over her shoulder, almost exposing the naked curve of her breast. ‘Wh… What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded fiercely, fumbling to pull the awkward wet Lycra back up again.

‘You don’t know?’ His sardonic laughter taunted her as he shook his head in mocking disbelief. ‘I’d heard you were a mite frostbitten, but I’m sure you must have been kissed at least a couple of times before.’

She had struck out at him before she had formed the conscious thought in her brain, but he was much too quick for her, catching her wrists as she fought against him, simply amused by her fury.