Excerpt
Impatient, so randy he’d fricking climax if she so much as licked her lips, Terry boarded the boat early and paced the deck, waiting, plotting, and cutting the time between greeting and screwing down second by second. He’d already explored the cabins below and knew exactly where he would take her.
Women sensed his sexual heat.
Each female passenger raked him head to toe, and ascertaining his disinterest, darted speculative glances at all the other women on board, wondering who was the lucky one. He ignored the visual come-ons.
His lungs hiccupped when he caught sight of her sashaying up the gangplank dressed in a Chinese-style satin sheath. Each graceful step outlined her slender curves, and the emerald material glistened wet in the sun’s receding rays.
She stopped in front of him, and he curled his hands around the boat’s rail. The temptation to kidnap her and steal a page from his barbarian ancestors threatened to overpower all rational thought.
“Jenny.”
“Terrence,” her uncle said and held out a paw.
Terry acknowledged the greeting with a nod of his head and a brief handshake, determined not to take his eyes off her, drowning in her essence.
“I know you two met earlier, and I introduced my niece as Jenny, but she prefers her Chinese name, which is Su-Lin.”
“Su-Lin,” he intoned and raised her hand to his lips. Unable to resist, his tongue traced the center of her palm. His eyelids closed when she flinched and then melted into his caress. He could have eaten her fingers forever, drawing each one into his mouth, nibbling on each succulent tip, but she jerked her hand away, and his hooded lids flicked open.
Those jade eyes wouldn’t meet his gaze, and she turned away, the side of her nape coloring a dusky rose. He drank in her profile, noting the contrasts, the Asian and white combinations of her unique beauty.
Three weeks. Three weeks with her on the Glory, in the cabin next to his, which had a connecting door. His prick wept with greed. Terry razed her with the fervor of an addict scoping his next fix.
She drifted out of his line of vision, following her aunt and uncle’s path to the bar punctuating the boat’s bow.
“What are you doing here?”
That cultured baritone, honed to aristocratic perfection, could belong to only one person.
Hands jammed into fists, he shuffled right and faced the man he hadn’t seen or spoken to in more than a decade.
“I live on a boat in the Mediterranean. I’m the one who’s supposed to be here,” Terry growled, his earlier exuberance morphing into anger. “What in fricking hell are you doing here?”
“Watch your tone,” his father snapped.
The man hadn’t changed, not a single iota over the years. Terry’s lips curled as he studied his father’s visage, full head of hair, now silver rather than blond, weathered face lined at the eyes and mouth by too much excess, and gray eyes that mimicked the dead of Antarctic winter.
He’d been lucky to escape.
A throat cleared behind him.
Terry’s gaze shifted, and his stomach, always a barometer of his concealed emotions, listed and heaved, threatening to upchuck its contents.
“Terrence,” his mirror image said.
“Thomas.” His mind numb, Terry shook his identical twin’s hand. And what was left of his gleeful anticipation for the evening dissipated. “What brings you two to Antibes?”