Tamed By Her Husband. Elizabeth Power

had said she’d thought him a cut above the rest, which surprised him immensely, but he was also surprised to discover how much it pleased him too. He had always thought her opinion of him low to say the least, and now, because of the way she had sounded when she had—unintentionally, he felt—dispelled him of that notion, suddenly he felt like a first-rate heel. He’d condemned her, not because everybody else did. It had never been in his nature to listen to mere gossip—follow the common trend—but because, like everyone else with a gram of common sense, he could see the road she was going down, and he couldn’t deny that that crazy lifestyle of hers invited criticism. But even the most condemned of men—or women, he amended wryly—deserved a hearing, and he hadn’t even allowed her that. Perhaps he should have left her back there, instead of trying to get her to see things his way when she was so hell-bent on refusing to. But if he had, and then something happened to her…

      He shook off the thought, wishing he didn’t feel so inextricably involved.

      She had been right, when she had accused him of being seduced back to Bouvier’s by an attractive deal, although it wouldn’t have been in his interests—and much less the company’s—to refuse. But if she really knew the ‘deal’ Ranulph had initially offered him for bringing her home—a deal he himself had had no compunction about turning down flat—she would probably have jumped over the side without a backward glance.

      Checking the compass, estimating the distance from his intended mooring, he wondered if she had believed him when he had admitted to being worried about her; wondered whether, in using her health and safety as the only reason for keeping her with him, he was being entirely honest with himself.

      Because the whole truth was that, ever since the first day he had seen her when she had breezed into her father’s office nearly five years ago, she had stirred in him every masculine instinct it was possible to stir. Concern. Anger. Protectiveness. As well as downright lust! And that was it, he thought, despairing at himself, because, young as she had been then—and angry—as she had been that last time when she had stood there calling him a Judas, she had had the power to arouse him, and still arouse him, like no other girl or woman he had ever met.

      With a tense clamping of his jaw, fingers tightening around the wheel, he steered the powerful vessel through the gathering dusk. How the hell he was going to keep his mind on getting this thing to Cannes with her on board was anybody’s guess when he wanted to undress her every time he looked at her. Even in that urchin outfit he found himself wanting to peel her clothes off her, and he had only made that ridiculously outmoded statement about her honour to warn himself to watch his own step. Even thinking about her lying on that big bed—as she’d been earlier when he had gone below with some tea and found her sleeping, her blonde hair splashed across the pillow—filled his mind with thoughts that were anything but honourable. Just as in the past, even while he’d been bitterly disappointed and angry with her—with himself—after that scandalous affair, for still wanting her, he found himself envying every man whose bed she might have shared, wanting to be the one whose name that soft voice whispered, for whom those blue eyes grew heavy with desire; to hear her moan in acquiescence as he kissed the pale satin of her body and feel his own body harden—as it was doing now—from the unbelievable ecstasy of pleasuring her…

      ‘What happened to your last passenger?’

      ‘What?’ He swung round so fast that he almost sent a mug beside the control panel flying.

      ‘Your last passenger. The one who helped you crew? What happened to them?’ Shannon repeated.

      ‘Nothing happened to them.’ He sounded tense—impatient, she noted, her eyes drawn reluctantly to those strong, tanned hands steadying a mug; hands, she realised through that familiar unwelcome tension, that were experienced in handling more than just an ocean-cruiser… ‘She got off in Barcelona.’