Love Islands: Passionate Nights. Louise Fuller

suited her at the time. Why should he care about a woman who had turned out to be no better than a gold-digger?

      Annoyingly, it now irked him to think that she was only going to hop into bed with him because he had dangled that money carrot in front of her. So she fancied him. Big deal. From the age of thirteen he had known what it was like to be fancied by the opposite sex. But did she fancy him enough to sleep with him if she didn’t think that it made financial sense?

      He loathed the direction his thoughts were taking but seemed unable to stop the flow now that it had begun.

      ‘Are you? Because, if you’re just speculating, then I don’t want to be having this conversation. You’re free to walk away cash in hand, Lucy, and you don’t have to sleep with me as part of the deal.’ He flung himself onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. If this was what it felt like to be the good guy, then he could say in all honesty that he’d felt better.

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Feel free to show your true colours, my beloved wife,’ Dio said acidly, still staring up at the ceiling but conscious of her naked, sexy body next to his with every treacherous pore of his being.

      ‘I meant what I said when I told you that I want to sleep with you—money doesn’t have anything to do with it.’

      Dio inclined his head to look at her. He couldn’t credit the soar of triumph that greeted her unsteady admission.

      ‘Is that the sound of you telling me that you’re using me...?’ He shifted so that he was lying on his side and lost himself in a shameless observation of her beautiful body, even though it was costing him not to touch that beautiful body. Yet.

      ‘And what would you say if I told you that I was?’

      ‘I’ll live with it,’ he murmured. ‘Now, lie back. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much talk before sex in my life before.’

      Lucy’s eyelids fluttered and she obeyed, sprawling with feline satisfaction, arching slightly so that her small breasts were pushed up.

      With an unsteady groan, Dio planted a trail of kisses along her neck, then lower across her collarbone. He found heaven when he finally took one nipple into his mouth. It was sweet and succulent and he suckled on it, feeling it tighten in his mouth and hearing her moan as he swirled his tongue across the sensitive surface before drawing it long and deep into his mouth once again.

      Gently he cupped her other breast, massaging it, and then rolling his fingers over her nipple, a warm-up for his mouth.

      It was pure agony taking his time but he refused to let himself forget that she was a virgin. His virgin. His virgin bride. The thought of that fired him up on all fronts and appealed to the very essence of his masculinity.

      He took his time as he straddled her, pushing her legs wide open to accommodate him, and gently stilling her instinct to snap them shut.

      He was so aroused that he could scarcely breathe. If he began telling her what he wanted to do with her, he knew that he would find it impossible not to come.

      This was a first for her and in some ways it was a first for him as well. The slight tremble which he knew she was trying hard to contain gentled his natural raw instincts.

      Her other nipple was waiting for him and he took it gently into his mouth and teased and licked and sucked until she was writhing underneath him, arching up, her fingers curled into his hair so that she could push him down against her breast.

      Her nipple was taut and glistening as he finally drew away. Hands flat on either side of her, he continued to trace a path along her rib cage, over her stomach, pausing to circle her belly button and then lower still...

      Lucy’s eyes flew open as his mouth moved to caress her inner thigh.

      ‘Dio...’

      He looked up and smiled. ‘Dio...what...?’

      ‘I... I...’

      ‘Relax. Trust me. You’re going to enjoy me kissing you down there.’ The scent of her filled his nostrils. ‘And don’t close your eyes,’ he commanded. ‘I want to know that you’re watching me when I begin licking you...’

      Lucy moaned as her imagination took wonderful flight. She was so wet for him, wanted him so much. She marvelled that she had spent so many months primly keeping her distance, little knowing that he had the power to melt every bone in her body until she was as pliant as a rag doll.

      She watched as he settled between her legs, hands against the soft flesh of her inner thigh preventing her from closing her legs, making sure that she was open for him.

      Delicately he slid his tongue between the soft folds, finding the throbbing bud of her roused clitoris with ease and tickling it.

      The pleasure was exquisite.

      She wanted to keep her eyes open so that she could see his dark head moving with purpose between her legs but she couldn’t. She tilted her head up and arched her back, an instinctive response to what he was doing.

      When he plunged his finger into her, whilst keeping up the insistent pressure of his tongue on her clitoris, Lucy could no longer hold herself back.

      The waves of pleasure were too much, far too much. She didn’t want this...she wanted him in her... But with a long, shuddering groan she gave in to the ripples that increased into an unstoppable riptide of her orgasm.

      She came against his mouth, rising up, crying out, moving wildly as his tongue continued its ruthless plunder.

      Her own lack of experience stared her in the face as she gradually came back down to earth.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ She turned away as he moved up to tilt her chin gently so that they were looking at one another.

      ‘Only tell me you’re sorry if you didn’t enjoy it.’

      ‘You know I did,’ she whispered. ‘But I... I should have been able to hold off. I shouldn’t have come...not like that...not when I want you in me...’

      ‘I wanted to bring you to an orgasm, Lucy. This is just the foreplay...’

      ‘It’s pretty mind-blowing,’ Lucy returned shakily.

      ‘You’re so beautiful and wet that I’ll be able to slide into you, and I’ll be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you.’

      Lucy found it remarkable that this powerful, ruthless man, accustomed to getting his own way at all costs, could be so tender between the sheets.

      Yet, wasn’t that the hallmark of the expert lover? That was what she told herself because it was bad enough that he was climbing out of the box into which she had securely placed him. She just didn’t need yet another side of him to hit her in the face and overturn yet more preconceptions.

      He said that she should trust him and that he didn’t want to hurt her but some little voice inside cautioned her that it was within his power to deliver a great deal of hurt.

      He already had! Surely the proof of the pudding was in the eating? He had married her so that he could socially elevate himself. Her father had been cruelly clear on that count. He had turned her into the cynical woman she was now! It would be wise to remember those things. She knew that the most important thing in the world was self-preservation.

      She wanted a divorce, wanted to rid herself of a marriage that was a joke, and tellingly he hadn’t argued against that. He wanted her but, once he got that out of his system, he would be more than ready to ditch her and move on with his life, find himself some woman he actually had feelings for and wanted to settled down and have children with.

      That woman would never be her.

      But, Lord, it was hard to marshal her thoughts when her whole system was in crazy free fall!

      She felt him nudge against her and, just like that, a slow burn began. She wrapped her arms around him, loving the hardness of his body.

      ‘Tell