Page 15 of Cipriani's Innocent Captive
He’d warned her not to go getting any ideas and that had been the trigger for her to stop gaping and allowing him to get under her skin. She was sure that the only reason he had issued that warning was because he had noticed her reaction to him and, from that moment onwards, she had striven to subdue any wayward reactions under a never-ending stream of small talk.
To start with, she’d aimed to keep the small talkverysmall, anything to break the silence as they had shared meals. In the evenings, before he left to return to the bowels of the yacht, they’d found themselves continuing to talk over coffee and wine.
Her aim had been harder to stick to than she’d thought because something about him fired her up. Whilst she managed to contain her body’s natural impulse to be disobedient—by making sure she was physically as far away from him as possible without being too obvious—she’d been seduced into provoking him, enjoying the way he looked at her when she said something incendiary, head to one side, his dark eyes veiled and assessing.
It was a subtle form of intellectual arousal that kept her on a permanent high and it was as addictive as a drug.
In Lucas’s presence, Duncan no longer existed.
In fact, thanks to Lucas’s all-consuming and wholly irrational ability to rivet her attention, Katy had reluctantly become aware of just how affected she had been by Duncan’s betrayal. Even when she had thought she’d moved on, he had still been there in the background, a troubling spectre that had moulded her relationships with the opposite sex.
‘I own the yacht,’ Lucas reminded her lazily. He began stripping off the tee-shirt and tossed it onto a deckchair, which he pulled over with his foot so that it was right next to her. ‘Do you think I should have asked your permission before I decided to come up here and use the pool?’
‘No, of course not,’ Katy replied, flustered. ‘I just thought that you had your afternoon routine and you worked until seven in the evening...’
‘Routines are made to be broken.’ He settled down onto the deck chair and turned so that he was looking at her, still from behind the dark shades that gave him a distinct advantage. ‘Haven’t you been lecturing me daily on my evil workaholic ways?’
‘I never said that they wereevil.’
‘But you were so persuasive in convincing me that I was destined for an early grave that I decided to follow your advice and take some time out.’ He grinned and tilted his shades up to look at her. ‘You’re not reacting with the sort of smug satisfaction I might have expected.’
‘I didn’t think that you would actually listen to what I said,’ Katy muttered, her whole body as rigid as a plank of wood.
She wanted to look away but her greedy eyes kept skittering back to him. He was just so unbelievably perfect. More perfect than anything she had conjured up in her fevered imaginings. His chest was broad and muscular, with just the right dusting of dark hair that made her draw her breath in sharply, and the line of dark hair running down from his belly button electrified her senses like a live wire. How was it possible for a man to be so sexy? So sinfully, darkly anddangerouslysexy?
Every inch of him eclipsed her painful memories of Duncan and she was shocked that those memories had lingered for as long as they had.
Watching him, her imagination took flight. She thought of those long, clever fingers stroking her, touching her breasts, lingering to circle her nipples. She felt faint. Her nipples were tight and pinched, and between her legs liquid heat was pooling and dampening her bikini bottoms.
She realised that she had been fantasising about this man since they had stepped foot on the yacht, but those fantasies had been vague and hazy compared to the force of the graphic images filling her head as she looked away with a tight, determined expression.
It was his body, she thought. Seeing him like that, in nothing but a pair of black trunks, was like fodder for her already fevered imagination.
Under normal circumstances, she might have looked at him and appreciated him for the drop-dead, gorgeous guy that he was, but actually she wouldn’t have turned that very natural appreciation into a full-on mental sexual striptease that had him parading naked in her head.
But these weren’t normal circumstances andthatwas why her pragmatic, easy-going and level-headed approach to the opposite sex had suddenly deserted her.
‘Tell me about the deal.’ She launched weakly into the first topic of conversation that came into her head, and Lucas flung himself back into the deck chair and stared up at a faultlessly blue, cloudless sky.
He was usually more than happy to discuss work-related issues, except right now and right here that was the last thing he wanted to do. ‘Persuade me that you give a damn about it.’ He slanted a sideways look at her and then kept looking as delicate colour tinged her cheeks.
‘Of course I do.’ Katy cleared her throat. ‘I’m herebecauseof it, aren’t I?’
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ He folded his arms behind his head and stared at her. ‘You’re only here because of the deal but, now that youarehere, are you having a good time?’
Katy opened her mouth to ask him what kind of question that was, because how on earth could she be having a good time when life as she knew it had been turned upside down? Except she blinked and thought that shewashaving a good time. ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this before,’ she told him. ‘When I was a kid, holidays were a week in a freezing-cold British seaside town. Don’t get me wrong, I adored my holidays, but this is...out of this world.’
She looked around her and breathed in the warm breeze, rich with the salty smell of the sea. ‘It’s a different kind of life having a father who’s the local parish priest,’ she confided honestly. ‘On the one hand, it was brilliant, because I never lacked love and support from both my parents, especially as I was an only child. They wanted more but couldn’t have them. My mum once told me that she had to restrain herself from lavishing gifts on me, but of course there was always a limit to what they could afford. And besides, as I’ve told you, they always made sure to tell me that money wasn’t the be-all and end-all.’ She looked at Lucas and smiled, somewhat surprised that she was telling him all this, not that any of it was a secret.
Never one to encourage confidences from women, Lucas was oddly touched by her confession because she was usually so outspoken in a tomboyish, challenging way.
‘Hence your entrenched disregard for money,’ he suggested drily. ‘Tell me about the down sides of life in a vicarage. I’ll be honest with you, you’re the first daughter of a man of the cloth I’ve ever met.’
The image of the happy family stuck in his mind and, in a rare bout of introspection, he thought back to his own troubled youth after his mother had died. His father had had the love, but he had just not quite known how to deliver it and, caught up in his own grief and his never-ending quest to find a substitute for the loss of his wife, he had left a young Lucas to find his own way. The independence Lucas was now so proud of, the mastery over his own emotions and his talent for self-control, suddenly seemed a little tarnished at the edges, too hard-won to be of any real value.
He dismissed the worrying train of thought and encouraged her to keep talking. She had a very melodic voice and he enjoyed the sound of it as much as he enjoyed the animation that lit up her ravishingly pretty, heart-shaped face.
‘Down sides... Well, now, let me have a think...!’ She smiled and lay down on the deck chair so that they were now both side by side, faces upturned to the brilliant blue sky above. She glanced across at him, expecting to see amusement and polite interest, just a couple of people chatting about nothing in particular. Certainly nothing that would hold the interest of a man like Lucas Cipriani. But his dark, fathomless eyes were strangely serious as he caught her gaze and held it for a few seconds, and she shivered, mouth going dry, ensnared by the gravity of his expression.
