Terry’s lips flattened as he watched the Texan saunter away. He had three friends in this world: Harry, his partner, Geoff, and Rolan Paxton. All of them would risk their lives for each other. Yet when it came to women, an unsaid gloves-off principle held, and he had no illusions Harry would target his Asian darling.
The notion riled him, and he knew he had to have a strategic advantage over his first mate before the end of the evening. Even the thought of Harry pursuing her after Terry ended their affair caused his jaw to clench. He kneaded his nape and avoided analyzing the reasons behind this sudden surge of jealousy and ownership. For the next three weeks, the little Asian belonged to him and him only.
Impatient, so randy he’d fricking come 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?”
“Business. Don’t think of embarrassing me tonight,” his father answered. “How did you garner an invitation?”
“They’ve chartered my yacht for the next three weeks.”
Nigel Thomas Jefferson Patrick Gore, the Earl of Arran, flinched and paled. Terry’s eyes widened; for a mere inhale, he thought he saw fear and guilt in his father’s charcoal eyes. He shook his head, lip curling at one corner. The father he knew eschewed any hint of vulnerability. He must have been wrong.
Leprechauns dogged him.
Terry downed his glass of scotch, caught both his father and his twin’s disapproving stares, and spun around, headed for the bar, where he ordered a triple shot.
Jaysus.
Fricking leprechaun luck. Both his father and his twin when he least expected it.
Ten years since he’d last seen Thomas, longer for his father.
Thomas, Thomas.
Terry found a solitary spot on the starboard, propped one foot on the rail, downed the tumbler of liquor, and flung the glass into the sea. The boa constrictor banding his chest squeezed his gullet, and the scotch traversed his insides one drop at a time, scorching a slow, scalding path.
Even though the view showed a tranquil Mediterranean, it was not what he saw.
Rage, bloodied limbs, Thomas’s sad, resigned slate eyes minutes before he slipped unconscious, burned Terry’s pupils. For the past ten years, he’d buried his self-loathing in booze, orgies, drugs, gambling, anything to mask acknowledging the lousy human being he’d become.
One brief exchange was all it took.
One glance and their souls meshed.
He could no longer deny the damage he’d inflicted. His twin’s pain reflected in his eyes like an endless corridor of horror-house mirrors bouncing, echoing, so he couldn’t differentiate the person from the never-ending reflections. He’d become a mirror image -- there only if you happened to catch the muted likeness at the right time.
Only Thomas could spur such soured introspection.
Terry shook his head, ordered another scotch, and forged into the throngs cramming the deck. Old habits reared and Terry scanned the crowd.
A woman, he needed a woman. Sex, a night of thrusting and pounding like an enraged bull, and then he would face reality, deal with the burdens of the past.
Determined not to be thrown off course, his glance slid left, drawn to Su-Lin like Mars drawn to the sun. To his surprise, she met his gaze and tipped the crystal glass, her full lips curling in a trembling smile.
His for the taking.
He forgot his father, his brother, his life, and homed in on a single goal, sheathing himself in her warmth. Trying not to be obvious, Terry wound his way through the crowd mingling on the upper deck until he stood inches away from her. An involuntary shudder sucked his stomach in as his eyes swept the length of her back, delectable ass dimples exposed by the sweeping low-cut jade silk.
As if sensing his presence, she sidled a corner-of-the-eye glance at him, and her pouty lips parted in a sultry half-smile. She sipped at the bubbling champagne, glancing over one bare shoulder at him.
“Have you met Lord and Lady…?” He lost the rest of her question, eyes pinpointed on those large nipples pushing against the sleek satin. A brief flicker to the right unveiled a hefty, downright ugly couple.
“A pleasure,” he said and captured Su-Lin’s glass. “There’s a minor issue in the kitchens, and your presence is required.” He set the crystal flute on a nearby high table and held out an elbowed forearm. “Excuse us, will you? Shall we?”
Those searching eyes, their startling color, the absolute absence of guile, made him hesitate for a brief, imperceptible moment. A woman, he reminded himself, she was a female, a hole to be filled, nothing more, nothing less.
Before they reached the last mahogany step fronting the lower deck’s main corridor, Terry scooped her into his arms
She didn’t resist but raised verdant eyes to his. “I’m not sure.”
That was all she said, and it stabbed at his conscience, those words.
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “It’ll be okay.”
He had to squelch all emotions to make it to the secluded cabin door without touching her, without drowning in her mouth. With a gentility he didn’t know he possessed, Terry laid her down in the middle of the queen-size bed.
She rose on her elbows but said not a word, watching him dash his tie away, flick his jacket to the floor. When he tore his shirt lapels apart and buttons went flying, she put up a tiny hand, and his pulse pounded like a Celtic bodhran drum.
“What, darlin’?” He could barely breathe, get the words out, and wondered if he sounded like the barbarian he felt.
Her head drooped, and she stared at the white comforter. Without looking at him, she whispered, “I want to touch you.”
Jaysus.
He grabbed the head of his prick and squeezed so hard it hurt. He’d almost lost it, and they hadn’t even begun.
Calling on all his military training, Terry shuffled over to the mattress and sat.
“All you want.” That was all he could muster, and getting the words out almost undid him again. He took her small hand and placed it over a heart threatening self-destruction.
Her pink tongue snaked out to touch the corner of her mouth. She shifted closer, the silk dress she wore caressing his flesh and tindering sparks with each slight contact.
Tacky, moist sea brine wafted to his nostrils, and not an iota of it made it to his lungs.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said, so softly he had to strain to hear her words. And then she could’ve bellowed, and he’d never have known. His heart sounded like immediate thunder in his ears, reverberations vibrating every nerve, every synapse.
She placed the other hand on his chest and breathed, “You’re so beautiful, like a Norse god.”
One finger traced the outline of his pectoral muscles, and his stomach contracted so hard his gut cramped and his prick leaked.
So close. So close.
“Darlin’ --” he began, but she cut him off by applying two fingers to his lips.
She shook her head.
“Please, no words?” And still she wouldn’t meet his gaze, and it bothered him, made him desperate for some sign of, what? Not consent. Approval, perhaps?
Terry stifled his response and waited, watching, body functions going into trained military hibernation.
With the slightest pressure of one hot little palm, she had him lying supine on the bed. Her hands flitted over his chest, lithe butterfly caresses skimming his scalded flesh.
Her touch left him wanting, impatient.
Delicate fingers flicked the right nipple, then the left, and she licked her lips when he flinched and his hips arched off the mattress.
Her gaze fixed on his arousal then, and with shaking fingers, she unbuckled his belt. Long minutes of agonizing torture followed, prolonged by her obvious nerves, her hands fumbling over his cock.
He had a photographic memory, so Terry visualized the training manual for his sub’s nuclear weapon in a desperate attempt to not spill, not ejaculate toward that pursed mouth.
Shaky fingers slipped the zipper of his fly down; she spread the material of his pants, and his erection sprang free.
Her gasp stirred the air over the head of his prick.
A pleased smile curved her mouth, and her lips widened into a grin when she met his gaze.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about this.” One finger brushed the head of his shaft.
His eyes crossed.
She rolled down his foreskin.
He grabbed fistfuls of down duvet, his gaze fixated on her face, on the wonderment lighting those jade eyes.
“Oh my,” she breathed and touched the tip of her very pink tongue to his slit, then suckled it.
His balls slammed into his pubes, and white orgasmic light blinded him.
He shot his wad.
And to his surprise she lapped up his cum, angling this way and that, swallowing every drop. Slurping and humming, this little sound coming from the back of her throat, the vibration of which almost pained the oversensitive crown of his prick, while he lay spent, sated, sorrowful, shamed.
He collapsed against the pillows, wallowing in every caress, every tentative touch.
And must have passed out from sheer pleasure, as when he awoke, shore lights glistened and bobbed through the portholes of the cabin, and he was alone. A predawn glow hit the distant horizon.
Jaysus.
Never, ever had he failed to bring a woman to pleasure. Not only had he not done that tonight, but he’d also passed out after having shot his wad like a green adolescent.
Jaysus.
His nails bit into damp palms.
He never wanted to see that woman again.
He couldn’t wait to see her again.
He had to be inside of that tight little hole, soon.
Minutes soon.
When he made it onto deck, fully clothed save for one scarlet tie, his twin brother greeted him. Thomas’s face, lit by dawn’s foreshadows, reflected a decade of excessive living.
“Who was it this time? You can’t keep your prick in your trousers. You never could.”
“Sod off, Thomas. We all know where you keep yours.”
“At least it’s not down our stepmother --”
Years of reaction kicked in and Terry punched him in the jaw, then followed up with a left hook to his twin’s stomach. When Thomas fell to the deck clutching his belly, Terry stalked away, the scene too familiar, too pulsing with self-loathing, fraught with too many buried secrets.
The image of Su-Lin burned his pupils, replaced by the abject longing flashing across Thomas’s features seconds before his fist crashed into bone. Remorse set in.
And all he wanted to do was escape, never see her again, never see his twin again. Never have to face the abject failure of his performance with either individual.
When had he become so selfish, so greedy? Disgust laced every movement, every thought. Even two ice-cold showers couldn’t wash away the sins of his soul. Black coffee laced with scotch helped him decide how to proceed.
Around midmorning, he phoned the Lockheeds’ suite, but no one answered. A quick check with the front desk revealed the Lockheeds and Su-Lin had rented a limo, and the itinerary for the day included Arles and Marseille. Terry left a voice mail in their room and, for good measure, wrote two cryptic notes.