Madeleine Ker – The Sicilian Duke's Demand (страница 2)

‘No.’

‘You thief!’ This time she threw caution to the winds. She pulled his unyielding fist to her mouth and sank her sharp white teeth into his knuckles.

Maddeningly, he just kept laughing at her. ‘Are you going to eat me alive? To preserve the historical record?’

She thought she could taste blood on her tongue. She spat. His pectoral plates were hard and strong, with dark nipples that were as rigid as hers, and crisp black hair making a triangle at the base of his thick throat. His arms were heavy with muscle. She was never going to get the coin away from him by force. He was much too strong. ‘I’ll buy it from you,’ she said desperately.

One dark eyebrow quirked in amusement. ‘I don’t think you could fit even the price of a bottle of wine in your lime-green bikini, siren lady. What do you intend to pay with?’

‘Give me the coin and I’ll bring back cash,’ she temporised.

‘The only thing you’ll bring back is a squad of carabinieri.’ He grinned. ‘Handcuffs don’t suit me. Think of something else.’

‘You’ll have to trust me,’ she said, glaring at her tormentor with furious jade-coloured eyes.

‘Sicilians say, never trust a woman with red hair and green eyes,’ he replied, as though imparting some important life lesson.

Having her hair called red was adding insult to injury. ‘Don’t you understand, you savage?’ she snapped. ‘That coin doesn’t belong to you or to me! It’s part of the national heritage. The world’s heritage. You’re not just stealing a lump of gold—you’re stealing a piece of our knowledge, our understanding of our past!’

‘Brava,’ he purred. ‘Is the lecture over?’ He was unimpressed by her passionate words, a primitive brute—a beautiful primitive brute—who was enjoying the situation to the full.

‘All right,’ she spat at him, her temper snapping, ‘take it, if that’s what you want. But at least let me see the markings on the coin—so I can make a note in the site log.’

‘I can tell you what’s on the coin,’ he replied. ‘Some old goat with a beard on one side, and a fork on the other.’

‘A fork?’

He made a jabbing motion with one arm, his biceps swelling as he did so. Her eye was caught by the octopus tattoo again, swirling tentacles etched against the tanned skin. ‘A spike with three points, like we use for spearing fish.’

‘A trident?’

‘Exactly, a trident.’

Poseidon, god of the sea, with his insignia. A gold Poseidon from Syracuse. Isobel bit her lip with even, pearly teeth. Not just a precious and beautiful coin, but important evidence. Vital evidence. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, trying to control her anger and dislike of this big ruffian who sat there mocking her every word. She spoke reasonably and slowly, as though to a child. ‘I’m going to try and explain this to you.’

‘Thank you, lady,’ he said gravely.

‘There’s a wreck down there. A very old wreck. An ancient Greek ship, called a galley. From a place called Corinth. We think it went down in a storm somewhere around three hundred BC. That’s over two thousand three hundred years ago,’ she added helpfully. He nodded, blue eyes filled with amusement. She pressed on. ‘That coin may be the key to the whole excavation. For one thing, it will give us a date. The coin can be dated to within a few years. And we’ll know that the wreck couldn’t have taken place before that date. You see?’

‘I see.’

‘For another thing, it shows us that the ship had already been to Sicily—and was on its way back. These galleys traded between Greece and the islands,’ she explained, her eyes searching his face for some sign of comprehension. ‘The presence of a gold coin from Syracuse on board means we can say that they had already visited Sicily and sold their cargo. So now we know that the cargo down there is Sicilian, not Greek—it was going back to Corinth to be sold there. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘But I can’t prove any of this unless I have that coin. It’s not enough for me to say I just saw a Syracusan coin in the wreck. I need to have it to prove—’

‘I’ll sell it to you for a kiss.’

Isobel’s sermon froze in her throat. ‘What?’

‘If this is so important to you, that’s a very small price to pay.’ His perfect white teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Sicilians also say that no woman can kiss like a woman with red hair and green eyes.’

‘My hair is not red!’

‘Do you want the coin or not?’

‘I—’

He reached out and brushed the heavy, wet ropes of hair away from her cheek. The same hand, surprisingly gentle for all its strength, then slid round to cup the back of her neck and drew her face forward to his.

To her eternal shame, she did not start struggling until after his warm, velvety mouth closed on hers.

And by then she was wrapped in the irresistible power of those muscular arms, which held her close and drew her tight against his naked chest. And the warm hand that held the back of her neck made it impossible for her to turn her mouth away while he kissed her…

And kissed her…

The first kiss was soft and assessing, as though he were getting the taste of her, smelling her skin, gauging the smoothness of her lips. She had the fleeting thought that expertise like this must have been gleaned at the expense of a hundred women in a hundred taverns along this rocky Sicilian coast.

He smelled warm, masculine, of the sea. His body was all male, living muscles swelling against her slim body as he enfolded her further into his embrace, the second kiss deepening as his lips caressed hers, pressing against her mouth.

In fact…

In fact, she was to recall later, by some weird chemistry of the female mind, it was not until she started to kiss him in return that she also started to struggle.

And that was what she was doing now, kissing him passionately and yet fighting him all the way. Her nails digging into those powerful shoulders, her knees trying to thrust at his groin, even as her mouth opened to his like a flower in the sun, and her eyes closed in ecstasy.

His hard, flat belly pressed to hers, the crisp curls caressing her skin.

Isobel’s heart was pounding wildly, her breath rushing hotly, mingling with his. The inside of her chest felt as though it were filled with some molten metal; her legs were boneless; her mind was whirling with emotions. Fury that he should do this to her. Resentment that her hormones should respond so vehemently to such an indignity. Relief that this brigand had just proved Michael Wilensky wrong. Imperious and sarcastic she might be, but an iceberg who had never responded to a man she was not.

Not any more.

And he kept kissing her, until his erotic mastery was so intense that, although he had not touched her breasts or anywhere else, she felt that swelling, rapturous pressure in her womb that only came when…

She shuddered violently in his arms, her emotions peaking almost unbearably inside her, holding her on a pinnacle of suspense for a long eternity until her body sagged in his arms like a released rag doll.

‘Mmm,’ he purred, releasing her at last, ‘the legend was right.’

In a hot blur, she saw that he was smiling at her, holding out one hand. Her fingers trembled as she took the coin from him. It was warm and heavy. She clutched it weakly.

Did he have any idea what he had just done to her?

Any idea?

‘You—’

She ran out of words after that first pronoun. ‘Sorry I took more than one kiss,’ he said in that husky, accented voice. ‘But it wasn’t breach of contract. There is actually a whole amphora of coins down there.’

‘Amphora…?’ she said weakly.

‘I don’t know what you would call it. Some kind of ancient pot. Full of coins.’ He gave her that dazzling smile. ‘Plenty more where that came from, siren lady.’

‘But—where?’

‘You’ll find them where I left a marker.’ He rose to his feet, a magnificent, bearded creature from some ancient myth, smiling down at her with knowing eyes. The black Neoprene clung to his thighs, revealing the swelling, male muscles of his body. ‘I will see you again.’

‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ she said, dragging her dignity back together again. ‘Unless it’s in a criminal courtroom!’

‘Nobody has committed any crime,’ he said softly. ‘Arrivederci.’

And now she could tell why he was so anxious to leave: the purring of an outboard motor could be heard threading its way between the rocks towards them. It was the others in the dive boat, coming to see why she was taking so long.

‘Don’t come back!’ was her parting shot.

He slipped into the water like a dolphin, leaving her with a final memory of a broad back and tight buttocks. Then he was gone.

Isobel sat clutching her coin, hot and cold flushes chasing one another across her skin as she waited for the other archaeologists to arrive.

The coin told her she was triumphant. So why on earth did she feel as though she had just been conquered?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR her pains, she had to endure a morning of merciless ribbing about her ‘encounter with Poseidon’.

None of the others had actually seen her mystery man, not even Antonio Zaccaria, their Sicilian liaison with the Beni Culturali, who normally saw everything. The boat, piled with diving gear, had rounded the little cape just after her Poseidon had vanished beneath the waves.