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Marc felt her press her face deeper into his shoulder. He knew that she must be tired. He was exhausted. But he needed to know more.
He had no doubt that she intended to keep her promise to abandon him once they arrived in the UK.
He intended to make it impossible for her to do so, but she was a resourceful woman and could escape him if he let his guard slip even an inch.
He needed to know where she would run.
Scientia est potential, his Latin master had taught him. Knowledge is power.
Marc lived by the phrase.
“Why didn’t you go to see your grandfather while we were in Guyana?” he asked.
“There wasn’t time.”
“I would have allowed you the time off.” He felt stupidly hurt that she had been so closemouthed, telling him little except the bare facts of her life. “He would have been happy to see you.”
“I know. I...” He waited for her to continue. “I’m going back to see him.”
“At Christmas?”
“No.” He felt her take a deep breath. “When I arrive in London, I’m going to call John and let him know that I’m leaving the agency with immediate effect. I have some matters to take care of and as soon as they’re sorted, I’m going back to Guyana.”
“Surely not for good?” He hadn’t even considered that possibility.
“No. I don’t have a Guyanese passport. I can only spend a maximum six months at a time there, unless I apply for a special visa from the High Commission.”
“Six months?” he asked in disbelief.
There was no way he was going to let her out of his grasp for so long. The men in Guyana weren’t fools. One of them—Harry the bodyguard, for instance, if he’d made a full recovery from his fall—would snap her up if given the chance.
“My grandfather isn’t getting any younger,” Dawn explained. “He’s happy. He remarried five years ago and now has nine stepchildren, numerous step grandchildren and a growing number of step great-grands. He loves them, but I know he misses me. My aunt should have let me stay with him. I would have been happier there.”
“But then you wouldn’t have met me,” he said again.
“And that would be a very bad thing.” She paraphrased his earlier words and he felt the movement as her lips lifted into a smile against his skin.
“It would have been disastrous.”
The thought that they would have never met didn’t bear thinking about.
“John would have found another bodyguard if I hadn’t been available.” She turned onto her back and pulled the covers securely under her chin and closed her eyes as if suddenly exhausted. “You didn’t really need one anyway.”
“I know you know that I’m not talking about our professional relationship,” he said, but he didn’t argue further. Turning her so that she was on her side, facing away from him, he arranged himself until his body was snugly spooning hers. “You need a rest.”
His wayward erection was soon pressing itself eagerly against her bottom.
“I thought you said that he was well behaved,” she teased, her voice sounding husky with sleep.
“This is him being well behaved.” He laughed and nibbled her ear. “If he was being naughty, he would be inside you.”
Dawn laughed softly and soon her even breathing told him that she’d drifted off.
***
When Dawn awoke, his hardness was still poking into her. He seemed to be asleep, so she tried to stay as still as possible, not wanting to wake him.
She recalled the moment when he’d told her the previous night that he’d never slept with another woman. She’d laughed and called him a boldfaced liar, until he’d explained that he’d always made sure to take women home after sex, too afraid to sleep with them, in case he stuttered in the morning while still groggy from sleep.
Being the first woman to sleep with him for that reason shouldn’t feel special.
But it did.
If he was being naughty, he would be inside you.
She smiled as she remembered his earlier words.
Billionaires were often portrayed as domineering alpha males who engaged in dark and deviant sex, but with Marc it was fun and lighthearted.
“Are you awake?” he growled into her ear.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was enjoying the feel of you in my arms too much.” He rubbed himself against her. “And he wouldn’t let me sleep.”
“Okay.” She turned and faced him, a naughty smile on her face. “The drapes offer us privacy...so.” She nodded her head suggestively. “I’m not getting naked, though. If there’s an emergency, I don’t want Moira finding us in flagrante delicto. Or worse, if the plane falls out of the sky, I don’t want to be found naked among the wreckage.”
“Miss Jacobs, you have the most morbid imagination.” Marc laughed and curved his hand around the nape of her neck.
As he kissed her, he slipped his hand under the pajama top and cupped her left breast. He expertly molded the mound of flesh and soon her nipple was painfully hard and needing the contact of bare flesh on flesh. She moaned deep in her throat and as if sensing her need, he pushed the cup of her bra aside and covered her breast warmly.
His fingers are as lethal as his mouth, she thought as he subjected the engorged spike to a series of nips and tugs.
When his hand strayed lower to delve under her panties, she was wet and waiting.
“Yes!” Marc groaned the word as he slipped a finger deep inside her and stoked her already raging fire.
Moments later when he moved the gusset aside, he freed himself and replaced the finger with his hardness.
They kissed passionately as they made love, smothering each other’s moans and groans as they quickly reached the pinnacle and tumbled over it.
Dawn giggled as they righted their clothing and readjusted the covers.
Their lovemaking had been fast and furious, but just as enjoyable as their more languid sessions in the early hours of the morning.
She doubted that the flight attendant would have interrupted them unless it was absolutely necessary, or that Marc would have cared if the woman had done so. The fact that he had assented to acting as furtive as thieves made Dawn fall a tiny bit more in love with him.
She wished they could stay airborne forever.
Once they reached the UK, this fantasy would be well and truly over.
“I want you to stay with me for another month,” he said, as though he’d read her thoughts.
“I told you that I’m quitting once—”
“Not as my bodyguard,” he interrupted. “I know that you’re eager to see your grandfather, but I can’t let you go just yet.”
Just yet.
He wasn’t declaring his undying love or suggesting a long-term relationship.
She would run a mile if he was.
“One week and then we’ll see.” The words came out before she could stop them.
Her head needed to exercise firmer control over her damn heart.
“Two,” he counter proposed.
“One,” she reiterated firmly. “And then we’ll see.”
Even a week might be too long. Mr. One Night of Pleasure might be well and truly bored before that time was over.
“Okay,” he agreed, but she sensed somehow that it wouldn’t be the end of the matter.
She really shouldn’t be so weak.
A clean break would have been better.
But, she had the rest of her life to be strong.
“Have you considered bringing your grandfather to the UK instead?” Marc asked.
“He would have come with me years ago when I first returned, but my aunt made it clear that she didn’t want him around.” For a moment she felt the familiar rush of anger that surfaced with thoughts of her aunt. The woman had unnecessarily added to her and her grandfather’s suffering, just when they had begun to glimpse the very edge of a rainbow peeking out of dark clouds.
Their parting at the airport had been excruciatingly painful.
While he’d remained dry eyed and as stoic as a rock on the day of the murders and then at the funerals when she’d needed him to be her Gibraltar, tears had run freely down his lined face as he’d waved Dawn goodbye just days before they would have celebrated their first Christmas together.
On the flight, sitting in her economy seat alone while her aunt and her husband enjoyed the luxury of first class, Dawn had prayed fervently and tried to dispel the dread that she wouldn’t see him again.
That worry had tormented her every day until her aunt had sent her back for the Easter holidays, deciding that she’d rather pay for the trip than have Dawn underfoot for two whole weeks.
Later her aunt had discovered the closer and cheaper alternative of play schemes and holiday camps, so Dawn hadn’t seen her grandfather again until she was eighteen.
And though she still feared losing the last link to her father and sister, she and her grandfather had since been able to create beautiful memories together.
“And now?” Marc’s question pulled her back to the present. “Can’t he and his wife move to the UK?”
“He has a very good life. It would be selfish to tear him away from it.”
Dawn was happy for her grandfather, but at the time it had felt as though Life was giving her yet another kick in the teeth. She’d waited patiently for the day that she would come of age and finally be able to apply for permanent residence for him in the UK as her dependent. But, just months before her eighteenth birthday, he had married a widowed member of the church he’d attended. The news of his marriage had hit her hard and it had felt as though she would never be happy again as another of her dreams had vanished into thin air.
“You must love him very much.” Marc ran his thumb over the top of her right cheekbone and she realized that the moisture that she’d thought had only pricked her eyelids had fallen.
“Sorry,” she apologized. “I don’t know why I keep crying. I never do.”
“Don’t apologize’.” He said, his voice sounding gruff as though her tears had moved him. “I told you before, some people would have gone crazy if they’d gone through half of what you did, and at such a young age.”
“Sometimes I’ve wondered if it would have been easier if I’d gone as mad as a hatter.”
“And then I wouldn’t have met you.” He smiled.
“Not unless you’d gone crazy too and we’d found ourselves in the same mad-hatter hospital.”
“I would have fancied you even if I was crazy.”
“You are mad!”
She laughed.
And realized that she’d done so more often in the last day with him than she’d done in any day since she was eleven.
What harm, she reasoned, could a week of sex and laughter be?
*****
