Erin’s heart thumped and she swallowed hard. Goodness. How was she going to get out of this predicament in a dignified manner?
“Kiss me.”
“Wh…what?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? Now’s your chance.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She glared up at him, shocked by his audacity.
“You threw yourself at me twice in one day. I have to reward all that effort. Now kiss me.” Dare’s tone was commanding. He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face toward his.
Erin’s heart pounded. He was going to kiss her. And she wanted it, dear God she wanted it. But she’d always been “the good girl”. Did she dare?
She did. When his lips touched hers she did not stop him. She did not pull away. Erin closed her eyes tight and clung to his muscled arms. His lips were hard, unyielding. His arm snaked around her and he pulled her tight against his body, so close that she could feel the rippling muscles of his torso against her br**sts.
She kept her eyes closed, not daring to look into those enigmatic gray eyes, not wanting to read what lay in their depths.
Then all coherent thought flew from her mind as Dare softened his kiss, his lips moving sensually over hers, stealing her breath away. Erin leaned into him, her ni**les as hard as pebbles, and then she was kissing him back, answering his passion with a fervor that was alien to her. She moaned under the caress of his lips.
Erin trembled in Dare’s arms. Her body was responding to him like she’d done with no man before. And as she stood there wrapped in his arms Erin knew she was in deep trouble.
CHAPTER THREE
Slowly, Dare lifted his head and stared down into the dazed eyes of the girl in his arms. What was she doing to him? He’d meant to dominate her, knock her off balance with his kiss. After all, she’d been pursuing him all day. It was time to take her up on what on what she was offering, maybe even teach her a lesson in the process.
But, to his chagrin, it was he who was caught off guard. The kiss had left him breathless. Damn, was he getting soft?
He released her and put her away from him. Only then did he speak. “I want to see you again. Let’s have dinner tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened in apparent shock. “Dinner? But…I don’t know you.”
Dare almost laughed out loud. What kind of game was she playing? Did she take him for a fool? Why else would she have been coming on to him, twice in one day, if she didn’t know who he was? He would have respected her more if she’d just been honest.
“Listen, I know enough about you to know that I want to see you again.”
“But…”
“No buts. Do you want to see me again?” He knew he was bullying the girl but that was the whole idea. She’d decided to play with fire so it was no fault of his if she got burned.
“Yes.” Her voice was a mere whisper, her eyes huge pools of iridescent hazel. On her face was a look of uncertainty tinged with just a hint of anticipation.
Dare chuckled inwardly. The girl was playing temptress but she had a lot to learn. First lesson - don’t make your feelings so obvious. With an expressive face like hers she was going to have a hard task succeeding in her chosen role as seductress.
“It’s settled then. We’ll have dinner tomorrow at Michelangelo’s. They have a private lounge where we can eat and talk undisturbed. Seven o’clock. Meet me there.”
She opened her mouth then, those soft lips still swollen from his kiss, but he cut her off before she even had a chance to utter the first word. There was no way he was giving her a chance to back out. He’d had a taste of her lips and, deceiver though she may be, he wanted more.
He took her by the elbow and turned her toward the pathway. “Come. Let me walk you back to your villa.”
“N…no,” she said quickly. “No, thank you. I’m fine. I can get back on my own.”
He shrugged. “Until tomorrow then. Seven o’clock.” He watched her hurry away, heels clicking on the cobbled stones along the lighted path. He had no concern for her safety. He’d made sure security was at its highest level at his resort, with plain clothes security guards patrolling the grounds twenty four hours a day. In his five years operating the resort he’d never had a visitor fall victim to a crime on his grounds. He was determined to keep that record spotless.
Dare DeSouza was an entrepreneur and had been since as long as he could remember. He’d grown up in Michigan and while in elementary school he’d run a candy business, buying bags of candy for a dollar and selling the sweets to his classmates for a quarter a piece. When his home room teacher found out about it he’d had to abandon his enterprise but by high school he’d graduated to selling soda pop and comic books and was raking in a few hundred dollars a week. By the time he started his engineering degree at MIT he was running an online trading company specializing in collectable items, a business which he sold in his senior year for over a million dollars. With this seed money he started yet another business, another trading company that far surpassed the success of the first, and was soon the head of a multi-million dollar operation.
Then he attended a wedding on the island of Santa Marta and was hooked for life. He loved the richness of the island, the verdant pastures and the vibrant green of the tropical foliage. The brilliant blue of the sea and the sky, the cotton white of the clouds, the rich reds of the flora - everything seemed to practically glow with life. He spent a week there and vowed that he would be back.
Next time he visited the island it was for a site visit and on his third trip he signed the documents for the purchase of Sunsational Resort on the northern coast where the best beaches lay. It was family owned but had been neglected due to lack of funds. The couple’s children were less than enthusiastic about the hotel business so they were all too happy when Dare offered them over one hundred million for the place.
And then the rebuilding began - renovating, refurbishing and advertising to let the public know the resort was under new management. Sunsational Resort burst back onto the scene and outshone its rivals, soon placing among the top ten resorts in the Caribbean. He expanded to other islands until he had resorts in four additional Caribbean locations. He’d found a winning enterprise and he was loving it.