Page 24 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

Jens walked down the last few steps and stepped into the cabin, a map in his hand. He looked around and nodded his approval. ‘This is a nice master suite. Much bigger than the other four cabins.’

Before leaving the hotel he’d changed into cotton shorts and a loose, light blue button-down shirt. Her gaze slid over and down him, taking in the tanned v between the lapels of his shirt, the hint of the fine chest chair she’d loved to rub her nose in, and the bulge under the zip of his trousers. He wore no shoes. Like her, he’d kicked them off when they stepped onto the yacht, and Maja reacquainted herself with his very nice feet. Big, sure, but still elegant.

She could easily imagine him walking into the bedroom from the bathroom, with just a towel around his lean hips. The towel falling and him looming over her as she lay naked in bed, watching him with hungry eyes. Rolling over to straddle him, the early morning light streaming in from the windows, watching the stars out of that same window as she lay on his chest after making love...

He belonged in this room, with her. The thought rolled over her and she had to drop her eyes from his face, scared he’d read her mind. She was afraid he’d do something about relieving the sexual tension building between them, and even more scared he wouldn’t.

But she couldn’t keep her eyes off him for more than a minute and she saw his Adam’s apple bob, and he rubbed the back of his neck. Yeah, he was also thinking about the best way to put this big bed to use.

One of them had to be sensible. They shouldn’t rock the boat. Because if they started stripping off and sending clothes flying, they might never come up for air.

‘What have you got there?’ Maja asked, nodding at the map in his hand, happy her voice sounded normal.

He looked down, and it took him a few seconds to respond. She liked that she could throw this supposedly cool, always thinking, unemotional man off balance. Maybe if she kept doing that she’d be able to find the boy she’d loved beneath the layers Jens had built up over the last decade.

There was always the risk of him doing the same thing to her. Could she allow him to peek under the cover, past the barriers of protection she’d constructed? She didn’t know how far they’d get, because the elephant in the corner—Jens blackmailing her into marriage—was always present.

Time would tell.

Jens spread the map on the bed and Maja walked over to him and looked down at the topographic map. Jens jabbed a spot with his short-nailed finger. ‘We’re here,’ he said.

‘I can think of worse places to be,’ Maja assured him. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

‘Well, food first, I’m starving.’

So was she. She’d snagged a chocolate-covered strawberry from a bowl in the honeymoon suite at the Hotel Daniel-Jean, but she’d eaten nothing substantial since leaving Bergen.

‘I asked the chef to prepare a meal. Scallops for a starter, lobster for the main course, and sorbet, I can’t remember the flavour, for dessert.’

He didn’t ask her if she was happy with his selection, but he didn’t need to. It was his boat, his staff and he could order what he wanted for dinner.

Honestly, she would’ve been satisfied with bangers and mash, but freshly caught seafood sounded amazing. Was it a coincidence that he’d remembered that scallops and lobster were her two favourite foods?

‘That sounds perfect,’ she told him.

They were in a stunning cabin, on an amazing yacht and were about to take a cruise, the only two people on board. She’d been worried about the romance of the hotel, and the honeymoon suite, but being alone on a luxurious yacht upped the sexy factor by a thousand per cent.

Oh, she was in a heap of trouble here. But, to be fair, she hadn’t anticipated Jens buying a yacht! Who did that? Billionaires, apparently.

‘So what would you like to do?’ Jens asked. He looked down at the map, moved closer to her and Maja found her shoulder pressing into the top of his biceps. She didn’t pull away and neither did he. Not smart...oh, well. ‘We can either hug the coast, or I can ask the captain to head into Geirangerfjord and we can look at the Seven Sisters waterfall cascading down the cliffs.’

‘That sounds good.’

He traced a route on the map. ‘I wish we could carry on, head on up to Trondheim, Rorvik, and then into the Arctic Circle, Bodo and east to the Lofoten chain of islands.’

She did too. But that wasn’t a trip they could take when there was so much distrust and residual damage between them. That was a trip for lovers, not for two people engaged in a battle of wills and emotional warfare, struggling to keep their hands off each other.

But this moment felt like a rare truce and she didn’t want to go back to sniping at each other, not just yet.

She waved at the map. ‘If you had a choice to go further, stay on this boat longer, where else would you go?’ she asked him, aware she was leaning into him as she used to do. She didn’t move away when his arm crossed her back and his hand loosely held her hip. They shouldn’t touch like this, it was dangerous, but she wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. Besides, she liked his hands on her. She always had.

‘Svolvær,’ he answered her, and her breath hitched. Svolvær was where they’d met and fallen in love. ‘Well, east of Svolvær. I own a small island. I inherited it from my aunt.’

She’d love to go back to Svolvær, the place where it all started, the beginning of their story. She wondered if Håkon had still owned the Hagen holiday home in the small city when he’d died. The house she’d sneaked Jens into, the place where he’d initiated her into the wonderful world of sex. Well, it had started there...her education had continued on his boat and in his tiny apartment.

Hot now, Maja stepped away from him, jamming her hands into the back pockets of her pants to keep from reaching for him. She cleared her throat. ‘Maybe you should tell the captain we’re ready to leave,’ she told him, her voice sounding a little ragged.

‘That’s a really good idea. We should go up.’

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