That line of thought should have been sobering, but he was in it now. He wanted his hands all over her, and the truth was that Jason had grown accustomed to getting what he wanted.
Go big or go home, motherfucker, he told himself.
“Enough talking,” he drawled at her.
He nodded at the surfboard at her feet. Then stood there, making no particular attempt to hide his smirk as Lucinda eyed the board as if she expected it to rise from its slumber and turn into some kind of alligator. Jaws and all.
But, of course, she didn’t ask for any help. She didn’t argue with him. She set her jaw at a mutinous angle and then she awkwardly dragged the board into the water, hurling herself through the breakers with more ruthless determination than any kind of skill.
He was impressed despite himself, because hardheaded women hit him straight in his sweet spot. Whether he liked it or not.
Jason followed, throwing himself on his board and paddling out into the lagoon, keeping an eye on his redhead as she splashed around, making more noise than headway.
“Do you need me to tow you out?” he asked after watching her flail, his voice just silky enough to make her glare at him.
“Well, I don’t know how to answer that, do I?” she retorted, and he was delighted to hear more Scotland in her voice than before.
That told him two things about her, and fast. One, she had the exact simmering, redheaded temper he’d imagined she did, which made him that much more motivated to experiment with all that fire and fury in bed. And two, that just as he had been forced to ease up on his Hawaiian pidgin and so-called “surfer” accent when he’d headed to the mainland—because all those haole fuckers interpreted his way of talking as evidence of stupidity—Lucinda had clearly done something similar with her accent. He didn’t have to know the history of the United Kingdom to figure that anyone who could sound like that redheaded Disney princess in the cartoon one minute, then cover it up like she belonged on the BBC the next, had a lot of the same issues he did.
Of course, imagining that their issues matched—or should, if he looked hard enough—told him any number of things about himself he had zero interest in analyzing just then.
“Are you asking me for help, Scotland?” he asked lazily, ignoring the tightening sensation in his chest as he sat up on his board and relaxed into the roll of the waves beneath him. “Or are you just complaining?”
“It’s evidently quite important to you that I make a fool out of myself according to your preferred method. I wouldn’t wish to let you down.”
“I’m out in the water with a nearly naked woman. What letdown are you worried about? The worst thing that’s going to happen to you is that you fall off, and if there’s a God, lose that bikini. I’m here for it.”
She raised two fingers at him, but he somehow didn’t believe that she was making that particular V for victory.
And then he sat back and laughed himself silly as his angry, no longer dour or businesslike redhead tried to hurl herself up onto her surfboard.
He lost track of how many times she scrabbled up, then tried to get to her feet, only to lose her balance and have the board shoot out from under her.
She fell over and over, splashing into the waves and then paddling furiously to the surface, but she always tried again. She kept muttering out filthy curses in that increasingly more obvious accent of hers, one after the next. Sounding more and more Scottish as she went.
Jason sat back on his own surfboard, busting a gut laughing and watching the show. When she fell for approximately the nine millionth time, he reached out and caught the tip of her board with one hand as it shot away from her. And he studied her when she bobbed up to the surface, rising and falling with the swell of the water.
“You about ready to admit defeat?”
She bared her teeth at him. “Death first.”
But when she swam over to climb up onto her board again, he reached down and hooked her under one arm. Then hauled her out of the water, up and onto his board. He settled her between his legs, then he reached over and clipped her surfboard to his, countering the jerky little movements she made with his thighs.
“Are you trying to dump us both in the water?” he asked lazily enough, and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her back against him. “I don’t think you understand balance. Maybe in a global sense.”
“Let me guess. You’re going to teach me. It’s my lucky day.”
Jason figured it was his lucky day, anyway. She was sleek and wet. The breeze had dried him off, which meant she was cool against his chest, and fit there between his thighs a little too perfectly. He wanted to settle his mouth in that place where her neck joined her shoulder. He wanted to push her forward onto her hands, lift that fine ass of hers and settle into her from behind—and who cared if they drifted all the way out to sea?
But he did none of those things, because he was a goddamn saint.
“Settle down, Scotland.” She wiggled a little, then stopped when he pressed his thighs tighter against her, and he liked that a whole lot more than was wise. “You need to stop thinking about all the ways you can conquer the surfboard, and more about the way the water’s going to conquer you if you don’t respect it a little more.”
She scowled over her pale shoulder, gleaming with a new spray of golden freckles. “I thought the entire point of surfing was conquering the bloody water.”
“We already covered this. Stop looking for the point. Start looking for balance. And because I can tell you’re not going to get this, balance isn’t about conquering anything. It’s about letting yourself become a part of it and taking what you need.”
This time, Lucinda sighed. “Nothing in your portfolio suggested you were a new-age hippie.”
She sounded appalled.
Jason laughed again, and had the distinct pleasure of feeling the way she shivered in response, right there against him. He could see the goose bumps that rose on her neck and snaked down her arms. He was fascinated and more than a little hot himself, but somehow kept himself from licking them up with his tongue.
“I’m not a hippie, darlin’. I’m Hawaiian.”
He moved then, setting her farther in front of him on the board, liking how easy it was to lift her and move her where he wanted her. Then he jackknifed himself up, bringing his feet out of the water and onto the board, then standing in a single swift movement that he’d practiced so many times it didn’t require thought. And before she could comment on it or jerk around on the board, he reached down and picked her up, too.
“What are you doing?”
And Jason knew that she had no idea how panicked she sounded, or she would probably have bitten off her own tongue.
He kept hold of her. “Relax.”
“Right. Because, first of all, everyone relaxes on command. The best thing to say to someone when they’re not relaxed, in fact, is relax in exactly that tone. That does the trick, every time.”
“Stop talking, Lucinda.”
He pulled her close to him again, with one big hand on that soft, sweet belly of hers. And he wanted nothing more than to eat up the way she shuddered, then flushed red. Everywhere.
But he didn’t put his mouth on her the way he wanted to do. Instead, he held her there, keeping the board balanced beneath them as they floated.
“You don’t fight the waves. Fighting them is a quick way to end up face down in the water. You feel them. Every one of them.”
He could feel her tense. Every sweet little curve of that lush body of hers, wound up and ready to fight no matter what he said. But instead of hurling something back at him, she only shuddered again, holding her arms out from her sides.
Like she’d seen surfing on television once.
“Good girl,” he murmured approvingly, and then grinned at the little noise she made in response to that. “Balance,” he said again. �
��You’re never going to beat a wave into submission. But you can ride it.”
And for a while, all they did was stand there like the surfboard was a paddleboard and let the ocean do its thing. One wave after another lifted them up, then brought them down again. Over and over, without end.
It was the rhythm of his life. It was his own heartbeat, there in his chest.
It was what brought him back to himself and it was why he’d come here, where no one was around to snap pictures of him or get in his face about his father or football or both, so he could find that heartbeat again.
But helping Lucinda find that same rhythm charmed him, somehow. And made his actual beat a little faster.
Eventually, Jason let go of her and let her find her feet on her own. Once she got the hang of that, he jumped off the board, leaving her to do it on her own. When she had that down, he unclipped the boards and pulled himself onto the other one so he could watch her.
“Now what?” she demanded, her body in the correct position, if far too rigid. And the frown on her face a clue that she wasn’t anywhere close to relaxed or balanced.
But he gave her points for trying.
He pointed at the water. “Now you jump in and climb up on your own.”
It took her a few tries to get in the water and pull herself out, then stand up on the board, finding her feet beneath her.
“Good job,” he said. “Now you catch a wave.”
“‘Catch a wave,’” she muttered, as if he’d said catch a star, or something. “Right. I’ll just catch one, shall I?”
But he knew she would, because for all the muttering and the scowling, she kept trying. She never flipped out. She simply fell down and got up again. Over and over and over.
It was impossible not to admire her.
Or want to get his hands on her again, with more desperation than he was comfortable admitting, even out here where there no witnesses to his foolishness but the waves and the sky.
“You’re going to start paddling,” he told her. And realized when he heard the intensity in his own voice that he was entirely too invested in this woman doing the very thing he’d wanted her to fail at before. He wanted her to get up. He wanted her to ride the wave. He wanted her, and he didn’t know how to handle that. So he ignored it. “When you feel the wave pick you up, you get up and you ride. Got it?”
“It’s that simple, is it?”
Though her voice was skeptical, they had been out in the water too long. No matter how grumpy she sounded, she obeyed him.
Jason liked that a whole lot more than he should have.
“It’s that simple,” he promised her. Gruffly.
And when the next wave came, he put his hand on the back of her board and threw her into it.
Then watched with an intoxicating mix of pride and greed as his tight-assed little redhead pulled herself up, balanced herself beautifully and rode her first wave all the way into shore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUCINDA HAD EXPECTED surfing to be a grim, brutal exercise.
Like anything else she had done to claw her way and her current position, she’d assumed it would be unpleasant and if she was lucky, she could look back on it with a certain smugness born of having survived it. There was always some or other feat to perform, so she could prove herself to whoever it was who held the thing she wanted and thereby convince them to give it to her.
There was always a test. Always a series of hoops to leap through.
She’d expected surfing, of all things, and in a micro-bikini, to be no different.
It had never even crossed her mind that she might enjoy doing something she’d always viewed as remarkably, even laughably, pointless.
But the truth was, it felt like flying.
Better.
And at some point, she would have to think about Jason’s laughter, or the way he touched her. The way he pulled her against his body and the unmistakable proof of his arousal that he’d neither thrust against her nor hidden. Nor, for that matter, apologized for.
As if all that sexual awareness that wound around the two of them was as matter-of-fact as the water. The sky. Just nature, doing its thing.
She would have to think about all of that, certainly. And she’d been firing off speeches in her head, one after the next, each more haughty and self-possessed than the last—
But then she caught that wave.
And everything changed.
Because it felt better than flying.
It felt like joy.
Something in her chest expanded, bigger and brighter than anything she’d ever felt before, until she was sure her ribs had to crack wide open to let it out.
It was that mad hurtle, blue below and blue above, in a rush of exhilaration.
When she made it to shore that first time, she turned right around and headed back out.
And did it again and again.
The truth was, she never wanted it to end.
There were too many things to think about once she came out of the water. Her position at her company. Her ambition. What she had riding on convincing an impossible man to do something he very clearly didn’t want to do. The fact she hadn’t slept or ate in a very, very long time.
Too many things, none of which seemed to matter or stick to her as she let the waves lift her and hurl her toward the sand as if she was one of them.
It wasn’t until Jason caught her by the arm, after her last marvelous ride that was still humming in her and making her giddy, that she came back down to earth with a thud. Or maybe it wasn’t earth, exactly, with that big hand wrapped around her upper arm and his dark gaze on hers.
And in her, too.
Reminding her of what had almost happened earlier with an electric jolt.
She’d lost track of how much time she’d spent out on the water. How many times she’d let the waves pick her up and take her on that amazing rush of a journey. But she knew it was enough that she’d completely forgotten to grumble to herself about what a chore it was to have to prove herself to yet another man with power over her.
That should have scared her, but she’d forgotten to let that happen, too.
She’d been aware of Jason, of course. She’d been simply riding the waves as she caught them and proud of herself that she stayed standing, but he was...art.
As if he and that board and the sea were all one, working together to create a kind of magic. Art and skill and raw beauty blended into one—
But it didn’t pay to think too closely about Jason Kaoki, Lucinda reminded herself sharply. It made her aware of the way the sun felt heavy on her eyelids, as if all that shine had weight. Of the greedy thing between her legs that pulsed and hummed, hot and ready, still.
This close, if she would just...
The fist of lust that punched deep into her gut, and didn’t let go, seemed heavier than before. But she refused—again—to let it take her down.
“Enough.” And his voice was another problem, heavy like the sun and with as much potential to scar her. “The tide’s changing. And even if it wasn’t, sunscreen doesn’t last forever.”
She might have argued with him—and she opened her mouth to do just that—but he didn’t stick around to debate the matter. He scooped up her board under one arm, his under the other, and sauntered up onto the beach again as if neither one of them weighed more than a twig.
She followed him onto the sand, scowling and annoyed that she had no other option unless she wanted to float about like a hapless jellyfish. It wasn’t until her feet sunk into the white sand again that she realized how deeply tired she was. But this time, in a different way than she’d been before, fresh off the plane.
This time it felt wilder. She was exhausted, yes, but she still felt connected to the ocean all around them. Humming with it, somehow.
For some reason, that ma
de her even more furious.
Jason walked up to the edge of the beach to put his surfboards onto a rack there, beneath a canopy stretched between two palm trees. And Lucinda followed because that was why she was here.
But suddenly, she was outraged by that fact. There was something scooped out and hollow beneath her ribs and it was making it hard to breathe.
“Did I pass your test?” she demanded, moving from the sand onto the grass, as he wrestled the boards into their proper places.
Well. He didn’t wrestle. He was so strong the boards looked like they were made of Styrofoam.
Lucinda had been gearing up to unleash a little of her temper, but she couldn’t seem to hold on to whatever had been poking at her as she’d trudged across the sand. Instead, she was caught by the play of muscle, brown skin and dark black tattoos that made up his astonishing back.
She felt her own breath go shallow. And that hollow place inside her chest changed, too. Intensified, maybe, until it was gleaming and wild and intimately connected to that delicious ache in her pussy.
This is a professional interaction, no matter how unorthodox, she lectured herself.
But she was standing there practically naked with some wild current she barely understood streaking through her like lightning, one strike after the next, and words like professional didn’t seem to have much meaning.
Jason turned back to her at last, raking that dark hair back from his face.
He was so beautiful she thought her knees might give out. She could admit that to herself, but she was made of sterner stuff than that.
She’d already proved it once today, when she’d refused to let herself come simply because he was touching her. She would keep proving it, because collapsing at his feet in a heap of sunburned flesh and legless need wasn’t quite the power play she was going for here.
“Well?” She made her voice much sterner than she felt, and told herself feeling anything at all was a betrayal. “Did I acquit myself appropriately? This was a game to you, I assume. Did I win?”
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