by Susan Napier
An orgasm hit him almost immediately, a prolonged, wild, uninhibited eruption of pure energy that stunned Jane with its primitive violence. His muscles twisted and corded, locking and unlocking in pulsing spasms that sculpted his body into straining contortions as he bucked and shuddered, lashing himself into a frenzy in his mindless quest for climatic satisfaction. He reared up on both hands for one last, huge, hammering thrust, his head thrown back, his arched body utterly rigid, quivering like a tightly drawn bow until he let out a hoarse shout of scorching triumph and slumped down onto her heaving bosom.
Jane felt used and bruised and dazzled by his splendour. No other man had succeeded in making her feel so wildly desirable. She wasn’t the sort of woman who drove men crazy. She had only had one other lover in her life, and James had turned out to be a set-up of her father’s, more interested in grooming himself as a potential heir-in-law than satisfying her as a woman. For James, extended foreplay had been an irksome waste of time, and with his brisk efficiency he had ensured that Jane felt inadequate if she couldn’t keep up with him.
Ryan’s lax body eased off her, and Jane, suddenly self-conscious in her nudity, rolled away from him onto her side. His strong arm hooked around her waist, hauling her back against his sweaty chest as he mistook her movement for an attempt to leave.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded, sinking his teeth deep into the rounded curve of her shoulder, his hand cupping one soft-tipped breast. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet...’
He tightened his arm, turning her onto her back, anchoring her there with one hairy leg crooked across her abdomen. ‘The room is booked for the whole night, my sweet little swindler. You’ve only just begun to earn your money...’
CHAPTER SIX
JANE bent down to pick up a small pebble from the firm black sand. She brushed away the clumps of clinging grains and rubbed the flat, round stone between her finger and thumb in tactile appreciation of the smoothly polished surface. She curled her forefinger around the outside edge and looked out at the wide expanse of sea. There was a stiff wind and the turn of the tide had made the early-morning surf wild, the breakers thundering to shore in broken lines, salt spray hanging like white mist over the long, flat beach.
Jane waded into the foam at the edge of the water and paused, judging her moment, then splashed sideways in a series of little hops to skim the stone into the shallows over the top of a disintegrating wave. It skipped three times on the swirling water before smashing into the next curling breaker. Not bad considering that conditions were so poor and she was using her right arm!
She backed out of the water, brushing at the splashes on her white cotton shorts. Five was still her best score. When she got the proper use of her left hand back, in a few more weeks, she hoped to be able to double it.
The wind stung her wet legs and she tucked her taped hand into the pocket of her thin wind-cheater and turned back, deciding it was time for breakfast. Trudging into the soft sand above the high-tide mark, she glanced to her left where the huge, crouching hulk of Lion Rock which separated the broad iron-sands of North Piha from the main Piha beach was obscured in low cloud and spray. By mid-morning the cloud would probably burn off and it would be another brilliant west coast summer day.
Yesterday had been a scorcher, and the usual rash of weekend day-trippers had created havoc for the dedicated surf lifesavers who patrolled the crowded main beach, but early on a weekday morning, during school term, it was only the locals, and the serious surfers and body-boarders who braved the notorious Piha rips.
She lifted her eyes from the fine black sand sifting through her bare toes to the steep, bush-clad hills above the beach. They were the western fringe of the Waitakere Ranges, which protected the fiercely independent coastal community of Piha from the brash encroachments of the sprawling suburbs of Auckland, forty kilometres to the east. There was only one dead-end road winding through the ranges into Piha, and the locals liked it that way.
There were no commercial developments in the small, isolated settlement, no shops other than a single general store, a dairy and a takeaway bar on the beachfront, and no hotels, bars or restaurants—only private residences and holiday homes, most of them owned by the same families for generations, and a council-run camping ground offering basic facilities to those wanting to pitch tents and park caravans. The core population of permanent residents was small enough to be friendly, large enough to blend into, and eccentric enough to be tolerant of a range of alternative lifestyles.
It was the perfect bolt-hole.
Jane scrambled up the tussock-seeded dunes which crested the narrow tar-sealed road that ran along the back of the North Piha beach and came into sight of her own, private bolt-hole.
It wasn’t a very pretty sight. Like many of the old-fashioned holiday baches at Piha, it was a box-like rectangle of painted fibrolight panels, with extensions randomly tacked on over the years to cope with the ebb and flow of family numbers. This one was a particularly ugly faded yellow, with a red corrugated iron roof urgently in need of patching.
The paint on both roof and walls was cracked and peeling, sandblasted completely bare in places by decades of savage Piha winter westerlies. Several windows were cracked in their badly warped frames and the front door listed drunkenly on its hinges. The detached wooden garage was in even worse condition, rotten timbers proof of years of neglect, and the chain-link fence sagging around the perimeter completed the general picture of sad dilapidation.
But at least it was a roof over her head, albeit a rather leaky one, thought Jane ruefully as she pushed open the rusty gate. It was also rent-free and, most important of all, it was well out of Ryan Blair’s dangerous orbit!
Her enemy.
Her lover.
She didn’t know which one she feared more.
She still couldn’t quite believe that she had managed to escape him. After all her previous struggles it had seemed almost too easy. Or was she only free because Ryan had decided to let her go?
The question tormented her, as did her distressingly vivid memories of the scandalous night as his sexual play-thing. She could conveniently blame the pills and alcohol for initiating her outrageous behaviour, but she had a sneaking suspicion that they were the tools with which she had subconsciously sought to lower her inhibitions to the point where she could act on her desires without feeling guilty afterwards.
If so, it hadn’t worked!
The first thing she had been aware of when she had woken the next morning had been the pulsating throb of her left hand. The pain had been as bad as in the first few days after the injury. Had she rolled on it in the night? Why hadn’t her fingers been safely taped up?
Her heavy eyelids had fluttered open and she’d frowned for an instant of total bewilderment at the morning sunlight streaking across an unfamiliar ceiling. Her mouth had tasted dry and cottony, her head had felt oddly achy, and so had...
Oh, God! Through the pain it hit her: where she was, what she was doing there...
Her heart jerked in fright as she turned her head, but she was alone in the wide disordered bed, her long black hair streaming across the indentation in the pillow beside hers. Alone and naked under the white cotton sheet, her body feeling bruised and tender in all sorts of incredibly intimate places.
And no wonder! She snatched the sheet to her throat, a burning blush enveloping her as splintered images of wild, passionate excess danced in her head. What had begun as a primitive act of possession had very quickly become a prolonged orgy of mutual self-indulgence, shorn of any pretence of reluctance on either side. Ryan had seemed possessed of a superhuman stamina and an infinite capacity for invention that had shocked Jane to the core, even as she had boldly responded to the irresistible challenge of proving that she was more than a match for his devastating expertise. She had done things for him, to him and with him that she had never dreamed of doing with any man, let alone with Ryan Blair!
She was suddenly conscious of the open cu
rtains flooding bright, white light across a tangle of male and female clothes on the floor, and the sound of running water shutting off behind the closed bathroom door. Panic surged to a peak. Oh, God, maybe she could sneak out of the room while he was in the bathroom? She rose on her elbows, but even that slight movement made her hand throb sickeningly and she sank down on the pillows again, groaning at the sight of her freshly swollen fingers.
She let the back of her fiery hand rest very gently down on the cool sheet beside her pillow. The painkillers had worn off with a vengeance and she realised how foolish and downright dangerous it had been to take double the prescribed amount. Not only had she risked an overdose, but she had masked the warning signs that might have told her she was doing more damage to her hand.
Oh, yes, she had been a complete and utter fool all round! Jane flung her other arm over her eyes to block out the harsh light of day. In the condition that she was in it would take an age for her to dress herself again. Unless she wanted to scuttle out of the hotel wrapped in a sheet there was no avoiding the impending confrontation. She groaned again, furious with herself for being so weak and pathetic.
‘If you’re feeling stiff and sore I suggest you try a hot shower,’ came a darkly mocking drawl from the bathroom doorway. ‘It’s worked wonders for me...’
Jane tensed, instantly defensive, and fought a fresh stirring of pain that wasn’t entirely physical. She didn’t want to look at him but she couldn’t resist a peek from under the shadow of her arm.
Thankfully Ryan had knotted a white hotel towel around his hips, although it rode low enough for her to see the black, curling hair thickening at the base of his hard belly. His tanned skin was glossed by beads of water, indicating that he hadn’t bothered to dry himself before leaving the bathroom. His wet hair was spikily uncombed and without a razor his chin was blue-black with heavy regrowth.
He looked thoroughly tough and disreputable as he sauntered towards the bed, and Jane stifled another groan of mingled pain and self-disgust, her arm clamping back down over her eyes.
The bed depressed heavily beside her and she felt the heat of his hard thigh settle against her sheet-covered hip. ‘You may as well come out from hiding, Jane,’ he said drily. ‘I’m not going to conveniently fade away just because you refuse to look at me.’
She bit her lip, clinging to the illusion of privacy as she felt him pick up a lock of her long, wavy hair and begin to play with it. God, when she thought of the way she had reacted to him during the night! After that first, frenzied explosion Ryan had turned out the light, and in the fevered darkness it had been all too easy to relinquish what remained of her inhibitions. No wonder he wanted to gloat!
‘Jane?’ He tugged on her hair and his impatience became tinged with malice as she continued to shelter under her concealing arm. ‘I can’t believe a woman who brazenly sells her sexual favours is shy, so perhaps this provocative pose is supposed to tempt me into doing this...’
She felt a light twitch at the top of the sheet and whipped her elbow down to anchor it in place, exposing herself to the penetrating blue gaze that she had been trying so hard to avoid.
His hard mouth curved with satisfaction. ‘Good morning,’ he murmured, with a pointed politeness. Her hair was a gypsy tumble and most of her make-up had worn off, the smudged remains of her eyeshadow and mascara giving her eyes a sunken look of sleepy sensuality that was much sexier than the artificial gloss of the night before.
His eyebrows rose as she failed to respond and he bent over to brush his lips teasingly against her sealed mouth, bracing his hands on the pillow on either side of her head. He was almost leaning on her swollen hand, half concealed by the overhang of the pillowcase, and Jane’s whole body clenched in terror at the idea of more pain. His expression darkened as he took in her tight-lipped pallor and an angry pulse created a tic at his temple.
‘Regrets, Jane?’ His eyes skimmed down her tented body and back up to her frozen face. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late for those. I told you there would be no going back. You made your bed last night and now you’re lying in it.’ He staked another claim with his mouth, an insolent kiss of ownership.
‘And you can take that martyred expression off your face, because we both know it’s a damned lie—a woman doesn’t have screaming multiple orgasms unless she’s enjoying herself. At least you can stop worrying whether I’m going to ask for a refund. You were the consummate professional, darling—worth every cent!’ He sat back, flicking his hands off the pillow with a careless motion that knocked against her hidden wrist.
Jane’s eyes dilated in their smudged sockets and the blood seemed to rush away from the surface of her skin, leaving it icy cold...except for her hand, which felt as if it were being pierced by white-hot needles. Physical pain became indistinguishable from mental anguish, and a choking moan slipped past her clenched teeth. But not the tears; she would fight the tears until her last breath!
‘Dammit, Jane, don’t think you can soften me up by—’ Ryan broke off, frowning as he saw the glitter at the corner of her eyes. His eyes shifted and he blanched, leaning forward to draw the edge of the pillow back from her crabbed hand. He swallowed. ‘My, God, Jane—did I do that?’ he said in a devastated whisper. ‘Your finger—it looks as if it’s dislocated...’
He tentatively touched the shiny, swollen skin and Jane let out another explosive whimper. He snatched his finger back as she drew her hand to her chest and hunched around it like a wounded animal.
‘I know I was rough with you last night but I know my own strength—I didn’t think I was actually hurting you,’ he said shakenly, his face twisting into a rictus of self-disgust. ‘For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell me? I can’t believe I could hurt you that much without realising it—’
Considering how mercilessly he had tried to hurt her in every other conceivable way it was strange that he should react with such intense revulsion at the idea of causing her physical harm, Jane thought miserably, but there was no mistaking that his horror was genuine. His peculiar sense of honour at work...
It was tempting—very, very tempting—to torture him with a lie but, unfortunately, she was in too much pain to spare the energy to torment anyone else.
‘You didn’t,’ she gritted.
‘I didn’t?’ The thin white line around his mouth relaxed as he took another look. ‘No, of course not—the bruising is too advanced for this to have happened in the last few hours. But if it was like this last night—I might have overlooked it because the lighting in here bruised everything with shadows, but I certainly would have noticed at the dinner table—’
He stopped, his eyes jerking to her bloodless face. ‘Except that you were wearing gloves...’ he said slowly. ‘I thought it was odd, but then your whole outfit was bizarrely out of character and it threw me off. Was that the plan, Jane? Did you hide this from me because you were afraid to let me see that you were weak and wounded?’
He saw too much. He always had. ‘I’m not weak.’ she mumbled hopelessly, in no fit state for another bout of verbal fencing.
‘No, you’re stupidly self-willed and too stubborn for your own good.’ He picked up the cordless telephone by the bed.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know when it happened or how, but that hand obviously needs medical attention,’ he said grimly, punching in a set of numbers.
‘It’s had medical attention,’ she cried. ‘I’m not stupid—’ Her father had called her that, whenever she’d proposed an idea that went against his wishes.
He ignored her. ‘Carl? Ryan—I need your help.’ He rose to his feet and paced across the room to scoop up his clothes.
Jane rolled carefully onto her side, fulminating against the pain as she strained to hear his low-voiced conversation. ‘What are you doing? I told you, I don’t need a doctor—’ Her mouth snapped shut as Ryan casually shed his towel, tucking the phone into his neck so that he could continue to talk as he stepped into a pair of thin white bikin
i briefs. His buttocks were as hard and muscular as the rest of him, flexing as he bent, revealing the fine dusting of hair that disappeared into the intriguing crease between his legs. He turned to face her as he pulled up his trousers, affording her a brief glimpse of the silky pouch cupping his bulging manhood.
He punched off the phone and dropped it back onto the table, shouldering into his blue shirt.
‘I have a doctor. I’m not going to see another one—’
‘You don’t have to go anywhere. He’s coming to see you.’
‘The hotel doctor?’ She was horrified. The management would slap on a surcharge. And weren’t large hotels hotbeds of gossip? If it became known she had spent a night at a hotel with Ryan Blair her life would become even more of a scandal than it was already. Jane gingerly put a foot to the floor, trying to cradle her hand and still maintain a grip on her modesty.
‘No. Mine. Dr Graham Frey. You’ll find he’s extremely competent...and discreet.’
‘You called your own doctor?’ Her agitation increased as she watched him bundle up her clothes and place them on the chair behind him, out of reach. ‘I won’t see him!’
Ten minutes later her blustering had weakened to a sullen whine and she was still crouched on the edge of the bed clutching the sheet around her. And he’d called her stubborn!
‘At least let me put on my clothes—’
‘For goodness’ sake, he’s a doctor. He’s used to seeing naked women—’
For some reason that made her blush. ‘If he comes in and sees me like this with you here, he’ll think...he’ll think—’
‘That we’ve just spent a night of hot and heavy sex?’
She closed her eyes to shut out his mocking truth.
‘If he sees you in that trashy little evening number at seven o’clock in the morning he’s going to come to the same conclusion anyway,’ he pointed out in an aggravatingly reasonable voice. ‘There’s a hotel bathrobe in the wardrobe; how about you put that on for now?’