“And I brought dessert too, just in case.”
Instantly, his mind went there. Her mouth for dessert. The velvety skin of her neck. Her thighs. Jeez. “You did?” He forced neutral into his voice.
She rooted in the bag again. “Some hard candies.”
“You’re fucking killing me with kindness here. I hope the fish is worth it.” He waved over to the fire. “Come. Sit. I wish I had a blanket or something I could spread out for you so as to keep that dress clean.”
“Well, I…uh…” She reached into the bag again and pulled out a folded cotton blanket.
“Unbelievable. You’re ready for anything.”
“I’m on holiday. Not being a hardcore survivalist.” She spread the covering on the sand and sat on it. Unscrewed the top off the whisky, took a sip, then handed him the bottle.
“So, you used to go on camping trips with your dad?” He sat on the blanket next to her and sipped from the bottle, just as she had. “That must have been cool.”
She gazed at the sea, but he got the feeling she was really looking back in time. “It was. I loved it. I guess because it was just us two against the world, y’know?”
He did know. It had been just him and his mother against the world. Until everything changed.
“Were you an only child?” Sholto asked.
He had been. Maybe things would have been different if there had been a sibling to share the burden. Or if his father had stuck around. Instead, he was left with the memory of social services forcing their way in and taking him out of his home, never to return. He’d be forever grateful to his mother’s brother and his wife for taking him in and giving him a real home—but forever angry at what had happened to his mother…
“I might as well have been.”
Her voice cut through his memories. He turned to look at her profile silhouetted by the dusky evening sky. Her eyelashes were impossibly long, and her mouth full, both without the addition of makeup. Their shoulders were close, but not touching, and yet a skein of intimacy seemed to wind around them, binding them together.
“I have two older sisters—and years later there was an unexpected pregnancy.” She pointed at herself. “My sisters were seventeen and sixteen when I was born. I was the flower girl at my sister Caroline’s wedding, and a nine-year-old bridesmaid at my other sister’s wedding. It’s fucked up.”
“It could have been worse.” You might have had a mad mother.
“Oh, it was worse.” She leaned forward and clasped her arms around her knees. “You remember my school uniform? I’d love a hand-knitted sweater now, but back then?” She grimaced. “Let’s just say different was just wrong when I was a kid.”
*****
“You’re a good listener.” She couldn’t believe she was pouring out all this stuff. She rarely opened up, had never shared about her family except to her best friend Kathryn Hazzard or her therapist. Heck, even Cam had no idea of her family dynamics.
Close up, Sholto had the most amazing color eyes. Green, not light and vibrant like the sea, but deep and rich, like emeralds or forest undergrowth. Talking to him was so different to the way she normally spoke to men she met in clubs or bars where the setup was totally artificial. Their conversation was natural, not forced. They weren’t circling each other like cautious animals. Playing the game of casual conversation that would lead back to someone’s bed, or in the case of the sex club she’d visited to a mutually satisfying screw in one of the club’s private rooms. They were just two people. Alone. Unadorned. Sharing truths.
“Things weren’t perfect in my early life either.” His jaw tightened. “My mother had some problems, but I didn’t want to leave her. Social services made that decision for me.”
Everyone had talked about the new boy who joined school in their final year, but she’d never realized he’d been unwilling to leave Scotland. “I thought you got expelled from your last school.”
His smile had a bitter edge. “My mother was judged unfit, and I was sent to live with my uncle and aunt. I never said much about how I came to be there, I guess people just made up reasons. It was a new country, a new school.” He shrugged. “I worked hard to fit in.”
“But you did.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Eventually.”
“Well, good for you.” She tilted the bottle at him, and then took another sip.
“The fish will be ready by now.”
They ate with their fingers, using large leaves as plates. Max breathed in the aroma of thyme with every mouthful of the firm, white, flaky fish. “This is amazingly delicious.” It was damned difficult not to look at him. He wore a shirt today, but it was open, and her gaze kept returning to his tanned chest.
He grinned, flashing white, even teeth.
She licked her fingers. Being with him was easy—more than easy, it was enjoyable. It was a damned shame that once dinner was over, she’d have to retreat to her own tent.
He licked his top lip. Desire unfurled like a sail within her. “I won’t stay too late, I don’t fancy trying to find my tent in the dark.”
He frowned.
“We both want to be alone…” But her body leaned toward his, making her words a lie.
“I thought I did.” His voice was low and quiet. “But I was disappointed when I couldn’t find you this afternoon.” He pushed his finished meal onto the fire and watched it alight. His mouth curved into a smile. “Being here with you feels more real than the false shit I normally deal with.”
“As though we’ve taken off our masks.” Her hair swung forward, half-hiding her face when she looked down at the sand. A heaviness filled her chest. Once she walked away from this campfire, she’d never see him again. “I’ll miss you when we go back to our own lives.” Her face flushed with heat. “Crap, did I say that out loud?”
The air between them seemed to spark. His eyes shifted to dark emerald. “Would you want to see me again?”
She could lie. She could walk away—she could run. “Yes. I might.”
He stroked a hand up her arm, a trail of heat following the path his fingers traced. “Then don’t leave. Don’t go back to your campsite tonight, stay here with me.”
What happens on the island stays on the island. He made no further move, leaving the decision to her. She’d slept with people she didn’t know. Had explored casual hook-ups and threesomes. But she’d never connected with a man like this before—someone who wasn’t lured by expensive shoes and a beautifully painted shell, someone who had seen her unadorned and wanted her anyway. Who knew her.
She shifted on one hip, so her body was facing his. Reached up and touched his face, and did what she’d wanted to do from the first moment she’d seen him: brought her mouth inches from his. “This might be a bad idea,” she whispered.
“Bullshit. It’s the best idea either of us have had all day.”
One more inch, and they were kissing. Their tongues tangled, the nascent flame inside flashing into a blaze, like a match thrown onto a cache of fireworks. The dream of him had been sepia compared to the reality. Her hands were everywhere, on his face, in his hair, and then sliding beneath the light covering of shirt to trace his muscular shoulders.
“Max.” He eased away and took off his shirt, then pulled her dress over her head and cast it onto the sand. He stared. “Fuck, I just can’t get over how beautiful you are.”
*****
It sounded like a line, but it wasn’t. In After Ecstasy, he’d held Caro Michaels, this year’s sexiest woman alive, in his arms and simulated sex on screen. Even though his co-star was celluloid sexy, she couldn’t hold a candle to the raw beautiful sexuality of the woman before him. Max’s hair tumbled in blonde waves over sunkissed shoulders. Her breasts were pale and perfect with rosy pink nipples that begged to be touched.
Max’s unpainted lips were open a fraction. She stared into his eyes with a look half desire, half stunned confusion, as though she couldn’t believe what was happening between them. He could barely belie
ve it himself. Where had his determination to distance himself from her gone? He’d asked her to stay and he didn’t mean just for the night. He wanted to be able to touch her, kiss her, sink his fingers and his cock into her, and hear her moan his name for the rest of the time they had on the island.
“You’re beautiful too.” Her voice was husky. Sexy. His cock jerked in response. She stroked a hand across his shoulders, across his chest, all the time staring into his eyes with a look of raw desire.
“Come here.” He tugged her hand, pulling her closer.
She swung a leg over his, and settled on his lap, her heat directly over his hard cock.
He leaned in, bringing their torsos into alignment so her nipples brushed against his chest. His mouth slanted over hers and her lips parted instantly to allow him access. Demanding and urgent, her tongue invaded his mouth, showing the desperation of her need. He breathed in the scent of the sea and woman from her warm skin. Flattened his palms at her sides, and stroked around to feel the subtle bumps of her spine beneath his fingertips.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss until it was difficult to judge where he ended and she began. Subsumed by her, entangled, just kissing her was such an enormous turn-on he could barely breathe.
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. He had to have more. Had to taste. Sholto lifted her so she rested on her knees, stopped kissing her mouth, and trailed his lips down her exposed neck.
“Oh, Jesus.” Her whisper was like a prayer.
He licked the slopes of her breast. Rolled his thumb over one perfect, erect bud, then circled the puckered areola with his tongue, and sucked it into his mouth. Her skin, unadorned by perfume, tasted clean with a hint of sweetness.
She stiffened. Groaned. So responsive he almost came right there.
His fingers slid inside the leg of her panties, finding her wet and ready. Ordinarily, he’d just rip them off, but this was no ordinary situation—neither of them had many clothes on the island, so with regret, he lifted his head from her breast and stared into her face. “These have to go.”
“So do these.” She undid the button of his pants and slid down the zipper. Then she swung her leg off him, and stripped. When they were both naked, she curled her hand around him, and her tongue swiped across her bottom lip. “Mmm.”
She ran her finger over the tip of his cock, smoothing the bead of moisture over his length, then moved her hand up and down slowly, staring at what she was doing with total concentration. When she bent her body over him to take him in her mouth, he snapped out of the lust-induced funk that had taken him over, and took back control.
His hand slid up her thigh then dipped between her legs. “I want to taste you.”
Chapter Nine
“That’s my line.” Max turned and started into his eyes. Wow, he really can bring the intense. Every nerve ending on her skin seemed super-sensitized—it would be easy to pretend it was just because it had been so long since a man touched her, but the truth was she’d never felt so affected by a simple caress. The way he looked at her made her heart pound and the thought of further speech impossible.
She’d almost had him in her mouth, but now that goal was obliterated by the slow slide of his fingers over her bottom.
As though recognizing her state, his mouth curved into a movie heartthrob smile. He scooted to the side, nudged her hip and had her flat on the blanket in seconds. Warm lips kissed her shoulder. His thumb stroked her clit in agonizing slow motion, and his fingers dipped into her opening. She was so wet, wetter than she’d ever been. A light wind brushed over her hands, which had somehow found their way to caress his back. Palm trees rustled. The murmur of the sea kissing the shore, and the dull crackle of the fire, soft accompaniments to the sounds of their lovemaking.
Not lovemaking. Sex. Thinking about him as anything more than a beach fuck was dangerous. They might hook up again after the island, but it wouldn’t be a relationship—could never be that.
Then he licked her nipple and sucked it into his mouth again, and coherent thought evaporated.
Max loved her body. Adored sex with an experienced partner, and had always considered it an essential part of being human. Even though she hadn’t had sex in months, she was protected by her contraceptive implant. But her partners always wore a condom, and because she thought she might end up sleeping with Sholto, she’d slipped a packet into her bag. But admitting that she’d known all along they’d be lovers felt awkward.
Sholto’s fingers pushed into her. His hair tickled her stomach as he scooted down her body to the juncture of her thighs. “What are you thinking?” He looked up, emerald eyes blazing with heat. “About condoms?”
She nodded.
“Are you on the pill?”
“I have a contraceptive implant. And I’m clean.”
“I am too.” He scooted up and propped himself up on one shoulder. “Although you shouldn’t just take my word for it.”
What other option did she have? He hadn’t brought test results with him, had he?
He avoided her gaze. “I know I wasn’t supposed to bring anything Weatherly didn’t have.” He scooted up to reach for his discarded pants and unfastened the long pocket on the thigh. “But he was alone on the island. I’ve been burning up for you from the first time I saw you at the After Ecstasy premiere—there was no way in hell I was coming to Melati unprepared.” He pulled out a long ribbon of condoms.
It was like a magic trick. The one where the magician pulls out brightly colored silk handkerchiefs tied together, and flings them through the air. “How many?” Her voice sounded feeble, so she cleared her throat and gave it another shot. “How many did you bring?”
“About thirty.”
“Thirty?” She raised her eyebrows, doing her best to look scandalized.
He ran a hand through his hair. “There is more than one way to have sex. I could lick you, suck you, touch you in ways that would drive you so crazy you’d come without my cock penetrating you, but I’ll never fuck without a condom.”
His words were so hot it was difficult to think, never mind manage a response. She swallowed. “So you came prepared.”
Screw this. It was time to drop the outraged act, and get real. Max smiled. “I do want you. And you’re right, we could just play around. I could suck your cock. Touch you until you can’t bear the ecstasy any longer, and cum in my hands. Shove my tits together to make a cradle for you, and stare into your eyes as you thrust between them.” She looked down at his gorgeous cock growing long and thick by her thigh. Then she leaned close so that his breath feathered across her lips and whispered. “But I wanted more, so I cheated too.”
“You did?” His hand cupped her breast.
“I have a bumper pack in my bag.”
“You are so fucking sexy,” he growled against her lips, then he slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her. The taste of him, the scent of him, set all her senses alight. His tongue met hers and it was as though the moments spent talking had never happened. His fingers squeezed her breasts, tweaked her hard nipples, sending a spear of sensation into her core. Her hands spiked into his dark hair, tracing his scalp. Her heart was pounding fit to burst—his touch was delicious.
She wanted him hard and fast, thrusting into her, stretching her. He was close, but she needed him closer.
Even though she hadn’t said anything, he got the message her body was transmitting. His mouth left hers and he trailed a flurry of kisses down her neck, across her sternum, then licked around her nipple and sucked it into his mouth.
“Oh.” She jerked, arching her back from the soft blanket, and gripped his shoulders. If she almost climaxed at the feel of his mouth on her, what...
He kissed down her stomach, his clever fingers tracing further and dipping between her legs. “You’re wet for me.”
His hands clasped her thighs, pulling them apart. He stared into her eyes as his thumb rubbed over her sensitive clit. “So beautiful.” His eyes were dark like
the green depths of the forest behind them. He scooted down and draped her legs over his shoulders, and stared at her sex with a look of total concentration.
Yearning hollowed her stomach, and her body shivered in the grip of a desperate desire to feel his mouth where she needed it most. Then, slowly, Sholto leaned down and flicked his tongue over her and then sucked hard.
Her hips bucked.
He slipped two fingers into her, and wrapped his other arm beneath her hips, pulling her up and onto his mouth. He sucked, he licked. His fingers curled and found a spot inside, a spot she’d heard about but no-one had ever managed to locate before. He stroked her there, and his mouth slipped a fraction, his tongue joining his fingers thrusting inside her.
“I can’t...”
She couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. Sex had always been fun, but this--this was something else. In the past, she’d made the decision to let go and surrender to sensation, here she had no choice, no control. She couldn’t stop her body from undulating in the air, from pressing greedily against his mouth.
His fingers dug into her butt.
The sound she made was more moan than cry. His fingers moved faster, teasing her G spot again and again. His thumb circled her clit with just the right amount of pressure.
The feeling started at the tip of her stiff nipples, wound down through her torso, then thrashed like the incoming tide, through her entire body. Her toes turned up in bliss, and spasms took her to nirvana.
“Maxine.” His voice was deep and full of wonder. “Fuck, Max, that was beautiful.” He slid up her body.
When her heartrate steadied, she kissed him, tasting herself on his mouth. Then the insistent hardness of his cock against her stomach sparked desire to life again. She edged her legs apart and linked her ankles behind his back. “I want more.”
He reached across to his pants and ripped open a small foil packet.
“Let me.” She took the condom, and rolled it slowly over his erect cock, loving the way his face changed as her hand gripped him. He’d made her control evaporate; she needed to return the favor. Needed to see him completely lose it. She rubbed his crown over her wetness, pressed him against her clit. Played a teasing game for as long as she could bear to, before the need to have him inside was too much for either of them.
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