by Ginna Gray
Head back, eyes closed, she smiled, luxuriating in the feel of the cool water pouring over her, sluicing the mounds of lather down her slick body like caressing fingers.
She had been standing there for several minutes when her skin began to prickle. Slowly, as if in a trance, she opened her eyes, and a delicious shock rippled through her,
Not ten yards away on the bank of the pool, stood Rhys... watching her.
He offered no apology, nor did he turn away. He simply remained where he was, still as a statue, Ins arms hanging at his sides. He did not so much as blink, but his silver eyes glittered like hot ice.
His face was dark and rigid with desire, so taut, even from where she stood, Meghan could see tiny muscles quivering in his cheek above the short beard.
Meghan knew the cascading water only partially veiled her body. She could have backed out of sight behind the protection of the waterfall or stepped off the ledge into the pool, but she did neither. She simply stood there with the water flowing over her.
She wasn't angry. Nor could she pretend to be surprised. Deep down, she had known he would come; Rhys always bathed just before sunset. No matter-what excuse she had given herself, wasn't that why she had chosen to come to the pool at this time, instead of in the morning as she usually did?
It had been four days since her birthday. In those four days she had learned that living without Rhys was not living at all.
Though she had not realized it until that moment, in coming to the pool tonight she had made her decision regarding her relationship with Rhys.
Excitement spiraled through her, tightening her chest until it felt as if it might explode at any moment, but she did not let the emotion show. Lifting her chin, she lowered her eyelids partway and fixed Rhys with a sultry look. Calmly, she raised her arms above her head and stretched sinuously.
Rhys sucked in his breath. With slow,, deliberate steps, be started for her, his gaze locked with hers. He walked around the edge of the pool to where the ledge beneath the waterfall connected with the bank, and stopped. Still watching her, he unbuttoned the waistband of his shorts and lowered the zipper. Meghan smiled.
The cutoff tuxedo pants dropped to his ankles and he stepped out of them and up onto the ledge, magnificently naked. Magnificently aroused.
In two steps he stood before her. Water tumbled over his head and shoulders in a splashing torrent. It plastered his hair to his head and ran down his face and spiked his dark lashes. Through the deluge his eyes glittered at her.
"Tell me."
His voice was low and raspy with desire, barely discernible over the roar of rushing water, but Meghan saw the words form on his lips. Even that was not necessary; she knew what he wanted to hear.
She reached up and touched his cheek, threading her fingers through his wet beard. She was trembling all over, but she smiled at him with her heart in her eyes. "I want you to make love to me, Rhys," she said, forming the words slowly and distinctly, so there could be no doubt.
There was none. Rhys's eyes flared, and before she could catch her breath he snatched her into his arms.
She gasped as their wet bodies came together, then gasped again at the feel of his mouth on hers. He kissed her like a man starved for the taste of her, as though he would devour her. Meghan clung to him and kissed him back. Her heart hammered and the blood roared in her ears.
Water poured over them, sheeting down their backs, running between her breasts, down her belly, melding their flesh together.
Their skin was slick and wet, and as his lips rocked over hers their bodies slid against one another, small erotic movements that stole Meghan's breath and started a fire low in her belly. Callused hands slid over her back and buttocks, squeezing, lifting, pressing her tight against him. Lips moved together, teeth nipped, tongues rubbed and swirled in a raging storm of passion. They both groaned, wanting more, but neither could bear to end the kiss.
Passion and need spiraled higher. Caught in the maelstrom, they gasped and clutched at one another, out of control, on fire. Neither gave a thought to where they were, the insanity of making love standing in a waterfall when a few steps away there was a grassy bank. Nothing mattered, nothing existed but the burning passion that drove them.
When Rhys could bear it no more he ran his broad palms down over her bottom, grasped the backs of her thighs and lifted her. As naturally as breathing, Meghan tightened her grip on his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. Setting his jaw, Rhys cupped her hips and pressed her downward, entering her with one strong thrust. Meghan gasped, and Rhys said her name in a guttural voice.
He seated himself deep within her and stilled, clenching his teeth. "Are you all right?" he gasped in her ear.
"Yes. Yes! Oh, Rhys!" Meghan buried her face in the curve of his neck and clutched him tight.
Rhys squeezed his eyes shut. "Yes. You're mine now," he gasped.
Then he began to move.
He clutched her bottom, his fingers digging into her soft flesh as he guided her into the rhythm, lifting and thrusting. The hunger that had been building in both of them rose to the surface, voracious and consuming, setting a frantic pace. With each thrust of his hips, Rhys's movements grew stronger, faster. Lost in the voluptuous pleasure, Meghan responded with equal fervor, her hips surging in a powerful undulation beneath his guiding hands.
In silence, they clung together and loved each other. Water poured over them in a ceaseless torrent, sluicing down their slick bodies, getting in their mouths, their ears, interfering with their breathing. They barely noticed.
Urgency consumed them. Glorious, demanding urgency. The pleasure built and built until it was almost pain.
"Rhys! Oh! Oh!" Meghan sobbed, clutching his hair. "Rhys!"
"Yes, sweetheart. Yes! Yes!"
Rhys gritted his teeth and thrust deeper still as the end came crashing down on them, a shattering ecstacy that pulled cries from their throats and left them wrung out and shaken.
It was several minutes before Rhys regained any semblance of awareness. When he did he was amazed that he was still standing. He felt as weak as a day-old kitten.
Although her legs had lost their grip and were beginning to slide slowly down over his hips, Meghan still clung to him. Eyes closed, she lay against him, her head on his shoulder, her arms looped limply around his neck.
Water splattered off her forehead and onto his face, and Rhys cursed. Damnation, he had to get them out of there before they drowned. It was a wonder they hadn't already.
He pushed Meghan's legs the rest of the way off his hips, then hooked his arm beneath her knees, hefted her against his chest and staggered toward the bank.
She opened her eyes and gave him a sleepy-eyed look as he laid her down on the grass at the water's edge. "Hi."
"Hi, yourself." Rhys lay down beside her, stretched out and propped up on one elbow. He smiled at her drowsy expression and stroked her jaw. "Happy?''
"Mmm.Very."
"Good. I want you to b— Hey, wake up." He gave her cheek a few pats and she blinked up at him. "That's better. Now pay attention. This is important."
"Sorry," she mumbled over a yawn. "Go ahead. What were you saying?"
His tender smile returned, and he smoothed his fingers along her jaw as his gaze traced her features one by one. "Just that I meant what I said earlier. You're mine now," he said with fierce satisfaction. "For always!"
Chapter Ten
The statement brought both joy and pain.
Meghan gave him a wobbly smile. "Yes. I suppose I am. Since it doesn't look like we're going to be rescued, I guess you're stuck with me this time. Poor Rhys."
She made the remark with an airy chuckle, hoping to pass off the whole thing lightly, but Rhys's expression turned dark. Uneasy, she looked away and started to rise and gather up her clothing, but he grabbed her arm.
"Poor Rhys, hell! What the devil is this? You think I'm only interested in you because we're stuck here? Is that it?"
"Rhys-"
"If that's what you really think, why the hell did you make love with me? And that's what we did. We made love. We didn't just have sex, and you know it. You're not the kind of woman who would give herself to a man if her feelings weren't involved. Dammit, I know that you care for me, Meghan. Don't you dare try to tell me otherwise."
"I won't... I'm not... but—"
"But you obviously think that I'm the kind of lowlife who would make love to you just because you're available. Is that what you think I did eight years ago?"
"No! Of course not. You were drunk and...and I seduced you."
"Seduced hell. I'd had a few, but I wasn't drunk. I knew what I was doing. You were just a kid. I should never have touched you, but I couldn't seem to help myself. Dammit, Meghan, even then I cared for you. All right, so maybe it wasn't love, but I felt something special."
"Oh, Rhys, be fair. You've been intimate with a lot of women. Surely you don't expect me to believe that you cared for all of them?"
"I've had sex with other women, yes. And there haven't been all that many, regardless of what you read in the papers. But none of them was anything like you. They were all worldly, sophisticated women."
Meghan bristled instantly. "Well, blessed hell. What am I? A country bumpkin?" Glaring, she tried to yank her arm free, but he held fast, a ghost of a smile flirting with his lips at her eruption of temper.
"Just settle down, you little spitfire. Meghan, listen to me. You may be an independent career woman and sharp as a tack, but worldly you're not. You were raised with a solid set of old-fashioned values and morals that set you apart. That make you special," he added in that deep whiskey voice, and the look in his eyes caused her heart to give a little bump. "For the past eight years, most of the women I've met think no more of having casual sex than they do of having a meal. It's an appetite to be appeased. Or a pleasant recreation. No more. On occasion, I took what was offered."
Rhys shrugged. "It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but when you're a celebrity it comes with the territory. Stardom restricts your life to a very small orbit. Usually the only women I meet are the ones Quincy allows inside that circle. Music groupies, mostly. And even then, only very select ones." Disgust flickered across his face, but he shook it off, and when he refocused on her his silver eyes were once again intense.
"My point is, until today I've never really made love, Meghan, sweetheart, listen to me. Where we happen to be, this situation we're in, has nothing to do with how I feel about you. What we just shared was special. Whether we spend the rest of our lives on this pile of dirt or someone picks us up tomorrow, you're mine now. Just as I am yours."
She gazed at him, wanting with all her heart to believe the impassioned declaration. Her eyes misted as she reached up and touched his cheek with her fingertips. "Are you, Rhys?" she asked in a quavery voice. "Are you really mine?"
His expression lost its fierceness. Covering her hand with his, he held it against his face and looked at her with such depth of feeling her insides did a slow melt. "Oh, yes, sweetheart. I'm yours. Always."
He turned his head and placed a lingering kiss in the center of her palm. Watching her over their hands, he touched the tip of his tongue to the spot. Meghan jumped as a jolt of electricity zinged up her arm, and he smiled against her palm.
Then he lowered his head.
At the first touch of his lips on hers Meghan's heart seemed to swell in her chest, like a flower spreading its petals into full bloom.
He kissed her softly, with a tender passion so exquisite she could barely breathe. His lips nibbled, then rocked and rubbed, then nibbled again. A delicious fizzy feeling began to percolate through Meghan, and her hands came up to cup the back of his head.
"The sun's... going... down," he whispered against her hps between kisses. "It'll be... dark... soon.''
"Yes...you're.. .right," Meghan whispered back in a breathless voice.
"We should...probably...go back to...camp." Rhys paused long enough to trace her mouth with the tip of his tongue, then resumed strewing the tormenting little kisses.
"Mmm."
"Before... it gets too... dark to... see." He caught her lower Up and sucked it gently, and Meghan moaned and writhed, her back arching.
Releasing her mouth, he raised up partway and laid his hand flat on her bare abdomen. Even in the gloom she could see that his face was dark and blurry with passion, his expression blatantly sensual and smug as he studied the helpless excitement on her face. "What do you say? Shall we?" He stroked his hand up over her rib cage and cupped her breast. With a stroke so light it was barely a whisper, he drew his thumb across her nipple. Liquid heat shot straight to the core of Meghan's femininity.
"Yes. Yes!" Clutching fistfuls of his hair, Meghan made a low sound in her throat and yanked his head back down.
Against her lips, Rhys gave a satisfied chuckle and rolled with her to his back without breaking the kiss, pulling her on top of him.
* * *
The days that followed were the most wonderful that Meghan had ever known. Living intimately with Rhys, loving him, sharing life with him, brought her more happiness than she had ever imagined possible. Rhys was a wonderful lover, companion and friend, and being the focus of his attention was the fulfillment of all her girlish dreams... and more. Her long-ago fantasies about him paled in comparison to reality.
If Meghan continued to occasionally experience a niggling worry that Rhys's affection sprang from proximity rather than true emotion, for the most part she was able to push the troublesome thought aside. In any case, as the days turned into weeks and it began to look more and more as though they would not be rescued, the issue became moot. If they were destined to live out their days alone together on the island, what did it matter?
Though they kept a pile of wood on the beach ready to light a signal fire in case they spotted a ship, neither held out much hope of being rescued. As the lazy days slipped by, they unconsciously accepted their situation and adapted.
It was not difficult. They lived the life of a modern-day Adam and Eve. There was fruit and fish and game in plentiful supply. There were no pressures, no worries, no restrictions—just the sensual, pagan freedom of a man and woman alone in an island paradise. They soaked up the sun, swam in the surf and the placid lagoon, took long walks on the beach, explored the island together and frolicked on the sand... and they made love with joyous abandon.
In the surf, in the forest, at the pool, on the beach in the moonlight or beneath the blazing sun, anytime, anywhere they happened to he, whenever the desire that flared so easily between them sizzled to the surface, they loved one another.
At times their joining was playful, at others serious, or hard and fast and frantic, or slow and languorous. But always, no matter how or where or when they made love, the voluptuous pleasure took their breath away and left them trembling with awe.
As lovers the world over do, when passion was spent they talked for hours. With open hearts and a sense of rightness neither had known before, they revealed innermost secrets, made discoveries, shared hopes and dreams.
Rhys told her about his childhood, how his parents had both been killed when he was eight and he had gone to live with his grandmother, how the dear old soul had opened her home and her heart to the lost little boy, even though she'd been sixty-one at the time and living on a meager income.
Meghan told him of her big and boisterous family, which included an aunt and uncle and their three offspring, about being the only girl with three brothers and the youngest of the seven cousins. She told him about how they had all grown up together in the sleepy East Texas town of Crockett, wandering in and out of each other's homes at will-big, rambling old Victorian houses that were only minutes apart if you took the trail through the woods.
He told her about the loneliness of a little boy with no brothers or sisters or even very many friends, since almost everyone in his grandmother's neighborhood was elderly, too. He told her of how old-fashioned and strict
Ella Morgan was and what a stickler for manners and cleanliness— what a trial it had been for a rough-and-tumble kid to endure endless fingernail and ear inspections, or sit quietly through decorous meals. He told her how chagrined he'd been whenever anyone from his school had discovered him helping his grandmother hang out clothes or snap green beans or spied him in the sissy Sunday clothes she had made him wear to church.
"We didn't have a car, so we had to walk fifteen blocks to church. I suffered a thousand deaths every Sunday, hoping that no one I knew would see me wearing that dumb bow tie, and with my hair parted in the middle and slicked down with tonic." Rhys's mouth twitched. "Except for my cowlick, that is. I can't tell you how many times Gran licked her fingers and tried to plaster that sprig of hair down with spit."