by Cait London
“There’s too much.” Where could she start? As a hungry, untended child? As a teenager who thought marriage would take her away from her family? From her first husband, who roughly fumbled through their wedding night and bragged about it to his friends? Or to Robert, who had only touched her with tenderness and pride?
Her emotions churned within her, because this one man had touched her deep inside, to that delicate softness she’d protected for a lifetime. She wanted to feel everything all at once with Alexi—every hunger, every caress—to allow herself to open fully, to demand—
Alexi’s chest moved slightly, side to side, pressing against her bare breasts. “I like this,” he said quietly against her ear, “you resting against me, soft like this.”
“Stay with me.”
“No.”
She opened her lips against his shoulder and felt the shudder of reaction go through his body. “I could make you.”
“That remains to be seen—if you could make me.”
Jessica didn’t trust the humor in Alexi’s tone and turned her face to his throat, nipping lightly. “You want me.”
When he didn’t answer, she drew back to study his expression.
He was grinning. “One of us still has most of their clothes on. That says something about who can make whom.”
Jessica pushed back from Alexi and crossed her arms in front of her breasts, concealing them. Sensitized, her nipples peaked at the touch and she frowned up at Alexi, who was buttoning his shirt. “You’re a difficult man, Stepanov.”
“So you say.”
“Tell me about Willow.”
He put on his denim jacket and reached for his hat. “Find out for yourself.”
“Damn you. You like pushing me, don’t you? Does bringing me to heel, making me come to Amoteh, working on that house, have anything to do with making your ex-fiancée pay for what she did? Am I paying her tab? Is that what you want? Revenge on a woman who walked out on you?” Jessica demanded hotly. “Do you still love her?”
Alexi’s blue gaze pinned her. “You’re asking a lot of questions.”
No one had ever gotten to her emotions as Alexi had, and Jessica struggled to squash her simmering temper. In another minute she’d drag him back to that couch and wipe another woman from his memory—That primitive instinct shocked her. She usually planned her life and Alexi was—“You’ve just walked through my life. I deserve to know about yours.”
“Then you’ll have to come after me. Let’s have this out, shall we? Or are you too afraid to take a chance?”
At eight o’clock on the evening after Alexi had driven to Seattle, he couldn’t concentrate on the figures for repairing his father’s future home—or on building enough of a down payment on the Seagull’s Perch.
He’d been unable to stay away from Jessica any longer, and the week separating them had seemed an eternity.
He needed to feel her against him…to see that pale skin against his own, the softness of her breasts against his chest, the taste of her, the sound of her breath—uneven, as if her need had trapped it within her—need for him….
The kiss was to reassure himself that Jessica hadn’t forgotten what ran between them, not only the passion, but the tenderness, too.
The excuse to see her was just that; the cookies he’d taken her were his, baked by Mary Jo, the soap had been purchased especially for the woman he wanted.
Willow was clearly framing her own danger, magnifying it only to Jessica, who had been calling nightly—and once when Alexi had been in the shop. He’d listened intently to Willow’s innuendos of danger from the back room; he’d followed her handwritten checklist tucked into a crime detective manual on dealing with stalkers. He’d compared her carefully placed, threatening notes to her computer printouts and linked the paper and fonts together—Willow was creating her own threats.
The window that had been broken recently had been hit from the inside of the building. The shoe prints in the flower bed beneath the window said that the prowler had small, narrow feet, not filling the overlarge boots.
Kapolo would wear a large-size boot—and so would the librarian, Elizabeth Price.
Alexi had seen Willow in action—emotionally defending her expertise and what she had uncovered about their faulty genealogy. She didn’t fear either opponent.
In Alexi’s appraisal of the situation, Willow clearly was framing her own danger and using it to worry Jessica. Willow’s purpose? To draw Jessica back to Amoteh.
But why?
Before he had left to see Jessica, Alexi’s quiet, intuitive question had stunned Willow. “Are you playing matchmaker, Willow? With Jessica and me?”
Willow’s wide-eyed expression was too innocent. “Um. Maybe. But for a good reason. I can’t bear for her to stay in that big empty house, that shrine to her dead husband with that worm Howard hovering around her.”
“That description fits,” Alexi had said very quietly.
“Then you’ll play along? Let Jessica think that she needs to visit me more often?”
He’d smiled at that. “Maybe I’m the one she wants to see. It’s her choice. I’ve offered her a job.”
“Really? Doing what?”
“My assistant with no pay.”
“Aha!” Willow had exclaimed. “The plot thickens. You want her. She’s been independent for her whole life. She might not like a takeover. There’s a lot going on inside Jessica that no one knows. I hope you know what you’re doing. For both your sakes.”
In his house, Alexi stared out at the rainy night and smoothed his lips with his fingertip. He still tasted Jessica, that quick fire between them, the urgent hunger that was too real to deny. Wounded once, a man’s pride was important. He needed a sign that she matched his hunger, his needs, with her own. Jessica already knew he wanted her. Would she come to him?
He rubbed his chest, remembered the softness of her breasts against him, the satin of those lace briefs, the loose leg openings that could so easily be breached.
But the ache that rested within his heart needed more than a quick sexual fix. Alexi needed to care for Jessica, to protect her now, to enjoy the colors flashing beneath the cool, professional surface.
When questioned about her late husband, Jessica’s expression had softened. She hadn’t changed his upstairs room, or the sitting room next to it—where a man’s big chair and reading lamp could be seen through the open door, a stack of magazines and books beside it. Men’s bedroom slippers rested on a footstool.
Alexi remembered Howard’s grasp of Jessica’s arm. Howard’s furious expression said he would rape a woman to prove that he was her master and a man, if that’s what it could be called.
Alexi tried once more to make sense of his notes on the Seagull’s Perch, the repairs needed to it, the necessary budget-type remodeling.
But his mind came back to Jessica. In her office she’d collected her dignity, walking away from him to take a black kimono from a rack. With her back to him, she’d belted it, and the red silk dragon curling on the back looked no more primitive than his need to take her.
When she had turned, her auburn hair shining against the black satin of the jacket, she’d pulled herself back into her businesswoman shields.
Jessica knew how to survive, how to protect herself.
Maybe it was time someone else helped her.
Alexi stared grimly at his empty bed and the vision of Jessica, snuggled deep inside it, tormented him.
Maybe Kamakani’s curse was true—that Alexi had lost his pride once and now his need of another woman could cause him to lose it again.
She would return to Amoteh for Willow.
But would Jessica come to him? Would she stay with him and not in an Amoteh Resort suite?
Alexi looked at his reflection in the glass window. A hard man stared back, his deeply set silvery eyes glittering, his expression a stern mask of jutting bones, more shadow than light.
Perhaps Kamakani’s curse had struck him, a proud man wanting a w
oman to bend just that bit—to salve his pride.
He stared toward the bluff on Strawberry Hill, that peninsula spearing out into the black Pacific waves, now separated from land by high tide. Chief Kamakani had gifted him with the curse of a woman—Jessica.
Jessica pulled her BMW off to one side of the road above Amoteh. In mid-January, the rain beat steadily down on her car, the windshield wipers click-clacking. It had only been a little over two weeks since she’d danced with Alexi, and now her desire to see him wouldn’t be ignored.
He’d just fired her need for him by appearing at her office that morning. Alexi knew exactly what he was doing.
Jessica gripped the steering wheel. She wasn’t an impulsive woman. In fact, she kept herself on a meticulous, planned, thoughtful life schedule. Now, here she was, determined to see Alexi. He was volatile, moody, brooding over a woman who had wounded him—and most likely wanting another to pay.
But Jessica knew that Alexi wasn’t as Howard had labeled him: “a down-on-his-luck, out-of-work cowboy, living off his relatives, and tending bar and probably women for his meal ticket, if that’s what it could be called.”
After another episode in her running battle with Howard, Jessica needed Alexi’s safety—and his hunger. “If his feelings for Heather have anything to do with this…”
With a last indrawn breath to brace herself, Jessica stared into the night toward Chief Kamakani’s grave site. “You’re pretty good at this cursing business, Chief. I was safe and knew exactly what I was doing. Now I don’t. I’ve known Alexi for just over two weeks and here I am, delivering myself on a platter. I could walk away from this, but I’m not going to,” she whispered, and then slid the car into gear.
Was Alexi’s hunger, his kiss, everything that she remembered? Or was she just dreaming? Was she so wrong to want him this passionately? To feel the intensity of life that she’d never known with a man?
Alexi noted the headlights of a car spearing into his darkened room. He stood by the window as a sleek, upscale car pulled beside his work truck. Head bent, her coat gathered around her, a woman hurried toward his back porch.
Jessica! He walked to the living quarters door, opened it and a blast of cold air from the sunroom hit his bare torso.
He jerked open the exterior door and stared at the woman smiling up at him. “Hello, Marcella. Out late, aren’t you?”
Alexi frowned at the second car that had pulled alongside the road, the headlights shooting off into the rain.
“I’ve come to play,” Marcella whispered sexily, and lifted the resort’s basket, used by guests for wine and dinners along the beach.
Her raincoat gaped open to reveal that her body was nude, except for thigh-high black panty hose. With an alluring look, she nudged past him. On high heels, she picked her way over the heavy utility electric cord and rough board floor to the door of his living quarters.
Alexi stepped outside, slammed the door behind Marcella and ran for the car parked on the road. Through the veil of rain, he’d seen Jessica’s face, framed by the dashboard’s light. He jerked open the passenger door and slid inside just as Jessica prepared to put the car in gear.
Alexi switched off the key and pulled it from the ignition. “This isn’t what you think,” he stated unevenly, because he read Jessica’s wounded expression too easily. “I am not having an affair with her.”
“You’re in demand. I’ll say that for you. Is Heather arriving, too?” Her words were cutting and cold, and she was shaking, her arms wrapped around herself.
Alexi picked up the cell phone she’d been using and dialed Mikhail’s personal number. His cousin wouldn’t be happy, but neither was he. “You have a guest who has strayed onto my premises—yes, Marcella. Come get her. I will be waiting in another car. Thank you.”
Jessica stared out into the night as if she were disinterested, but Alexi noted the quick trembling of her lips. “I did not invite her,” he said.
Her flat “Sure” was disbelieving.
“I don’t lie. And when I say Heather never touched what is inside me, I mean it. It took an irritating, fascinating sexy redhead to do that.” He noted the packed bags in the back seat. “You came to stay with me.”
“No. With Willow. Or at the resort. Definitely not with you,” she answered loftily.
“Liar.” Alexi slid his hands beneath Jessica’s body and lifted her from the driver’s seat onto his lap. “I’m cold, you know.”
Jessica sat very straight and looked out at the rain. “That is not my problem. I’m sorry that I irritate you, but the feeling is mutual. You like to make my life difficult. You revel in—”
“But you’re so warm and soft and sweet.” He couldn’t resist teasing Jessica as she sat so straight on his lap. Would she leave now?
“You’re so full of it. You’d better get in there. Your girlfriend is waiting.” She traced the sleek BMW that had just parked next to the other car. Mikhail Stepanov, looking very formidable, stepped out into the rain. He lifted a hand in Alexi’s direction and then strode toward the house.
In two heartbeats Mikhail came out the door, hauling Marcella by the back of her coat collar. He ignored her swatting hands, ushered her into her car and stood as she rolled down the window to argue. Whatever passed between them wasn’t pleasant. Marcella gunned the powerful engine, reversed and soared away toward the Amoteh Resort. Mikhail turned toward Jessica’s car and, with a curt nod, slid into his own BMW and drove toward his home and family.
For just a moment Alexi almost felt sorry for Marcella. She appeared lonely, but driven. Marcella appeared to place value on how she could attract and have men, not in her esteem as a woman. In his arms was a real woman with heart and compassion and strength and intelligence.
And a body that was sheer temptation. His hand slid over Jessica’s hips and accidentally inside her coat. His fingers locked onto smooth, bare, warm silky flesh and he forgot about everything but the woman in his arms. His voice seemed to echo rawly, unevenly, against the plush interior of the car. “Jessica. You are not wearing anything.”
“Apparently it isn’t a novel idea where you’re concerned. I saw her getting out of the car. She must have been freezing. Gee, and me without a wine basket. You should have taken the first offer. The benefits were better.”
But Alexi was carefully unbuttoning her raincoat, dismissing her attempts to close it. His hand skimmed her body from her thighs to her stomach and upward to cup her breast. “Are we headed for make-up sex?”
Jessica shook her head and stared down at him. “You could drive anyone over the edge and make them wonder what they’re doing.”
“I can only try, sweetheart,” he said, and watched her eyes darken as his hand slid lower.
While he caressed her softness, Jessica held very still as if locked in pleasure, unable to move. “You’d better stop that, Alexi,” she whispered breathlessly.
“Why?” But he was already bending to taste her body…. “Do you want me to?”
She could barely breathe, his lips trailing over her skin, nuzzling her breasts, his hand warming her thigh—“Don’t… stop.”
Six
T he offshore buoy clanged softly in the night, the sound echoing in the salt-scented wind as Alexi carried Jessica toward his home. Unhurried, he walked as if the cold rain wasn’t pelting his body.
The gesture appeared primitive and possessive. It called for a response to equal his elemental ones and Jessica gave way to the soft, feminine instincts to put her arms around him, to trust him. She eased away his hair from his cheek and wiped the raindrops from his eyebrows. The stroke of her fingertips smoothed the dampness from his sharp cheekbone.
Instantly, Alexi tensed as if caught, entranced by the unexpected; he paused and stared down at her. Her hand was still on his cheek and she lifted to kiss him lightly. For a moment his harsh expression eased and he took the second kiss, which came to her as a tender reassurance, a sharing of something deep inside him, a contrast to the primitive har
dness just heartbeats ago. Her instincts moved her now and Jessica nestled her face against his throat.
Inside the living quarters, he kicked the door shut and stood holding her as if he didn’t want to release her body. He sniffed lightly, impatiently nuzzled her face with his cold one and lowered her to her feet.
“That woman wears too much perfume.” In the next heartbeat he was striding to the windows, opening them and the door to the deck.
He opened an interior door and peered inside. “Good. She hasn’t been in the bathroom. It’s for you. I’ll get your things and move the car.”
“There’s no need—”
Alexi’s expression was fierce. “You’re staying. Her smell will be gone in a minute.”
“You don’t have to explain, Alexi.”
“I did not encourage that woman. I have told her that I am taken. When I go to the Amoteh, she stalks me. I have taken refuge here, and yet still she comes,” he stated with disgust as he bent to stoke the wood fire.
Then he stood to look at Jessica and his words were crisp with frustration and trimmed with his slight accent, the abrupt, old-fashioned phrasing. “You know that I am waiting for you. That this is right. That I have no other woman. Inside you, you know. And it frightens you. What you feel frightens you. I know this isn’t easy, we’ve known each other a short time. I want to give you better words, but I—I’ll get your bags.”
Then he was moving out into the night. Uneasy with her tumbling emotions, with the way her body ached for Alexi’s, Jessica closed the open windows and the door to the deck. She opened the bathroom that bore only Alexi’s scent, but was definitely created to please a woman—the huge footed bathtub sat next to a giant window that would overlook the ocean. A circle of pipe ran high above the tub and from it, a shower curtain pushed aside. The showerhead was well above average height, indicating the remodeling had taken Alexi’s height into consideration. Rolls of thick towels stood in a basket and a large shell filled with Willow’s fragrant soaps sat on the stool near the bathtub. Plush area rugs ran over the white tile-like linoleum, softening the room. A vanity spread beneath a wide mirror topped by soft lights. It’s for you, Alexi had said.