by Cat Schield
“You’ve enjoyed it enough for both of us.”
“It was delicious.” Cutting another piece, she held it out. “Sure you don’t want some?”
The question was innocent enough, but the light in her gray-green eyes as she peered at him from beneath her lashes was anything but. Avoiding her gaze, he shook his head.
“As much as I’m enjoying your attempt to seduce me, I’m afraid my intentions toward you haven’t changed.”
“We’ll see.” Resolve replaced flirtation in her eyes. She sat back and assessed him. “I still have two nights and a day to dishonor you.”
Eager to avoid further banter, he cleared the plates from the table and busied himself putting away the remnants of the stew.
“I can hear what you’re thinking,” Brooke murmured, following him to the sink. “You’re thinking it took me five years to wear you down the first time.” She set the pan of baklava on the counter and swept a finger over a patch of honey. “But have you considered that I know a little bit more about what turns you on after all the nights we spent together?”
Out of the corner of his eye Nic watched, his mouth dry, as she stuck her finger into her mouth, closed her eyes in rapt delight and licked off the honey. She was killing him.
“Two nights and a day, Nic.” She said again. “Hours and hours of glorious, delirious pleasure as we explore every inch of each other and get lost in deep slow kisses.”
But he wasn’t free to have the sort of fun Brooke suggested. And one way or another, he intended to make her understand.
“And then what?” he demanded, his voice more curt than he’d intended.
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“What happens after the fun?” While hot water ran into the sink, he propped his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “Have you thought about what happens when we leave this island and go our separate ways?”
Her shoulders sagged. “I head back to California and my dream job.”
“And I start looking for a wife.” To his surprise, he’d managed to get the last word in.
Deciding to capitalize on his advantage, he scrounged up the CD with Sherdanian folk music Ariana had given him for his birthday several years earlier. As the first notes filled the air, he extended his hand in Brooke’s direction. “Get over here. It’s time for you to learn a traditional Sherdanian country dance.”
Five
Nic woke to the smell of coffee and tickle of something in his ear. He reached up to brush away the irritation and heard a soft chuckle. The mattress behind him dipped. His eyes flew open as a hand drifted over his shoulder and a pair of lips slid into the erogenous zone behind his earlobe.
“You sleep like the dead,” Brooke murmured. “I have been taking advantage of you for the last fifteen minutes.”
“I doubt that.” But oh, the idea that she might have hastened his body’s awakening.
“Don’t be so sure.” She sounded awfully damned confident as she snuggled onto the bed behind him, a thin sheet the only barrier between them as she traced the curve of his backside with her knee, running it down along the back of his thigh. As if this caress wasn’t provocative enough, she wiggled her pelvis against his butt, aligning her delicious curves against his back from heel to shoulders. “I know you’re not wearing any underwear.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Am not.” Her palm drifted along his arm, riding the curve of his biceps. Her touch wasn’t sexual; she was more like a sculptor admiring a fine marble statue. “I peeked.”
He couldn’t even gather enough breath to object. What the hell was she doing to him? Reminded of her threat the night before, Nic knew that letting her get her fill of touching him would only lead to further frustration on his part and more boldness on hers. Yet, he couldn’t prevent his curiosity from seeing how far she intended to go.
“How long have you been awake?” he asked as her fingers stole up his neck and into his hair. He closed his eyes and savored the soothing caress.
“A couple hours. I went for a swim, started the coffee and grew bored with my own company, so I decided it was time to wake you. How am I doing?”
Brat.
“I’m fully awake,” he growled. “Thank you. Now, why don’t you run along and fix breakfast while I take a shower.”
“Want some company?”
Her mouth opened in a wet kiss on his shoulder. Nic bit back a curse. The swirl of her tongue on his skin caused his hips to twitch. The erection he’d been trying to ignore grew painfully hard.
“Didn’t we come to an understanding last night about this being a bad idea?”
“That was your opinion,” she corrected. “I think we wasted a perfectly lovely night dancing around your living room when we could have set fire to this big bed of yours.”
“Set fire?” Amusement momentarily clouded his desire to roll her beneath him and make her come over and over. She had the damnedest knack for tickling his funny bone.
“Set fire. Tear up the sheets.”
He shifted onto his back so he could see her face. Bare of makeup, lips soft with invitation, eyes shadowed by long reddish lashes, her beauty stopped his breath. He cupped her pale cheek in his palm while his heart contracted in remorse. For five months he’d savored the notion of spending the rest of his life with her. He’d claimed her body and given her his heart. At the time, with Gabriel’s wedding to Olivia fast approaching and the future of Sherdana safely in their hands, Nic believed he could at last have the life he wanted with the woman who made him happy. It wasn’t fair that circumstances had interfered with his plans for the future, but that’s the way it was.
His hand fell away from her soft skin. “You know we can’t do this.”
“Damn it, Nic.”
The next thing he knew, she’d straddled him. Astonished by her swift attack and trapped between her strong, supple thighs, Nic reached for the pillow behind his head and dug his fingers in. The challenge in her green-gray gaze helped him maintain control—barely. She settled her hot center firmly over his erection and smirked as his hips lifted off the mattress to meet her partway. She obviously intended to push him past his limits. To incite him to act. He clenched his teeth and held himself immobile.
She put her palms on his chest and leaned forward. “I’m sad and I hate feeling this way. I want to be blissfully happy for just a little while. To forget about the future and just live in the moment.”
Where she touched him, he burned. The curtain of her hair swung forward. Still damp from her swim, it brushed against his cheek. He gathered a handful and gently tugged.
“It’s not that I don’t want that, too,” he began and stopped. She couldn’t know that what he felt for her went way beyond physical attraction. “I just can’t see where that’s going to be good for either of us.”
Her hands stalked from his chest to his stomach. His muscles twitched in reaction to her touch, betraying him. He grit his teeth and focused on something less tantalizing than the slender thighs bracketing his hips or the heat of her burning into him through layers of cotton. Unfortunately with her current position, she dominated his field of vision.
“Is that my shirt?”
The last time he’d seen the white button-down, she’d been driving away from his house after they spent the night together. In his eagerness to get her naked the evening before, he’d torn the delicate fabric of her blouse and rendered the garment unwearable. Today, where her damp hair touched the fabric, transparent patches bloomed on her shoulder and chest.
“It is. Every time I wear it I think about you and the nights we spent together.”
Nic gripped the bedsheets, endeavoring to stay true to his word and keep his hands off her. Even if his position didn’t lend itself to a series of casual affairs, leaving a trail of broken he
arts in his wake was not his style. On the other hand, he didn’t need the sort of complication a romance with Brooke would bring to his life right now. But since yesterday afternoon he’d become obsessed with all the ways he could touch her without using his hands, and since she’d arrived, he hadn’t brooded over the accident for more than five minutes.
“Tell me about the women who are dying to become your princess,” she said in a tone as dry as the California desert near the airport test facility. “Are they all beautiful and rich?”
“Do you really want to talk about this?”
“Not really.” Her fingers tickled up his sides toward his armpits.
In an effort to stop her before she made him squirm, Nic snagged her wrists and rolled her over. She ended up beneath him, her legs tangled in the sheets. Now that she was trapped in a web of her own making, this was his chance to escape. He should have immediately shifted away from her and put a safe distance between them, but her expression took on a look of such vulnerability that he was transfixed. Pressed chest to groin, they stared at each other.
“Touch me,” she whispered, digging her fingers into his biceps.
He flexed his spine, driving his hips tight into hers. She shifted beneath him, rubbing her body against his in a tension-filled rhythm. A groan ripped from his throat as her heat called to him. Today she smelled like pink grapefruit, stimulating with a sweet bitterness. His mouth watered.
“I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Then, kiss me. You didn’t promise not to do that.”
That would be following the letter of the law instead of the intent. “You should have been a lawyer,” he groused, surrendering to what they both wanted.
His lips lowered to hers. She opened for him like a rose on a warm summer afternoon. He kept the pace slow, concentrating on her mouth while ruthlessly suppressing the urgent thrumming in his groin. Her heart beat in time with his until Nic wasn’t sure where he left off and she began. Time was suspended. The room fell away. There was only the softness of her skin beneath his lips, her soft sighs and the growing tension in his body.
This deviation from his intention wouldn’t benefit either of them, but he’d grown sick to death of thinking in terms of what he couldn’t do, what didn’t work, what he stood to lose. He wanted to take joy in this moment and put the future on hold. Brooke had offered him a gift with no strings attached. He would face a lifetime of limits and restrictions soon enough. Why not go wild for a few minutes? Enjoy this exhilarating, vivacious woman who brought joy and laughter into his stolid existence. Who confounded him with her sassy attitude and liberated his emotions. For five years he’d fought against falling for her, afraid if he let her in he might one day have to leave her.
And he’d been right. No sooner had he risked his heart than he’d been forced to make a terrible choice.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” she murmured as he broke off the kiss to trail his lips down her neck to the madly beating pulse in her throat.
“I’ve never met anyone like you. No one knocks me off my game faster.”
“It’s my dazzling personality.”
“It’s your damned stubbornness. If Berkeley doesn’t work out, you could always teach seminars to salesmen on the art of not taking no for an answer.”
Her rock hard nipples burned his chest through the thin cloth, branding him with each impassioned breath she took.
“Unbutton your shirt.”
She hesitated at his demand as if unsure what his change of mind might mean. After a long moment, she raised her hands and slipped the first button free. As the top curve of her breast came into view, he lowered his head and tasted her skin. Her gasp made him smile. What he intended to do next would render her breathless.
“Another.”
She obliged. He nudged into the ever-widening V, grazing her sensitive skin with the stubble on his chin. A shudder captured her. Nic smiled.
“Keep going.”
She unbuttoned the next two buttons in rapid succession, but held on to the edges of the shirt, keeping the material closed. Sensing what he wanted, she peered at him from beneath her lashes. Nic eyed the pink tone in her cheeks.
“Spread the shirt open. I want to look at you.”
“Nic, this is—” She broke off as he nudged the material off one breast.
“Not what you had in mind?” His tongue circled her tight nipple.
“It’s exactly what I want.” She arched her back, her fingers tightening convulsively. “I feel...”
“Tell me,” he urged, eager to hear what effect his mouth was having on her body. He flicked his tongue across her nipple. She jerked in surprise. “I want to know everything. What do you like? What drives you wild?”
At last she unclenched her fingers and spread the shirt wide. Now it was Nic’s turn to suck in his breath. She was beautiful. Breathtaking. Perfect. Her small round breasts, topped with dark pink nipples, were a perfect fit in his palm. Pity his mouth would be the only part of him to enjoy all that silky skin. And yet, as he pulled one bud into his mouth and sucked, perhaps that wasn’t so bad after all.
She was mewling with gratifying abandon by the time he finished with one breast and moved to the other.
The situation was swiftly disintegrating. Nic felt his control slipping. Heaving a sigh, he caught the edges of her shirt and pulled them together, hiding her gorgeous breasts from his greedy eyes.
“You’re stopping?” She sounded appalled. “But things were just starting to get interesting.”
His muscles clenched at her frustrated wail. He levered himself out of bed and kept his eyes averted from her. He’d survived temptation once. He wasn’t sure he could do it twice.
“You still don’t get it, do you? I can’t offer you anything beyond this bed.”
“I know.”
She rolled onto her side, her gaze steady on him. Accusations darted like deer through her gray-green eyes. Anger surged in his chest. Damn her for coming here and littering the clear path to his future with enticement and regret. He retreated to the bathroom. Just before closing the door, he shot a last glance in her direction. She had propped her head on her hand and lay watching him through half-closed lids.
She’d left the edges of her shirt unfastened and the three-inch gap gave him an eye-popping view of the curve of her right breast, almost to the nipple. Aphrodite in all her glory could not have appealed to him more than Brooke’s slim form in his bed.
Nic shut the bathroom door with more force than necessary and started the shower. A cold shower, he decided.
* * *
As she heard the water start, Brooke exhaled raggedly and rolled onto her back. The empty bed mocked her. Frustration bubbled in her chest and rose into her throat, building into a shriek. She clamped her teeth to prevent any sound from escaping, but it was an effort to hold so much emotion in. So she grabbed one of Nic’s pillows and covered her face in it to prevent him from hearing her shrill curses.
Once the tantrum had passed, she lay with her nose buried in the cool cotton, absorbing Nic’s scent and reliving the moment when his control had broken. Heat wafted off her skin in surging waves, the source the smoking hot place between her thighs that pulsed and throbbed with frustrated longing. The man had a gift for turning her world upside down.
He only had to give her the slightest bit of encouragement and she went all in. How many times since she’d first discovered she had feelings for him had he crushed her hopes by deflecting her overtures or chasing her away when she’d tried to get him to take a break from a problem so he could gain some perspective on it?
Not for the first time an ache built in her chest. What had started out as a whim, a crush, a foolish game had escalated into something she couldn’t break free from. Her mother, Theresa, even Glen, had warned her she was better off with a man w
ho appreciated her. But she hadn’t wanted to hear the good advice from her friends and family. And for a while things had been perfect.
The way she’d felt about him the first time he’d kissed her six months ago was nothing compared to the growing connection she felt now. Each day in his presence it grew stronger. How was she supposed to just let him go and move forward? To raise this child on her own? To spend the rest of her life without him? Panic assailed her, causing dark spots in her vision and making it hard to draw a full breath for several minutes.
She rode the paralyzing fear until her emotions calmed. Able to think rationally again, Brooke was mortified by how badly she wanted to cling to Nic and beg him to give up his responsibilities and be with her. Once upon a time she’d prided herself on being an independent woman, capable of living abroad for a year in Italy while she worked on her doctoral thesis on Italian literature. She might make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, but she ruled her finances with a miser’s tight fist and had a knack for avoiding bad relationships.
These days she was a rickety ladder of vulnerability and loose screws. What else could explain why she’d charged a fifteen-hundred-dollar airplane ticket on her credit card to chase after a man who’d vanished from her life without even a goodbye? If she’d picked up the phone and delivered her news about the pregnancy she could have saved herself a bucketful of heartache and said to hell with closure.
Brooke sat up and buttoned Nic’s shirt once more. A sudden bout of nausea caught her off guard. If the positive pregnancy test result had seemed surreal, here was tangible proof that her body was irrevocably changed. Brooke slipped off the bed and fled the room, afraid Nic would exit the bathroom and catch her looking green and out of sorts, then demand to know what was wrong with her.
On her way to the guesthouse, she snagged a bit of bread and a bottle of water. Once there, she nibbled at the crust, put the chilled bottle to her warm forehead and willed her stomach to settle down. As the nausea subsided, Brooke’s confidence ebbed away, as well.