And still he couldn’t remember it. Guilt had blocked it out too tightly, clearly. Even now, trying to push that guilt down, Nikhil found himself scrabbling for something else to hold onto. A distraction that would grant him a desperate reprieve.
‘Why are we here, Nikhil?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘Why do we need to clarify anything? Why not just stay away from each other?’
‘I’m First Officer on this ship and you—thanks to Head Office’s little shuffles—are now my junior doctor. Our working paths will unquestionably cross. Regularly. I’ve worked hard at my career, and at keeping my private life wholly removed from my professional one.’
‘And what?’ she snapped, and he found it fascinating the way her eyes sparked when she was angry. He suspected very few people ever got to see this side of the unflappable Dr Sinclair. ‘You think I’m here to broadcast our liaison to the entire ship?’
‘Some women in your position might.’
She snorted—actually snorted—at him. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever snorted at him—at least, not in the last decade. It was so...unexpected.
‘It might have escaped your notice, in your essentially Nikhil-centric way of thinking, but that’s my private life that would be on show too. And I value my career as much as you do. Possibly more, given that, despite all the advances we women have made, who I sleep with will come under more scrutiny than who you sleep with.’
‘I can’t say that I remember much sleeping going on,’ he quipped, before he could stop himself.
Suddenly, in spite of everything, he found himself grinning at her little cry of frustration. She got under his skin that easily.
‘My God, you’re unreasonable.’
He didn’t realise when he’d moved, or how he came to be standing in front of her, but suddenly he was there, within touching distance of her. That dark thing inside him railing in its cage, howling for things it had no right to crave.
‘On the contrary,’ he grated out. ‘I am the epitome of reason.’
At least he usually was. Before this woman had come along and turned everything upside down.
He took another step closer.
‘What are you doing, Nikhil?’ Isla asked.
But her voice had changed. Breathy, and fragile, and hesitant, and she watched him with that expression that made him hard and melting all at once.
It was impossible. She was impossible. And yet she was right...here.
‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ she said, her voice thick, echoing every emotion swirling through his own body.
‘You know precisely what I want.’ There had to be some kind of remedy for this madness he felt every time she was in the room. But if there was, he feared that right now he wouldn’t even take it.
‘Because I want it too,’ he heard himself growl.
She stirred him up in a way that no other woman had ever done, electrifying him and challenging him in equal measure.
She swallowed. Hard. And her bashfulness was all the more bewitching.
‘I...don’t know anything of the sort.’
‘Then it appears I have no choice but to employ the only means to show you, pyar,’ he growled.
And then, as if he couldn’t make it any worse, he bent his head and kissed her.
* * *
Isla felt as though she was falling. Fast, and hard, with no idea what was at the bottom. And she couldn’t seem to bring herself to care.
She tried to cling to some last grain of reality, but it was slipping further away with every foot that she fell.
And she was plummeting.
How was it that this kiss was so different from any last night, when she thought that they’d spent the entire night kissing. And touching. And tasting. Yet this was something different again. More intense, somehow. As though neither of them wanted to give into temptation, and at the same time as if there was nowhere else either of them wanted to be.
She knew it was wrong—certainly on an intellectual level. Hadn’t they just been asserting—vociferously—their respective career choices? Hadn’t they both just agreed that private lives and professional lives were clear and distinct entities which had no business becoming complicated?
And yet here they were, complicating things in the most base, primal way possible. And as wrong as Isla knew it was, she couldn’t stop herself from wanting more.
Much more.
It was possibly the most thrilling, terrifying sensation that she had ever experienced. A complete loss of control, and a complete inability to care.
So long as Nikhil never stopped kissing her.
Isla was aware of nothing. And everything. Like his tongue gliding over her lips, parting them so effortlessly, and dipping so wickedly inside. Like his large hand, splayed against her back and holding her close, so deliciously close, to him. Like the way every inch of her body moulded itself, as if instinctively, to every inch of his.
It was like fire. More than that—an inferno, and she was dancing in the flames.
With every twist of his mouth against hers, and every tangle of his tongue, she made a tiny new sound in her throat. Greedy, eager, impatient. She hungered for him more than she’d hungered for anything. Even her job on this ship, it seemed.
But, rather than helping her to stop, the knowledge only made her feel that much more desperate. More daring. He made her feel glorious and proud, as if she could do anything. Even walk on the very water that encircled this ship.
If this was him keeping away from her, then she couldn’t say she was complaining. Though some part of her whispered that she should.
And then his hands were moving over her. Leisurely, lazy, yet still they scorched a path as they went, leaving her quivering with heat, and fresh need. Tracing the contours of her sides and the dip of her back he slowly—too slowly—began to pull her shirt out of her trousers.
She shivered with anticipation, and damn him if the devilish man didn’t smile. She could feel the curve of his mouth against her throat, kissing her in that oh-so-sensitive hollow below her ear.
‘Nikhil...’ His name escaped her mouth before she could stop it.
But, if anything, it only made him haul her to him even tighter. As if the sound of his name on her lips drove him on all the more.
Sliding his hands beneath the fabric, he traced a series of whorls higher—even higher—making her breath catch in her throat in her restlessness.
‘Patience, pyar,’ he told her.
But she didn’t miss the tautness in his voice—all the evidence she needed that he barely held onto his own patience. She couldn’t help it; she rolled her hips against him—then exulted when they both groaned softly.
And then, as he held her waist with one hand, he finally allowed the other to reach higher, nudging her breast aside and raking one thumb pad over her straining nipple.
Isla arched instinctively against him. She heard the low cry, but it took a moment to realise it was herself.
‘I’ve missed these.’ Nikhil’s voice rumbled through her, as dark as the inky ocean, and just as deep.
As though it hadn’t only been this morning that he’d left her bed.
As though it had been a whole eternity.
Part of her felt as though it must surely have been that long. And she didn’t understand how, though her mind had replayed last night several times already—in spectacular detail—it had somehow failed to recapture quite the intensity of the effect Nikhil had on her.
Her mind had somehow played it down. That didn’t seem possible. But it wasn’t playing it down now; it was sending her wild and flooding her with a sense of lust that she could hardly believe she’d denied existed only twenty-four hours before.
Before she’d met Nikhil.
Now, she could do nothing but give into that fervour. More than that, she was practically racing tow
ards it.
It was ludicrous the way her body reacted with memories and anticipation, and all she could do was press herself against him—hot steel against her softest part. Full of promise.
It was a noise outside the cabin door that finally broke into their fragile, fictitious little bubble. The voices of crew who could only be officers, talking confidently outside the room—reminding Isla and Nikhil exactly where they were. And what they were supposed to be doing.
Or perhaps, more the point, what they weren’t supposed to be doing.
In one smooth movement, Nikhil swung her away from him and set her down, turning to stalk back to his desk whilst Isla scrambled to get her head together. And her clothing straight.
‘This was a mistake.’
His words lashed through the air, and she was almost surprised when they didn’t physically cut into her flesh.
‘How very clichéd of you.’ She barely recognised her own voice in her effort not to fold under his glower. ‘Disappointingly so, in fact.’
‘Is everything a joke to you, Dr Sinclair?’
‘Dr Sinclair?’ She was proud that her voice didn’t waver too badly. ‘Do you think that addressing each other formally can erase what just happened between us?’
‘Clearly, we need some boundaries.’
‘Boundaries?’ She narrowed her eyes at him.
‘I warned you that nothing more could happen between us again. And yet here we are.’
Isla busied herself tucking her shirt in, not quite trusting herself to answer straight away.
How had it come to this? She’d been so careful all her life, and then last night she’d met Nikhil and she’d decided that one night—just for once—she could throw caution to the wind.
And now she was standing in her boss’s office—technically her boss’s boss’s office—her clothes in disarray, a low, molten ache deep within and her legs threatening to buckle beneath her at any moment. And now Nikhil seemed to be laying it all at her feet.
It was too much to bear.
‘You say it like you think this is entirely my fault,’ she managed at last. Then lifted her eyes to his with as much defiance as she could muster. ‘Or have I misunderstood?’
* * *
He’d called her pyar.
My love.
Nikhil glowered across the room, torn between contemplating the madness of having sent her away from him just now and the lunacy of having brought her to his office in the first instance.
He had no idea how he’d managed to tear himself away from her. He had even less idea how he managed to stand in place, around the other side of the desk from her, as though it could provide some barrier between them.
As though it made her any less of a siren, and him any less the mariner drawn inexorably to her.
Although that would suggest that he was powerless and she was deliberately luring him, when the truth was that they were equal victims to this all-consuming attraction that crackled between them.
Not that his current state of fury at himself would allow him to admit that much aloud.
‘You’re a distraction, Isla,’ he ground out instead. ‘And I don’t do distractions.’
He knew the moment he spoke the words that they were a mistake. They revealed far too many things that he would much rather have kept to himself.
He watched as Isla’s eyes widened then crinkled, seeing his unexpected weakness for herself.
It was galling.
‘Is that so?’ She arched her eyebrows. ‘How flattering that I’m a distraction. I wouldn’t have thought that the savagely determined Nikhil Dara would have allowed anything to sway him.’
‘I didn’t say that I intended to allow anything to sway me,’ he bit back.
‘And yet here we are. With you taking time to drag me to your office just to kiss me and then tell me...what? That you don’t intend to waste time being distracted by me?’
She had a point, but that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst of it was that he—who had prided himself on control and restraint all these years—was now fighting the considerable urge to silence her with his mouth—again—whilst he stripped them both and worshipped her body the way he’d been dreaming about doing since he’d walked away from her hotel room.
It certainly didn’t help that she wanted him every bit as badly. He knew women well enough to see it in the lines of her body. He could read it in every dark flash of her eyes, every deep breath she inhaled, every time she flicked her tongue out over her lips.
And every single one of her reactions only served to stoke that fire even higher, making it burn hotter and brighter until he feared his entire body might burst into flame.
It was ludicrous.
They’d had sex, just as he’d had sex with women before. Not an obscene amount of women—not like some of the officers he knew, who seemed incapable of preventing their trousers from ruling their heads, on practically a daily basis—but still, he didn’t do repeat performances. It wasn’t worth the hassle.
Which only made it all the more infuriating that he couldn’t seem to shake this woman from his head. He wanted her.
His body needed her. And that simply wouldn’t do.
He would stay away from Dr Isla Sinclair if it killed him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE BANANA PLANTATION was vast and dense, bustling with people. Isla followed the local tour guide with fascination, watching as men chopped down enormous clusters of bananas, already wrapped in plastic bagging.
‘Did you know it isn’t really a banana tree but a banana plant?’
She turned slowly to face Nikhil, her heart hammering so loudly in her chest that it was surely impossible that he couldn’t hear it.
One moment she’d been rather enjoying her tour of one of Ecuador’s—and apparently the world’s—biggest producer of organic bananas, learning about hands and fingers and tiers, and watching as the workers loaded enormous bagged bunches onto a rail system, and the next she found herself face to face with the person she’d been trying so hard to shove out of her head.
It had been almost a week since their encounter in Nikhil’s office, and she’d been congratulating herself on having managed to keep her distance from him.
Or at least she’d told herself that she ought to be congratulating herself.
She’d told herself that she didn’t feel anything remotely akin to regret that things had turned out the way they had. Turning something that had been so electrifying and fun that night in Chile into something infinitely uglier. And sombre.
With such thoughts whirling around her brain, Isla wasn’t sure how she managed to tug her expression into something she hoped was a light, airy expression.
‘Mr Dara, what a surprise. I thought we were keeping our distance from each other. Or, more accurately, that I was to keep my distance from you.’ Her voice sounded remarkably even. ‘According to you, I’m too much of a distraction.’
She had no idea how she managed to infuse her words with condemnation, but she found she was rather proud of herself. Still, if she could have bound her erratic heart down with ropes and chains, she would have done.
‘You are a distraction,’ he replied easily. ‘How else do you explain the fact that, instead of concentrating on the tour, I’m talking to you?’
‘Perhaps you have a childlike attention span?’ she quipped. ‘I’ve inherited all the tours and duties of the doctor who I’ve replaced, and I’m here as the medical liaison in the event of any accident. Why are you here?’
‘So you had no choice in this day-trip?’
‘None at all. I’m sorry if it bruises your evidently swollen ego.’ She made sure not to sound remotely sorry.
It was galling, but he didn’t bite as she’d anticipated. Instead, something she might have taken to be amusement—had she not already known that Nikh
il didn’t have an amused bone in his body—tugged at his lips.
‘No doubt I can get my fragile ego massaged back into shape, if need be,’ he drawled.
Isla batted away a sharp stab of some emotion that she told herself couldn’t possibly have been jealousy.
‘No doubt you can,’ she muttered darkly. ‘Though you might watch what you pick up. I’ve just had to treat a rather nasty outbreak of genital warts and gonorrhoea that’s ripping through a good proportion of the crew.’
‘I’m aware, since all your reports ultimately come to me. But thank you for your concern.’
‘It isn’t concern.’ Isla narrowed her eyes.
‘Really? It sounded like concern.’
‘Well, it wasn’t.’
So much for trying to rile him; he was enjoying this far too much. But didn’t that beg the question, Why was she trying so hard to rile him?
‘I also happen to know that you’ve treated two heart attacks, a sprained ankle, a honeymooner’s unexpected pregnancy and multiple passengers with known allergies who happened to decide that the food in question looked just that bit too tempting to pass up. And that’s just amongst the passengers.’
‘Right... Well, then... I guess that’s you up to speed.’
Isla faltered, not sure what to say next, or even where to go. But then a shriek from the main excursion party a hundred metres or so ahead drew everyone’s attention as Isla and Nikhil raced to the passenger.
‘I’ve been bitten, I’ve been bitten...’ The man was already beginning to panic. ‘Is it a spider? I think I killed it, but it’s still in my shirt. Get it out. You’ve got to get it out.’
As Isla began dealing with the man, a couple of the locals came running over. There was no obvious sign of a bite but, sure enough, in the man’s shirt was a dead spider. As the two plantation workers peered at it, the passenger began to hyperventilate.
The Doctor's One Night to Remember Page 8