“One hundred percent. I love this.” She eyed the bobber thing. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life—whoa!” The red dipped below the water. The line jerked. The rod bowed. And Skye quickly found herself fighting what had to be Jaws himself. “I got one!” She jumped to her feet and the boat wobbled. “I got one.” Excitement raced through her as she struggled for her balance.
Like an ant on a sweet apple pie, Clint appeared behind her. Large hands steadied her waist. His arms came around and his hand closed over hers.
“Easy,” he murmured. “Reel in slowly, slowly until you get it close to the boat.” He guided her, spinning the reel and drawing in the line.
“There it is,” she shrieked, seeing the slick body fighting just below the surface. “Ohmigod, it’s a fish. A real fish. Probably thirty inches easy.”
“A little more,” he murmured, guiding her, helping her draw in the fish. “And then you reel up.” He jerked up. The rod bent in the opposite direction and the line pulled, tighter, tighter... pop!
The rod straightened, the tension eased and the fish disappeared. Skye shook her head. “What happened?”
“The line snapped.” He released her and turned to eye his own rod he’d left in the holder a few feet away.
“What do you mean?” She reeled the rest of her line all the way up and stared at the dangling line.
“The fish popped your line.”
“But I had it.”
“That’s the way it goes.”
“But it was right there. I could see it just beneath the water. It was my fish. My first fish. It was a big fish, too. A good thirty-five inches.”
“I thought you said thirty.”
“Maybe thirty-six.”
“It happens sometimes. They can be tricky little things. If you’re a little slow—”
“I am not slow. I had it.” Until those strong arms had closed around her and he’d taken control. “You messed me up.”
“Me? I was showing you how to do it.”
“Do what? Lose my fish? I could have done that by myself.” She turned toward the live well, flipped open the lid and ducked her hand in the water, mindless of the small net Clint had used to catch the bait. She grabbed one of the slippery fish.
“You can’t bait your own hook.”
“I can, too.” She struggled for a few moments and jabbed herself more than the fish, but finally she managed. Much to Clint’s surprise. “See? I can do fine without you.”
“You can’t cast the line.”
“I most certainly can.” She glared at him, daring him to say anything more.
Finally, he shrugged and turned back to his own rod. “Fine, but I didn’t mess you up. You’re no good at this. Just admit it.”
“No good?” Okay, so she wasn’t good. The fish had been luck, pure luck, and she really sucked. But thinking it herself and hearing him say it out loud were two very different things. “At least I can latch onto something bigger than a piggy perch. I don’t see you hauling in a giant redfish.”
“It wasn’t giant, and it wasn’t a redfish. It was an average-sized sheepshead. Nothing special.”
“It was, too, special. I saw it. It didn’t look anything like a sheepshead. It was definitely a redfish. A big one. An easy thirty-seven inches.”
“In your dreams.”
“You’re just afraid I might be better at it than you.”
“I might be afraid that you like it as much as me, but I sure as hell am not afraid you’ll be better at it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shook his head, as if he’d said more than he meant to. He glared at her. “Just shut up and fish. If you can manage to cast the line.”
“I can cast just fine.” She’d read about line-casting yesterday, and she’d watched him all day. She could do it. “Better than fine. Step back and prepare to be humiliated.”
“This is ridiculous.” Another head shake and he turned and stared off in the opposite direction. “Just fish.”
“I will,” she huffed, and scooted toward her end of the boat. She reared back, opened the reel and threw her arm behind her. So far so good. Now all she had to do was bring it forward like this and... splat!
The fish hit the back side of the boat before flying forward into Skye’s line of vision.
“Clint,” she said after several long, thoughtful moments. “I think I have a problem.”
“Now we get to the truth,” he said. “It’s about time you stopped being so stubborn and started using your head—”
“I’ve got no head,” she cut in. At his sharp glance, she held up her bait. “I decapitated my fish.”
Clint had seen a lot of things in the years he’d been fishing, but never had he ever seen someone cast a line and rip the head clean off a croaker.
Guilt carved her expression, her gaze distraught, as if she’d kicked a puppy instead of ruining a measly piece of bait. Something shifted inside him and he had the sudden urge to reach out.
She stared at the fish and then at him, and then she said the words he’d been waiting to hear since he’d ushered her onto the boat that morning.
“I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I’m hot and miserable and this boat is even worse than my room at the Catfish Castle.” The brave, interested front she’d been putting on fell away and in a rush of words, Skye Farrel revealed her true feelings. “I hate fishing. I hate the rods and the reels and all this water and all the heat and the smell. I hate it all.”
Clint stared at her and watched as her eyes welled with tears. She despised the fishing. She really and truly despised it. The truth sank in for a long, heart-pounding moment, and then he did the only thing he could now that he saw the real woman beneath the facade.
He stepped forward and kissed her.
Because, despite the truth, Clint still wanted her. Now more than ever.
Chapter Fifteen
He wanted her more than a thirty-five-inch trout.
The realization found its way into her head as Clint’s tongue found its way into her mouth. Her lips parted, giving him better access as he tasted and stroked and delved.
She forgot all about her decapitated bait, her sunburn, her empty, deprived stomach and the fact that she was having the most miserable time of her life. Things had suddenly taken a turn for the better. So much so that perhaps she didn’t despise fishing nearly as much as she’d originally thought. Particularly with Clint as her personal guide.
His large hands found their way beneath her fishing shirt and his fingers burned into the bare flesh of her back. His touch trailed up and around the sides of her breasts and heat pooled between her thighs.
A heat that had nothing to do with the one hundred degree temperature and the scorching sun and everything to do with the man himself and the way he affected her.
Her blood pounded. Her heart raced. Her knees buckled. Her body swayed—whoaaaaaaaa!
The boat tipped from all the added weight on one side. Skye opened her eyes just as her balance failed and she teetered sideways. Clint tried to save them both, but it was no use. Gravity fought against them as the boat rocked and dipped and tossed them overboard.
The water sucked her under and she flailed, kicking her arms and legs and fighting for air. She reached the surface and gasped for air just as Clint’s head bobbed up several feet away from her.
She coughed up a mouthful of water and sputtered, “Did I mention that I really hate this boat, too?”
“You and me both.” He sliced his arms the small distance to the boat, grasped the edge with one powerful arm and hauled himself over the side while she treaded water. Grabbing the oar, he kept one hand firmly on the steering wheel as he leaned out to offer her a lifeline.
She grasped the edge and he pulled her the short distance to the boat. Reaching down, he clasped her hand and pulled her in. The fiberglass edge scraped her sunburned legs as she climbed over and collapsed in the two inches of water that swished
in and out through the water vent holes in the bottom of the boat. The boat rocked this way and the water went that way. Her forgotten croaker floated past her head and she closed her eyes. Her lips parted and her chest heaved as she drank in some much-needed oxygen and tried to slow her pounding heart.
“We actually fell overboard,” she grumbled when she managed to catch her breath. “And not because of a storm or bad weather or anything normal. Because of a kiss.”
“One helluva kiss.” His deep voice sounded a split second before the engine cranked to life. Skye opened her eyes to find him standing at the console. “You’d better get in your seat. We’re getting out of here.”
Skye scrambled onto the cushion-topped ice chest and braced herself. God is definitely a woman and all is right with the world once again.
Almost.
Despite the fact that she was safely in the boat, her heart was still pounding. She still felt nervous. Light-headed. Anxious. More so now because of the deep timbre of his voice and the admission that he’d liked the kiss.
Even the sudden gust of air that surrounded her as they headed into the marina did nothing to cool her flushed skin or the desire blazing deep in the pit of her belly.
There was only one thing that could do that.
She half turned, her gaze hooked on Clint as he stood behind the driver’s console and steered. Large hands clasped the wheel, his fingers long and purposeful as they curled around the black plastic. She’d never actually seen him race, but she could picture him in his car, gripping the steering wheel as he maneuvered around a track at a dangerous speed. He looked focused, intent.
A man with a purpose.
In this case the purpose wasn’t to win a race, even though they made it back to the dock in record time. No, he obviously wanted her.
A truth that hit home when he docked the boat, grabbed their stuff and ushered her back across the street to the Catfish Castle with an urgency that made her pulse quicken and her insides coil in anticipation.
The minute Skye was inside her room, she dropped her stuff and turned toward him. He was already halfway out the door.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. Pack your stuff. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Nine minutes later, they left the lime green room and the smell behind as they climbed into the car and headed back up the highway.
Fifteen minutes after that, they pulled up to the Holiday Inn that had haunted Skye’s dreams during her scant four hours of sleep the night before. Clint checked them in and hustled her into the elevator along with their luggage. Soon he unlocked a door and led her inside what looked like heaven compared to the room she’d just vacated.
Tasteful beige carpeting.
A real TV with a remote control.
A mini-bar.
And one king-sized bed.
The lock clicked, he stepped up behind her, and something strange happened to Skye Farrel. Panic welled inside her and she did what she’d never done in her entire life when it came to a sexual situation. She bolted for the bathroom.
“I’m sticky and salty and I really need a shower,” she blurted as she made the four strides to safety. “Just give me a minute.” The slam of the door punctuated her sentence and cut off any response he might have had. She drew a shaky breath, collapsed onto the toilet seat and tried to understand what the hell had just happened.
She’d chickened out. For all her bravado when it came to sex, Skye had never actually checked into a hotel with a man for the sole purpose of having it.
It seemed so tawdry. So cheap. So... strictly sex.
So?
That’s what she wanted. What she’d wanted since the moment she’d first met him.
At least that’s what she’d thought. But sitting in the bathroom with her skin itching from the sunburn and the saltwater and her heart pounding from much, much more, she wasn’t so sure.
This felt like something altogether different from anything she’d felt in the past. Hotter. More intense. Dangerous.
Dangerous? She’d never been threatened by sex. It was her comfort zone. Her area of expertise. She knew sex.
But it wasn’t the idea of sex that had her acting so freaky. It was the idea of sex with Clint MacAllister.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, she heard a tap on the door.
“Are you okay?” His deep voice slid past the door and into her ears, skimming her nerve endings and bringing them to full awareness.
She stiffened. “I’m taking a shower.”
“I don’t hear any water running.”
“I’m about to take a shower.” She jumped up, reached into the tub area and turned on the faucet. Water streamed from the shower head.
Skye peeled off her clothes and stepped under the spray. The water sluiced over her, washing away the salt, but it didn’t ease her panic.
Not that the feeling had anything to do with the fact that she liked him. Sex had nothing to do with like. Sex was about pleasure. Pure and simple. Unfettered and un-complicated. Physical.
Like was a different story, and it was completely out of the question. While she wanted him and she respected him, they didn’t have any common interests. Sure, she liked football and wrestling. But she hated fishing—an obvious passion of his—and she hated marriage, a subject which topped his list at the moment. Genuine like simply wasn’t possible without all three points of the Holy Commitment Trinity. Skye had learned that very early on when her mother had caught her baking the cookies for her seventh-grade Valentine. It hadn’t just been the cookies that had sent her mom into a tailspin. It had been the Valentine she’d made, complete with a heart and the words “This Valentine Entitles the Bearer to Free Fraction Worksheets ‘til School Do Us Part” written in red crayon.
“But he has trouble with his fraction sheets and I want to help him. I love him, Mom. I really do.”
“Nonsense. You’re thirteen and your hormones are starting to rage. He’s a boy and he’s cute and you’re physically aware of him. That’s not love, Skye. If you’re attracted to someone, fine. You can act on that attraction, but don’t mistake it for more. You can care for someone. You can even care about them to the point that you would do a great many things for them. But you should never choose that someone based on a physical attraction. No daughter of mine would ever make such a decision without taking into account all three points of the Holy Commitment Trinity.”
Her mother had been right. She and the seventh-grade heartthrob had had nothing in common except the fact that they’d shared a desk. Once the semester ended, their seating assignments had been changed and he’d immediately started talking to his new deskmate—a cute redhead named Trisha—and had forgotten all about her.
She was too smart to make the same mistake again. She was Jacqueline Farrel’s daughter and she knew the score when it came to sex and relationships.
So her hesitation was simply because her conscience was getting to her. Clint was spoken for, and so Skye would be doing a great injustice to the future Mrs. MacAllister. Not to mention, she would be flagrantly violating the student/teacher relationship. She was his instructor.
Then again, the subject was sex. While she could give him the information, there was no way she could be absolutely certain he understood what she was saying, or that he could take the knowledge and adapt it to his own life, incorporating her techniques with his own.
And it wasn’t as if Clint had definite wedding plans. The woman had turned him down, and while he intended to go back and pop the question again, there was no guarantee she would say yes. Then again, if Skye did her job correctly and lived up to her company’s reputation, the young woman would be foolish not to say yes.
But that was the future, and this was now.
Right now, Clint was free and single. And Skye was free and single.
He was a mature, consenting adult. And she was a mature and consenting adult.
He was desperately turned on by her. And she was desperate
ly turned on by him, so much so that she didn’t even hear him enter the bathroom. Instead, she saw his shadow on the other side of the shower curtain.
The shower curtain slid to the side and he stood before her, naked and fully aroused.
Skye swallowed as her gaze swept the length of him. His broad shoulders framed a wide chest sprinkled with crisp, dark hair. The dark brown silk stretched from nipple to nipple in a V-shape that narrowed and funneled down his abdomen and pelvis to disappear in the dark hair that surrounded a very impressive erection. His legs were braced apart, his thigh muscles taut, sprinkled with the same dark hair that covered his chest.
If she’d ever doubted that race-car driving was, indeed, a sport, she had no doubts now. He had an athlete’s body, all hard muscle and powerful grace. And he had an athlete’s look, his blue eyes dark and intense as he stared at her.
“What are you doing?” she blurted, a crazy question because they were both naked and very much aroused.
“Your minute’s up.” He stepped in, his big, powerful form filling up the narrow space and blocking the spray of water. Water hammered the back of his head, running in tiny rivulets over his shoulders, down his chest and abdomen, to drip-drop off his swollen testicles.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a shower.” He stared at her, but he didn’t touch her. True to his word, he reached for the soap and rubbed it between his large hands. Lather squeezed between his fingers, trailing down his powerful forearms. He soaped his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen. He spread the lather under and around his penis, clasping the thick length and stroking up and around the plump head.
She watched for several long seconds, her nipples tightening and heat coiling in her belly. When she finally looked up, she found him watching her, his gaze dark and even more intense, and expectant.
She realized then that where she’d left the first move in the boat up to him, he was leaving this one up to her. She’d retreated the moment they’d reached the hotel, and so they were at an impasse. Time to either get busy or throw in the towel.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice Page 16