For a very brief moment, McKenzie’s gaze slid down Aidan’s chest, over his stomach to his groin before, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she looked up into his face again. A faint frown pulled at her eyebrows and she caught her bottom lip with her teeth again. “Umm…there’s something I need to ask you.”
Aidan’s throat slammed shut. He stared down into her clear blue eyes, his dick—all too easily remembering what it had been worked up over only a short while ago—growing hard again. His blood roared in his ears and he tried to swallow, his mouth dry. “What?” he asked, more than a little dismayed at how croaky his voice came out.
“Something kinda…odd,” she continued, the frown pulling deeper at her eyebrows until a tiny crease formed in the middle of the smooth space between them. “But important.”
Aidan drew a slow breath through his nose. This couldn’t be happening, could it? What he’d hoped for, for so bloody long? Had McKenzie Wood finally seen him as something other than—
“Will you hit on Nick Blackthorne for me?”
McKenzie waited for Aidan to say something. He didn’t.
Not straight away.
“Umm…”
“I know I’m asking a lot.” She placed her palms on his broad chest and gave him a crooked smile. “But it’s just one little conversation with the guy at a bar.”
He looked down at her, an expression she had no hope of deciphering falling over his face. “Ummm…”
Oh, my God, Wood. Are you really doing this?
“Please?”
Yes. It seemed she really was.
You’re pathetic, you know that?
No. Pathetic she wasn’t. Confused. That’s what she was. Confused about the new and totally unexpected way her body was reacting to Aidan. Aidan. Her best friend. The guy who’d held her hand after every break-up she’d ever had. The guy who’d helped pick out what she was going to wear on just about every first date she’d ever had. Aidan freaking Rogers. She didn’t get horny over Aidan Rogers. She didn’t.
Yeah, that’s why the second he uttered the word “dick” you wondered what his was like. And don’t go pretending you didn’t feel it when he was holding you against his body earlier. In fact, don’t go pretending you weren’t squirming against him more than you needed to. You liked the way his dick got hard rubbing against your arse. You liked it a lot.
“Let me get this clear.” His voice was just as unreadable as his expression. “You want me to try and pick up the world’s biggest rock star so you can get a story?”
McKenzie’s belly flip-flopped. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to say, No, it was just a joke, what I want you to do is kiss me.
The unexpected thought hit her. Blindsided her, in fact. Made her pussy clench and her pulse pound.
She nodded, not trusting herself to say or do anything else.
Aidan’s jaw bunched. His nostrils flared. “If I do this, will you do something for me?”
McKenzie nodded again. A quick single nod of her head.
“Quit Goss.”
The request was like a physical slap. And not because he’d asked her to give up her job, a job she didn’t want anymore. Because he hadn’t asked her to…
What? Kiss him? Sleep with him? Marry him?
Oh, for Pete’s sake. What the hell was going on with her?
For the third time, she nodded.
Aidan’s nostrils flared again. “And when he turns me down?”
She looked up at him, her sex constricting, her heart hammering. “He won’t.”
Because who in their right mind would?
Chapter Three
Nick studied the sweating glass in his hand, his stare following the paths of individual beads of water even as his mind played seven lines of lyrics over and over again.
A face of an angel with filth on her mind,
I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms.
Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
I will die in his fire and beg her for—
What? What did he beg for?
He didn’t know yet. He didn’t know and it pissed him off. And intrigued him.
As did McKenzie Wood from Goss Weekly and her unnamed, completely enamored male companion.
Intrigued? Is that the word you’re going with?
It was for now. When he finished his drink, however…
“Is it just water?” A familiar male voice spoke beside him and Nick twisted on his barstool, watching as McKenzie Wood’s unnamed, completely enamored male companion slid onto the stool beside him. “Or something a little stronger?”
Nick swung his attention back to the glass in his hand, regarded it for a second and then turned back to the man next to him. “Water. Very icy.”
His new friend perched himself on the edge of the stool, and Nick couldn’t help but note how tense he was. Every muscle in his body seemed sculpted from rock, lovingly carved by a master artist, each one sublime in that latent strength he’d noticed earlier, but rock all the same. Whatever was going on, the man was on edge.
Nick waved a finger at the barkeeper, keeping his gaze on McKenzie Wood’s companion as the woman dressed in little but a string bikini and lip gloss hurried over to them. “Give my friend what I’m having. Straight up.”
The man flinched at the word “straight”, a barely-there tightening of the corners of his eyes, and Nick chuckled. He took a sip of his drink, let the cool water slide down his throat and then turned back to his new friend. “Can I ask a question?”
If it was even possible, the man’s muscles coiled tighter. “Sure.”
“What’s the first thing to come into your head when I say, ‘I will die in his fire and beg her for…’”
“A chance.”
The two words passed the man’s lips without hesitation and Nick chuckled again. Yep. Here was a love story ready to be told. Or sung about.
He straightened back to the bar, closed his eyes and held up his glass. “A face of an angel with filth on her mind,” he sang, his voice low. “I pray to burn in her fire, I pray to die in her arms.”
He heard the man shift on the stool, but he didn’t open his eyes, the words and the rhythm—far more haunted than anything he’d created before—claiming him for the moment.
“Yet the arms of her lover reach out for more.
“Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
“I will die in his fire as she pleads for more.
“Like a sinner I will burn in his fire,
“I will die in his fire and beg her for a chance.”
It worked. On more levels than Nick expected.
A chance? Isn’t that what you’ve been looking for, for the last lifetime? A chance at something else? Something you once had?
He ignored the ambivalent question, opening his eyes instead and holding out his hand to the man beside him. “Nick Blackthorne.” He smiled. “But you already know that. Who might you be?”
The man closed firm fingers around Nick’s grip, his skin callused. “Aidan Rogers.”
“And what do you do for a living, Aidan Rogers? Apart from boating marlin and helping tired rock stars write song lyrics.”
Aidan snorted, the sound far more self-deprecating than Nick believed he intended. “I’m a firefighter.”
“Dealing with enflamed situations a specialty, ’ey? But today, you’re on a different mission? Feeling the heat for a different reason?”
Aidan cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”
Nick grinned. “You’re here to ask me out.”
Silence followed his statement. Stretching silence. He shot Aidan a quick look, taking another drink as he did.
The man studied him, his expression steady. For all intents and purposes, Nick could have said Aidan was here to sell him a fire extinguish
er. Nothing about his face registered any kind of shock or reaction. “So,” the man finally said, his voice steady. Calm. “Can I buy you something stronger than water?”
Unable to help himself, Nick burst out laughing. “Oh, mate.” He clapped a hand on Aidan’s very broad shoulder—what did the guy do? Shoulder-press Mack trucks in his spare time? “You have no idea how far from my type you are.”
A face of an angel with filth on her mind…
The song lyric came to him, lilting and soft, a teasing caress on the part of him he’d thought long dead, and with it came an image of McKenzie Wood, her entirely kissable lips curled in a challenging smile, her direct gaze presenting its own challenge.
His prick moved in his jeans, an eager spasm he felt both in his balls and at the base of his spine. What he wanted right now…right at this very moment…
Aidan cleared his throat, and as if someone had released a valve somewhere on his well-built body, a fluid ease rolled through him. “Didn’t think I was.”
“So, what are you going to tell her?”
A frown pulled at Aidan’s eyebrows. “How do you know it was Mack who put me up to this?”
Nick shrugged, Aidan’s answer confirming more than one suspicion. “Who else would it be? You’re here at the resort with a tabloid journalist. A journalist with the balls to ask me straight out about Germany.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.” Aidan’s gaze was direct. “Who’s to say I didn’t find you attractive back in the corridor?”
Nick laughed again. “I do. I saw the way you looked at her, even when you were trying to shut her up. You don’t write over twenty rock ballads about unrequited love without being able to recognize it.”
He waited for the man to say something, wondering if he should also point out the way Aidan had looked when the little journo with the brass balls and sexy-as-sin body squirmed against him?
Before he could, though, Aidan shook his head, another one of those self-deprecating snorts escaping him. “Unrequited love. Yeah. That’s one way of putting it.”
Nick chuckled. “Ever thought of telling her?”
“About a million times a day.”
“And instead you’re here?”
Aidan let out a huff. “Yeah. I’m here. Of course, she’ll accuse me of not trying to pick you up hard enough.” He tilted his head a little, casting Nick a gaze part curious, part uncertain. “What were you doing in Germany, if I might ask? If not because of the whole…” He made a funny, fumbling gesture with his hand, his cheeks growing pink and Nick had to laugh again. Aidan Rogers was, if nothing else, an open, honest and somehow altogether innocent bugger.
“Gay thing?” Nick finished for him, grinning.
“Yeah, that.” Aidan raised his own ice water to his lips and took a drink. “Are you bi?”
Nick let out his own snort. “Nope.”
“So the sex clinic thing is just a rumor?”
The pit of his gut tightened and he swallowed a mouthful. “Nope.”
Once again, Aidan didn’t say anything. Not for a good couple of minutes at least. “Fair enough,” he eventually said with a nod. “Just out of interest, if I were to say to you, ‘I will die in his fire and beg her for’, what’s the first thing that comes into your head?”
Life.
The word—simple but with so much weight he could barely draw breath—came to Nick straightaway, accompanied by an image of McKenzie Wood naked and slicked in perspiration, her lithe little body wrapped in the strong, muscled arms of an equally naked, sweat-slicked Aidan Rogers.
How could two people he’d never met until today stir something so firmly believed dead?
And what was he going to do about it?
The sound of metal scrapping on granite jerked Nick back from the brooding thought and he turned towards Aidan, surprised—and more than a touch disappointed—to find the man on his feet. “So, you’re going to give her the bad news, are you?”
Aidan let out a short chuckle. “You know what?” An ambivalent expression claimed his face. “I think it’s time I give her something else.”
Nick raised an eyebrow, his pulse thumping quite hard in his neck. “Why today?”
“Because a month ago I almost died in a fire.” Aidan’s lips pulled into a small, lopsided smile. “I think a chance is exactly what I’ve been given.”
With another one of those strangely communicative nods the man walked away, his massive back straight, his shoulders so broad his T-shirt barely stretched over them.
Nick watched him go, his throat far too dry for a man drinking ice water. “Give her one for me, mate,” he muttered, reaching for his drink, knowing full well he was thirsty for something else.
McKenzie chewed on her thumbnail, her stare fixed on the closed door of her luxurious room. It was a disgusting habit she’d promised herself she wouldn’t indulge in anymore—nail chewing, not door staring—but at the moment, she was so damn nervous she didn’t know what else to do.
Damn it, what if Aidan didn’t come back?
What if Nick Blackthorne accepted his drink offer?
What if they were both right at this very minute removing each other’s clothing in Nick’s room?
Why are you so worried about this, McKenzie? Why now? What’s going on in your head to make you worry about who Aidan Rogers sleeps with?
She didn’t know. But something about the way he’d looked at her earlier, like she was the only thing that mattered to him in the world… God, what if she’d made a mistake asking him to—
The sound of a lock releasing shattered the suffocating silence, and McKenzie started on her chair, her pulse flying as the ultra-chic chrome doorknob turned.
The door swung inward, Aidan filling the frame for the split second he took to cross the threshold. The sun streaming through the room’s main window bathed him in warm light, picking out the copper-gold in his light brown hair and turning his green eyes brilliant jade. The white T-shirt he wore clung to his body, snug enough to emphasize his perfectly fit physique, loose enough to highlight how little attention he paid to his appearance. Even his almost baggy cargo pants—hanging low on lean hips and faded to a washed-out olive—were a season late, but on Aidan they just looked…
Sexy.
McKenzie’s heart slammed into her throat, a hot prickling sensation she didn’t want to analyze racing through her at the sight of his towering presence.
Face it, Wood. The guy’s sex on legs. Why have you never seen this before?
Tossing the suite’s key card on the nearby table, he gave her a steady look, walking deeper into their luxurious suite’s living room, drawing closer to her with slow steady steps.
“Soooo?” she asked around her thumbnail.
“He said no.”
“No?” She scrambled from her chair, her heart beating harder. Faster. “How could he say no? How could anyone with a pulse say no to you?”
Aidan’s face became still, a small muscle twitching in his jaw. “I don’t know, Mack. How can you?”
McKenzie’s heart didn’t just thump harder in her chest. It tried to smash its way out of her chest cavity. She looked up at him, lost for a thing to say.
“Ah, fuck it.” The words were almost a guttural growl. In two steps he destroyed the small space left between them, pressed his large hands on either side of her face and took her lips with his.
They were warm. Warm and soft and confident. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t just test the waters. He kissed her. The way a lover kisses. There was nothing chaste or friendly about the way his lips took hers. First with just his lips, his hands framing her face, holding her motionless, and then with his tongue, dipping into her mouth with a determined assurance she liked so very, very much.
Aidan Rogers is kissing you. You are kissing Aidan Rogers.
The thought should have terrified her. He was her best friend. What if it went all wrong?
His tongue stroked against hers, a slow, thorough mating th
at made her pussy constrict and the ridiculous notion of things going wrong went out the window. Along with the temporary paralysis for some reason claiming her.
With a low groan, she snaked her arms up around his neck, closing her eyes as she pressed her body to his. He was hard. Everywhere. Hard and big. Her sex constricted again, a demanding throb that made her whimper.
“Jesus, you have no idea how long…” he murmured against her lips, nipping at them with gentle bites. He didn’t finish the statement, instead plunging his tongue back into her mouth, a groan closer to a growl rumbling in his chest as his hands raked down her back and grabbed her arse.
He was six-foot-three and built like a warrior. She was five-foot-six and resembled a waif. He had no difficulty whatsoever hauling her off the floor, even less spinning around and taking the two steps needed to press her back against the door. His hands cupped her butt, his legs splaying just enough to balance them both as his lips and tongue continued to worship hers.
McKenzie’s head swam. Hot fingers of raw sensations threaded through her, twisting and turning through the center of her heat as Aidan made love to her mouth. She rolled her hips, wanting to feel the solid thickness of his erection rub over her spread pussy lips. Even with the damn barrier of their clothes, the bulbous shape of his cock head nudging her folds made her pulse quicken and her nipples pucker. She’d touched that cock once—sixteen years ago. She’d rubbed it and laughed and never thought twice about touching it again.
And yet, here she was. Aching to not just touch it, but impale herself on it. Have it stretch her to her limits, fill her completely. No laughing involved.
What if this is a mistake?
The unspoken question hung between them and she pulled away from his kiss, her heart racing. She couldn’t believe this was really happening. How could she? One minute Aidan was just her best friend, now…they were about to have sex?
He waited, watching her but not saying a word, his eyes blazing his desire—and, she was somehow glad to see—his confusion as well. Had he always wanted this? Or was it an island thing? God, she didn’t know.
Tropical Sin: Bandicoot Cove, Book 2 Page 3