by Cathryn Cade
“Three men,” he told Bella. “They’re pointing at the Jet Skis we borrowed. They’re consulting. Now, they’re riding two, hauling the other one, headed back to the yacht. Not coming after us yet.” He’d much rather they hadn’t taken the only transportation either, but at least it gave him a little time to figure out how he was getting her and the trio out of here.
He swung the binoculars until he found the yacht and adjusted them, searching the portholes.
“Did you see Camille?” Bella asked.
“No, and I don’t want to. Come on, let’s try our phones again. They should work.” But the same “out of service area” symbol blinked at them from both phones. “Damn it!” Joel flung his phone onto his duffel and lifted his hands to shove back his tousled hair. “I just don’t get it. What the hell is jamming the signals?”
“Maybe Camille is doing that too,” Bella said wryly.
Joel looked at her. “You know,” he said, “you may have a point there. You can buy all kinds of tech gear now online, and if she’s wealthy enough to own that yacht… Maybe she’s got some kind of jammer operating from on board, or hidden in the woods here somewhere.”
She nodded. “She certainly has hired some scary enforcers. How on earth did you and the others get away from Camille’s armed men?”
Joel’s stomach growled loudly. “I’ll tell you over lunch. I’m starving, and you must be too.”
She shook her head. She sat down on the rolled-up sleeping bag, looking suddenly exhausted. “I thought—we were going to die out there,” she said. “And I—I thought he was going to…rape me.”
She looked at Joel, her mouth quivering. “And you acted as if you didn’t even know me.”
He winced, making his head throb worse. “I thought Matt was right, and that Camille was after me, or him and me. I figured if I paid attention to you, she’d get even more irrational and jealous.”
She accepted this with a nod and sniffled. “But then you protected me. Mahalo. That was really sweet.”
“The bitch wanted to humiliate you.” He looked her in the eye. “But she didn’t succeed, because you’re a tough tita.”
She smiled, or tried to. “Li said he was going to c-cut me. I’ve never been so frightened, Joel.”
He ached to take her in his arms, but something told him to hold off. He needed to feed her first. She was a little shocky and needed energy. “Of course you were,” he said. “Guy’s a slime ball. Bet he isn’t feeling too chipper now. Explain to me what the hell you did to him?”
He dug in his bag and pulled out a couple of sugared colas and handed one to her. “Drink this.”
She sipped hers while he slapped together a quick meal. Between bites of a barbecued pork sandwich and the macaroni salad he fed her from his own fork, Bella recounted her quick thinking with the flowers in the bouquet. By the time she was finished, the sparkle was back in her eyes and she was eating with more energy, if not enjoyment.
“That’s one to tell your grandkids around the campfire,” he said. “I can’t believe you knew to do that. Not too many people would.”
She shrugged. “They would if they were florists.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “I guess. But it was damn lucky that bouquet fell over in your struggle with him.”
She stopped with her sandwich in her hand, gazing at something only she could see in the clear pool. Then she looked over at him. “Yes,” she said. “Lucky.”
A small shiver rippled across his skin. Sometimes, she could be a little eerie. He shook his head at his own imagination. He’d met natives of lands far away who spent their entire existence in the shadows of the jungle, and some of them had a kind of knowing that was mysterious to his Western mind, but this was no native woman. It was Bella.
Joel took her empty plate and soda can and set it with his.
“What happened after I…after Li dragged me away?” she asked. “I saw that thug hit you. And that reminds me, I want to put something on your bruise. I have a first aid kit in my bag. DelRay’s mini-special,” she joked.
Joel nodded and then winced as the motion made his head throb. “I wouldn’t say no to a painkiller.”
As she fished in her bag, he began to talk. “When an opponent gets close enough to hit you, that means they’re within your reach too. I went a little crazy, I guess, worrying what Li would do to you. I managed to grab the big guy’s legs in a scissor hold and knock him down. At that point, Matt leapt into action and wrestled the weapon away from him.”
Bella handed him two painkiller tablets, and he swallowed them with a last drink of soda. “Never would have expected it of the kid,” he went on. “Or that Tanah and Cassie would manage to drop that awning on Camille.”
She grinned. “They dropped the awning on her?”
“Damnedest thing,” he agreed. “Don’t think it hurt her, but it gave us time to come up with a plan. I’d go after you, and we’d meet at the back and try to grab either the raft or the Jet Skis. They’d follow if they could, but if that didn’t work, barricade themselves in one of the cabins with the weapon and wait for us to bring back help—and the law.”
“Wow,” Bella said, stunned. “You were all so tough.”
He gave her a look. “You were the toughest of all, tita. That little creep is scary, but you faced him down and got away with only a scratch.”
He indicated a spot on his throat, looking at hers, and she touched the spot, wincing at the sore, puffy place where Li had pricked her with his knife.
Joel moved to kneel before her, the tube of antibiotic ointment from the first aid kit in his hand. He squeezed out a blob and gently smoothed it over the scratch. “There. All better.” At least it would be when he got a few moments alone with that little scumbag. He was going to turn the dude’s smirking face into mincemeat.
“Mahalo.”
He looked up into her eyes, as pretty as sooty blooms, and he wanted to sweep her into his arms and promise that no one would ever be able to hurt her again. But he couldn’t promise that, and what the hell was he doing, even thinking it? So instead he rose and walked to the edge of the pool.
“How about a quick bath?” he suggested and dropped his shorts on the bank and walked into the water. The pool was hip-deep in the middle, the water chilly at the bottom but warmed by the sun at the surface. “I want the blood off of you and the salt water off of both of us.”
He turned to Bella and found her watching him. The look on her face sent arousal shooting straight to his groin. His cock stiffened even as the cool water washed at his sac, tightening it up. The contrast of heat and chill was erotic as hell, as was the idea of her heat surrounding him.
He smiled at her, wincing as the motion pulled at his swollen cheek.
“Come on in, nani girl,” he suggested, his voice deep in the sudden hush that seemed to grip the surrounding forest.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?”
“The most important thing we can do right now is keep you safe,” he said. “And happy. Why don’t you come on in here and let me make you real happy?”
She gave him that disgusted look he guessed women had been giving men since the beginning of time, the one that said he had a one-track mind. But it changed to speculation, and as he watched, fascinated, a rosy blush chased the last of the paleness from her cheeks, and she bit her lower lip, letting it slide through her white teeth, wet and pink in the sunshine pouring over her.
“How about if I make you even happier?” she replied in that way she had, like it was a contest between them. That was okay with him. They’d both win.
When she pulled her tank over her head and let it fall aside, Joel forgot the question. And when she reached down and hitched her thumbs in the strings of her little bikini bottoms and shoved them down her pretty legs, revealing her small triangle of sooty curls, he forgot everything except the heat roaring through him.
As she walked daintily into the water, he was surprised the water of the pool didn’t b
egin to boil. She was the prettiest, hottest wahine he’d ever seen.
He told her so, his voice hoarse. She waded into his arms, one eyebrow lifting in a feminine challenge. “Prove it, hotshot.”
His brain went up in smoke. Like a man in an erotic dream, Joel lifted her up in his arms, one arm around her back and the other under her sweet ass, warm and round in his hand. Her hot center landed against his cock, pressing her wet heat directly along the length of his shaft as she wrapped her slender arms around him and held on.
With a deep groan of the most intense desire he’d ever felt, Joel cocked his head and kissed her, pressing his mouth to hers, soft and damp. Her lips parted, and he slipped his tongue into her mouth, finding hers and tangling with it in a sweet battle. She tasted like barbecue and the sweetest of nectars. But he recognized the taste as if he’d been waiting for it all his life—her special taste.
She moved, tightening her legs around him, and he groaned into her mouth as she caressed his cock in sweet, wet torture. Damn, he loved foreplay, but right now all he could focus on was getting inside her.
He dragged his mouth from hers. “Condom,” he gasped, already heading for the bank.
“Hurry,” she pleaded, kissing him again as he carried her out of the pool. He had to stop walking for a moment or kill both of them on the wet rocks.
He managed to lift his head one more time. Holding her, he waded out onto the bank and knelt to lay her down in the soft greenery, reaching out to yank open the side pocket of his bag with one hand.
He found a condom packet, ripped it open with his teeth and then reared back on his haunches just long enough to roll it on. Hard to concentrate when his hands were shaking and she was displayed temptingly against a bed of green, with blossoms nodding all around her. She leaned back on her elbows, watching him sheathe himself.
Joel groaned. “You look at me like that, and I’m gonna come right now,” he warned.
She growled, her brows shooting together in a fierce command. “You come before you get inside me, and I’ll strangle you with a vine.”
He crouched over her, holding her thighs apart with his hands and inhaling her heady scent. “Then let’s get you ready, Princess. Cause I need you primed to blow when I slide inside you.”
Since he followed his words with a swift, ruthless lick, her only response was a cry, soft and high. He shivered with pleasure. Ah, he loved that sound. He’d do anything to hear her voicing it, again and again. He craned his neck, watching her. Oh, man, she was writhing in his grasp, and she’d pulled a big spray of those red blooms down, or they’d fallen. They lay across her chest like a sash. The stamens of the blooms must have felt good tickling her nipples, because she moved again, her pretty breasts quivering.
Then she grabbed his hair and yanked. “Joel. Come here. I need you inside me—now.”
He allowed her to pull him up over her, her hands tugging at his shoulders. He looked down at her, lying open beneath him, her eyes slumberous with passion, her hair flowing around her head in an ebony tumble that matched the curls on her mons. Her pretty breasts, nipples tight—ah, he hadn’t even had those in his mouth yet. The tracing of pollen made his mouth water.
And waiting just for him, the delicate, feminine place that opened to welcome him inside, straight to paradise, decorated with another blossom, fallen on her flat little belly.
He froze for a moment, staring down at her. He was already in paradise. Even with Camille’s thugs down below and God only knew who on the mountain around them, he’d never felt so alive. Because he was with Bella, and she was safe here in the flowers, not maimed or dead on that bitch’s boat.
The raw joy bursting in his chest was enough to scare the hell right out of him.
Until, with another one of those fierce little growls, his wahine grabbed his cock in a grip that meant business and pulled, the nails of her other hand digging into his bare ass. He was just glad she wasn’t using her nails on his cock.
“Joel Girand—now.”
“’Ae, wahine.”
He settled down into her arms, letting her guide him into her soft, hot opening, because she seemed determined to take the lead, and he was more than happy to let her bring him home.
He leaned on one elbow, reaching down to cup her ass with the other, and then thrust carefully, almost prayerfully into her. He shuddered as pleasure streaked from the tip of his cock through his entire body.
“Ah, Princess,” he murmured, tipping his forehead against hers. “You feel—I can’t believe—ah, Jesus.” Giving up his poor attempt at speech, he thrust again, shuddering with pleasure and need as her tight, hot little passage sucked and caressed his shaft.
She clutched at him, her hands holding him as if she was afraid he would get away, and began to move under him, arching up to meet his thrusts until he was deep inside her, so deep and tight he didn’t care if he ever got free. He must not be hurting her, he thought hazily.
And he didn’t know how the hell she was doing it—must be holding a blossom in her toes, he thought hazily, his eyes crossing—she was tickling his balls and the crevice of his ass with what felt like a handful of blossoms. The delicate sensation in contrast with her tight heat around his cock drove him wild.
He groaned, pressed another quick kiss on her soft mouth, put his head down and began to thrust, hard and fast.
Chapter Sixteen
To Do: The most sought-after tour directors will use all their skills to enhance their clients’ tour experience.
Bella hung on to Joel as tightly as she could, clutching at his broad back and digging her heels into his flexing ass cheeks as she met him, thrust for hard, delicious thrust.
She couldn’t believe how good it felt to have him inside her. He filled her completely, her sensitive channel squeezing him tightly as he drove into her again and again.
His spicy, musky scent filled her nostrils, faintly overlaid with the perfume of the flowers hanging heavy around them. He kissed her and then lifted his head, his eyes slitted, face taut with passion as he moved.
“Ah, yeah,” he groaned. “That…do that, right—there.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but as he spread his knees, lifting her on the powerful muscles of his thighs, spreading her farther open to him so that he was taking her even deeper and harder than before, her pleasure coalesced into sheer ecstasy, and she cried out to him, a high paean of praise and entreaty, begging him not to stop.
He let out a deep, poignant groan that rumbled in his chest, and thrust even harder, sweat breaking out over his skin.
She rode with him through the storm of pleasure and sank down the other slope, little aftershocks pulsing through her as he moved slower and slower, finally collapsing on her, a hot, heavy, damp weight.
She was crushed under his heavy weight, could barely breathe, but she didn’t care. She’d never been so smugly satisfied in her life.
They lay entwined for several moments, until finally Joel lifted his head and propped himself up onto his elbows, looking down into her face. His cheeks were stained with color, his eyes soft, hair damp with sweat. Their joining was slick with sweat, as well, and he was still inside her, although he felt a bit smaller.
“You okay?” he asked, with a swift, sipping kiss.
“Mm-hmm. Are you?”
He smiled wickedly. “Are you kidding? I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard in my life.”
He nudged her nose with his and chuckled. “Where the hell did you learn to do that? With the flowers, I mean?”
She eyed him, uncertainty penetrating her sensual haze. “What thing?”
He nibbled her ear and nuzzled her neck, making her hunch her shoulder against the sweet tickle. “Tickling my ass and balls, you little tease. That was…amazing.”
“Oh, that.” She gazed up at the branches heavy with blossom, nodding over them. “Just sort of…came to me.” Oh, Pele, she hadn’t been imagining it. The forest was even participating in his seduction.
He lifted his head and smiled slowly down at her. “I would never have taken you for the inventive type. Thought it would take me months to get this far.”
Bella stiffened. He’d been planning how to seduce her?
Joel’s expression changed, his eyes softening. He cupped her cheek with his hand. “Hey, don’t look like that, baby. Of course I thought about this—with you. The first minute I saw you, bam!” He rocked back as if from a blow.
She glowered up at him, remembering. “You hid it well. You flirted with Tanah all the time.”
He shook his head. “That was just chitchat. You were the one I imagined being with.”
He kissed her and then cocked his head, taking it deeper, his tongue curling into her mouth to tease her own.
Still kissing her, he moved, rolling onto his back and carrying her with him so that she lay draped across him, her thighs open over his and his cock still inside her. The new position reinforced the intimacy of their embrace.
Bella kissed him back. She couldn’t seem to get enough of his mouth—those wide, soft lips, that clever tongue of his. She remembered it caressing her pussy and shivered. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, enjoying the damp pull of his skin on her nipples.
He groaned and pulled away, pulling her up off him with his hands on her waist.
“You’re getting me hot again,” he warned, reaching between her thighs to fumble with the condom.
She knelt over him on her hands and knees. Power sizzled through her in a sweet rush. “Good. I want…” She hesitated, blushing at the look in his eyes.
“What,” he demanded softly. “Tell me. In so many words.”
She moved up over him, her breasts close to his face. “I want your mouth on me—on my breasts. I want you to suck them and lick them.”
He reached up and cupped his hands over her breasts, squeezing them carefully, and then opening his hands to squeeze her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, watching what he was doing. “Hard or softly?” he rasped.
Bella swallowed, her nipples tightening needily. “Hard.”