Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

  Forewarned was forearmed. A bitter surge climbed the back of his throat, forcing his knuckles to clench round fistfuls of dark silk, and loose it almost before her cry broke the stultifying tension between them.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he lied, both to her and himself. He grazed a finger across the dark slash of color tinting her cheekbones and checkmated his lie with the truth. “You’re just too damned beautiful. Thought so the first time I saw you.”

  Ngaire dismissed the compliment with a shake of her head. He was aroused, wanting her. She knew better than to believe his flattery, formed by the blood running hot in his veins. “That sounds nice, but I have to warn you I do have a mirror and it doesn’t exaggerate.”

  “Exaggeration be damned,” he growled, gathering her up into his arms, into him, closer than paint, hearts hammering at each other with a sudden rush of emotion as he slanted his mouth over hers like a man who had thirsted too long.

  Having his compliment thrown back in his face trashed his intentions to keep a part of himself back and just do this thing. Recalling his feelings the first time he’d laid eyes on her stepping off that bus into the torpid Tahitian heat, he crushed her in his arms and poured a jumble of emotions from his mouth to hers. Mixed emotions. Wanting her, knowing it was wrong. Grief for Gordie. The whole damn mess his life and the world was in. Knowing one man was never going to fix enough to make a blind bit of difference.

  Ngaire took it all and gave back more. Her tongue warred with his, twisted and dived and circled. Her breasts pressed into his chest, hard nipples leaving their mark. Her hands fisted in his hair as if it were a lifeline. Like the makeshift rope that had taken them both to safety. His head spun with every moan she let loose, his arms tightening with every whimper, demanding surrender.

  Never in her life had Ngaire wanted a man so much that crawling inside his skin with him didn’t seem too far out there.

  Fear had to be one of the world’s best aphrodisiacs, fear that if she didn’t take a chance now she’d never know…

  Never know what? A family? Facts set in concrete.

  Kel’s finger slipped under the elastic strip attached to the front triangle of her bikini thong. Gently, teasingly, he ran it back and forth, skimming the valley of her behind, his touch releasing a moan for him to swallow.

  Never know love? The hearts-and-flowers thing after only three days was huge to ask of any man. And, as she felt Kel’s finger ease between her legs from behind, searching out her heat, she tensed, held her breath, held on to him.

  His taste was on her lips, her mouth. It fanned her face as he lifted his head. “Easy, doll. Easy. You’re so soft and wet this is going to be like stealing candy from a baby. Just let me in.”

  She widened her stance as his finger probed, gently, slowly. He watched her face, his eyes holding hers as surely as his arm clamped her against his arousal, and all the while his entry into her body deepened.

  Never know hope? But she did…always had, she realized. Yet from the moment Kel had pulled her into that bus shelter and kissed her, hope had increased a thousandfold, from a tiny light shining at the back of the darkness cluttering her mind into a radiant beacon calling her on. Telling her that she could have a life. Short? Long? It didn’t matter as long as it was full.

  A whimper escaped her lips, full of need and want as his hardness flexed against a tender bruise near her navel, a reminder of two narrow escapes, today’s and yesterday’s.

  Was that what showed in her eyes? Her needs. Her wants. Was that what he looked for in them while her lids ached but refused to close? In that moment, as her insides fluttered and tightened on the intrusion, setting up torrid waves of sensation, she knew that never again would she categorize Kel as any man.

  His face dissolved in front of her eyes as they blurred and went blind, all-feeling, all-knowing, centered on one thing, her climax. And along with the throes of blind ecstasy came the sensation of falling with Kel off the end of the world into liquid flames.

  Kel stepped off the edge of the pool, taking Ngaire with him, the aftershocks of her response to him still squeezing his fingers. As the hot water reached his waist, it struck him that throwing petrol on to a fire wasn’t going to quench it.

  As he set her free, her sleek hair fanned across the water in a dark veil, the kind he had to keep over the truth. Back in control of himself he shrugged off the urge to drop a kiss over each eyelid to still her confusion.

  “We’re in the pool.”

  “Yeah, things were happening so fast I thought we needed to cool off.”

  “In hot water?”

  “Believe me, doll, there’s hot, and then there’s hot.”

  Her small “Oh” said it all, but didn’t stop there. “Don’t even think there was anything normal about my reaction. This has never happened to me before…well it has, but only with you.”

  “All the more reason to slow down and make it last. We have all evening. Why don’t you float on over to the side. There’s a seat about two feet below the rim. I’ll open the wine and pour us each a glass before it grows as hot as everything else around this place.”

  He lunged over to the edge, kicking his legs, and heard Ngaire giggle behind his back. “What? Did I say something funny?”

  “No, you’re still wearing your flip-flops.”

  He threw a grin in her direction, anything to take the heat out of the impossible situation his libido had gotten him into. “Protection.”

  The instant he spoke it, he remembered. Protection, he didn’t have any on him. He’d intended to use that as an excuse to avoid having sex with Ngaire. Now he had more than an hour and a half to fill and no condoms. Slowly, very slowly, he filled their wineglasses, preventing the bubbles from fizzing over the top and gaining time to plan his way out of this one.

  A situation of his own damn making.

  Handing Ngaire one of the glasses he carried, Kel smiled, his lip quirking to the left of his mouth, signaling an amusing thought. “I don’t know why mermaids were always portrayed as blond when this—” he ran his fingers through the long strands of dark hair floating on the surface, swathed in steam and shimmering like a mirage “—is so much more satisfying.”

  “I hate to prick the bubble of your imagination, but I should mention I’d never win medals as a swimmer.”

  He watched her take a sip of wine and wrinkle her nose as if it had fizzed up the back of her throat. She licked the pale gold liquid off her lips, giving him a glimpse of her small pink tongue, a muscle she’d used on him with devastating effect and made him wonder… Ah well, maybe not.

  “Mmm, this is good. The bartender didn’t put me wrong.”

  “Did you expect him to?” Kel asked.

  “In some parts of the world I believe he might have palmed off someone more used to soda, or the occasional shot, with something he’d had a hard time selling.”

  He latched onto “some parts,” thinking he had caught her out at last. “I thought you said you hadn’t traveled much.”

  “So sue me, I meant my hometown, San Francisco. Though I do read and watch TV shows.”

  He laughed through his mouthful of wine and almost gargled as he asked, “Soaps? Books? All fiction?”

  “No, I won’t let you get away with that one. If someone’s thought it, then someone’s done it.”

  “Ouch! You know how to bite, doll.”

  She laughed and snapped her strong white teeth at him. He wanted to say “Show me later.” But that would take him straight back to the place he’d been in before he stepped into the pool with her locked in his arms.

  Before and after, up to his neck in hot water.

  Instead he asked her, “Do you have family in San Francisco?” The longer he kept her talking, the less time he’d have to put his hormones and his conscience on the line.

  A frown saddened her expression and dulled her eyes. “No. No family, but I do have a friend, Leena Kowolski, who’s like a sister to me.”

  K
el took a mental note of the name, meaning to check it out.

  “We met at a self-defense class.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s two of you roaming the streets of San Francisco with a superhero complex? I’m sure all the bad guys are shaking in their shoes.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. We couldn’t be more different. Leena’s more likely to slay them with her mouth than her hands. She’s sharp as a razor and quick on the comeback. Nothing like me.”

  To which Kel raised his brows and said, “I’d say you could hold your own in a spitting contest.”

  “I wish. Leena’s bright and savvy, knows the latest trend before it’s happened.”

  Thinking of kiss-and-tell, Kel knew he was definitely going to check this woman out.

  “She wears shoes you need a ladder to climb into and she’s as fair as I’m dark, but you’ll see for yourself when you meet her.”

  He almost spilled his wine as he sat up. “Meet her? Is she in New Zealand as well?”

  Ngaire’s eyes widened, dark and hopeful, as if she expected him to reject her suggestion. “No-o-o, she’s not here, but you did say you covered the Pacific Rim. That includes San Francisco. I thought if you looked me up, I could introduce you.”

  Hell, his sex drive had awakened like a sleeping giant, and look what it had gotten him into, gotten them both into. He had a feeling that one day soon, when Ngaire looked at him, the hope would have disappeared. Hate would have taken its place.

  When that introduction came about, it might be because he was locking them both up.

  “Actually you’re right. I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago and I’m sure to be back soon. Give me your number and address and I’ll look you up.”

  “I’ll write them down for you tomorrow,” she said. It couldn’t have been simpler. So why did he feel like such a heel?

  Chapter 10

  F unny how she’d let a brief resurgence of hope blindside her into taking things for granted. But, wishful thinking or not, she would give Kel her address and number before the trip was over.

  Who knew, with Te Ruahiki on her side, wanting her to return home, maybe she would see her thirty-first birthday and more.

  Having fended off Paul Savage’s henchman once, she felt confident she could do it again. The knowledge she had only five weeks, five days till New Year’s Eve, exactly one week after her birthday, she flicked aside. Now wasn’t the time for feeling blue.

  So she sipped her wine and talked to Kel of little things, like the places she’d be stupid to miss visiting during her trip, places he would show her. And as the wine went down and her mind floated on the surface of dreams, she let her feet bob to the top of the pool, occasionally bouncing off him as gradually she let herself drift closer and closer.

  Tilting her head back against the rim, she gazed up through the palm fronds at the star-filled sky. It was truly dark now and the moon had risen. “See that moon? It looks like a half scoop of vanilla ice cream.”

  Kel edged closer, letting his eyes follow her line of sight. His arm rubbed against hers, making the water slide and slap between the two. “Mmm,” he agreed. “From this angle it does. As an analogy, it has more going for it than the green cheese one.”

  She broke into a throaty chuckle, her fingers dancing down his arm, taking the game to another level. “Luckily it’s cold in space, so it won’t melt.”

  Slipping one arm under her, Kel turned, pulling her closer, aware that it wouldn’t take much effort for her to melt in his arms. He reached for her glass. It was empty. Any inhibitions desire hadn’t managed to conquer, the wine had. “Let me put this up on the side before it ends up on the bottom in pieces.”

  He’d rid himself of his own a while ago, so his head was clear…clearer than hers, but the two-hours’ grace Chaly had demanded still had a way to go.

  When he was this close to her, not even the light tang of sulfur could diminish her exclusive perfume or its effect on him. It took just one trace to turn him hard and needy again. He’d never been less than half hard from the moment he’d poured their drinks. Hell, he was in that state of arousal most of the time she was within arm’s reach. Sometimes, not even as close, he mused, remembering the view via his computer.

  From Ngaire’s angle, Kel’s body loomed as he stretched higher to return her glass to the pool’s rim. A hard, unruly erection brushing his board shorts rubbed against her thigh. Her womb clenched as she gauged his size. Though her hand itched to reach out, she didn’t scratch it. Mellow as the wine made her feel, it hadn’t removed all constraints.

  Instead, she began touching his chest with soft hands. Stripped of almost all his clothes, he had the most beautiful body. One he let her hands explore as he sank into the water.

  Her buoyancy allowed her partial equality in the stature stakes. Without rush, she reached out and shaped his muscles, traced his tight abs, and measured the width of his pecs with her palms, aware he watched, looked down out of eyes black as the night sky. But unlike the moon, they didn’t look as if they could melt.

  “You’re very well built. Do you work out much?”

  On a swift breath forced out by the trail of her fingers, low down, through the hair near his navel, Kel said, “A bit. When I have the time.”

  Her hand stopped teasing, slid back to his shoulders, and just when he thought he could breathe again, she kicked her feet, surging out of the water to lay a kiss in the hollow of his neck.

  “Hey, turnabout is fair play. You have a pretty spectacular body yourself, and it’s time I saw more of it.”

  Releasing the catch of her bikini top, with a dexterity Ngaire was sure men learned in the cradle, he said, “That’s better.”

  Heat that had nothing to do with hot mineral springs played across her cheekbones. No longer covered, her breasts flaunted themselves, their tight, furled peaks cresting the water to reveal the state of her arousal.

  Kel examined them with interest, first testing their weight in his hands, then rubbing the tips with a drugging enchantment that made her eyes close. “One taste, just one taste,” he murmured, but by her count it was more like ten.

  Drunk on her, Kel lifted his head before he did or said something that might rebound on him later. Turning his attention to her hair, he combed it with his fingers, breaking up the cascade until a million strands of sparkling jet draped her from shoulder to waist. A half smile cracked his mouth, more would have given him away. “I wondered how this would look.”

  And now he knew.

  He’d also wondered how it would look covering them both, but now her hair was wet it was never going to happen. Not now, not ever, he promised himself. Tonight was one out of a lifetime, in the call of duty.

  He couldn’t let it happen again and be sure he’d survive.

  Even now as his hands dove into the water, splashing them both, he wasn’t certain if kissing her again would leave scars. He locked his fingers round smooth satin shoulders, closing his mouth over hers for a taste of the pleasure he’d tried to forget, wanted to put away since stepping into the pool.

  All the while he’d sat beside Ngaire, pretending to be the kind of guy she thought he was, the memory bugged him like a gnat that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times he swatted it.

  His male scent filled Ngaire’s head with visions of sun on his skin, distilling musk and paradise into the one note no chemist could match. Two days and already she was addicted to the thrust of his tongue, filling her mouth in a byplay of what they both wanted, needed. He lifted and she climbed, scraping her aching nipples against his hard chest, the pain of it screaming in her womb. Mouth to mouth, belly to belly, heart to heart, legs and arms tangled in knots of desire.

  Heaven lay in the touch of his hands, hell in him removing them. As it had happened before, one second she was caught in a maelstrom, the next she was falling through space into a sun swallowing them whole. And when their lips had torn apart, the shock had deprived her of comprehension. Like, where was she? Up to h
er neck in hot water. Who was missing? Kel.

  Taking the hot water literally made no difference, she’d still be up to her neck. Still wondering if she could turn the weeks she had left into a lifetime. And do it in five days.

  Her grip tightened as Kel went to pull her arms from his neck. Released, he ducked lower to look into her face. “Hey, don’t look so worried. I’ve got you.” He held her wrists as her fingers curled like flowers missing sunlight. “Relax, doll, that’s it.”

  Her muscles went lax as he took her hands and stepped back until her head floated, wreathed in steam. “No, keep your legs round my waist.”

  If he was going to do this, he needed distance. Kissing her had gotten way too personal. He could pleasure her, rock her with orgasms she wouldn’t forget; the trick was to take as little, or as much as he was able from the experience and remain sane.

  Her hair fanned out, a dark sea anemone backlit by the pool lights. “Good. Lie back and let yourself float like a mermaid.”

  Her arms drifted away from her sides, hand making small circles that kept her afloat. “Not ‘The Little Mermaid.’ That story didn’t end up so well.”

  “Anything you say, doll-face.”

  She scrunched up her nose at his second effort.

  “What, you don’t fancy being my china doll from Chinatown?”

  “China dolls break too easily.”

  And just as easily, she thrust him into the truth that lay outside that moment. That Ngaire, like Gordie, would be broken at the end. And this small interlude, cut out of his real world, could help bring about that end.

  He dragged his mind out of the mire of dark thoughts. “There’s a local legend of a maiden who swam to an island on the lake where her lover was confined. She’d go secretly, in the dead of night, as he was the enemy and their love was forbidden. Her statue sits looking over the lake.

  “With the pool light under you, turning your skin bronze and your hair floating in the water, you could be her. Hinemoa, her name was.”