He let the imagined scene roll through his mind again, slowly, detail for detail, until a little shriek of laughter brought him back to reality. By the time he looked up, Bev and Arthur were bouncing around in the vat of plums, Bev holding her skirts high and cavorting like an island nymph.
Sam’s self-control was already stretched past the breaking point when Bev’s dress slipped off her shoulder, nearly exposing a breast. Arthur let out a delighted gasp and tried to shield her as he pulled the material back up. Bev giggled and swiped at his marauding hands.
Sam saw red. Arthur may have been trying to help, but to Sam it looked like nothing more than a cheap excuse to fondle a woman’s breasts. He reached the wooden vat on a dead run, vaulting over the side, boots and all. “Back off, lover boy,” he said, shoving Arthur aside. The smaller man went down, disappearing in the purple glop.
“That man’s got his shoes on!” a woman screeched.
“Who is he?” another cried. “What’s he doing in here?”
“Sam?” Bev said, belatedly aware of his presence. She’d been trying to rescue Arthur, who couldn’t seem to stay on his feet. She turned unsteadily, abandoning Arthur to the glop. “When did you get here, Sam?”
“The party’s over, Lace.” Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her with him to the side of the vat. “You’re coming with me.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Bev mumbled as Sam strode up the gangplank of the cruise ship. She was unceremoniously draped over his shoulder and swinging like a bag of dirty laundry as the world floated by her, upside down. She knew she ought to be kicking and screaming and doing all the things abducted women did in the movies, but she didn’t have the stomach for it. Literally.
Nearly all the passengers and ship’s brass were at the festival, which left only a few waiters and crew members to gape as Sam ferried her through the ship’s narrow corridors.
“Put me down,” Bev whispered. “Everybody’s looking.”
“Let ’em look.”
“Why are you carrying me?” she demanded to know.
“Because you’re bombed on your butt.”
“My what? Where are we going?”
“The cabin,” Sam muttered. “And a nice cold shower.”
“Shower? No!”
Sam paid no attention to her halfhearted protest. Once they were in the cabin, he propped her up against the shower stall as he reached inside and turned the water on. “Get your clothes off,” he said. “You’re a sorry-looking mess.”
“Am not.” Bev glanced down dizzily at her magenta feet and legs, and then, with effort, she looked back up at Sam, trying to bring him into focus. He was fruit-splattered and demon-eyed, but there was the cutest little red blotch on his nose, a semi-crushed bit of passion plum. “Don’t look any worse than you do.”
“Ditch the island-nymph ensemble,” he said, “unless you want me to do it for you.”
She shook her head—and nearly lost her balance.
Exhaling a curse, Sam reluctantly grabbed a handful of her peasant blouse by its loose elastic neckline and dragged it down her torso, letting it lay in a pile at her feet. He stripped off her skirt next, leaving her standing there in nothing but her panties, her clothing a colorful pool at her feet.
Bev stared at her naked breasts, one plum-stained, one not. “How did that happen?” she asked absently.
Sam’s stomach fisted at the sight of her nearly nude body. She didn’t seem to be aware that he’d undressed her, and oddly, her nonchalance made her that much more irresistible. He wanted to touch her so badly, his teeth ached.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, turning her around and herding her into the shower. The sooner he got this object lesson over with, the better, he’d decided. There was no reasoning with a soused, half-naked woman. He’d get her sobered up and then he’d give her holy hell.
He no sooner had her in the shower with the door shut when she bounced back out again, dripping. “All done,” she chirped.
“Like hell. Get back in there.”
She shook her head, water flying in every direction.
“In that case, I’m coming in with you.” Sam pulled off his shirt and boots and pushed her back into the stall, crowding in behind her. The spray soaked them both instantly. “You’re not getting out of here until you can say your name backward.”
She began trying immediately. Before she was through, Sam had heard so many garbled versions of Beverly Jean, he wished he’d never brought it up.
“Veb?” she said finally, twisting around to grin at him.
“Enough chitchat,” Sam muttered.
It was a tight fit in the tiny shower stall, very tight. Bev insisted on wriggling around to face him, and the soft, wet squish of her breasts against his bare chest was enough to give Sam a serious muscle spasm in a vulnerable place. She was making him crazy, and what was worse, she didn’t seem to know it.
He whipped the cold knob on full force, but the closest he could get to an icy, sobering shower was a lukewarm spray. He held her under it anyway, letting the water run over her face and stream down her shoulders and chest. The sight of her wet and glistening breasts sent a lightning bolt of desire through him. Tension burned deep in the pit of his gut, flaring all the way to the soles of his feet.
“How are we doing?” he said, holding Bev back so he could inspect her.
“Who wants to know?” She smiled at him dreamily, as though she were thoroughly enjoying his dilemma, to whatever extent she was aware of it. Maybe instead of spanking her, he would dump her over the side and drag her behind the boat with Arthur. Maybe he’d do both!
In fact, Bev was enjoying herself. The world had stopped swinging, her stomach was pretty well settled, and she was thoroughly drenched with warm, sexy water. Even Sam seemed a little less edgy, or so her slightly foggy brain concluded from the fact that he’d joined her in the shower. She wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing in there with her, but it felt kind of pleasant pressed up against him. She hadn’t been this close to him in so long.
“You have a very nice chest,” she said. There were other things about him she could have mentioned, but she happened to be staring directly at his chest, and the streaming water was making fascinating patterns in his dark hair. He did have the most beautiful body hair.
“Thank you.” He smiled faintly. “Yours is nice too.”
“My chest?” She met his eyes and saw the fierce, dazzling blue they had become. The scar that drew at his mouth was nearly white from the tension in his jaw. Something about the way he looked made her strain a little harder to breathe, as though the steam in their tiny shower stall had absorbed all the oxygen. Her legs ached a little too, with that sweet, pulling sensation she’d come to associate with him.
A fanciful notion filled her head as she vaguely remembered how he’d dragged her out of the vat and thrown her over his shoulder. He could have been a ruthless Caribbean pirate, the decadent, bodice-ripping type who regularly abducted women for their own pleasure. He certainly looked ferocious enough. But wouldn’t a pirate be ravishing her by now? The possibility might have alarmed her if it hadn’t been for the soothing water. She felt as though her insides were streaming with warmth, smooth and silvery, everything gone to liquid. She didn’t have a muscle or a bone in her body.
“Don’t you just love showers?” she said, letting her head loll back and the water run over her face.
“Careful,” he said, catching hold of her.
His hands slid down her back, one of them ending up very near her derriere. The sudden feel of him there sent an erotic lightning bolt through Bev. It was a sensation as sharp and bitingly sweet as the snap of leather recoiling in the air. She’d never felt anything so riveting.
“What are you doing?” she asked softly, a gasp in her voice.
“Keeping you on your feet. We don’t want an accident in the shower, do we?”
“No. No accidents.” Suddenly aware of him in a very different way, she couldn’
t take her eyes off him. Details leaped out at her with dizzying clarity. The flare of his nostrils when he breathed, the aggressive bones of his face overlaid by fine-grained tawny skin. Had he always been so tall, and broad at the shoulders? He seemed to be touching the shower stall on both sides. She felt surrounded by him, completely engulfed.
He moved against her, and she felt the heaviness of wet denim abrading her bare skin. “Do you know you have your jeans on?” she asked.
He smiled, his eyes darkening. “I think the party girl is finally sobering up.”
No, Bev wasn’t sober, not by a long shot. She was simply aware. Suddenly, painfully aware of him, of herself, and of the sensual signals coursing riotously through her body. She could feel him through the wet denim. He was hard against her, huge against her. The constant thrumming pressure on her pelvic bone set off an explosion of excitement deep in her belly. She felt dizzy and drunk again. Dizzy with sensation, drunk with wanting to see and touch what was underneath the denim.
“Couldn’t be very comfortable,” she said, looking up at him. “Wet jeans.”
“Not comfortable,” he agreed, “but safe.”
Their eyes met, and Bev fell silent. He knew, she realized. He knew she was tingling with curiosity and excitement. Burning. It was as though he’d been eavesdropping on her thoughts.
“If the jeans bother you ...” he said.
“You could take them off,” she suggested.
His voice got husky. “Or you could.”
Bev’s heart went wild as he reached for her hand and drew it to the button fly of his jeans.
It occurred to her that she ought to protest, but she was driven by curiosity. She moved her fingers gingerly, each new discovery sending another lightning bolt through her. When she finally found the top button, it was slick and stubborn, refusing to cooperate as she tried to force it through the shrunken opening. “I can’t,” she said, frustration surging in her voice.
He took over, silently freeing each button.
He wore no underwear.
Bev’s breathing deepened, growing slow as he brought her hand back. She touched him, and a shock wave of sensation ripped through her hand. He was rigid and hot to the touch, like steel and silk about to burst into flames. She curled her hand around him, forgetting to be frightened, and he let out a sound that was as racked with anguish as it was ecstasy.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, knowing she hadn’t hurt him. She was giving him more pleasure than he could bear. Her fingers curved instinctively to the shape of him.
“Enough,” he pleaded. But she couldn’t stop. Touching him thrilled her. It filled her with a harsh, nameless yearning that clutched at her vitals.
Looking at him, she waited, and when he opened his eyes, there was something incredulous there, something touched by wonder. She squeezed her hand and watched the lights flare in his irises. The blue turned a deep, roaring indigo, an inferno of carnal urges and animal desires. She’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Without a thought to the consequences, she knelt and brought him to her lips, tasting the wetness, the hardness. Her mouth softened against burning steel, and a current of electricity stroked her feminine parts, so powerful she could hardly move. Her legs felt weak and useless, stunned by the force. Her heart was a deep throb that pulsed in her swollen lips. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the pulse for several seconds. The urges clamoring inside her were too frenetic to understand or satisfy, except one. She felt an overpowering impulse to take him into her mouth, deeply, completely. She wanted to consume him, but she was too weak with paralyzing excitement.
“Help me,” she whimpered.
“Help you?” A profanity shook on his lips. He caught hold of her arm and tore her hand away from him, dragging her up to his mouth. His hands bit into the flesh of her arms as he brought her to her tiptoes, nearly lifting her off the floor. His kiss was harsh and brutal and consuming. It punished her for the sweet pain she brought him. It promised her savage pleasure.
Sam had no conscious thought of punishing her. The forces inside him were too primal for conscious control. He was mindless with need. He had to get inside her, to know how deep she could take him, to feel her squeezing him the way her hand had. There was no other way to survive the maelstrom his body had become.
“I’m going to help you, babe,” he said, lodging her up against the shower wall. “I’m going to help us both.”
She breathed an anguished plea as he stripped off her soaked panties and brought up her leg. The urge to enter her immediately slammed through him like a fist. He wanted to take her right then, rough and quick, no preliminaries, but he controlled the impulse.
He tasted her mouth, drinking the beads of warm water that caught on her upper lip. She was soft and hot and open to him. And she was hungry, he could tell by the way she dug her nails into his biceps when he stroked the inner silk of her raised thigh. Her soft gasps of pleasure nearly drove him crazy, but he held back, stroking nearer and nearer the source of her excitement.
“Like this?” he said, swirling his fingers up to the place where her soft brown hair curled wildly. “Do you like being touched like this?” He combed his fingers into the vibrant thatch.
Her head fell back helplessly, and then she stiffened, arching against him as he cupped the mound between her legs with his palm. “Yes,” she breathed, hardly able to speak. “Yes, there ... touch me there, please ... harder.”
“Harder?” He knew exactly what she wanted, but he couldn’t bring himself to give it to her so quickly. He was in the throes of a sensation so sweet it made him want to groan. He had to make it last. “And here too?” he said, delving into her warm folds with his fingers and using his thumb to encircle the part of her that was swollen with desire.
She couldn’t speak. She could only nod her head.
He stroked her gently, mercilessly, letting her move against his hand until the mounting pain of his own desire forced him to act. He probed deeper, slipping a finger inside her as she cried out with choked rapture. She was hot and wet, muscles as taut as her demon fingers had been. Her throbbing warmth told him everything he needed to know. She wanted him inside her as much as he wanted to be there.
He withdrew and pressed her to the wall, straining to hold her still.
“Easy, Lace,” he said, unable to subdue her frantic movements long enough to enter her. The aching throb between his legs became unbearable, and he gripped her by the arms, lifting her over him, bringing her down. A knifelike sensation pierced his groin as he found what he was seeking. Her lush warmth yielded to his muscular thrusts, and he entered her with a passion that was primal.
Once he was truly, deeply inside her, once that barrier of flesh and will had been crossed, he lost control to the urgent demands of his body. He kissed her ravenously, running his hands over her nakedness, cupping her breasts and buttocks roughly, tenderly. She clung to him, gasping as he impaled her, nailing her sweet, undulating body to the wall.
Bev felt as though she were being rocked and jolted with ecstasy. A deep, radiating pleasure gripped her, pulling irresistibly at her muscles. It seemed to peak with his thrusts, to caress every shimmering nerve. She locked her arms around his powerful neck, vowing never to let him go. There was an urgent need flowering inside her. She wanted to be crushed in his arms, pinned by his weight. She wanted him to open her legs and mount her in the way that men and women had been making love since the beginning of time.
She wanted to feel like a woman again. She needed that so desperately. But when she tried to tell him, the words were breathless and nearly incomprehensible. “Please ... carry me to the bed,” was all she could say.
She refused to let him pull out. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and curled herself to him as he shouldered open the shower door. A billowy cloud of steam escaped with them as he carried her to the bed. Bev felt him plunging even more deeply with every step, and then they fell onto the flowered bedspread, still joined, r
olling and flashing and thrusting until somehow they ended up with him on his back.
Bev gave out a cry of shocked satisfaction and arched above him. “Wait a minute,” he rasped, cupping her breasts as she began to flex slowly, throwing her head back, moving up and down on him, heedless of the utter wantonness of her movements. “How did we end up like this?”
“Just lucky—” She barely got the words out before new and sharper heights of sensation took her. Every minute move she made, even the tiniest twitch of her muscles, brought the most unbearable ecstasy. “No, it’s too much,” she said, her voice choked with startled disbelief. “I won’t survive this.”
She shuddered and stopped, unable to move, her legs weighted and throbbing.
Sam’s body screamed in protest. Muscles seized in his gut and his thighs. “We’re not stopping now, babe.” He hauled her into his arms and rolled her onto her back. “Not now.” He was racked with the need to hold her, to make love to her—rough, tender, whatever she wanted. He’d never felt anything so powerful before.
“No, don’t ever stop, Sam,” she said, a strange, sweet urgency in her voice. “Make love to me. Do it all to me. Everything. Every sexy, incredible thing a man and woman can do.”
Her eyes glittered and danced like stars reflected on water. There was a wildness in them that blew Sam’s mind. Was it the wine talking? Or the woman? His conscience tried to tell him that she might not know what she was doing, but he was too bewitched by her sensuality, too crazy with desire to pay it any heed. If she wanted him to romp naked through the cruise ship and swing on chandeliers with her, he would do it.
Nine
BEV WOKE UP to a frantic tapping on the cabin door. At first she thought she was in her small Encino bedroom and Southern California was having another earthquake. Why else would the house be rumbling and vibrating? As she rolled her head and saw the naked man sprawled on his stomach, his arms thrown wide, his head partially covered by a pillow, she knew she was a very long way from Encino.
She sat up gingerly, trying to remember why she was in bed with a naked man, but her forehead was throbbing just above her left eye, and she couldn’t concentrate on details. Also, someone was calling her name.
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