Island Idyll: Bandicoot Cove, Book 4

by Jess Dee

  His skin was tanned gold, confirming her assessment of the time he’d spent in the sun, and his lips—full, gorgeous and ruby-red—were curved in a bewildered smile. At least a week’s worth of stubble shadowed his jaw and upper lip.

  “Hell, Si, you look better now than you did twelve years ago. And man, you looked good then.”

  Recognition hit, the force enough to take her breath away. Suddenly Kylie’s words made perfect sense.

  It wasn’t a lie she’d been referring to. It was a Lye. Or, to be more specific, a Joshua Lye.

  A heart-stoppingly gorgeous, all grown-up Joshua Lye.

  “Josh?” she asked tentatively.

  He nodded. “In the flesh.”

  And, oh, dear Lord, what flesh it was. If the teenage Josh had made her blush like a fool, the very adult version made every nerve ending stand to attention. At sixteen, he’d been cute. At thirty, he was full-blown sex on a stick.

  He sat with a thunk on the deck chair Kylie had just vacated and shook his head in wonder. “Christ, if you weren’t the star feature in every wet dream I ever had…”

  Her eyes popped open. “If I wasn’t what?”

  “My wet dream every night for years,” he said, his gaze roaming over her face. “How are you, Si?”

  She blinked several times, processing his words, his presence leaving her staggered.

  Josh was here. On the island. Josh Lye. Or, as she, Mack and Kylie had called him, Josh Lie-With-Me. Hmm, nope, hang on. She was the only one who’d called him that, and only when he wasn’t anywhere near. Ky and Mack had called him Josh Lie-With-Si.

  Sienna had only had a crush on him the entire way through high school. She’d have shed her good-girl image in a second if even once he’d shown her any interest. Hell, she’d have tossed her much-cherished virginity aside in a heartbeat for just five minutes with him.

  God, she hadn’t seen him in…twelve years.

  “I…I’m okay.” She finally found the presence of mind to answer his question. “You?”

  His gaze dropped to her chest and then slowly made its way down to her thighs. A grin tugged at his lips. “Good. Never better.”

  Sienna frowned. “You know, you have some kind of cheek, mister.”

  He cast her a questioning look. “I do?”

  “Where do you get off making me the center of your wet dreams, anyway?”

  “Where do I get off?” His lips twitched, as though he tried to repress a bark of laughter. “Uh, you really need me to answer?”

  Sienna resisted the urge to drop her head in her hands and cover the blush she knew blossomed on her cheeks. Shit, that was so not what she’d meant. “Listen up, mate, I haven’t seen you in forever, and you greet me with an explicit insight into your teenage fantasies. Nice. Real nice.” Oh, yeah, real nice. It would have been nicer to know when she was a teenager too. When he’d been the main feature of every one of her adolescent dreams.

  Josh’s gaze dropped to her chest again, the exact place where her cleavage spilled over the top, and he let out a low wolf whistle. “Not just a teenage fantasy. I strongly suspect you’re gonna be the center of a full-blown adult wet dream tonight as well. Mine.”

  She gaped at him. “You didn’t just say that.”

  His eyes twinkled as he winked. “I always did like the way you blushed in school. How quickly those cheeks filled with color. Seems like nothing’s changed.”

  Apparently nothing had changed. She’d blushed as a teenager every time Josh had walked into a room, and she was blushing again now. It was like her body couldn’t deny her attraction to him.

  Josh eyed her sexily. “I still like how you look when you blush. Like a mixture of a Penthouse centerfold and an innocent kid.”

  She snorted. “I’m thirty years old. Hardly an innocent kid.”

  “Which leaves just the Penthouse centerfold.”

  She opened her mouth to retort and realized she was struck speechless.

  A rumble of laughter filled the air. “There it is again. The trademark Sienna James blush.”

  “Damn it, you’re doing this on purpose. You haven’t changed one bit, have you?”

  Josh shook his head. “Nope, I was crazy about you in school, and after spending two minutes with you now, I’m crazy about you all over again.”

  “Pffft.” She dismissed his comment with a flick of her wrist, although she couldn’t hide her smile. Or deny the tug of awareness that flickered through her belly and lower. It was the first tug she’d felt for anyone other than Ben in a seriously long time. “What are you doing on the island?”

  “Time.” He grimaced. “Two months hard labor.”

  “You work here?” Would surprises never cease?

  He nodded. “It’s been hell, I tell you. Hell. I’m forced to swim every morning, sail a cat at sunset, dive on weekends and run barefoot along the beach every lunch hour. It’s killing me.”

  She gave him a commiserative nod. “I can see the toll it’s taken. You look awful.” Awful good. He looked downright lickable. Sienna could only thank her lucky stars the waitress arrived with her daiquiri at that moment. Otherwise, she would, without a doubt, have licked him.

  Not all over. Just a little sample of his neck. And maybe his lips. And, if she could just get that T-shirt out of the way, then maybe a nipple as well.

  Sienna. Concentrate!

  She took a very long sip of daiquiri and shoved all thoughts of licks, lips and nipples aside. “So, what hard labor have you been sentenced to?”

  “Installing the computer network.” He shook his head and scowled. “Wanna know the worst part of all? They may make it a life sentence. The hotel needs a permanent IT person on staff, twenty-four seven.”

  He grinned then. An outrageously sexy grin. A grin that made her want to lick him all over again. Everywhere.

  “What did I do to deserve this kind of punishment?” he asked her. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. You must have been a very bad boy.” She laid her hand over his in mock comfort and jerked as a jolt of heat shot through her palm.

  “I was a very bad boy.” His eyes danced. “And I grew into a very bad man. Want to see proof?”

  Yes! Every instinct she possessed yelled in her head. She’d wanted proof when she was a teenager, and she wanted proof now. Hell, proof with Josh would be a fantastic way of taking that final step away from Ben.

  She suppressed her base needs and clung to her common sense instead, taking another sip of her drink for fortification. “I’d rather see proof of your sailing skills,” she told him. “I saw the cats out on the beach earlier. I’d have taken one out on my own, but since I have no idea how to sail and would probably flip the Hobie and drown myself, I figured I’d better not take a chance.”

  “Fair dinkum? You wanna go sailing with me?” He turned his hand palm up, and Sienna belatedly realized she’d forgotten to move her arm away. Before she could motivate herself to do just that, Josh clasped her hand in his.

  She bit her cheek, refusing to focus on the warmth of his skin as it wrapped around her hand. “That depends.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “On what?”

  “You gonna talk any more about those wet dreams you used to have?”

  Josh shook his head almost immediately, the epitome of a well-behaved kid—which he’d never been. “Hell, no. I promise.”

  Ah. Well, darn. “And you don’t have to work?”

  “I’m done for the week. Unless there’s an emergency, this afternoon and the entire weekend are all mine.”

  She smiled. “Then if you’d be willing to take me, I’d love to go sailing with you.”

  He stood and was tugging her up along with him before she’d finished talking. “Ace. Let’s go.”

  “Now?” What if she hadn’t given him a choice? What if he didn’t really want to go sailing and she’d just forced herself on him?

  He nodded. “Right now.”

  “Wh-what’s the rush?”

  He met her gaze
with his emerald green one. “You know how I promised not to talk about my teenage wet dreams?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Why, oh why did she feel like she was walking into a well-planned trap?

  His face lit up like a damned Christmas tree. “Well, I made no such promises about my adult ones. And believe me, Si, you don’t want anyone within ear distance when I tell you about those.”

  Chapter Three

  Sienna gaped at Josh. Again. Hell, she didn’t think she’d stopped gaping since he’d surprised her by the pool. But seriously, the words that came out of the man’s mouth were enough to make anyone gawk. And blush.

  He sat beside her on the Hobie’s trampoline, his legs stretched in front of him, one ankle propped over the other and the tiller caught under his arm. Wind whipped hair around his face, making him look wild, untamed and absolutely beautiful. Mirth and merriment glinted in his eyes like the rays of the afternoon sun glinted on the water.

  “You’re just saying all of that to make me blush again,” she told him accusingly.

  He shrugged, looking ridiculously adorable. “I’m saying it because it’s the truth.”

  Sienna straightened her shoulders and decided to call his bluff. She was no longer the tongue-tied kid. She was a mature, experienced adult, and she could give as good as she got.

  And if she got good, she gave good.

  Suppressing a smile, she glanced pointedly at his groin then ran her hand over the boom beneath the sail, trailing her fingers down the smooth metal. “This hard, huh?”

  “That hard.” He grinned at her. “But thicker."

  She wrapped her fingers around the metal and raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “You’re welcome to compare,” he offered generously and shifted his leg, inviting her to move her hand from the boom and settle it on his cock.

  Sienna’s grip on the bar tightened. Her mouth turned dry. Ben was the only man she’d desired in eight years. Eight long years. She still desired him. That was a hard, unrelenting fact she couldn’t deny.

  Yet sitting this close to Josh, with the salty, ocean air filling her nose and nothing but crystal water stretched out around them, her belly flipped from one side to the other. Hunger and lust coursed through her veins like an incoming tide. She wanted him. Wanted him with a fierceness that shook her.

  Not Ben. Josh.

  When once she’d lusted after him with all the innocence of a teenager, now very womanly needs tugged at her breasts and pulled at her pussy. Josh’s talk about the size of his erection was not helping matters at all. She resisted the urge to pump her hand up and down the boom, doing to it exactly what she wished to do to Josh.

  That, and so very much more.

  She sniffed. “You realize of course that I would have welcomed the chance to compare when we were at school.”

  His smile softened. “I’m willing to bet you didn’t even know what an erection was when we were at school.”

  Touché. Still, instead of blushing, she met his gaze head-on. No time like right now to do something about all those desires raging through her bloodstream. “I would’ve been open to your teaching me.”

  “Ah see, Si. If the teenage Josh had let you anywhere near his erection, it would have been game over before you’d even touched him once.” His eyelids drooped sexily. “Before you’d touched me once,” he corrected, his voice a whole heck of a lot deeper.

  Dear God. Was that simply desire in her veins? Felt more like a raging inferno.

  She folded her arms across her breasts, staring at him mulishly as her past and present merged in her mind. “Here’s what I don’t get.”

  He looked at her expectantly.

  “You knew I had the biggest crush on you for like, oh, five years. Heck, I even asked you to the Year Twelve Formal. You turned me down flat.” Ouch. That had hurt. Big-time.

  He merely nodded in agreement.

  With a huff, she went on. “You never once, in all that time, acknowledged any kind of returned attraction.”

  Another nod.

  Damn it. Did he have to agree so easily? Could he not maybe lie, and say something like he’d just kept his attraction to her under wraps?

  She gave him the evil eye. “Yet here you are, telling me I was your wet dream every night of your high school life. Telling me that seeing me now makes you hard all over again. I don’t get it. What did I do so wrong back then that you refused to show me any interest?”

  For a second, the laughter and happiness leeched from Josh’s face. His eyes…died. Emptied of emotion. And his lips thinned, fine lines fanning out from the sides of his mouth. “Si…”

  He shook his head, blinked, and a mask dropped over his face, hiding any sign of the misery she’d just seen.

  “Si,” he said again. “You were everything good and pure in school. Everything each poor male sap in our year dreamed about. You could have clicked your fingers and had anyone you wanted fall at your knees. You were a…princess.”

  Er, not quite the way she remembered it.

  She’d been a little overweight even then. Not a nerd exactly, but strait-laced and studious enough that she’d never been any guy’s first choice. Those privileges had always gone to Ky and Mack. She was the plain Jane, happy to hear about her friends’ conquests and determined to do her parents proud.

  “You were…” He hesitated, as though searching for the right word. “Perfect. Utterly perfect. The last thing you needed was me fouling up your reputation.”

  Do not gape at him again! “What the…? What reputation? And how on earth could you have fouled it up?”

  “It’s never good for the class angel to hang out with the class failure.”

  “Failure? What the hell, Josh? Are you and I talking about the same school?” No, Josh may not have passed with the Dux of Year Twelve Award, but as far as Sienna knew, he’d always gotten along just fine academically. And just fine with the girls too.

  Damn it, even now a sliver of jealousy crept under her ribs.

  “You were good, Si. I wasn’t. I refused to let my…ways blacken yours.”

  His ways? Blacken hers? “Seriously, Josh, you’re talking rubbish.” Hurt and anger assailed her. She could see only one reason he’d spout such crap. “If you didn’t like me then, that’s okay. You don’t have to like everyone. I can even appreciate that having a classmate fawning all over you might make you feel awkward. But don’t go feeding me some bullshit about you not being good enough, just to make me feel better.”

  Damn it, she shouldn’t have come out here with him. Shouldn’t have forced him to take her sailing. She’d been a burden to him back then apparently, and she’d just made herself a burden all over again. Her and her big mouth. Next time she’d just keep it shut. Every single insecurity she’d ever experienced at school came flooding back.

  Cold shivers spread up her arms even though the sun beat down on her shoulders. The sail billowed in the wind, making Josh tug a little harder on the tiller.

  “Know why I declined your invitation to the formal?” he finally asked.

  She refused to answer. She’d already said too much about their high school years and her ridiculous infatuation with him.

  “Because I had no way of paying for the tickets. Besides, if I’d missed work, even one night, my asshole boss would’ve fired my sorry ass.”

  She blinked. “You worked in high school?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t have a choice.”

  “When?”

  “Every night. Five to ten, at the fish and chips shop down the road.”

  She stared at him, stunned. How could she not have known?

  “And every weekend. Stacking shelves at Coles.”

  “Two jobs?”

  Another shrug. “Family had to eat.”

  “And you had to pay for the food?”

  “Me and Jarrod.”

  His older brother. “Wh-what about your parents?”

  “Ah, yeah. My parents. Let’s see. My old man, well, I have no idea why
he never gave us money. Probably because he spent seven of the twelve years I was in school in prison.”

  She knew her mouth hung open, but somehow she couldn’t close it.

  “And my mother? Yeah, she was good for work for a while. Until she discovered the attraction of the bottom of a gin bottle.”

  Her heart constricted. Dear God, what a childhood. How could she have been so blissfully unaware of the hardships in his life?

  She ached for the teenage boy he’d once been. Or maybe she ached for the boy he was never allowed to be. “So you and Jarrod were forced to work?”

  He angled the cat to the right, a little too far and too fast, and it tilted precariously. Sienna slid a little closer to Josh, so their legs pressed together. The muscles in his thigh were hard as rock and tense as elastic about to snap.

  He righted the cat, muttered an apology and turned the Hobie again, catching the wind. The cat sailed through the water, picking up speed.

  Sienna did not move her thigh. Not even an inch. She liked the way it felt resting against his. Liked the way the hair on his legs abraded her skin. Liked the way a tic pulsed in his cheek as he looked at her leg, then his, then up at the sail.

  “Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why was your dad in prison?”

  Big sigh. “Fraud.”

  “Is he out yet?”

  “I’d assume so, since he was given a nine-year sentence almost twenty years ago.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  Josh shook his head. “Never been interested enough to find out.”

  “But surely he came back to live with you when he got out?”

  His face was once again a blank mask. “He might have. We weren’t there.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Jarrod and I moved up north. To the Sunshine Coast.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She moved on with her bottle of gin. To this day I have no idea where they went.”