Real Men Do It Better

by Lora Leigh, Susan Donovan, Lori Wilde, Carrie Alexander

  “I studied a map of the island.”

  Prudence. She hadn’t expected that of him. Maybe Duncan had changed. She cocked her head and studied him. He looked different. Solid, more peaceful than before. Hope sprouted inside, took root, and grew. Maybe they could turn back time and start fresh. Maybe they could revive their lost friendship.

  Be careful, she warned herself. Those are dangerous thoughts.

  They stripped off their swim fins, oxygen tanks, and diving mask, and found a safe spot to leave them on the beach along with Duncan’s harpoon, out of reach of the rising tide. They headed inland, their feet sinking into the damp sand. The cooling air was rife with electrically charged ions, and goose bumps danced along Annie’s arms.

  The storm was rolling in fast. Lightning flared again, hot and brilliant in the dark blue sky.

  Duncan led the way, the Siren’s Call inside his diving bag banging against his thick, muscular thigh clad in the sleek black material of his dive suit. His shaggy, damp hair curled against his head. Here walked the King of the Sea.

  Her stomach tightened, sending sexy messages shooting straight to her pussy. She tried to ignore them, but she knew she was in trouble. Stranded. Alone. With an incredibly hot-bodied man and a magical mermaid idol with the potency of an aphrodisiac.

  Duncan pushed back the overgrowth, clearing the way for her. By the time they’d walked half a mile into the tropical forest, the storm was swirling overhead and fat drops of rain were splattering against the palm fronds.

  “Look there.” He pointed to an outcropping rising out of a stony bluff. It overhung a nice alcove, providing shelter from the storm. “Crawl under.”

  She ducked her head and slipped beneath the cliff. Duncan didn’t follow. Instead, he slipped the utility knife from his pocket and began slashing at palm fronds.

  “What are you doing?” she called, the wind whipping so loudly she had to shout to be heard.

  Duncan didn’t answer, just kept slashing at the fronds until he had collected a large pile. He gathered them up and strolled toward her. He looked down at her, and she looked up at him as the ache inside her grew to fever pitch.

  She saw the pulse pounding in his neck and she felt a corresponding throb between her legs. There was too much rubber between them. She wanted him naked. Now. Biting into her lip to suppress that crazy thought, she dropped her gaze.

  “Scoot over,” he commanded.

  When she did, he laid the palm fronds out across the rock slab, cushioning it.

  “Strip.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She bristled.

  “Take off your wetsuit.”

  “I will not.”

  “You can’t sit around in it. Besides, we can use the wetsuits to pad the palm fronds.”

  He had a point. What was comfortable in the water was miserably clingy and hot on shore. She had to leave the protective overhang in order to stand up. Duncan loomed over her, breathing hard and heavy, watching her shimmy out of her wetsuit as rain pelted their skin and lightning danced through the clouds.

  “Turn your head,” she said, feeling vulnerable and exposed.

  “What for, Annie? I’ve seen you naked before.”

  “I’m not naked. I have on a swimsuit.”

  His eyes blazed with overt sexual desire.

  “I mean it.” She tapped her foot.

  “Afraid the Siren’s Call will send me into a lust-filled frenzy at the sight of your bare skin?”

  “Something like that.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re such a tease,” she groused.

  “Admit it, you like that about me.” He wriggled his eyebrows.

  She did indeed, but she wasn’t about to admit it. She snapped her fingers and pointed in the opposite direction. “Avert your gaze.”

  He pretended to look away, but the minute she went to work on the zipper of her wetsuit she could feel his eyes on her again. She chose to ignore him, peeling the wetsuit off her body like it was a banana skin.

  Duncan audibly sucked in his breath, and belatedly Annie realized the top of her bikini had shifted underneath the wetsuit and one of her breasts was hanging out.

  She snapped her head around and met Duncan’s gaze.

  The look in his eye was so feral, so wild and hungry, she could scarcely breathe. He was the only man who’d ever looked at her with that much raw desire. It was a scary thing to acknowledge. Did she really hold that much sexual power over him? Before she had time to explore this new realization, a fresh clap of thunder brought a downpour. She tucked her breast back inside her bikini top and tossed him her wetsuit.

  He had taken off his wetsuit, too. God, he looked so good with those washboard abs. He laid their wetsuits atop the palm fronds, sat down, and held out his hand to her.

  In spite of her doubts about what was happening between them, she took his hand and crawled up under the overhang beside him.

  He wrapped one big strong arm around her waist and stretched them both out across the length of their makeshift bed. He nestled her into the curve of his body, her bottom pressed against his pelvis. She felt the determined poke of his cock through his swimsuit, but he made no move to take things further. They lay together, watching the rain tumble.

  Annie tried to deny the desire pushing up through her, closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on something other than the need knotting her entire body.

  They breathed in tandem. Close. Snug. Pressed together. But Duncan did not make a move on her.

  Why wasn’t he making a move on her? What in the hell was wrong with the man? How was he staying so controlled? He’d never been this controlled before.

  He had changed.

  And the more restraint he showed, the more desperate she became to have him. Oh, fuck this.

  She wanted him and she was going to have him. She wasn’t so young and naïve anymore, expecting happily-ever-after from a man who could never promise it. She was going to enjoy the sex for good sex’s sake and not read any more into the encounter. The Siren’s Call might be responsible for her uncontrollable horniness, but this time she knew what she was getting into. It was just sex and she was in control. This time, she’d keep her heart safe.

  “Let me see the Siren’s Call. I want to see her up close.”

  He sat up. She felt him rummaging around in his diving bag and a second later he was leaning over her, dangling the idol in front of her. She claimed it.

  Here was the enemy.

  The Siren’s Call stared at her through sultry, somnolent eyes, stirring her hormones, daring her to forget her pride, urging her to block out the chatter in her brain for one minute and listen to the throb of her hot, wet pussy.

  Do it. Fuck this man. You know you want to. It doesn’t have to mean happily-ever-after, just happily-ever-now.

  Her body responded in a gush, chemicals colliding, expanding. She felt a racy sense of exuberance, of a glorious feminine power. When she’d made love to Duncan the first time she’d been a shy virgin. But no more.

  She was a woman indulging her sexuality. Like froth on the ocean’s tide, captured by the pull of the moon, carried by the swell of pheromones, mesmerized by the lure of the Siren’s Call, she let herself be swept away. Setting the idol aside, she rolled onto her back on the bed of palm fronds and wetsuits.

  Duncan was propped up on one elbow, his head just inches below the top of the overhang. “I know exactly what you need,” he murmured.

  Normally she wouldn’t have let him get away with sounding so cocky, but she wanted him so much, and her aching clit was just throbbing for his caress. “Oh, yeah?”

  He winked wickedly.

  She swallowed great thick gulps of air. “What’s that?”

  “You need to be cherished by a man who knows how to take care of you.”

  She wasn’t going to let him turn this into something romantic. “Wrong, I need your hard, hot cock, and I need it now.”

  He looked taken aback, but just for a moment.
A smug smile curled his lips. “Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

  “Hurry, hurry, I can’t stand waiting.”

  “That starved are you, Harvard?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “The Siren’s Call strikes again. Unfortunately she’s played a cruel trick on us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “No condoms.”

  Dammit! The Siren’s Call had made her so irrational she hadn’t even thought of protection. Annie bit her bottom lip and then smiled provocatively. “Um … there are other things we could do.”

  “Why, Annie Graves, what are you suggesting?” He pretended to be shocked.

  Her pussy was already slicked up and juicy for him. The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice was driving her to distraction.

  The overhanging rock cast his face in shadows. He looked savage, primitive. His high cheekbones appeared razor-sharp, his lips full and foreboding, his chin a cleft darkened by beard stubble. For a moment, the man she had known since she was thirteen looked like a total stranger.

  The sensation skyrocketed her arousal. Her erogenous triggers went off, nipples pebbling, womb contracting, every nerve ending taking note of this strong, determined male.

  “You look like you’re about to go on a salvage dive, Duncan. That’s the only other time I’ve seen such focus on your face.”

  “I am on a salvage dive, babe,” he teased, and she caught his meaning. He slipped a hand between her thighs, which she had pressed tightly together, just above her knees. “Going after the treasure I lost.”

  Every muscle in her body clamped down hard, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from moaning.

  “Go ahead.” His voice lowered, went huskier, just like in her dream. “Moan all you want. There’s no one around to hear you but me. Ah, the things I’m going to do to you.”

  Things? What things? A dozen stimulating images tumbled through her head.

  Keeping his hand wedged between her thighs, Duncan twisted his body around until his head was resting at her feet and his own bare toes were rubbing against her hair. He dusted off her feet, dispersing the fine grains of sand clinging to her skin, and then slowly took her big toe into his hot mouth.

  “Oh, Duncan,” she breathed. The sensation was so erotic. “You’ve acquired a toe fetish, you big perv.”

  He suckled her toe while his hand tickled the inside of her thigh. She let her knees drop outward, giving him easier access. He made a noise of satisfaction, took his fingers and massaged the sole of her foot as he continued to lap at her toes.

  What a feeling!

  He must have hit some kind of reflexology trigger point because a glorious sensation shot through the bottom of her foot, straight up into her clenching womb. Automatically, her hips arched up off the ground. A desperate keening cry slipped past her lips. She fisted her hands, swept away like a boat in a storm, as his mouth left her toes and trailed up her right leg, his fingers gliding over her left.

  His tongue was her master, commanding her to moan and squirm and beg as he inched from her ankles to her shin to her kneecap. This was the sexiest thing that had ever happened to her. She had no idea her toes and feet and legs were so sensitive, so desperate for attention. Who would have thought that Duncan’s mouth against her inner thigh would feel so fucking erotic?

  He reached up with one hand to touch her bare midriff. His fingers brushed against the pearl at her navel, enlivening things even more. His mouth moved higher and higher up her thigh. One hand was strumming her navel. The other hand was rubbing the back of her kneecap.

  Annie was in tumult. She shouldn’t want this. She should resist. Should fight the lure of the Siren’s Call. But she was hamstrung by her desire. Overcome by the passion she tried so hard to deny. All her long-held values and beliefs about life and passion and safety just crumbled. Helplessly, she quivered in his arms.

  “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he breathed, pulling his lips from her skin, raising his head, and gazing into her eyes.

  Nervously, she reached up to finger her chin.

  “Stop doing that,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Touching your chin. The scar doesn’t detract from your beauty one bit.”

  “I’m not beautiful,” she denied. “I’m well-rounded, not leggy. I’m short and I have freckles and, of course, there’s this.” She touched the scar again.

  “Who says well-rounded and petite and freckled isn’t beautiful?”

  “You.”

  “When did I ever say that?”

  “Not in words, but in action. You go for tall, leggy blondes with flawless features. Think about those women who followed you into the dive shop.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Face it, Duncan, I’m not your type.”

  “I’ll show you my type,” he growled, shifting positions again, straddling her, his hard throbbing cock pressing against her belly as he leaned down to kiss her.

  His tongue drifted over her teeth. His fingers teased her nipples beneath the material of her bikini top. The sensation was out of this world. Blood pumped through her body, echoed in her ears, the strum of life singing inside her.

  Annie’s nipples were rock hard, her breasts swollen and achy. A strange, wondrous surge of heat blazed from her tense nipples straight into her womb. She was dripping for him. Juicy and ready.

  “You like?” He pulled his mouth from hers, his voice rough as a caveman’s, and peered deeply into her eyes.

  She nodded. His fingers were busy slipping the strap of her bikini slowly off her shoulders. Annie whimpered.

  Where had this come from? She was a strong woman who didn’t let her desires reduce her to a quivering mass. Why was she so willingly capitulating to him? Especially when she knew exactly how much he could hurt her.

  It’s the Siren’s Call.

  This was miserable. This was joy. This boomerang of emotions. How could she want him so much yet be so afraid of her desire? Her brain told her to fight it, to push him away, to jump up and run out into the pouring rain. To drown herself in the ocean, if that’s what it took not to make the same mistake. But her body wasn’t having any of it.

  Her hands were on his face, caressing his cheek, peering into his eyes, begging him for more. Passion—the thing she feared most—crowded out prudence. All she could think about was his masculine fingers stroking her super-sensitive flesh to a five-alarm blaze.

  “Oh, God, Annie,” he said once her bikini top was off. “You’re fucking fabulous.”

  She blushed, never believing but always secretly hoping she’d be back here again. Duncan’s fiery gaze roved over her, his hands sending ribbons of pleasure unfurling throughout her body.

  A sneaky, double-crossing part of her wanted to cry out with joy that she was in Duncan’s arms. That they had a second chance. The euphoria of that idea was sweet, but dangerous. She refused to explore the possibility. This was strictly sex, nothing more.

  “Duncan,” she breathed, tossed by her tumultuous thoughts. Longing overwhelmed her. She couldn’t resist. He was so damned handsome with that shock of brown hair plastered against his thick, tanned skin.

  A smile tilted his lips when she reached up, threaded her arms around his neck, and brought his head down for another kiss. The length of his hard body was pressed against hers. His tongue dipped languidly into her mouth.

  She strummed her tongue against his, making herself an active participant. If she was going to go through with this, then she was going to take full responsibility for what happened. Afterward, she could tell herself she’d known exactly what she was doing. This time, there would be no regrets. Annie didn’t stop him when his hand drifted to her bikini bottoms.

  “Lift up your hips,” he commanded.

  She obeyed, levering her lower back off the bed of palm fronds as his big hand made short work of the slight material.

  He made a guttural sound low in h
is throat. This was it. No begging off now. He rolled to one side and stripped off his swim trunks in a motion so practiced she had to wonder how many bedrooms he’d performed it in. How many other women he’d slept with. His erection burgeoned, thick and heavily veined, the velvety head purpled and pulsating.

  “My, my,” she cooed. “You’re bigger than I remembered.”

  It was his turn to blush, and that blush did a strange thing to her heart. He was shy with her. This big, commanding man.

  Stop it! Don’t let his vulnerability get to you.

  She sat up and reached for him, but he grabbed her around the wrist to stop her. “Touch me now, Annie Graves,” he said, his accent heavier than usual, “and I’ll blow.”

  Lowering his head, he pressed his lips to her bare belly and kissed his way back up to her straining nipples. She quivered.

  “Does that feel good, Annie? Tell me what you like.”

  “Good.” It was all she could manage.

  He flicked his tongue over one straining bud and then oh-so-lightly bit down. Razor-thin shards of pleasure spread throughout her breast. She moaned.

  “Good?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Fabulous.”

  He grinned and kept at it. His mouth sucking, his tongue teasing, fingers tickling. Brilliant. He’d learned a lot in five years. He’d honed his technique.

  He left her nipples and traveled downward. He spent a little time at her navel, pulling the pearl ring in and out of his mouth. The maneuver produced crazy, erotic ripples in her belly that undulated all the way down into her pussy. When his lips reached her straining, hungry clit, he stopped just short of touching her with his tongue. His breath was hot against her tender flesh, igniting her beyond comprehension.

  She arched her hips again, trying to bring his mouth and her clit into contact, but he read her like a GPS tracking device and moved with her, keeping his mouth just out of her reach,

  “Beast,” she hissed.

  He laughed.

  “Bastard.”

  “Hang on, babe. Well get there.”

  She didn’t want to hang on. She wanted him to fuck her with his mouth right this second. Her brain was glazed with lust, her body worked to a fevered pitch.