But some devil had her by the heels, one that was tired of doing what was right, what was expected. What was best for someone who wasn’t Skye. She wanted to be selfish, greedy and hungry with no thought for consequence or fallout. No consideration for anyone but herself.
She was on the clock. Skye felt that certainty deep in her blue blood. It was only a matter of time before the vast Thornquist resources were used to find her. An amateur at this hiding business, she was surprised some private detective hadn’t already located her hiding spot. She might be counting her short-lived freedom in days, but by God, she was going to enjoy what little time she had left.
And if she couldn’t invite Grant Sisti to help her do that, maybe she could incite him to it instead.
“Careful, nymph,” he warned her now. “You don’t want to play this game with me.”
“Please. Like you’re going to do anything about it. All wrapped up in noble intentions to protect my virtue. Does this look like a Victorian romance novel?”
“Sweetheart, in that bikini? With your sensational smile? Protecting your virtue is now the farthest thing from my mind.” His face was full of a hot promise that made her shiver. Something the curve of his mouth told her he noticed.
Oh, how that confidence irked her! “Pardon me if I don’t clutch my pearls.”
His hands slipped into his pockets, relaxing the tight line of his shoulders. She could practically see him regroup to re-engage. “You weren’t this lippy last night,” he noted. “Showed some cheek, yeah, but now you’re getting reckless.”
“I was naked,” she reminded him unnecessarily. “Pretty much showed all cheek.”
He flashed what she thought of as his lady-killer grin, but she could tell he didn’t commit to it. “Not what I meant, but yeah, hard not to notice that too.” The curve of his mouth turned knowing and lazy. “Very hard.”
She swept a look down his form, lingering on his crotch before one brow lifted with manufactured nonchalance. Skye was a little taken aback by her dive into hitherto untried sexual parlay. She didn’t know where it came from—it certainly wasn’t employed in her usual social strata—but she liked it. “Must be a disappointment when such promise turns out to be only another empty…package.”
That grin broke wide as he laughed and Skye nearly swallowed her tongue. The grumpy bruiser disappeared and for a moment she saw again the charming rogue who’d once skillfully divested her of a complicated couture cocktail dress in less than a minute. He was gorgeous always, but when he let himself be without guarding every word or gauging everything, he was irresistible.
The uncharacteristic candor that had taken control of her drove Skye to remark, “You’re ridiculously handsome when you do that.”
To her regret, he immediately went quiet, stifling his lapse with a scowl he directed toward the sea, avoiding her searching look. Almost, she wished he hadn’t laughed in the first place. These glimpses of the man she knew before were a bitter pain, a broken memory of what could have been.
What she’d once abandoned.
What calamity had changed him into this reticent, careful man?
And what did she possibly think she could do about it?
He’d wham bam, thank you ma’amed her drunk behind before walking out on her, then had the gall not to even remember her six months later when he kicked that same naked behind (though now, sadly, sober) out of his expensive villa! Okay, yeah, sure, she’d skinny dipped in his pool, but the man she at least had the courtesy to remember (even if that memory was two shades short of mortifying) wasn’t the type to turn down unencumbered sex.
Unless it was sex with her.
And now, here he was again. Her own personal albatross.
She wasn’t there to take on his burden, no matter the heart clench she felt every time she looked at him. She was done being the second- or third-thought. There’d been too many years when she’d been made to bear the brunt of other people’s life-changing decisions.
Which explained how she’d wound up a bridesmaid at her fiancé’s wedding to her sister.
When fresh pain pierced through her chest at the memory, she breathed deep and tilted her chin back up at the sky. “Go away, albatross,” she ordered, not caring she was rude, and unaware of the defeat that peppered her words. “You have successfully harshed my bliss. Surely that’s achieved your mission objective for the day.”
Silence dropped around them, a small pocket barely pierced by the continued noise passing for music and the man-children’s loathsome conversation.
“Ah nymph,” Grant said finally. “You do have a knack for turning my good intentions to shit.” She felt him shift on the sand, so close, his long legs brushed hers. She opened her eyes in time to see him dropped down next to her. He tossed his aviators onto the blanket before mimicking her pose, angled back on muscular forearms so that his biceps and shoulders bulged as they took his weight. He was fluid movement personified, even on unwieldy sand. Especially on the sand.
“That’s just creepy.”
“What?”
“No one’s that smooth on sand.”
He shrugged. “SEALs are smooth on everything.”
“Oh, you’re not arrogant.”
“It’s not arrogance when it’s true.”
She rolled her eyes then realized he couldn’t see them behind her shades. She plucked them off and shoved them back into the tangle of her hair. “Why are you here?”
“Toldja, my friend got re-married. To his ex-wife.”
“Really?
“Yup. If you’d stuck around till this morning, you would’ve met them when they came ’round the villa for breakfast.”
Skye decided not to remind him (again) that he’d kicked her out last night. Instead, she cycled back through her mental notes on the resort’s schedule. The exercise served as a distraction that spilled over her frayed emotions, soothing newly sprung cracks. “The McQueen wedding, right? Those are your friends?” He nodded assent. “And they had nothing better to do the first morning of their honeymoon than have breakfast with you?”
“Queen’s got a responsibility streak that makes the Grand Canyon look like a pot hole. If he feels one of his people is out of sorts, he doesn’t delay no matter the occasion.” He caught her moue of confusion. “Queen is Jasper’s call sign. His SEAL nickname,” he clarified.
“His wife must be very understanding.”
“Well, it’s their second time around with this marriage shit, so, yeah, she’s got his number by now.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here on this beach.” She peered at him from the corner of her eye. “Were you looking for me?”
“That would be telling.”
“My boss Mandy is the only one who knows I’m here, and she never would’ve given me up to some stranger.”
“You’re discounting my skills at interrogation.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “Like you’d waterboard a cleaning lady to locate your thwarted hookup.”
“Only if I thought it’d work. Relax. It’s been at least…” he pretended to count back, “…three weeks since I had to waterboard anyone. And I could tell in a glance that your Mandy is far too loyal anyway.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It is if you do it right. I’m a SEAL,” he continued over her gasp of outrage. “If I can’t track a water nymph on a secluded island, I have to turn in my trident.”
“You’re a SEAL,” she repeated. “Not Aquaman.”
“All of the DC and Marvel canon available, and you go with Aquaman?”
Skye lifted one hand, palm up. “Trident.” She raised the other the same way. “Aquaman.” She moved both hands up and down as though balancing a scale.
“A SEAL’s trident is a pin, but otherwise, I follow that bouncing ball.”
Skye ran her morning back through her mind, searching for who else might’ve given up her location. “It was the resort’s transportation guy, wasn’t it?”
“His gi
rlfriend’s gonna love the romantic dinner he buys her with the couple hundred I slipped him for the intel.”
“Proving again that anyone can be bought,” she murmured, cynically. “Even for useless information.” Hardly a revelation for people like her who’d seen money cross hands to bellboys and chauffeurs and the like all her life. “Well, you found me. Congratulations sailor.”
“I’m a lieutenant, actually,” he corrected. “And we have unfinished business.”
“Nothing about me is your business,” she declared.
“I remember you.”
The words were so soft, it took several seconds for them to resonate in Skye, a slow earthquake that rippled out with increasing impact as their meaning and consequence took root.
Skye licked her lips. “What, exactly, do you think you remember?” He could be testing her, drawing her out merely on a suspicion to get her to share secrets without him actually remembering the night they’d shared.
“I remember hauling your drunk ass out of the resort pool, cocktail dress and all. Armani as I recall. Sensual and classy. Like its wearer.”
The compliment skipped over her, meaningless and trivial compared to the threat this man now represented. He remembered her. That meant he knew who she was—what she was—and could reveal her to her family long before she was ready to be found.
She sprung up again, a taut bow of outrage and panic, but before she could get to her feet, he was on her, one arm around her back, the other shooting beneath her knees. Before she knew which end was up, he lifted her, following her around to roll her under him, half on, half off the wide beach towel. He settled into the cradle of her pelvis and pinned her hands above her head with one hand on her wrists so fast, she was trapped before she knew it.
Automatically, she bucked, planting her feet for added leverage, her knees high on his sides. To any passersby, they’d look like a couple getting too amorous for a public beach. The move caught him by surprise, though, enough that she managed to shift them further onto the sand. But Grant contained her in the next second, the denim of his jeans scraping the insides of her thighs as he pressed their bodies together.
“Settle,” he warned when she did it again.
“You settle!” She bucked again, knees clenching his ribs. His legs pressed her thighs wider, setting her off balance. The weight of his growing erection pressed exactly where she didn’t want to need it. Their struggle challenged the limits of her top until the tie behind her head came loose. Only the pressure of Grant’s chest kept the scraps of fabric from falling off entirely. She felt her nipples contract into hard points from the friction of their struggle, and she was so incensed by this physical betrayal, she raised her head to yell in his face. “Get OFF!”
“I won’t rat you out. Trust me.”
“Not—on—your—life!” She grunted each word as they tussled. But the victor was a foregone conclusion.
One hand squeezed her wrists while the other clamped her hip with his wide palm, holding her with laughable ease. Stress lines radiated out from his narrowed eyes. The merciless gleam in them gave her a hard pause. Skye suddenly knew how his enemies must feel to see him looming above them with that predatory look.
“Squirm some more, babe. See what that gets you.”
Instantly, she stopped moving and silently fumed at his smug satisfaction. Panting, her heartbeat thumped in her ears, and she hated that it had only a little to do with fury and absolutely nothing to do with fear.
Above her, he was barely winded, which was so annoying. She glared up at him, determined not to give him an inch, even if he had subdued her with a laughable lack of effort.
It took her a minute to realize she’d lost his attention. Instead, Grant glared off to the side and she realized the man-children had been cat-calling while she grappled with Grant. Skye turned so she and Grant were cheek to cheek and saw they were the focus of avid fascination for a trio of dude bros.
“Yo bro, you-are-the-man!” One bragging buffoon leered at Skye’s side boob. Hot shame flooded her cheeks with color. Bulky with oversized muscles, he affected a lewd man-spread and patted his lap. “You finish, I got just the place for her.”
She fought the urge to duck her face under Grant’s chin and instead, stuck her nose in the air. Thornquists never hide.
“Get your fucking eyes off her,” Grant ordered, voice lethal.
Skye saw Dude Bro’s Adam’s apple bobble as he held his hands up in front of his pudgy form. “‘A’ight, bro. I feel ya.”
“You feel me? The hell are you from, South Central?”
“Where’s that?”
“Jesus fuck me. LA, kid, it’s a ghetto in Los Angeles.”
“Nah, I’m from Mimosa Key,” dude bro supplied.
“Then sound like it, for fuck’s sake.” Grant’s chin jutted toward water, but he stayed in place, giving Skye a modicum of coverage from their leering eyes. “Take your friends and go down there, Tupac, until the lady leaves.”
The petulant gleam of injured pride wasn’t strong enough to keep the boys from scrambling to their feet and taking off for the water’s edge. Grant tracked them till they reach a decent distance. Skye was grateful to see them gone.
“Stupid kid.” Grant turned back to her, and wound up close enough their noses nearly touched. “I was a dick last night and didn’t recognize you,” he admitted. “But you changed your look. Dyed your hair. Added some new tattoos I should’ve figured were temps. Slathered on enough makeup to make me wonder who you’re trying to hide from. Even with all that, there was something so familiar about you. Couldn’t figure out how or why.
“Now I know.” His head slid to the side and Skye trembled for a different reason when he nipped at the jittery pulse in her neck. Her neck stretched back with an invitation he was eager to take. His hand slipped to pull one strand of her top out of his way before she felt his tongue on her throat as his mouth followed the line of it up to her ear. “I remember how you taste. How you feel when I’m inside you. How you sound when I make you come.”
That was an uncomfortably thorough and arousing account. Her legs shifted on the sand, restless with the need to relax beneath him and take all that was promised by his hard body and hot words.
“And sweetheart,” he continued, head lifting out of her neck so he could stare into her face. “When a girl runs out on you after a night of spectacular sex, it’s the definition of unfinished business.”
“You left first,” she accused, a child’s defense, but all she could manage against a tsunami of arousal. Dammit.
He released her wrists and brushed her hair back from her forehead before spearing his fingers through the bunched strands to cradle her head in his wide palm. “My friend needed me,” he explained, no less terse for the gentle way he touched her. “The same friend, funny enough, who got remarried last night, no small part because six months ago, I left a sexy debutante passed out in my bed to help him get his head outta his ass and make up with his then ex-wife. I didn’t think you’d bail the second I was gone!”
Remembering how hurt she’d been when she realized he’d run out on her re-ignited Skye’s ire. “Then you should’ve left a note!” She shoved at his shoulders, not that she could move him, but so frustrated, she couldn’t hold back. “Let me up!”
He cursed under his breath, but set her free, sliding off to her right so he shielded her while she set her suit to rights.
“I figured,” he growled, over his shoulder, “that after a night that good, you’d want more. I damn well did.” Checking she was decent, he flipped back around to face her. “Because, you’re right. What happened between us was a goddamn sexual unicorn. I wanted more. I wanted you. All the while, you were using the security guard to work out your rich-girl issues. Daddy cut off your trust fund again?”
She sucked a breath in through her teeth and lurched upright. “You have no idea what I was dealing with that night.”
“Ditto, princess,” he shot back.
“I’m not a princess.” She’d been cleaning toilets for long enough to bring that fact home.
Grant cocked an elbow on his bent knee and sneered, “You are. An American princess. Privileged and entitled. I grew up with your kind, sweetheart. I know your kind.”
“You do not know me.” Skye swept sand off her arms with a regal sniff, unconsciously giving weight to his label. “Amazing that you suddenly recall such salient details of our…dalliance when last night it escaped your memory entirely despite the fact that I stood naked before you. How convenient for you to stumble upon the details now. When, exactly, did you deign to remember you had…Biblical knowledge of me six months ago?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Biblical?”
“So help me, if you laugh…”
“This morning.” He cut her off before she could finish what they both knew would’ve been an empty threat. “I remembered this morning when Jasper and Quinn surprised me with morning-after breakfast. He brought up when I pulled you from the pool back then and—” He snapped his fingers so close to her face, she started in place. “Your puzzle pieces clicked together.”
“I am not a puzzle!”
“Baby, you are a Rubik’s Cube of contradictions. Fortunately, I’ve been well-trained in decoding all possible combinations.”
That would be disastrous.
God, he remembered. And in detail. Skye floundered for a retort, rattled by too many quick changes to find stable footing.
As if sensing his advantage, Grant tugged her back in his arms. One calloused thumb rubbed her button lip; it caught on wind-chapped flesh, so that her tongue shot out to moisten his digit. She watched his pupil flare into a sharp green as desire drew his skin taut across the craggy planes of his face.
A low keen hit her ear and Skye was too turned on to be mortified when she realized it came from her.
“Oh yeah,” Grant said, his words a sibilant sound against her cheek. His hand cupped her jaw, thumb sweeping back over her parted mouth. “I remember that too.”
This was bad. This was very, very bad. She was getting sucked back under when he’d already turned her down once. Truth was, she didn’t want to find someone else to be with for however long she had left here on Mimosa Key. Not when she was drawn to him like an opposing polarity, constantly failing to break the laws of magnetism and getting stuck on him over and over again.
SEALed With a Twist Page 9