by Renee Roszel
“What does it look like?” she chided. “And don’t get any ideas, David. My body is my own and my nudity has nothing to do with you anymore.”
He gritted his teeth. He’d spent the week being frustrated in more ways than one over this woman and her calculated plan to drive him crazy. Well, if this was the newest attack in her scheme, then she may have struck upon the perfect way. He didn’t know if he could just stand there watching her, seeing her lovely lithe body—her slender arms, her firm, creamy legs, her satiny breasts….
He was half bent over with lust as she vanished below the rim of the cliff. The woman was really going to do it! With a raw curse, he decided that little Mrs. I-Dare-You-to-Touch-Me had taunted him once too often in the past week. Ripping off his tie, he headed out the door. So, she wanted to play games, did she? Well, two could play at this one. He could never recall a time when she’d resisted the invitation of his naked body, and he didn’t plan to pass up an opportunity to let her try.
By the time he’d reached the sand below and was sure Gina had turned her aghast attention on him, he dropped one maroon suspender and then the other. The sound of his slack’s zipper was loud even against the sound of the lapping waves.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Gina cried out.
His smile was so devilish, it sent a shiver of alarm up her spine.
“David—don’t you dare!”
With provocative disobedience, he allowed his white slacks to slide down over a shirttail that whispered of hidden, masculine delights. On down, down those plaguing trousers slid, revealing powerful thighs, to fall at last in a shameless heap around sexy, totally unprofessorial calves.
4
Gina came up on one elbow, staring as David stepped out of his trousers. Standing there clad only in a pin-striped dress shirt, Jockey shorts and socks, a devilish glint sparkled in his eyes. Sexy and half naked, he even managed to make removing his socks an erotic experience. Gina blinked and licked her lips nervously—or was her action in some small way anticipatory?
She stiffened as he began to unbutton his shirt. “David. This is ridiculous.” Bolting up to a sitting position, she demanded, “Get back into the house.”
He tossed her a half grin ripe with wicked defiance. “It’s my beach, too,” he reminded her as the shirt fluttered to the sand, revealing a sculptured chest to which the sun paid golden homage. Planes of light and shadow mischievously shifted as he moved his body. A simple lift of a shoulder or the slow, contrived turn of a hip proved to be more seductive than any lewd bump and grind might have been.
David’s striptease, though smooth and alluring, was relentless in its aim, mounting to a blistering crescendo. She swallowed, not happy with the heat that had begun to gnaw in the pit of her stomach.
Clad only in Jockey shorts, David hooked a thumb under the elastic band at his waist, threatening her with an explicit wink as he began to tug the fabric down.
She stared with the same fascination as one might watch a cobra as it prepares to strike. The well-developed muscle that angled across his hipbones became exposed, and then the taut, rounded rise of the hip itself. The dark swirl of hair that had tapered off below his chest, began to broaden again. To save herself, Gina forced her gaze away and, dragging her watery limbs beneath her, she struggled to her feet, sputtering, “I—I think I’ll go for a swim.”
“Getting hot?” he queried as she scurried and stumbled toward the lapping water.
She frowned, pretending to ignore the taunt in his words, concentrating on ignoring him. Unfortunately, some unmanageable part of her consciousness insisted upon noting the exact instant those Jockey shorts hit the sand. She had no idea that her peripheral vision was so encompassing. She wished, at that moment, that she were more inclined toward tunnel vision—at least where one wanton doctor of physics was concerned.
The cold seawater hit her calves and she gasped. But since her naked husband was approaching on her left, she decided a cold dip was preferable to a hot tumble, since the hot tumble would cure nothing—except a disquieting flame searing a familiar region deep within her.
As she surged into the water, she instinctively spun away from the wind-tossed spray. It was a bad move, for when she turned her back on the spray, she was put in full view of David, who had reached thigh depth in the water. Immediately her gaze was drawn to an area below his waist where the sun glinted unexpectedly, and she sucked in a harsh breath that had nothing to do with the chill of the surf against her bare backside.
He stood there under the bright midafternoon sun—his shoulders broad, sunlit, with more than just his stance gorgeously erect. His burnished hair was tossed across his brow by the wind; his thighs were damp, bold and strong. Seeing him there like that, dynamically aroused, he seemed more than merely human. He was something out of mythology—perhaps Poseidon, the Greek god who ruled the sea. And as he looked now, she could well imagine that, with such a scepter, he could rule very, very satisfactorily!
Hating the unruly thought, she decided to put considerable distance between them. In a rush to get away, she stumbled, falling backward into the frigid depths. Floundering, struggling for breath, she sucked in salt water instead of precious air. By the time she realized she’d been lifted clear of the suffocating brine and could stop flailing, she was too spent from coughing to fight the fact that David was holding her in his arms, his expression a dark mixture of ill temper and worry.
“Dav—” she broke into another sputter of coughing “—put—me—”
“Not this time, darling,” he vowed, hauling her toward the beach.
Gina cleared a heavy tangle of dripping-wet curls from her face and squinted up at him. His set features were spangled with water from her thrashing. “I’m—I’m not through swimming yet,” she finally managed, only to see his face soften minimally.
“Is that what you were doing?”
She coughed again. “I just fell—anybody can fall. Now I’m going to swim.”
“We can swim later.”
“Later?” She stiffened with distrust. “Why not now?”
“Because, my dear,” he whispered as he knelt on the sand and lowered her to her towel. “Right now, we’re going to make love.”
As her hips came to rest on the terry cloth, she pressed her hands to his chest. “We’re not!” Somehow the remark didn’t come out so much as a command as an expression of awed surprise.
He smiled down at her, and she was fascinated by the water that spangled on his lashes, both upper and lower. He had the most beautiful eyes of any man she’d ever seen.
“I’ve missed you, Gina,” he whispered before lowering a tentative kiss to graze her upper lip.
The sweet restraint of his lips sent a shiver of uninvited delight along her spine, completely defusing her planned resistance. His face above hers again, he watched her for a moment, his expression open, loving. She was suddenly lost in his spell, and with an almost-eager expectancy, she found herself tracing with her tongue the place where his mouth had been. Relishing the salty warmth of it, Gina searched his face, her eyes aglow with reluctant invitation.
For David, her quiet observation was invitation enough.
When he once again lowered his lips to hers, her body was all too eager for his touch, her mind clouded by temporary insanity. David’s second kiss was coupled with a gentle settling of his nakedness over hers. A breathy sigh escaped her lips when his body bestowed its message of carnal delights to come.
His name became a pained whimper as his kisses, like honey drops of fire, did their work, heating her to a state of gasping desire.
His hands teased, tortured, drawing from her a hunger to be led astray—beyond her will, her good sense, her life’s plan—to be, once again, one with David Baron, her mate and her nemesis.
Not until she was crying out his name, clawing at his back, did David relent in his lusty pillaging of her defenses. He had been an amorous aggressor, without shame or remorse, for he was fighting for his ver
y life—the only life he desired to live: with Gina. He knew how to move her, to touch her, to kiss and stroke her. He knew the secrets of her nape, her inner wrists, the sensitive hollow of her back. He knew the sound of her breathing and how to judge from it the extent of her need for him. He used this knowledge well. It pleased him when her body responded wildly to his ministrations, when her legs heeded a natural, earthly call and parted with invitation.
He felt blessed when her nails raked lovingly, desperately, along his back. How long he’d dreamed of such sweet pain, of such unstrung longing in her trembling limbs, and of her fragile, thready cries.
Finally, when she was at the pinnacle of urgency, he allowed himself the delight of slipping into the dear moistness of his only love. His moan was one mixed equally with divine deliverance and repressed pain. Tears came to his eyes with his reverent relief as she enclosed him within the carnal embrace of her legs, and they began the familiar, yet ever-new and renewing, lover’s dance.
Gradually at first, they relished the exultation of becoming one pulsating being, mending and rejuvenating themselves within each other. Moved by David’s sexual urgings, Gina experienced the rapture of heightened feelings. She found herself being lifted toward a dizzying place that she’d prayed never again to know—at least not at David’s expert hands. She was panting, whimpering, but not with regret—though her mind should have been set in that direction.
Gina was exploding with pleasure—flesh-rending, extravagant delights that no woman should be able to live through. Every time David brought her to this white-hot brink of ecstasy, she found herself believing that only sweet death could release her from the fuse that his sexual prowess had ignited. With a cry that frightened seabirds from their sun-drenched beach, her body shuddered and came apart. David, her David—distressing, disobedient David—had once again catapulted her into the orgasmic firmament.
As she began the long, sweet slide back to sanity, she found herself wondering about the big bang theory. Could it possibly have more to do with how a certain devastating seductive physicist could make love, than any piddling hypothesis about the origin of the universe?
“What’s funny?” he asked, sounding charmingly hoarse and breathless.
She hadn’t realized she’d smiled, let alone released a low giggle. Opening her eyes, she encircled his shoulders more tightly with her arms and sighed. “Oh—obviously I’ve been married to a physicist too long. I was just thinking of the big bang.”
He looked confused at first, and then his expression softened into a crooked grin. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Unable to help herself, she lifted her head and kissed his chin. “You’re a very bad boy, you know,” she admonished softly. “This wasn’t on my list of things to do today.”
He settled his powerful thighs more comfortable—still secure, deep inside the warmth of her body—and retorted with a knowing grin, “Yes, it was, Gina. Did you really think prancing around naked would drive me away?”
She squinted up at him, trying to understand herself, her own motivation. “I really—I…” She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know.” The last remark was barely audible.
“Yes, you do, Gina,” he insisted, shifting slightly and drawing from her a gasp of pleasure. “Just as I know what we’re going to do now.”
She swallowed, her body reacting with such heat and renewed desire to his sly movement that she was appalled with herself for allowing him to manipulate her so easily. But before she could remind him that they were in the process of getting a divorce, and that her nudity had been nothing more than a bad miscalculation today, and that things were no different, she was sighing again, reveling in his passionate, wicked pursuit of their mutual ecstasy. She mumbled no words of wretched regret, harbored no thoughts of bitter remorse; she only cried the soft cries of a woman delighting in a fulfilling sexual adventure.
Some time later, they lay there, spent, their bodies blushed with passion against the pale sand. David teased the lobe of Gina’s ear and she stirred from her contented half-slumber. With his teeth nipping her earlobe and his hand resting on her stomach, he murmured, “You know, darling, these next three weeks will make a wonderful second honeymoon before we have to get back for the fall semester.”
Gina, now full awake, turned to study his handsome face, softened with satisfaction at having her lying there so docile and deliciously naked beside him.
“But…” she began, but her voice faded. How could she break his heart? My God, her body still glowed with his lovemaking. How could she tell him there would be no second honeymoon?
He grinned at her as he came up on one elbow. Languidly he began to trace along her rib cage, drawing a shiver of new delight from her. “I know what you’re going to say, love,” he drawled softly. “While we’re here in California, we should run down to Los Angeles. You’ll need new clothes. After all, you can’t go back to AEI looking like a hippie—”
She put her hands over his, stopping his sensual trek along the undersides of her breasts. “Wait a minute,” she began again, this time more sternly. There was no putting this off. She drew away, coming up to a sitting position. “David, please. Nothing has changed between us.”
She watched the happiness—the trace of smugness—fade from his face, to be replaced by confusion. “Gina,” he said quietly, “that’s not funny, darling.” He moved toward her, and she had to jump to her feet to avoid being taken into his arms. When she did that, his expression grew desolate. “You’re not joking,” he mumbled, disbelief ripe in his words.
She shook her head, her damp curls slapping her shoulders, as though even her hair were angry with her decision. But she didn’t back down. Instead, she backed away, retorting as evenly as she could, “David don’t you understand? One little tumble on a beach won’t set things right between us. You know that sex has never been our problem.”
He was standing now, too, his towering nakedness a beautiful, terrible thing to witness. She made herself focus on the ocean’s restive tide.
“But Gina—we have so much, together. You can’t propose to throw it all away just because you’re feeling a little discontented. Everyone goes through phases. This fear about being like your mother—it will pass as you mature.”
She flung herself around to face him again. “Don’t you dare say I’m not mature! I’m nearly thirty. Don’t treat me like a child. I’m not your child!”
“I know that,” he growled, his disappointment nudging him toward outright anger. “Hell! What we just shared should damned well prove that I see you as much more than a child!”
“Sex, again! Do you realize that sex is the only human endeavor where you consider me your equal?”
He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled heavily. “That’s asinine.”
She stared at him unhappily. “No, it’s not. Remember when we were redecorating the house and you rejected every single one of my ideas?”
He shook his head, exasperated. “Gina, the house is Victorian. You wanted to do our bedroom in a preposterous black-and-gold New Age theme. You would have hated it in six months.”
“It wasn’t New Age. It was a blending of Art Deco and high tech. Mr. Inez said my ideas were a sensuous union of engineering and styling.”
“Mr. Inez drapes himself in pink chiffon and wears an amethyst in his nose.”
“That doesn’t make him a fool.”
“It doesn’t make him a competent decorator, either.”
She muttered an oath and spun away. “There’s really nothing for us to talk about. Just leave me alone.”
He stood there, stiff with incredulity as he watched her nude posterior wagging away. He loved her—loved her delighted laughter, her teasing lips, her unique sense of humor. He recalled sadly what she’d said the other night. It was true. He had fallen in love with her partly because of her openness, her receptiveness, her willingness to try new things. But, blast it! Did one of the new things she was willing to try have to be divorce! He wou
ldn’t allow her to divorce him, the little hippie witch. He’d make her walking out as hard as hell!
GINA HAD REFUSED to speak to him for a full day. It had been so damnably quiet in the lighthouse that he even welcomed the music that she had blaring from her MP3. The sound issuing from the player was raucous, and the group’s lyrics were off-color, but at least it was something. He hated her silence and her dogged capacity to ignore him. It was a talent he hadn’t realized she’d possessed—this stubborn, iron will of hers. He found himself grudgingly admiring her for it. She was strong. Maybe stronger than he’d given her credit for. But that new knowledge wasn’t giving him any comfort right now.
He looked up from his copy of Physicists’ Weekly, and peered at her, her legs tucked under her on the couch as she thumbed through a thick file folder she’d unearthed from an old bureau that had been stored beneath the dilapidated circular staircase that led up to the lighthouse tower.
He cleared his throat, hoping she’d look up. She didn’t. She merely kept thumbing. Every so often, she’d pull out a sheet of paper and add it to a growing stack of pages.
He gave up and asked, “What are you doing?”
She kept thumbing as though he weren’t there.
The singer screeched on. Apparently somebody wanted sex very badly from somebody else. David grimaced, knowing exactly how the lust-stricken singer felt.
“I said,” he tried a little louder, “what are you doing?”
She didn’t look up, but she stated sharply, “I’m working on my book.”
He scrutinized his beautiful malcontent, clad in a scanty T-shirt and a pair of faded shorts, and he scowled. “Your ghost book?”
She peered over at him. “My lighthouse-folklore book.”
His lips twisted sardonically. “‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.’”
She frowned, stared at him for a minute, contemplating his words. “Gang aft a-gley” was the Scots dialect for “often go astray.” She should know, he’d read Robert Burns’s poems to her enough times for her to know them forward and backward. After a long moment while she allowed her ire to fester, she swung around and shut off the MP3 player. When she was facing him again, she demanded, “What do you mean by that? That I won’t get this book published, that I won’t be able to make it on my own?”