“You got to spend hours surfing at an unspoiled beach pretty much by yourself,” he replied, his lazy drawl made of pure fire while his dark eyes glittered. “Some people would call that winning.”
“What would you call it?”
“A decent start.”
Her heart thumped at that, hard. Because that wasn’t a demand that she leave, and now. It wasn’t a smirk and a no. And anything that wasn’t a direct no was just a yes in waiting, her first boss had always said.
Lucinda had taken that to heart. She smiled at him, and reminded herself that she was, in fact, practically naked. Why not use it?
Maybe her smile got a little flirty. Maybe she shifted her weight to her advantage. Whatever worked.
“Does that mean you plan to give me more opportunities to convince you, I hope? Or will I have to fly back to Fiji on a tiny little puddle jumper wearing nothing but this?”
She didn’t know why she said that, much less in that tone—not breathy, because she was a woman of action who was never breathy, but it was close.
Until his expression changed, that was.
That smile of his turned dangerous and there was something about the way he held that predator’s body of his. She couldn’t have explained to another person what it was, or how it changed, only that it did.
With almost too much heat to bear. So much heat she was terribly afraid she would melt into a puddle right there at his feet.
Part of her even thought that would be a relief. Then she’d simply evaporate and not have to navigate this electric, sensual line with him.
“The bikini belongs to me, Lucinda,” Jason said after a long, hot moment with his gaze all over her like she was already naked and spread out beneath him. “I don’t think I’d like it to wander off to Fiji.”
She had the insane, likely overly optimistic thought that he wasn’t actually talking about a bloody swimsuit.
“Excellent,” she said, instead of giving in to all that melting. Even though her eyes felt slicked with it. And her nipples were so tight they hurt. “Shall I pick a room in the hotel, then?” His gaze darkened, which shouldn’t have been possible, and she hurried on. “To stay in, of course, while I try to convince you.”
“Only if you want to camp out with no electricity or running water.”
She shrugged, and wasn’t the only one who was entirely too aware of how her breasts swayed with the movement.
“Is that another test?” She tried to make herself sound bored. Or unbothered, at the very least.
“Why would your ability to squat in an abandoned building convince me of anything?”
“Why did you insist we get in the water? That seems even more random, doesn’t it?”
She expected a lazy smile. Some throwaway comment. But instead, something flashed across Jason’s fallen-angel face that she wished she could understand.
“I learned a lot about you out there. You’re tenacious. Stubborn as hell, in fact, but when given new information, you don’t insist on clinging to the old. You’re adaptable. And you’re not afraid to use your body. Or throw yourself face-first into new sensation.”
Her heart was acting up again, but she didn’t want to follow the sudden urge she had to reach up and cover it with her palm. Because he saw too much already, and he didn’t need to know how vulnerable she felt.
She wished she didn’t know it.
“All that from a dip in the sea and some paddling about?” It was a fight to keep her voice light. “What’s next? Will you tell me all the details of my childhood trauma after you watch me walk along a garden path?”
“Maybe later.”
He reached out then, and Lucinda knew with every cell in her body that she should dodge that hand of his. She should do whatever it took to keep him from touching her, because if he did, again, she would...but she didn’t dare finish that thought. And she didn’t dodge him, either.
Just as she didn’t question why she’d raised the issue of childhood trauma in the first place.
Or why that heat in his dark gaze gleamed with something new then that looked far too much like compassion.
She wanted to scream at that until it went away, but she didn’t do that either.
“I’m hungry, Lucinda. Are you?”
Even as Jason asked that question, his hand curled around one side of her neck, his thumb moving up and across her jaw to trace her bottom lip.
Once, then again.
Lucinda understood that she had only played with fire before. Sunscreen, his hands and jumping on and off surfboards in a friendly sort of sea the temperature of a bath. All very tame, really.
Because it was nothing next to this.
He was staring down at her, his mouth unsmiling and a blaze in his dark gaze.
As if he was daring her not to burn into ash where she stood.
Some part of her thought it was already too late.
“To clarify,” she heard herself ask in her most prissy, posh, put-on British accent, “are you talking about food, then? Or...?”
“Hunger is hunger, Scotland.”
“I feel certain there’s an argument to be made there. But either way, I like to be prepared.”
She had the sense of his laughter, that great, glorious, raucous sound that could scare the birds from the trees, though he didn’t make any noise. Still, it was there in his dark eyes. In the way he looked down at her, his wide shoulders blocking out the sky.
“I’m hungry,” he told her, his voice as black and rich as the volcanic rock scattered all over the island, looking deceptively soft when it was the opposite. “I want food. And then, like as not, I’m going to want to fuck. But I think you know that already.”
His thumb moved lazily over her jaw, as if he was already moving inside her. As if it was a preview of that thick, deep surge she was already imagining.
Obsessively.
And Lucinda’s mouth was too dry. She couldn’t seem to find her tongue. She couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, not when there was so much blazing tension between them that it felt like some kind of new element. Volcanic like everything else here.
“I take it that you mean me,” she said, what felt like a thousand years or so later. In a thin, reedy sort of voice that didn’t sound like hers at all. “You want to feed me. And then...”
“Fuck,” he supplied without a shred of shame, a hint of a curve in the corner of his mouth. “Yes, Scotland. I want to fuck you. A lot.”
“Is this how you negotiate, generally speaking?”
“It hasn’t been. But there’s something about you that makes me want to make an exception.”
She should have been horrified. Outraged and appalled, certainly. She should have screamed me too in his face and taken to the internet in a blaze of fury. But once again, she seemed to lack a certain affronted prudishness. A weapon was a weapon, after all.
And she was the one in a string bikini with her ass hanging out. An outfit she had chosen to wear, then frolic about in, when she could so easily have declined his offer and played it from there.
She hadn’t wanted to decline. She’d wanted what she’d gotten, which was his full and unwavering attention.
She still wanted it.
But she also wasn’t an idiot.
“And what happens if I fuck you?” she asked, and it was her turn to sound a little lazy. “Do I get to build my resort in all this paradise?”
He laughed at that, out loud this time, and sure enough a set of birds pelted themselves out of the nearest tree, squawking all the way. “That would have to be some fuck. Are you sure you can live up to that standard?”
“Are you afraid you can’t?”
This time, his laughter was a dark flame all its own.
And she was running out of ways to burn. Lucinda was beginning to worry that the only
logical next step was implosion.
“I don’t really do tit for tat,” Jason drawled, his hand still hot and pressed against her skin. “As tempting as it sounds, I don’t use my dick as currency. Which is a good thing for you, darlin’, because I don’t think you could afford me.”
She opened her mouth, but he shifted his thumb and pressed it against her lips, shutting her up.
But she could have stepped back. She could have slapped his hand away. Hell, she could have bit him.
All of those things would require she want him to let go of her, however. And Lucinda...didn’t.
“Here’s how this is going to go down,” Jason said, all rumble and dark promise. “I’m going to take you back to my house, which has food, electricity and a shower. My buddy already flew back to Fiji today. One way or another, you’re spending the night. How you want to spend it, and where, is up to you.”
“But the resort—”
He shook his head. “I don’t do strings, Lucinda. Or bargains. I’ll let you decide if you think getting a piece of that ass will soften me up or not. I can’t guarantee it either way.”
“What if that’s not good enough for me?”
And somehow she wasn’t surprised when all Jason did was shrug, then drop his hand. “It wouldn’t be the first time I used my hand. I know it won’t be the last. I’ll live.”
And then he turned and left her there as he headed back up toward the empty hotel.
“Am I supposed to follow you?” she called out after him. “Is this yet another test?”
He turned back, though he didn’t stop walking, and his smile was enough to make her heart stop, as wide as the arms he stretched out like he was taking over the whole damned world.
Or maybe just her.
The bastard.
“You need to do you, Scotland,” he told her, but there was that laughter in his voice again, as if he already knew what she’d choose. As if all of this was inevitable. “I already told you what I want. The question you need to ask yourself is what you want in return.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
BEFORE SHE’D SET foot on this island, Lucinda had known exactly what she wanted. It had been a clear path: find Jason Kaoki on his private island, convince him to build the resort of her dreams, ascend to a higher, better level of the life she’d always wanted. And in all those hours of travel, it had never occurred to her that things might go differently—because she was very, very good at getting what she wanted.
That was how she’d risen out of her dreamless, upsetting childhood in the first place.
Now she was running on a combination of fumes and surfing and Jason Kaoki’s dangerous hands all over her might-as-well-be naked body—and that straight, obvious path seemed a good deal less clear.
She ordered herself to get her head on straight, but after all that time tumbling around and around in the sea, she wasn’t sure what direction that was anymore. She followed Jason back up into the dim hotel lobby instead, hanging back as he went into the office and reemerged with a soft pile of dark black that it took her moments to realize were her own clothes.
And surely she should have been embarrassed by the fact that he was now holding her panties and bra in those hands of his... But she was all embarrassed out, it seemed. That was what happened when a person spent hours barely dressed in a string bikini, climbing on and jumping off a surfboard out in the water. She had precious few inhibitions left. Lucinda eyed the clothes in his hands. Then she lifted her gaze to the fire in his and let the flames simmer there between them for another breathless moment that felt a whole lot like forever.
At some point she would have to get used to all this...intensity, wouldn’t she?
Or it will kill you, a dour voice inside her chimed in.
Jason didn’t say a word. He came back around the counter and thrust her clothes into her arms. Though he didn’t explicitly tell her to follow him, Lucinda felt that was his clear intention when he moved toward the doors. She found herself hurrying along behind him, having to work overtime to keep up with his long, deep stride though she’d always considered herself a fast walker. He was just that tall. A saunter on him made her have to think about running.
And there was no reason that innocuous, innocent thought should have made her breath catch again, but it did.
He waited when they reached her bag as she bent down and shoved her armful of clothes into its main compartment. And when she straightened, he swept the bag up in one hand and headed back out into the sun. It struck Lucinda as a kind of thoughtless, matter-of-fact chivalry. As if he hardly knew he was doing it.
And it made her throat ache, because she was used to doing for herself in all matters, great and small. Her father had never carried a thing but his own drink. The many men she’d worked for had never offered any kind of courtesy without strings attached. There were no offhanded displays of chivalric impulses.
Lucinda had to frown ferociously to keep that same ache from flooding her eyes, thank you, sure that this was more evidence that she needed to sleep—and fast—before she became someone else entirely. Someone soft and feminine and fluttery who might actually weep over a man carrying her bag.
The very idea should have made her laugh.
It was surpassingly odd that she didn’t.
She followed him instead. Jason didn’t have any shoes on, but his bare feet were clearly used to the abuse of the old, cracked concrete outside, because he didn’t slow down when he hit it. And by the time Lucinda picked her careful way after him on her soft, complaining toes, he had already gone around the side of the building. He disappeared beneath an overhang she hadn’t noticed on her way in and drove back out again moments later in an open-topped Jeep.
He pulled up beside her, then looked at her like a cautionary tale brought to vivid life. He might as well have been waving a sign that read BEWARE STRANGE MAN IN CAR WHO WILL TURN YOU INSIDE OUT WITHOUT TRYING.
Lucinda assured herself it was no more than another Pacific breeze that trickled down the entire length of her back then, making her want to stiffen against it, then run for her life.
She did neither one of those things. Because she was on a deserted tropical island far, far away from anything and there was nowhere to run, for one thing. And because her feet were burning and walking around without any shoes on was surprisingly uncomfortable, for another.
She ignored the sensation flooding her, from the soles of her feet to her traitorously soft pussy and, higher still, to the heart that was going wild in her chest. At least none of these things showed, or she hoped they didn’t, as she pulled open the passenger door—which took her a moment to locate, as it was on the wrong side of the vehicle—and climbed up beside him.
Very much as if she had her own sign, and it read something like ABSOLUTE IDIOT.
She was then deeply grateful that Jason drove a Jeep, because it was wide open to the island around them. And that meant that when he put it into gear and started driving, it was noisy. Too noisy for any more pointed, barbed conversation with all that fire between each syllable.
Lucinda didn’t have to pretend to be cool, unbothered and aggressively at her ease. There was no conversation at all, so she wasn’t required to watch her tone and mind her words. There was only the wind in her ears, tugging at her hair so that wet strands pulled free and blew all around her. She had seen this coveted spit of land from the air, a stunning little jewel in the middle of all that deep blue water, and she’d seen the pristine beaches all around.
But settled back in the passenger seat of Jason’s Jeep that he navigated with one lazy arm looped over the steering wheel, she finally looked around and saw the island itself. There had once been an active volcano here, leaving the hills steep and covered in green all these years later. The jungle was everywhere, in the thick scent of growing things, the exultant plants and glorious flowers that Lucinda had never seen b
ack home. They were too big here. Too bright, in too many colors.
The road, such as it was, hugged the beaches. Jason drove away from the old hotel, bumping his way over dirt and grass on the rutted track before rounding a point that stretched out into the water, made of the same dark, volcanic rock that burst out from beneath the green everywhere Lucinda looked.
When the road ended a while later, he turned up toward the hills. He wound his way around the side of another steep, green incline, climbing until they were far above the same rocky point they’d passed below.
The jungle opened up over a grassy bluff and the house that sat there, surrounded by gleaming green lawns that edged up against the thick jungle on all sides and nothing else in any direction but the brooding blue sea.
Lucinda caught her breath. It was the most beautiful house she’d ever seen in her life. It was all polished dark wood and windows, somehow looking as if it was meant to be here on the top of this mountain with a view of eternity. As if it had been crafted here, the same as the steep hills around it or the shore below.
The main house sprawled out in an easy sort of U shape, claiming the flattest part of the bluff. But Jason didn’t drive up to the front door. He skirted the side of one wing, then drove a bit farther up the hill to one of several tidy, smaller houses that nestled half in and half out of the jungle.
“Shower, change, whatever,” Jason told her after he’d leaped from the Jeep, carried her bag to the front door of the nearest cottage and swung it open for her. Lucinda trailed after him, feeling more than a little loopy, and telling herself it was the jet lag.
But as he towered there over her, blocking the door to the cutest little cottage she’d ever seen with those wide, sculpted shoulders of his, she acknowledged that maybe the loopiness had nothing to do with air travel or time zones at all.
That maybe, just maybe, it was him.
“Whatever,” she said. Echoing him.
Or possibly, making a choice.
“There’s a fully stocked bar.” His dark eyes gleamed. “Feel free to choose your poison. When you get hungry, come find me.”
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