Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology

by Violet Vaughn

  “Oh, you do? Do you…” Davis pulled off his own shirt, but still Jordan kept her clothes on. She stared hungrily, desperately at his body, though—lingering on his bare chest and his flat, hard abs.

  “Sit up,” he told her.

  She obeyed eagerly. Davis reached beneath her shirt and pulled it slowly upward, letting his hands trail up the smooth skin of her back. Jordan shivered and moaned. He tossed her shirt aside, then hooked one finger under the strap of her bra and drew it inch by inch down past her shoulder.

  “Please,” Jordan panted desperately.

  “Please? Please what?” Why did it enthrall him so much, to see a woman as strong-willed as Jordan begging? He pulled down her other bra strap just as slowly.

  “Please… please…” But she couldn’t seem to get out any more words.

  Davis carefully unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, too, never taking his eyes from her breasts. They were small, but high and round, and the pale skin of their undersides seemed to call to him. He pushed Jordan back again and tasted her there, running his tongue slowly along the lower curve of each breast.

  Jordan’s back arched; she drew in one tremendous breath and then made no further sound, rendered utterly helpless by the sensation. But when Davis took her nipple into his mouth, sucking and circling with his tongue, she let out a long cry of passion.

  Davis kept it up, moving from the left to the right, until Jordan’s moan turned into short bursts of panting. She grabbed his hair in her fists. Davis stopped, unsure whether she was calling the whole thing off. He pulled back from her chest to give her a questioning look, but the fire in Jordan’s eyes leaped up hotter than ever before.

  “I want you to…” She faltered.

  “What?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against all her instincts to remain in control. “I want you to…”

  “Say it,” Davis teased. “Say it, or I won’t do it.”

  “God!” she growled. “You are such a jerk!”

  He leaned down, close to her ear, and whispered, “You love it. You love that I’m in control. Now come on… say it. Tell me how bad you want me to fuck you.”

  “Come on,” she pleaded, with a sound that was half laugh, half sob.

  Davis grabbed the tab of her jeans’ zipper and drew it down slowly as he whispered in her ear, “You want me to fuck you.”

  “Yes!” Jordan practically shouted. Exasperation warred with arousal. “Fuck me!”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? All you had to do was ask.” He backed away to get the condom while Jordan slithered out of her jeans. Her pink cotton panties quickly followed. Davis held the packaged condom up between his fingers. “Do you remember what I like?”

  For answer, Jordan bolted up from the bed and swiped the package. She tore the wrapper open with her teeth and had the condom on almost before Davis realized what was happening.

  “Whoa,” he laughed. “Slow down there, Speed Racer.”

  “No way. You already made me beg. You don’t get to hold out on my any longer.”

  “Oh, I don’t?” Davis guided her back down onto the mattress. “I kind of think you liked begging.”

  She bit her lip and blushed.

  Davis could have kept the banter going—Jordan was impossibly cute when she was out of her element—but he sensed she was reaching the edge of what she could tolerate before playfulness turned into fury. He kissed her instead, long and slow, and with his hand on the back of her neck he felt the rigidity drain out of her body, felt her melt in his embrace. When she sagged back onto the mattress with a sigh, Davis knew she was ready.

  He took her hand in his own, so that they could guide him in together. She was so wet from his teasing that he slid in easily; Jordan gasped at the sensation and let out her breath in a long moan of pure pleasure.

  Davis rocked his hips into her, trying to keep his rhythm slow, to keep pace with her breathing. It was hard to hold back. It seemed he could feel her with every nerve in his body, her tight warmth and the silkiness of her skin pressing in all around him. Her very presence seemed to push him closer to the edge all the time, but he didn’t want to come yet. He didn’t want to stop, or even slow down, either. To alter that rhythm at all seemed a crime Davis just couldn’t bring himself to commit. The steady slide of their two bodies, the warm friction between them, became his entire existence. Her short, sharp moans, panted out in time to his thrusting, drove him closer all the time. But even as he skirted the edge of bliss, Davis chided himself to back off, to wait, to make this last longer.

  Finally, with a monumental effort, he slowed and stopped.

  “What?” Jordan panted. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just…” He pulled out gently, then stretched along her side.

  “What are you doing?” Jordan sounded almost frantic; she clearly didn’t want the fun to stop any time soon.

  She began to roll towards him, but Davis grabbed the curve of her hip and with one strong, sure motion, he flipped her over. She sputtered, somewhere between indignant and impressed with the move.

  “On your other side,” Davis said hoarsely.

  Jordan hesitated.

  The need to be inside her again was beating at Davis’s chest, filling his head with a buzzing sound and a pressure he couldn’t alleviate any other way. He grabbed her and rolled her again, so her round, smooth ass was against his belly.

  Immediately, Jordan understood what he was after—and she clearly approved. She gave a wordless purr of excitement and arched her body, pressing her butt harder against him. For a woman who admitted to limited sexual experience, she was a natural—instinctively, she hooked her leg back over his hip to give him clear access. In a moment he was inside her again, and his slow, steady rhythm resumed.

  But this time he was focused on her, not himself. He held and massaged her breast as he fucked her, teasing her nipple and caressing the sensitive skin of its underside until her moans rose to ragged cries of delight. When his hand drifted lower, down to her smooth stomach and further down still, Jordan went mute with the force of her pleasure.

  Davis worked at her steadily, circling in time to the rhythm of his hips. It wasn’t long until he felt her tighten and her back arch. She gasped once, and as she came her voice returned in one long, drawn-out moan.

  When she shuddered and relaxed, Davis whispered in her ear, “Wow.”

  “Wow is right,” she said weakly. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” He kept up the same steady beat, but the need to come was burning inside him, throbbing along every vein and nerve in his body.

  “You’re not going to make me beg for this, too, are you?” Jordan laughed.

  “Beg for what?”

  “For you to come.”

  Those words on her lips did Davis in completely. With a groan of surrender, he grabbed her hip hard and thrust into her. After such a perfect, lengthy build-up, four or five fast strokes was all it took. He bit into her shoulder as he came; Jordan gasped, pressing her ass back against him, which only sent the waves of heat rippling harder and faster through Davis’s body.

  “Oh my God,” he murmured as he collapsed, drained of all energy.

  “You bit me,” she said playfully. “You vampire!”

  But the smile slid from her face, replaced in a heartbeat by a look of anger—and maybe fear, too.

  Davis raised himself up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  But as Jordan bolted off the bed, grabbing for her scattered clothing, Davis heard it, too—and realized why she was suddenly so upset. The grumble of an approaching boat’s engine sounded loud and clear over Jordan’s muttered curses.

  Emily and Storm were coming back. They were practically back on board already.

  14

  Jordan jerked her shirt over her head before she realized she’d forgotten her bra. “Damn it!” She pulled her arms back through her sleeves and wrestled the bra’s band around her body, frantically yanking its str
aps up over her shoulders.

  Davis dressed with considerably less haste. As he watched her struggle, he laughed softly.

  “It’s not funny!” Jordan snapped.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve always found it amazing, how women can work their bra magic without taking off their shirts.”

  “Yeah, it’s a real riot,” Jordan said drily.

  She risked a glance out the porthole. She couldn’t see the Coriolis’s tender now, but she could hear its engine drawing closer to the boat all the time. She slid back into her jeans without bothering to find her panties, which were hopelessly lost somewhere in the thoroughly thrashed mess of Davis’s bed. She ripped the elastic from her ponytail and flung it off into the cabin, then pulled her fingers through her hair, hoping she wouldn’t go above to meet her crew sporting obvious sex hair. When she was as put-together as she could ever hope to be, she shouldered past Davis without meeting his eye.

  “Hold on,” Davis said gently, laying a hand on her arm.

  The contact made Jordan’s stomach flutter. For the briefest moment she marveled at it—even after the intense passion they’d just shared, his smallest touch had the power to excite her. But she pushed the warm feeling away with savage resolve. No matter how good Davis made her feel, Jordan’s desire for him had almost cost her everything.

  This was where spontaneity led. Bitterly, Jordan remembered what she’d said to Emily just before this strange voyage had begun: People who don’t plan and focus make stupid decisions. They do things they regret later. They do things that make them miserable! She certainly regretted this encounter now, as the tender’s motor rumbled ever closer. And she would have been miserable indeed if Emily or Storm had caught her rolling around with Davis inside his cabin.

  This isn’t who I am, she told herself. But even as she thought the words, her heart lurched with rebellion. This was dangerous, a silly risk—but her speeding pulse told her she’d risk almost anything to be with Davis again… and again.

  She shook off Davis’s touch. “Don’t! I can’t believe I was so stupid… again!”

  Davis’s mouth twitched, flinching from her words. Jordan recoiled from the momentary flash of hurt in his eyes, but in less than a second he was back in control, donning the unperturbed, arrogant-cool mask of the consummate rock star. He leaned casually against the cabin’s wall. “Stupid, huh?”

  Jordan’s throat constricted. “I didn’t mean...”

  He shrugged. “Hey, it’s cool. Whatever, man. That’s just the way it is, you know? Have a little fun, and then… on to the next thing.”

  Her face heated, and a loud roaring filled her ears that had nothing to do with the tender’s engine. This shouldn’t have surprised her, she knew. What else could you expect from a rich prick like Davis? Men like him were all the same: users, who thought their money entitled them to anything they wanted from those less privileged than they. Anything.

  What did you expect? Jordan chided herself. Then she decided firmly, You aren’t upset by this. You aren’t surprised. This is nothing more than what you expected all along. He’s a jerk, just like all your other clients, and you certainly were not developing any feelings for him.

  “Yeah, well,” Jordan said fiercely, “it sure is going to be ‘on to the next thing’, because this thing will never happen again.”

  Again she thought she detected a flicker of hurt in Davis’s blue eyes…

  But that can’t be. He doesn’t care one bit about me. I was actually beginning to like him, in spite of the blasting music and his pigheaded refusal to enjoy the islands… but I’ve meant nothing to him this whole time. Nothing but another conquest to stoke his disgusting ego.

  Davis’s grin had a hint of brittleness around the edges. “Sure. Never again. If you really think you can stay away from me for the next two days.”

  Beyond the hatch, Jordan could hear the tender’s engine cut off, the sound of her crew tying the little runabout boat up to the Coriolis’s stern. They’d be onboard again any second now, and by then Jordan was determined to shut all her feelings for Davis out of her heart forever… to finish this job as the professional skipper she was.

  And once it was over, she hoped she could convince herself to forget how good it had felt to lose herself in Davis’s arms—and how good it had felt to give in to her spontaneous side, even if just for those two blissful hours.

  Jordan shoved those feelings away with ruthless force and stomped back toward Davis. She drew close to him, ignoring the warm, musky smell of him, refusing to feel the tingle his proximity raised on her skin.

  “You think you’re irresistible? I’ve got news for you: you’re wrong. You may have been able to charm the panties off every other woman you’ve ever met, but this time you’ve met your match. I’m so in control of myself that even you—” she loaded the word with sarcasm— “won’t have any effect on me. Mark my words, Davis: I’ll never touch you again. I have no desire to—none. The only thing that’s keeping me from detailing exactly what I really think of you is the fact that I’m still on the clock. I’m still doing my job. And I’ll do it until this trip is over, because that’s what I do; I’m a professional. Now let’s just get through the next two days without killing each other, and we can both think back on this trip as a success. Or at least, we won’t have to think of it as entirely a disaster.”

  Davis gaped at her, and raised one finger as if he was about to speak, to make an important point. But Jordan wouldn’t hear it—couldn’t let herself hear it. Her heart lurched painfully over the things she had just said… because no matter how badly she wanted them to be true, needed them to be true, she knew they weren’t. She spun away from him and stormed toward the ladder. As she climbed up to the deck, she didn’t know whether it was the bright light of day that brought tears to her eyes… or the pain that sat like a rock, heavy in her chest.

  Jordan knew that Davis Steen had gotten under her skin like no one else ever had before. He was with her for good now, in a way that was irreversible and impossible to ignore. She could try to deny her feelings—for the next two days, she might even suppress them enough to focus on her sailing to the exclusion of all else. But once she left Davis on the pier at Griffin Bay, she knew her heart would break. For better or worse, he had shown Jordan a part of herself she had never known existed before. Now that she’d seen herself as a whole woman—as someone more than just the stern, rigidly controlled captain—she couldn’t shut the door on her true, complete self.

  Damn you, Davis. I was happy as I was before. Why did you have to do this to me? And why couldn’t you care enough about me to like me as much as I liked you?

  On the deck of the Coriolis, Jordan stretched nonchalantly in the sun and smiled at her crew as they climbed up from the tender.

  Emily hesitated with one hand still on the ship’s rail. She examined Jordan’s face in cautious silence while Jordan busied herself at the helm, reorganizing sailing charts that didn’t really need it.

  “What’s going on?” Emily asked patiently.

  Jordan glanced up from her charts and shrugged. “Going on? What do you mean?”

  Emily exchanged a long, knowing look with Storm.

  “Did something happen while we were gone?” Storm asked. “Is everything okay? You seem—”

  “Of course I’m okay! Why wouldn’t I be? Nothing happened; it’s business as usual. So how was the village?”

  Storm and Emily shared another doubtful stare, but Jordan refused to yield, and finally the crew seemed to settle into the afternoon routine. But as Emily chattered about their visit to the village, music began to thump and pound from within Davis’s cabin. Something about the music—the particular tunes he had chosen—seemed melancholy, broken-hearted.

  Jordan pulled her ultra-dark sunglasses from their case below the helm and slipped them onto her face quickly, before Storm and Emily could see the tears sparkling in her eyes.

  15

  Davis had hardly slept, to
ssing and turning on his wide berth while the Coriolis rocked gently at anchor. Pale morning light suffused the cabin with a soft, pearly glow, and Davis didn’t know whether to be glad or depressed at the sight of it. His restless night was over, but the sun had risen on a new day—and he was another day closer to returning to Seattle, to facing Tyler and whatever his bleak future might hold.

  He slipped quietly from his cabin and tip-toed barefoot down the length of the Coriolis. He passed the two stacked berths where Storm and Emily still slept, their bodies barely distinguishable from the shadows that blanketed them. They lay untroubled and easy, breathing steadily in the dim interior of the boat. Jordan had a small cabin to herself, and its door was shut, thank God. Davis didn’t want to see her just now, didn’t want to remember everything that had gone so right between them—and everything that had gone so wrong. He brushed past the galley without rattling any of the pans hanging on their hooks. Then he crept up the ladder and eased the hatch open so slowly and smoothly that its hinges barely whispered.

  The morning air was sharp; his breath misted with every exhalation, but the cloudless sky promised a fine, pleasant day to come. Davis was grandly alone on the boat’s deck, just him and the sunrise.

  His initial instinct was to recoil from the loneliness, the stillness—to retreat into the shelter of distraction, where he could ignore all his dark thoughts, if not drive them away completely. But there was no place to hide—not anymore. Jordan had felt like a last hope to him, the only way to cling to the life he’d enjoyed before. Her attraction to him, her inability to resist his charms, had been proof that everything could go on just as it had always done—the band, the fame, the money, the women who flocked to Davis in droves. Jordan’s desire for him had been his magic charm, a talisman against the failure that menaced him from the dark corners of his own thoughts. But Davis had screwed that up to—lost Jordan, just like he was about to lose everything else.

  Everything. The Local Youths would eventually slide out of the limelight. The money would dry up, the lifestyle would vanish. Davis pictured himself letting it all go—selling his swanky condo, trading in his car for a much more sensible model, moving out of the city to some inconsequential little town where he could live cheaply off residuals, for however long those residuals held out. And then… what? Get some sort of everyday job, maybe as a mechanic or in construction. Live out his days as a humble working man.