Cherish Hard (Hard Play #1)

by Nalini Singh

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” Sweeping his hands down her back, he cupped her backside as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do. His palms were callused, his skin rough. And the sound he made deep in his chest was one of raw male pleasure.

  Ísa ignited just as she had at the school.

  And then he kissed her.

  There was tongue. Lots and lots of it. Wrapping her arms and her legs around him, Ísa let the sea and Sailor hold her afloat as they kissed under a moonlit sky, the world cocooning them in darkness. His arms were so strong, his body so powerful that she felt petite for the first time in her life.

  “I love your lips,” she murmured.

  He wove his hand into her hair in answer, the bottom ends wet because she’d forgotten to find a way to put it up. “You have one hell of a mouth yourself, spitfire.”

  More kissing, more stroking, more his body rubbing against hers.

  Her bones were all but molten lava when she heard a shriek.

  Startled into breaking the kiss, she looked toward the path heading down from the house. Two frozen seconds later, a woman came flying down. A man followed. Both tore off their clothes to dive into the waves.

  Three more people followed, all ending up in the water.

  “Damn.” Sailor sounded like he was grinding his teeth. “Our spot’s probably going to get invaded as soon as one of them figures out it’s here.”

  Ísa held on tight to him. “I’m not up for a group skinny-dipping session.” Being cuddled up to Sailor was a different thing to being cuddled up with strangers.

  A soft kiss to her neck. “Follow me. They’re too involved in their playing to notice us.”

  Ísa watched unashamedly as he hauled himself up, his biceps flexing with strength. Water sluiced off his flanks once he was on the rock, the thigh with the tattoo closest to her. “Here, spitfire.”

  Blushing like anything, Ísa nonetheless had no intention of staying in the water by herself. But when she crouched next to him after he hauled her up, she saw he’d kept his eyes closed. Her heart doing silly somersaults inside her chest, she leaned in and kissed him, then turned his face in the direction of the beach. “Let’s go.”

  He led her quickly to the sand, their movements apparently going undetected by the partygoers playing in the water. Only once they got to the beach did Ísa realize she hadn’t thought about how she’d be soaking wet after a skinny-dip.

  “Here.” Sailor threw his T-shirt over his shoulder. “Towel.”

  Yeah, he was pretty wonderful. And she wanted to see him again, find out if the fragile, hopeful thing she could feel growing between them had any chance in the light of day. Would he say yes if she asked him to continue the night? If she asked him out on a proper date?

  Drying herself with efficient moves while nerves knotted her up all over again, she pulled on her panties and the dress—but the zipper got stuck. “Sailor. Help.”

  “I like my name on your lips, my red-haired woman of mystery.” He kissed the curve of her waist as he hunkered down to tug the zipper free of the little piece of fabric on which it had caught. “I want to bite your skin. It marks so pretty.”

  “I might let you,” Ísa said, her toes digging into the sand. “But we need to go on a date first.” She was starting to feel things for him, dangerous things that had nothing to do with the primal attraction between them. “Want to go get late-night ice cream?” She didn’t want this magical, moonlit night to end.

  “I’ve got a better idea—how about a cookie bar?” Blue eyes seared into her as he rose to his feet after finishing the zipping up. “You can tell me your name while I ply you with chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, undone by the romance of it all.

  “Now?”

  “I have to drive home with my friend.” No way would she abandon Nayna in an unfamiliar part of town. “Give me your number. I’ll call you once I’m home and we can figure things out.”

  Cupping her face in his hands after inputting his number into her phone, he kissed her breathless. “I’ll be waiting.”

  After arriving at the top of the walkway, Ísa texted Nayna. Where are you?

  In the car, hiding.

  Eyes flying up into her hairline, Ísa turned to a bare-chested Sailor—he’d thrown his dirty T-shirt over one shoulder with the ease of a man who had no problem being half-naked.

  “I’m leaving now.” Ísa’s palms tingled with the urge to touch. “I’ll call you in about thirty minutes. Maybe a bit longer.” She had to find out what had gone wrong, why Nayna was hiding.

  Another kiss, this one as sensual as the bribes he’d demanded. “Cookies with my sexy redhead.” The masculine scent of him wrapped around her, his kiss flavored with the salt of the sea. “I can’t wait.”

  Bubbles of light in Ísa’s bloodstream, happiness a giddy dancer in her heart.

  As she turned to run quickly to the car along the darkened edge of the property, her heels in one hand, her clutch in the other, Sailor shoved his feet into his shoes, which he’d carried up. “Hey!” he called out. “Wait! You shouldn’t be alone in the dark!”

  Ísa turned… and the present collided with the past.

  Hey! Wait! You shouldn’t be alone in the dark!

  No. No.

  Ísa stared at him. At those blue, blue eyes. At that black hair. It had been shaved that night, all the way down into a buzz cut. His body had been thinner and less developed, and he’d had one hell of a black eye. But it was him. That voice. That face. No wonder she’d kept thinking she knew him. She did.

  From the most humiliating night of her life.

  The night she’d spent seven years trying to erase from her memory banks.

  Her stomach lurched.

  11

  Never Trust a Man Who Offers You Cookies

  ALL BUT THROWING HERSELF INTO the passenger seat of the car, Ísa said, “Drive!”

  Nayna quickly slid up from her slumped-down position in the driver’s seat and without a question started the engine.

  Sailor was standing on the grass across which Ísa had just run, watching the entire process with a frown she could see from here. What if he decided to come over? Ísa’s heart pounded as Nayna pulled out and zoomed them down the drive. Her friend had turned the vehicle around at some point during her hiding and now they just had to go straight.

  Until they were outside the gate and on the road.

  “Oh thank God,” they both said in unison.

  Ísa looked at Nayna.

  Nayna looked at her before returning her attention to the road. “You first.”

  “No, you,” Ísa replied, needing time to unscramble the thoughts in her head. “Why were you hiding?” Worry and anger had her spine going steely. “Did that Raj guy do something?”

  Nayna huffed out a breath, another. Hands tight on the steering wheel, she said, “It was fine at first. We were talking, flirting. Then… um…”

  “I can see your smudged lipstick.” She decided not to mention the marks on her friend’s neck. Nibble marks.

  The kind of marks Ísa might’ve had if the other skinny-dippers hadn’t interrupted her and Sailor.

  Nayna groaned. “I’m going to have to come up to your apartment to fix it before I head home. My dad will wait up until I get in.”

  “You need to move out.”

  “I will, when I get married.” Nayna’s voice was glum.

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “Why do you keep going to board meetings?”

  “Low blow,” Ísa muttered, scowling at the best friend who knew her far too well. “So you and Raj snuck out and kissed?” That, at least, was an encouraging sign.

  “We made out like hormone-crazed teenagers,” Nayna admitted, her skin flushing. “In a shadowy corner of the garden. He had his hands on parts of me that no one else has ever touched.”

  This was sounding extremely promising. But Nayna’s expression was less than ecstatic. “What went wrong?”
Ísa asked, worried. “Did he get rough? Wanted to go further than you were ready for?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.” Nayna swallowed hard. “He started talking.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have an arranged marriage, Ísa. I’ve agreed to that with my family. My father’s set up meetings with prospective grooms.” She pulled over to park on a quiet part of the street, the ocean crashing to shore on their right and large old trees arching their gnarled branches over the car from the left. “I have a voice, but I only get to choose from the men they’ve already vetted.”

  Despite her difficulty in accepting Nayna’s decision, Ísa knew why her friend had made it, knew that Nayna was trying to mend her family’s broken heart by shattering her own. Hurting for her closest friend, she said, “Raj talking changed that?”

  “I just wanted to have this one crazy night, to be the woman I dream about being when I’m lying awake at midnight, a woman who doesn’t care anything about the world and does exactly as she wants,” Nayna said softly. “Raj fit the fantasy. Hard-bodied hot guy who wanted to do dirty things to me. Then he began talking, and he was saying things that made him sound smart.”

  Ísa just listened.

  “I didn’t want to know him.” Nayna was almost crying. “I didn’t want to find out that he’s not just a good-looking hunk. I didn’t want to know that he likes rock-climbing and that he was thinking about going to an exhibition on Egyptian art. He invited me.” Her voice shook. “And I…”

  “What, Nayna?” Ísa reached out to close her hand over her friend’s. “What happened?”

  “I told him to be quiet. That I wanted his body and nothing else.”

  Ísa’s mouth fell open. “You said that?” It came out a squeak. “Really?”

  Nayna threw her hands over her face as she nodded. “I had my hand inside his half-open shirt at the time. His hand was… Let’s just say he didn’t take it well,” she whispered through her fingers. “He turned to ice so fast it was like I was in Antarctica.”

  Finally dropping her hands, she banged her head against the back of the driver’s seat. “When he turned around to swear at the night, I slipped off my shoes and ran away.”

  “Did he come after you?”

  “I don’t know.” Biting down on her lower lip, Nayna folded her arms across her middle, as if hugging in the tearing confusion of her emotions. “The music was pretty loud by then, even out in the garden, so he probably didn’t even know I was gone until he turned back around.”

  Ísa blew out a long breath. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, even though that was the last thing she wanted. For Nayna, she’d face even that nightmare. “Try to explain?”

  “How can I possibly explain being that much of a bitch?” Her voice trembled. “Hi, Raj, I just wanted to use your body, then forget all about you, because sometime in the next twelve months, I’m planning to marry a man I don’t love and probably won’t even really desire.”

  She shook her head so hard that it sent the silky strands of her hair flying to stick to her cheeks. “Somehow I don’t think that would go over well.” A shuddering exhale. “Please tell me you had a better time.” Pleading eyes. “I need at least one of us to have had a successful night of debauchery.”

  “Technically,” Ísa said, “you did get in the debauchery before it all turned to custard. Was his chest nice?”

  Nayna laughed wetly. “Oh my God, Ísa. I didn’t know it could be so much fun to just…” She wiggled her fingers as if digging them into a man’s pecs. “And the way he smelled… I wanted to bury my nose in his throat while I rubbed myself all over him.”

  Ísa nodded. “I did rub myself all over Sailor. Naked.”

  Nayna actually eeped before pausing to look carefully at Ísa’s face. “That’s not a happy-sexy-times face,” she said, her tone morose. “Was he an ass?”

  Shaking her head, Ísa confessed the truth. “He was wonderful. I knew he was a mistake, but I couldn’t help myself from starting to fall.” It was her turn to become agitated, her hands flying to thrust through her hair without her conscious volition.

  “So what happened?” Nayna frowned. “I saw him with you before you two left the party. He was eating you up with his eyes.”

  “He was there that night… with the Slimeball.” Ísa felt her stomach lurch as the horrible memory roared to the forefront of her mind all over again.

  Nayna’s eyes widened. “One of Cody’s friends?”

  “I guess so,” Ísa muttered, hands fisting. “It was Cody’s party after all.” Nayna hadn’t been able to come that night, her parents far stricter than Ísa’s had ever been; often, as a teen, Ísa had wished for parents who actually cared about her whereabouts.

  “Are you bothered because he saw what happened that night?”

  “My ritual humiliation?” Face hot, Ísa told herself it was over, in the past. “No, why would I be bothered that a man I want to be naked with saw someone call me a tub of lard?” Her skin felt like fire.

  “Your gardener clearly doesn’t share that opinion from the way he looks at you.” Nayna poked her in the shoulder. “Why are you acting crazy?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Her friend pinned her to the spot with her eyes. “Yes, it sucks that he had bad taste in friends at college, but remember that one day at school when you thought Suzanne might be a nice person? We all make mistakes.”

  “I was new!” Ísa cried. “I had no idea she was hiding horns and a tail under her blinding smile and shiny hair.”

  “Whatever.” Nayna waved off that moment of shame. “Back to your hot gardener. What’s the deal? Why are you so discombobulated?”

  Flushing, Ísa swallowed hard… and admitted the truth. Because yes, she was acting crazy and it wasn’t only because Sailor had witnessed the most horrible moment in her life—though that didn’t help. “I like him so much, Nayna. And if he was friends with Cody…” Her eyes grew hot. “You know the kind of guys Cody called friends.” Ísa had never been comfortable with his crowd, and they’d been total assholes to her around campus after Cody dumped her.

  “Did your gardener—”

  Ísa shook her head. “I never saw him again after that party, but… if those were the people he hung out with back then, how can I trust my instincts about him now? How can I trust him not to turn on me? For all I know, he still hangs out with Cody and Suzanne.”

  Nayna released a shaky breath. “Okay, yeah, that I get. But you’ve had a chance to see this guy a couple of times now. Does he seem anything like the Slimeball?”

  “That’s just the thing. Cody was nice when we began dating.” And Ísa had believed him, believed in him. “It makes me sick to think I might be repeating history. I just can’t, Nayna.” Not even for a blue-eyed man who asked her out on cookie dates and took her skinny-dipping.

  Later that night, she opened her laptop and began to skim through the photos on Cody’s social media profile. His privacy settings were ridiculous—she could see pretty much all the images he’d posted. She ignored all the images of Suzanne, her search focused on only one person.

  And then she found it: Sailor’s face.

  It was in an image of a bunch of guys wearing rugby gear so muddy it was hard to tell what their uniform colors might be. Sailor had been snapped talking to an equally muddy Cody.

  Fingers shaking, Ísa sat back and just stared. She’d hoped she was wrong and Nayna was right, that Sailor’s friendship with Cody had been a college thing that had fizzled out when he figured out his friend was a monumental ass. But this shot was from the last rugby season.

  Her hot gardener was still friends with the Slimeball.

  * * *

  SAILOR HAD A TERRIBLE NIGHT’S sleep. He’d been home from the party before eleven—and he hadn’t even had to ditch Raj. His friend had been in a hell of a mood, with no desire whatsoever to interact with any other humans.

  The other man wasn’t a big talker, but Sailor f
igured it had something to do with the pretty woman in the bandage dress. The depth of Raj’s reaction might’ve intrigued him on another day since his friend wasn’t known for his temper, but last night Sailor had been distracted by the promise of seeing Ísa again, probably within the hour.

  He hadn’t worried too much about how she’d literally run across the grass and away from him, figuring her rush had something to do with the message she’d received from her friend. Some female emergency. After all, he hadn’t done anything dastardly in the seconds before she’d run—he’d literally just asked her to wait so he could walk her to the car.

  Like a gentleman. And so he could sneak a final, scorching kiss.

  After dropping Raj off at his place, anticipation a knot in Sailor’s gut, he’d waited. And waited. And waited. And finally realized that there wasn’t going to be any cookie-bar date. He’d been stood up.

  The redhead had gotten away from him a third time.

  And he still didn’t know her name.

  Aggravated, he’d gone online and ordered a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. The next time he saw his curvy little con woman, he was going to lock her to some immovable object—namely himself—until he figured out why she kept leaving him in her dust.

  Unsurprisingly, he’d dreamed of the cute, lying redhead all night long, woken up with a cock so hard it was painful. He wondered if his perfidious redhead realized he hadn’t finished his job at the school. One of these days he was going to run into her again. And when he did, he was going to bring out those handcuffs. Then, when she was stuck and unable to run, he’d tell her what he thought of cute redheads who promised a man a night of sweet heaven and delivered a night of frustrated aggravation.

  Snarling at the memory of how soft she’d been under his hands, how lusciously responsive, he tried to convince himself it was a good thing she’d stood him up. Sailor had a plan for his life, and a cute, sexy redhead didn’t figure into it, not when his dreams depended on obsessive focus on a single overriding goal.

  Neither his brain nor his body were convinced by the argument.