by Brynn Kelly
The note of sympathy kicked at him. “Believe me, princess, I’m not.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“I’m his father.”
She nodded. “You love him, all right. That’s more than a lot of kids get.”
Was she talking from her own experience? “Actions, not words, that’s what’s important.” Like being there for your family, not just sending money every payday.
Her eyes took on a faraway look, a sad look. “True enough.”
“You have a graze on your cheek. And a lump on your forehead.”
The corner of her mouth curled up. “I have a lot of things going on. Those are not a priority.”
“Still, I may as well wash your cheek while I’ve got the antiseptic out. You don’t want a cut to get infected in this climate. Especially on a face...”
She raised her eyebrows at his unfinished sentence.
A face as beautiful as yours. “A face as expensive as yours.”
He scooted up the bed. She pushed up into a sitting position and turned toward him, chin tilted, eyelids heavy, like she was fishing to be kissed. He clenched his stomach muscles. Don’t even think about it, Angelito.
He dipped a fresh cotton pad in the solution and patted it along her freckled cheekbone. Her warm breath coasted over his hand. Her gaze dropped, her expression hidden under long eyelashes. She trailed a finger along his stomach. He flinched. Mon Dieu.
“Looks like you could do with medical attention yourself,” she murmured. “Is that seriously a boot print?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, quickly.
“Yeah?” She focused on his eyes. “You know... I don’t think you’re as tough and mean as you look, Capitaine.”
She flattened her palm onto his stomach. He froze. That touch—it wasn’t innocent. Pull back, his mind urged. His body rebelled.
Chapter 12
Laura swallowed, without breaking eye contact, as if her mind and body were battling as fiercely as Rafe’s. Her shell-pink tongue darted out to lick her lips. His mind went dark. He dropped the gauze, cupped her face and kissed her, hard, before his brain had time to catch up. She melted into him, her hand sliding around his stomach to his back and pressing him closer. Like he needed the invitation. He threaded his other hand into her hair, angling her head up. She parted her lips and he dipped in to taste her. Sweet, fresh, smooth. She stroked her tongue against his. Merde, he was in trouble.
She wrapped her other hand around his waist and drove her fingers up either side of his spine, digging into muscles that ached for release. Moaning, she urged him down until they lay side by side on the bed, not a whisper between them. As his tongue explored her silky mouth, he glided the fingers of one hand down her hair, her neck, onto her shoulders. Her skin was as sleek as water. Her hands left his back and dug into the sides of his neck, freeing him to explore her. And he did, with the hunger of a man who hadn’t eaten in a month.
He slid a hand around her waist, to keep her close, and ran the other down her side, stopping at the point her top gave way to the satin skin of her lower belly. He dipped under the fabric and ran his fingers up her stomach to palm the swell of her breast. Her nipple was budded hard, like he already knew it to be. Mon Dieu. He longed to suck it into his mouth, but settled for grazing his fingertips over it—for now. She groaned, the sound ratcheting the tension in his stomach—and lower. This was about as wrong as wrong got. So why the hell did it feel so good?
Like she said, this war wasn’t between them. So what if they gave in, right this second? He released her mouth, panting, and lifted away, just far enough to create room to slide his other hand under her top. He paused, testing for any sign of resistance. The slightest flinch and he’d stop. She groaned and arched. Yes. As he drew up her top, she raised her arms to help him slip it off. He threw it aside and swept his gaze down her, his jaw dropping.
“Mon Dieu. Tu es très belle.”
Beautiful didn’t begin to do her justice. Her pupils were huge, her swollen lips open in a breathless smile. No sign of anything but the same urges pumping through him. She pushed his shoulder, coaxing him onto his back, and rolled on top, propping her forearms either side of his head. She leaned down and nipped his lower lip. A moan escaped him. As she played with his lips, darting her tongue and scraping her teeth against them, he glided his hands down her back, molding their bodies together, fitting his erection into her cleft. Ah, the smoothness of her. The softness. He could just rip their remaining clothes off. He slid his hands down the dip of her lower back, under her shorts, and planted his fingers in the flesh of her derrière, pushing her right where he needed her. She took the hint and began rubbing into him, a torturous slow rhythm. She left his mouth and trailed her tongue to his ear.
“Do you think there are condoms in that first-aid kit?” she murmured.
“There’d better be.” His voice sounded like it came from far away. “God.”
“I’ll check.”
She pulled back, grimaced and clutched her knee. “Ow. Shit, I forgot about that.”
Fighting every urge in his body, he gently rolled her onto her back. Shit was right. “We’ve forgotten about a lot of things.” His gaze caught on one of her nipples, his mouth dropping open. If he leaned in just a few inches...
No. A force field had sprung up between them. He couldn’t go through with it, as much as he hungered to.
“Jack, I want to forget. Seriously. Let’s forget this whole insane situation. Let’s do this. I want this.”
He forced himself to sit, swinging his legs onto the floor so he faced away from her. Maybe starving his eyes of her would lower the heat in his body. Jack. She didn’t even know who she was about to sleep with. “I apologize. This was inappropriate.” Hell, it went far beyond any definition of appropriate.
“Who cares?” The bed shifted. She shuffled up behind him, slipping her hands around his waist. “I know this is crazy. The whole situation’s crazy. But I know you want this as much as I do. You need this as much as I do—I can feel it. And I’m not just talking about what’s under your shorts.”
He gently removed her hands. “I will not take advantage of this situation.”
“Who says it’s you taking advantage?”
“Tu agis sans passion,” he said under his breath.
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is not going to happen. Good night, princess.”
Without daring to look at her, he strode out the door, sweeping up the Makarov on the way out. After checking she wasn’t following, he stashed it under the veranda. Once on the sand, he yanked off his shorts and underwear and surged into the lagoon. The water swelled around him like warm cognac. Damn Indian Ocean. He’d need nothing less than the Arctic to chill the heat racing through his body.
He dived and settled into a punishing stroke rate, surging through the black water. Self-control, that’s what he had to reclaim. That was the number one thing separating him from the monster he’d become as a boy, when fear and rage and pain had opened the dark place in his mind where his conscience and his feelings couldn’t reach, where he could hole up and make his body do whatever it took to survive. If he lost control over himself again, there was no guessing what demons could erupt from his subconscious, destroying the years of rehabilitation, plummeting him back into that nightmare world where black was white and white was black, where a child’s cry or a woman’s scream meant nothing, where the innocent suffered and the guilty drank it up.
He wasn’t going back there. He had a code of honor now, and he would not break it, no matter how much he wanted to walk into that villa and take that woman into his arms, to make the tension between them detonate. This was a woman who challenged and taunted him, who dug to the bottom of him and touched parts of his soul that had long ago withered and blackened.
>
Tu agis sans passion.
Giving in to temptation would be the end of him.
* * *
Shit. Holly scrabbled through her bag for a cleanish T-shirt and boxers and yanked them on. Shit, shit, shit. She finger-combed her hair, wet from the shower she’d stumbled into after he’d walked out. The water had done nothing to calm her—body or mind. If that stunt was supposed to seduce him, why was her every nerve fizzing? Now would be a very good time for a squad of US Marines to rappel down from a Black Hawk and rescue her. But then, what would happen to Jack? He’d be arrested, possibly as a terrorist. What would become of his son?
And why should she care?
That right there was the problem. She and Jack were on opposite sides of this. His loss would be her win, his win her loss. Giving a damn about him was dangerous. He’d kidnapped her from a yacht, potentially ruining her shot at a new life, and here she was worrying about him and his son. He sure as hell wouldn’t sacrifice his goal for her sake. Why should she?
A rust-colored moth the size of her palm battered the bedside lamp. She limped over and switched it off. Moonlight beamed through the window. Movement outside caught her eye—Jack, rising out of the lagoon like Neptune, his strong, naked shape in silhouette. Desire pulled at her. Now she knew just how good those muscles felt under her fingers. She linked her hands behind her head. Goddamn. She guessed what the prison shrink would say—she was attracted to his size and strength because subconsciously she sought the protector she’d never had.
She needed no protector but herself. She trusted no protector but herself.
He pulled on his shorts and strode out of view. It was more than the physical that attracted her. It was his strength in so many ways. It was the decency that underscored his every gesture—looking after her wounds, defending her against that creepy pilot and now pulling back from sex because he refused to take advantage. She’d never known anyone with a moral compass that unwavering—if you didn’t count the kidnapping. Always a catch.
A mosquito whined in her ear. She slapped at it. Better get that net back onto its frame, especially now the cabin had no door. Malaria was all she needed right now. She stood on the mattress, favoring her good knee, grabbed the loose corner of the net and reached to hook it up. She was too short. “Damn.”
“Need help?” Jack leaned against the busted door frame, his jaw grim.
“I’ll be fine.” If I can just grow a couple of inches.
He strolled over, stepped onto the mattress and reached over her to hook up the net, his skin glistening and fresh from the water. Didn’t the man believe in T-shirts? He looked down at her, his forehead creased. He’d enclosed them both in the net. He threw it over his head and bounded backward onto the floor.
She lowered herself to the mattress. “Thanks.”
He nodded and walked to the door.
She had to say something, to cut through the thick air. “Awkward, huh?”
He stopped, locking serious eyes onto hers. “It won’t happen again. I’m...sorry.” His voice cracked.
Her chest ached. So was she, for entirely different reasons. “Do you think if we’d met under different circumstances—?” Was she still playing him? Even she couldn’t tell anymore.
“We didn’t,” he snapped. He jammed a hand in his hair. “Don’t even think about it.”
It wasn’t a no. What if they’d met on the Metro in LA, struck up a conversation, he a tourist, she an office worker, no life-and-death complications—would she feel the same surge of electricity she did now? Would they have eased into a relationship, the way she guessed it happened for everyday people? Got married, had kids?
Like hell. She knew better than to believe in fairy tales.
“Sleep well, princess.” He walked out. The hammock squeaked as he settled into it.
Fat chance.
* * *
Holly woke with a dust-dry mouth, breaking out of wild, hot dreams. So she’d slept, after all the twisting and turning? What a miracle. She pulled up the net and padded to the fridge, her knee stiff but taking her weight. She drank from a bottle of water, her throat giving a little with the cool liquid. Voices filtered in from outside. She froze, wiping her mouth. Too tinny to be real. Jack must be checking the internet.
She opened the screen door—Jack must have fixed it while she slept. He sat on the boards of the veranda in a tight black T-shirt and khaki shorts, his long legs stretched out in front of him, laptop resting on his thighs. Her mind dished up a reminder of how his muscles and ridges and dips had felt under her hands. Mamma mia. She rested the bottle against her cheek, to cool her skin. He paused the video. How was this going to play out, after last night?
“Morning, princess. Just in time for the news.”
“What’s the time?” She squinted at the sun, about a quarter of the way up the sky.
“Early. I thought you’d sleep longer. Fighting off pirates can be tiring.”
“Are you talking about our visitors last night, or yourself?”
He laughed, his dimple marking one cheek. He looked younger, relaxed. More Bruce Wayne than Batman, like he’d slept soundly, like he wasn’t humming with tension the way she was. “Both. You’re one hell of a pirate slayer.”
“I can’t help it if they keep getting in my way.” The humor eased the tightness in her belly. She settled her butt into the hammock behind him, taking another sip of water. Blinding sunlight bounced off the lagoon. Even the crimson bougainvillea climbing the veranda was too bright to look at. Just another perfect day on honeymoon.
“How’s the knee?”
She bent it back and forth. “Good. Swelling’s gone down.”
“Take it slowly and you’ll be okay.”
The laptop was paused on a close-up of the senator’s face. Underneath scrolled the words: A father’s worst nightmare. Her stomach knotted. “What’s the latest?”
“They’re still searching, still saying they won’t pay. Your father has shot up in the polls, though he’s put his campaign on hold.”
She exhaled. She’d live to see another day. “They’d do a poll at a time like this? Vultures.”
“Ah, everyone’s out to make a buck.”
“So is a platoon of US soldiers about to rush out from the trees and rescue me?”
He studied the screen, frowning. “Several companies of Marines are after you, along with local authorities, but they may as well be looking in another continent. No radars picked up our plane leaving the kidnap zone so they’ve started searching in the vicinity of the yacht.”
Damn. What could she do next? Lighting a pyre on the beach was out, now that she had firsthand experience of the “help” it might attract. But it was good news they were at least searching. What was Laura doing now? Lying low, while her father figured out how to handle the change in plan? Perhaps he’d pay the ransom just to make the problem go away. He’d be happy about the bounce in the polls—maybe that’d be worth the outlay.
In the meantime, what choice was there but to sit still and try to burrow further under Jack’s skin? Last night she’d gone a step too far with the seduction, for her sanity as much as her survival. Today she’d try the subtle approach, play on their obvious connection beyond the physical. When hell descended, as it would, she needed him on her side. He’d make too good an enemy.
“Have you eaten?” she said.
“Didn’t want to wake you.”
“Man, I was having some crazy dreams.” Featuring you.
“This kind of heat can do that to you. I’ll find some food.” He shut the laptop, reeled in the phone, and removed and pocketed the sat phone battery.
“Still don’t trust me?”
“I trust you as much as you trust me.”
“That little, huh?” Stupid thing was, she did trust him. She fel
t it in her heart, even if her mind flashed neon warnings. Was that a natural response after someone saved your life? Or a textbook progression toward Helsinki Syndrome? Whatever—she sure as hell shouldn’t trust him. His love for his son would trump any protectiveness he felt for her.
He stood. “What do you want to eat?”
“I’ll come in and have a look.”
She followed him into the cabin, limping slightly, the floorboards smooth and cool under her feet. Her gaze fell on the bed. Had they really come so close to sex? God, he’d fired her up, with those sure hands sliding down her belly and up her back, and gripping her butt. A few more minutes of that and—
“Laura?”
“Sorry?” She caught his eye, heat rising up her neck.
He scratched his buzz cut. “I asked if you wanted smoked salmon and capers on a baguette. There’s enough food in here for a royal banquet.”
Her stomach growled. Good to see hunger for food trumping her other cravings. Her survival instinct still worked, at least. “Guess they figure honeymooners need to keep up their energy.”
He laid the ingredients on the bench. He must have been on a honeymoon himself, once.
She pulled up a bar stool. “What happened to your wife, Jack?”
His eyes met hers, shot with danger. He broke a baguette in two and split each half. “Don’t you get it? The less you know about me, the better your chances of survival.”
“I take it she was the mother of your son.” Her stomach flitted.
“Laura, drop it.”
“Sometimes you’re not very good company, you know that?”
“I’m never good company.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “You were pretty good company last night.”
He stuffed shaved salmon into one baguette, then the other. Her mouth watered. “Last night was a mistake. We both know that.”
“I don’t regret it, for the record.” That, at least, was true. She just regretted that right now she had an urge to slide her hands up his T-shirt and feel the ridges of his muscles shudder at her touch again.
