by Sami Lee
From this distance she couldn’t have signed a sworn statement that it was him, but Hayley knew immediately the runner was Mitch. Who else would sprint on a treadmill indoors when one of the most gorgeous shorelines in the world lay only meters away? So maybe she was impetuous and emotional and a tad immature. Mitch Wood didn’t have it all together, either. He never had known how to let go, to forget his responsibilities and have fun. In his own self-contained, uber-successful way, Mitch was just as messed up as Hayley was.
“Oh, Mitch.” Hayley sighed as everything inside her turned soft. The eldest of six, Mitch had been assigned by birth order the role of leader, and with that came an awesome sense of responsibility. It was that sense of responsibility that had made him turn her away two years ago. She’d been young, an employee and a friend of his sister, to boot. She’d tried to seduce him, and he’d done the only thing he could live with—he’d tried to protect her by pushing her away. He’d done the right thing, what he saw as his duty. How could she hate him for that?
Knowing she had some reparations to make, Hayley headed toward the gym’s entrance.
The pain burned in Mitch’s calves, screaming at him to stop. As always, he ignored it. Eight hundred meters to go and he’d reach his goal of five kilometers. If he kept pace, he’d cover the distance in under twenty-four minutes, his best time yet.
Besides, running cleared his mind, helped him focus. And what he needed to focus on right now was Hayley and how to steal her away from that reprobate Ty Butler.
He could seduce her, of course. Mitch was confident he could entice Hayley into bed if he put in the required effort, even if she was still mad at him for not taking her up on that particular offer two years ago. After all, she wouldn’t still be angry if he meant nothing to her, would she?
But as much as Mitch wanted Hayley sexually, bedding her wasn’t going to be enough. Hayley had always been more to him than a potential sex partner.
Reaching down to the electronic panel, Mitch upped the speed by another half a kilometer per hour, successfully distracting himself from that thought. The second he did it, a voice came out of the dim light at the edges of the gym.
“Slow down before you hurt yourself.”
Startled, Mitch stumbled a little. The fumble screwed up his rhythm, making it impossible to maintain the pace he’d set. He felt his body careening off the back of the treadmill, but could do nothing to prevent it. His attempts to stop himself from falling face-first into the machine annihilated his balance. Toppling backwards, Mitch landed on the floor on his rear.
“Mitch!” Hayley rushed forward and fell to her knees by his side, a concerned expression on her face. “Are you okay?”
“Not really.” Winded, Mitch croaked the reply. “Did you have to sneak up on me?”
“I didn’t sneak. I was watching.” Mitch cocked a brow as he looked at her, and a little color stole into her cheeks. “Not like that. I was worried about you.”
Mitch’s momentary pleasure at the thought that she might have been ogling him vanished. “I’m only thirty-four. I wasn’t going to have a heart attack.”
“I know how old you are, a whole ten years older than I am.”
Mitch scowled when he saw her lips twitch. Was she making fun of their age difference? It was one of the reasons he’d used to point out why a relationship between them wouldn’t work, but at the time she’d dismissed it as unimportant. Had she changed her mind? Did she think him a pathetic, old, pompous wind—
“Anyway, I wasn’t worried about your physical health. Anyone can see you’re in great shape.”
The way her gaze flickered over him stilled Mitch’s litany of concerns. Hayley didn’t look at him like she thought he was too old for her. She looked at him like she was thinking of eating him for breakfast. Mitch’s blood, already heated from the strenuous exercise, caught fire, pulsing through his veins like a river of lava.
Energy crackled in the air between them as Mitch afforded Hayley’s body the same attention she’d given his. Their positions, her kneeling on the floor beside his seated form, brought her chest to his eye level. Mitch stifled a groan as he realized there was nothing between her white tank top and her skin. No lacey outline, no cotton cups—no bra. His gaze snagged on the twin circles of dark pink flesh clearly visible through the top. As he watched, they puckered, their tips extending toward him as though begging to be touched.
Abruptly, Hayley stood, breaking the erotic spell that had wound around him. “What are you doing in here, Mitch?”
“Running?” Mitch tried not to sound irritable as he stated the obvious, but the strain of his cock chafing against his jocks made it nearly impossible.
“Inside. On a treadmill.”
Rising to his feet and trying to subtly adjust his shorts to conceal his erection, Mitch drawled, “That’s how I usually do it.”
“Sure, when you’re in the city. But did you notice the long stretch of sand right outside this window?”
“Oh, yeah. They call it a beach, right?”
Having moved several paces away, Hayley at last turned back to face him. She matched his sarcasm with some of her own. “Did you consider jogging on it? Or wait, let’s go for broke. Would you consider taking a leisurely stroll on the shoreline?”
“Hayley, you know strolling’s not my style.”
Her smile was tinged with sadness. “I know.”
Mitch, you idiot. Had she been asking him to go for a walk with her? And had he really responded with mild loathing like some creep with an 85 IQ? Hey, babe, I’d rather act like a complete asshole than go for a walk with you. Shit! Here was his opportunity to spend some time alone with her and he’d blown it. “Hayley, I—”
“What’s the hurry?” She cut him off before he could say anything. “You’re already a success. You have money, a great company, respect from your peers. What are you working so hard for?”
“Hard work is how I got all those things you say I have.” He was getting kind of sick of having to defend his working habits to all and sundry. “If you think I can rest on my laurels and keep everything I’ve strived for, you’re being naive. Success means having to work harder than you ever have before.”
She gave him that sad smile again, the one that made him feel he was missing some vital point. “If that’s your definition of success, I don’t know how you’ll ever be happy.”
Because her words jangled a nerve somewhere inside him, Mitch responded with an aggression that was as natural as the growl of a lion defending itself from threat. He strode forward, closing the distance Hayley had put between them. He stood close enough that he towered over her, knowing the pose would make her aware of her smaller stature and weaker physicality. Staring down into her face, Mitch let the desire, the naked lust, shine from his eyes. “I know something that would make me happy—that would make us both bloody ecstatic, in fact.”
Lifting a hand, he trailed it down the side of her face until his thumb found the plump outline of her lower lip. It trembled when he traced its shape, the only signal Hayley gave that his touch affected her. Her body remained rigid, her eyes steady as they watched him. Mitch thought about shifting his hand farther down to cup her breast, find out if those nipples of hers were still as hard as flint. Before he could act on the impulse, Hayley slipped away from him again. “That isn’t what I came in here for.”
Mitch gritted his teeth on the urge to curse. “Then why did you come in here?”
“To apologize—for last night.” His shock must have been written all over his face because she elaborated. “I had no right to go off at you like that about something that happened ages ago. You can’t help how you feel—or don’t feel—about me.”
She couldn’t possibly think he didn’t have feelings for her. Could she? “Hayley, the problems between us were never caused by a lack of sentiment.”
Her smile was knowing and heartrending all at once. “Oh, I know you lust after me a little, but I’m not so immature anymore as to a
ssume that means we belong together. That’s why you refused to take up with me two years ago, because you figured I was bound to confuse good sex with true love. And maybe you were right. I don’t know that I could have conducted a purely sexual affair back then.”
Mitch’s throat felt constricted, like his heart had leapt to it and now sat there clogging his esophagus. He husked, “And now?”
She eyed him steadily, a wealth of feminine knowledge glittering in her eyes. The faint curve of her lips was mysterious, sensuous. Her silence was both an answer and the start of a whole array of additional questions. Mitch wanted to clarify that a “purely sexual affair” was all she had with Ty. Before he could ask, she took a deep breath and straightened. “Mitch, I’d like to show you something.”
“What is it?”
“You can’t ask questions, and you have to come with me now.”
Her demand unsettled Mitch. He was used to being in the driver’s seat in every exchange. Asking him to blindly follow someone else’s commands was tantamount to expecting him to jump off a tall cliff without any base-jumping equipment. When he opened his mouth to ask for more detail, the look Hayley sent him stifled the queries he wanted to utter. She didn’t think he could do it. She didn’t think he trusted her.
A strange sense of peace came over Mitch as he let go of the need to control the situation. He realized with some surprise that he did trust Hayley. Either that or he was willing to go anywhere with her, as long as he was by her side.
Both possibilities ought to have frightened the hell out of him. But he wasn’t scared as he nodded slowly. “Okay.”
As it turned out, Mitch was only too happy to oblige Hayley’s request. Walking behind her on the path that led through the resort’s lush green foliage enabled him to watch her unobserved. Her blonde curls fell in thick waves over her shoulders, all the way down to the small of her back. The tank top was short, exposing a strip of lightly tanned skin between its hem and the top of her sarong. As she walked, the jaunty swing of her hips mesmerized him—especially when the floral garment started to slip low on her hips. Above the fabric, Mitch saw a glimpse of dark ink, the tail end of a swirling shape that told him the tattoo she’d gotten was right there at the base of her spine, decorating the very tops of her butt cheeks.
Mitch could see the appeal of tattoos now. The mystery of Hayley’s—what it represented and how low it might go down—made his mouth dry out. By the time they cleared the resort grounds and their feet hit sand, he was in serious need of liquid refreshment.
“Can you see it?”
Mitch stared at the spot where her sarong had slipped another tantalizing inch, muttering, “Almost.”
At her silence, Mitch met her gaze. Hayley stared at him askance, one eyebrow lifting. “I was talking about what’s out there.”
The tilt of her head indicated he ought to be looking at the ocean. Dragging his gaze away from Hayley’s impish green eyes, Mitch stared out to sea. He looked for something on the horizon that might be interesting enough to warrant this little trek through the rainforest—a ship, a pod of leaping dolphins—but he saw nothing but an endless expanse of water and a pinkish-grey dome of cloudless sky. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“This isn’t a test. You’re not looking for anything, but you’re supposed to see it.”
O-kay. “If this isn’t a test, why are you staring at me as though I’m missing something obvious?”
“Because you are. It’s all around you, Mitch.”
Reminded of the words to an old song, Mitch quipped. “Are you going to tell me it’s love that’s all around?”
Her eyes remained steady on his and for once in his life Mitch was the first to tear his gaze away. He shouldn’t have mentioned the L-word even in jest, not around Hayley. “Hayley, I don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“I can see I’ll have to take a more hands-on approach.” Her steps so leisurely they made his erratic heartbeat halt altogether, Hayley moved to stand behind him. Rising on tiptoes, she placed her hands over his face. “Close your eyes.”
“I think I’ll need them open if I’m to see anything.” The droll retort came out raspy as the heat of Hayley’s body infused his back. Mitch swallowed. Dry. His throat may as well be chock full of sand.
“Just be quiet and do what I say.”
“That’s usually my line.”
The little gasp of breath and the fact her voice was now as husky as his were the only clues Mitch had that his comment had impacted her. “I bet it is. But for now, let me be in charge.”
The “for now” conjured all sorts of intriguing possibilities that did nothing to alleviate Mitch’s so-aroused-it-was-painful situation. “All right, instruct away.”
“First of all, listen. What can you hear?”
My heart pounding 120 bpm because you’re close. Mitch refrained from verbalizing the truth, trying to push aside the distraction of Hayley’s nearness to concentrate on the sounds in the environment. “I hear the ocean.”
“Doing what?”
“Being wet.”
“Mitch.”
He pushed out a sigh at her warning tone, uncomfortably aware that he was being bossed around by a woman of five-foot-four who probably weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds soaking wet. “I hear water coming into shore, tumbling onto the sand.”
“That’s great.” Mitch was inordinately pleased by the praise. Damn, he had it bad. “Now, tell me what you smell.”
“Your perfume. Vanilla and some kind of spice, cinnamon maybe. It’s the same one you’ve always worn, the one that used to make me forget what I was saying the second you walked into the room, even if I was on the phone to Japan.”
Hayley drew in a shaky breath. The inhalation caused her chest to inflate, thrusting her soft breasts against the muscles of Mitch’s back. Encouraged by her reaction, Mitch continued. “You smell so good, Hayley. Sweet and sexy and familiar. It makes me think of…”
Home.
The word came to him unbidden, shocking him. It was utterly illogical. Neither his family home nor his penthouse apartment on the Gold Coast had ever smelled like the intoxicating mix of scents that Hayley gave off like irresistible pheromones.
“What?” Hayley rasped when he trailed off. “What does it make you think of?”
Unsettled by the first answer that had popped into his head, Mitch provided the second. “Making love. The heady scent of silk sheets after a bout of hot, satisfying sex.”
That little indrawn breath again. This time when Hayley’s breasts brushed his back he felt the sharp imprint of her hardened nipples. Mitch’s dick responded in kind, growing as rigid as a lead pipe in his running shorts. He turned his head, trying to find Hayley’s lips with his own, needing to. Lord, he hadn’t tasted her in two years. He had to know if she was as delicious as he remembered.
If he kissed her now he wouldn’t stop. Perhaps sensing that, Hayley cleared her throat and put an inch of distance between their bodies. “In the air. What can you smell in the air?”
Tamping down the impatient surge of his body that screamed at him to end this game in favor of more pleasurable pursuits, Mitch concentrated on the aromas surrounding him. This was important to Hayley. He’d make every effort to do as she asked, if for no better reason than to please her. “Salt,” he said at length. “And some kind of flower, something light and tropical.”
“Frangipani.” Hayley’s voice was a soft murmur close to his ear. “Hibiscus and gardenia.”
“It’s nice.” He wasn’t only talking about the local plant life. Having Hayley this close—her chest pressed to his back and her arms twined around him—was nice. Better than nice and worse than torture. Heaven and hell rolled into one.
“Now, tell me what you feel.”
“Jesus, don’t you know?”
“You should be relaxed.”
“Relaxed is the last word I’d used to describe how I’m feeling right now.” It was certainly the last wo
rd he’d use to describe his penis, which was trying to poke a gigantic hole in his running shorts.
“Please, Mitch,” Hayley insisted. “For me.”
If she didn’t already know her power over him, Mitch’s acquiescence would surely give him away. He’d do anything for Hayley. He’d always known it and had been afraid of it, afraid most of all of Hayley finding out how easily she could drive him to his knees. But he didn’t have it in him to deny her request, not when it was so poignantly uttered. “Okay. I’m relaxing.”
“Deep breaths. In… Out. In… Out.”
Mitch did as she asked, matching the drawn-out pace of her voice. The slow breathing caused his chest to expand to its fullest, bringing her body and his closer with each exhalation. She’d either forgotten to maintain the distance between them or had decided not to bother. Her breasts stroked across his back, a delicious friction that made him hotter than he’d ever been. Instead of fighting it or trying to push toward the most satisfying solution to his physical response, Mitch let it steal through him. The intense desire, the bone-melting lust. His blood pumped slow and hot, his cock throbbed with each beat of his pulse. But he did nothing but listen to Hayley and feel every exhilarating, terrifying ounce of it.
“Are you calm?”
In a strange way, he was. Even with the force of his sexual needs coursing through him, the sense of urgency had faded to the background. Not fighting the inevitable was freeing. He wanted Hayley more than he’d ever wanted another woman, and admitting the truth of it was more calming than he ever would have expected. “Yes.”
“Are you here, in this moment with me?”
His answer was the absolute truth. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
At last, Hayley took her hands away from his face. “Open your eyes.”
The brightness caused Mitch to flinch as he raised his eyelids. The muted colors of predawn had disappeared. What replaced them were brilliant rays of light in every conceivable hue from bright fuchsia to flaming orange to deepest magenta.
