Their drinks arrived, and she tossed hers back and told him she was leaving and maybe she’d see him later at the villa.
“Charlotte, wait,” he said, following as she led the way, but staying cautiously behind her as she hurried to the Jeep and climbed in.
He told her to please scoot over and let him drive, since she shouldn’t have had the vodka on an empty stomach. He got in on the driver’s side and his right hand rested on the steering wheel. That’s when she noticed the skin on his knuckles was torn and bloody.
“What happened? Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?” she asked, her temper waning as she kissed his hand and laid it in her lap. Then she searched through the straw tote she’d brought along, looking for tissues, or anything to stop the bleeding.
He pushed the hem of her dress up and his fingers found their way between her legs, and she closed her eyes and opened herself to him.
“Arguing makes you wet. Do you remember that from your past, Charlotte? After you try a case in court or we have a disagreement, you call it ‘mad fucking’ and it’s beyond erotic,” he said as the blood from his wounds mixed with her slick, salty arousal. She pressed into his touch, arching, quaking, not caring if anyone saw them. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she was shuddering in the throes of orgasm almost immediately.
“Drive,” she said, without looking at him, and he laughed as he started the Jeep and pulled onto the road. “I suppose you gave that sleazy drug lord what he deserved. Why didn’t you let West take care of him?”
“Because you’re mine, and I’ll handle anyone who tries to take you from me. You’re distracting me, you know—maybe I should stop on the side of the road,” he said as she climbed onto his lap facing him, the wind whipping through her hair, her eyes wild with lust. Her back was to the steering wheel, and she slid her panties off and threw them out onto the road as they drove along. “That’s littering, but I doubt that’s what we’ll get arrested for. Fuck! Charlotte, you are so hot,” he said when she’d unzipped and freed him, then settled onto his straining erection.
“Don’t stop, keep driving and stay still. I’ll do all the work,” she said, inching down, her body clinching hard, gripping him, drawing him deeper.
Her unquenchable heat, the motion of her body, faster and more frantic, her unbearably erotic words whispered in his ear. It was torture and it was heaven, and he hoped he didn’t crash the Jeep and kill them both, but what a way to go. He kept driving, face forward, his eyes never leaving the road, her body molded to his, her sex gripping him like a glove. That was the divine odyssey of being loved by Charlotte—she was a like the Gauguin paintings they both adored. Beautiful and mysterious, primal and animalistic, irresistible and unforgettable. His love for her was unquenchable, it burned night and day and had left him adrift during the six years when she wouldn’t be his. It was true what they said, money couldn’t buy happiness. He had more wealth than he could spend in several lifetimes, but Charlotte’s head hadn’t been turned by a mere dollar sign.
She wanted what she wanted, and she’d mapped out the course of her life long ago. She’d made it on her own from the derelict foster homes of Mississippi to a position at Sheppard and Sheridan, the top corporate law firm in San Diego. He worried sometimes that sex was all she wanted from him—she’d warned him from the very beginning that falling in love wasn’t high on her to-do list. But he couldn’t resist her, and he’d used sex to help win her love. He kept her sore and aching and in need of him. Still, he wanted her to love him as much as he loved her, and he had a bad feeling that it wasn’t possible, that she could never match his devotion.
The Jeep careened into the driveway at the villa and skidded to a stop, just as her cries reached a fever pitch. She pulsed around him, her nails biting through cloth of his shirt into the sculpted flesh of his back. His groans matched hers as he let go, thrusting deeply, his hands on her waist, pulling her down hard as he slammed into her. Filling her, emptying himself, blissfully captured exactly where she wanted him, right where he belonged.
“You’re an excellent driver,” she said, kissing him, her hands tangling in the waves of hair. “And you’re absolutely right, I am totally down with the whole ‘mad fucking’ scenario!”
*
Charlotte was speechless at the sight that greeted her when she walked through the villa and stood looking out toward the ocean. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of white candles covered the stone terrace and surrounded the pool. It looked like a dream or a painting, it was so perfectly surreal. She turned to Bly and stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck, turning her face up so that his mouth covered hers in a long, deep, slow kiss.
“Is this your doing, or was it the miraculously invisible house staff?” Charlotte asked, when they came up for air. “I never thought of you as a hopeless romantic, but maybe I’ve underestimated Alexander Bly,” she said, her mind and body still reeling from the sex and the kiss and the fairytale scene laid out before her.
“It was my idea,” he said. “I am hopelessly romantic where you’re concerned, Charlotte. When you were missing, even though it was only a few days, it was like the end of the world. I’m in love with you, I knew it the first moment I met you all those years ago. Why the fuck I didn’t stop you from leaving then, I’ll never understand. After that—after the day I called and you said it was too late—I was sleepwalking through life for the next six years, and nothing and no one could fill the space where only you belonged.”
“Bly, I love you now, and I wanted you then, but you frightened me. I don’t think you have any idea what an innocent I was. Jorgen and I were together, but that entire relationship was so strange it defies logic. I was a dumb little cheerleader from Ole Miss engaged to a star NFL quarterback, and I was still a virgin. It was only supposed to be Jorgen who was photographed for the cover of American Jock, not the both of us. Then the next thing I knew, you—the great and powerful Alexander Bly—convinced me to pose with my boyfriend. I never intended to be the nearly-naked cheerleader, and it haunts me every time I walk into a courtroom. Do you know how difficult it is to inspire respect in the opposing counsel when he probably had pictures of my bare butt on his dorm-room wall?”
“If I could go back and do it over, I would have told you how I felt that day, and I wouldn’t have asked you to pose for those photographs. I was just… how do I even describe it? I was stunned by how beautiful you were, but mostly I was caught completely off-guard by my feelings for you. I’d never met a woman who affected me the way you did, and I suppose I thought if you agreed to do the layout in a magazine I owned, it would bind us together somehow. Something inside me laid claim to you the first moment we met, and I’ve never been free of you since. I don’t want to ever be free of you, Charlotte—you own my soul, and the rest of me, of course. Life is so clear in hindsight. I should have sent the quarterback on his way, and I should have done everything in my power to make you see that you were my destiny and that I was yours.”
“Well, things have a way of working out in the end, don’t they? We’re together now, and I know without a doubt that I love you. What else matters, Bly? Listen, you and I are fine, we’re better than fine. And I don’t know about you but I’m starving. It smells like something wonderful is on the grill, I think we should have some local delicacies and then jump into that candlelit pool. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get some sleep tonight—but then again, maybe not,” she said, slipping into his arms, pressing her body against the hard length of his, wondering if they would make it all the way through dinner without pausing to make love.
*
The candlelit pool called to Charlotte in the middle of the night, and she crept out of bed for a midnight swim. They had fallen into bed, gorged and happy, after a sumptuous supper and several bottles of rice wine. Bly slept soundly, sated with love and sex and Charlotte. She stood naked on the steps of the pool with the candles burning down and flickering out. The night sky mirrored the glittering terrace; it was a blanket o
f candlelight thrown across the heavens, nature’s own grandly romantic gesture. She waded into the exquisitely warm saltwater pool, and swam to the far end that balanced precariously over the edge of the ocean.
Bly was next to her in a matter of minutes, his smooth/hard chest against her back, his arms enfolding her. He lifted the dark, heavy curtain of her hair and trailed hot kisses across her neck as she turned to face him. Her lips parted and his tongue invaded her mouth, savoring the feel and taste of their desire. His hands cupped her breasts, then moved to her sweet little ass, lifting her up as her legs circled his waist, her hips eagerly pressing into him. She moaned at the feeling of his hardness straining between them, the broad length and ridges, hot and huge, throbbing against her belly. She didn’t just want him inside her, she wanted to taste him, she wanted to share every intimate pleasure with this man who was both her lover and her truest love.
To his great surprise, she peeled her body away from his, swam to the far end of the pool, and waited for him to join her.
“Hmm, you have that look in your eyes that means I’m in for some pleasurable trouble, or you’re about to seriously rock my world,” he said, settling onto the steps as she kissed and licked her way down his body. He couldn’t help but groan with anticipation when she looked into his eyes and said, “Both.”
*
“What is that noise?” Charlotte sat up in bed the next morning, and although her head was pounding from too much rice wine, she smiled at the view. Bly stood naked, drinking a glass of orange juice as he watched a helicopter touch down on the driveway. Her heart leapt as he turned and walked slowly toward the bed. God, he was without a doubt the sexiest man alive. And he was hers. How could she have forgotten that mind-and-life-altering fact? His power and his money meant they could live without worries or restraints, and that was an excellent bonus. But it wasn’t the things he owned that made her love him, it was his inherent goodness, his heart and soul. Of course, if she was going to be truthful, it was also his powerfully masculine body, and his stop-the-clock gorgeous face. He had that enchantingly unruly lock of hair that constantly fell across his forehead, and the sexiest blue-green eyes she’d ever seen. Not to mention those amazingly etched lips and strong, square chin with a deep dimple that made her weak in the knees. To top it all off he was a little too well endowed and she wasn’t the least bit ashamed of her constant longing for their special brand of loving with a hint of pain.
“We’re leaving tonight, going back to California,” he said, leaning over the bed, resisting as she tried to pull him down, lifting her up instead and holding her as if he’d never let go. “I thought you might like to see the island from above. It’s an incredible sight, and there’s something special I want to show you.”
“Something special? I’m intrigued. Let me grab a cup of coffee and get dressed, which you might want to do as well, unless you want me to take advantage of you…”
“I do love it when you take advantage of me, and just thinking about your bold, beautiful mouth last night makes me want to climb in bed with you right now. But we have the rest of our lives for every pleasure we can dream up. Let’s get dressed, then you’ll have to indulge my romantic side once more before we leave Bali.”
She dressed in a sarong and a linen blouse, then pulled her hair into a sleek ponytail and tied it with a bright batik scarf. He held her hand as they walked toward the helicopter, and then they were inside, buckling seat belts and covering their ears.
From above, Bali was a small bright emerald adrift in an endless watery world. The bays and the ocean surrounding the island caught the rays of sun and reflected them like a prism burning with variations of blue, turquoise, azure, and rich indigo until they the horizon swallowed them up. The helicopter veered away from the coast and climbed into the verdant hills dense with trees and boulders, and it seemed to Charlotte that this must have been the first piece of earth that God had created. There were tears in her eyes as she took in the pristine beauty of it all, committing it to memory. Memory was a tricky thing, and she wasn’t sure that hers was fully intact, but she knew unquestionably that she was in love with Bly and she also knew that no matter what, that was unchangeable.
“Look,” Bly said, his lips close to her ear so she could hear over the roar of the rotor and the wind. “That’s where we’re going—it’s a sacred temple over the water.”
It was a Hindu temple, he explained, as a smiling Balinese boy handed them sashes to tie around their waists before they could enter. Para Ulan Danu Bratan rested beside a mountain lake with the main temple at the water’s edge and a smaller “floating” structure on a tiny island. They walked inside the ancient structure, its rough stone walls festooned with moss and algae. They were quietly reverent, with only the sounds of insects and birds in the air and water lapping at the shore.
“This temple is dedicated to the gods of water, those who bring fertility and abundance to sustain the generations,” Bly said. They stood close together and his hands untied the scarf from her hair and used it to bind their wrists together. “This is important—it means we’re bound to one another for the rest of our lives. The legends on the island say that even if we are parted, we can’t escape each other until the end of time.”
“I like that,” she said, close to tears again at his gentle words spoken with absolute conviction. “Until the end of time. We’ll decide later if that’s long enough. I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you, Bly.”
“I’m so deeply in love with you, Charlotte. I wanted to bring you here so you would always remember that our love is a special kind of magic. There’s something I want to ask you, and I’m sure you know what it is. But you’ve turned me into an incurable romantic and I have it all planned out, so I hope you’ll agree to go on another trip with me as soon as we get back to San Diego. I want to be certain that your memory is firmly intact and that whatever your answer is, you’ll mean it when you say yes or no.”
“Another trip? Where will we go? What about my job?” she asked, although she knew she would gladly go with him to the ends of the earth, and that she would certainly say yes if his question was what she hoped it would be.
“We’ll go on my boat to Hawaii. It’ll be smooth sailing, and the islands are extraordinary this time of year. As for your job, you’ve barely missed a day of work since you joined the law firm. I feel certain they’ll give you a leave of absence.”
“That sounds like something I can handle, an extended vacation on a yacht in the Pacific. The few days we’ve spent here in Bali have been great for my state of mind and for restoring my memory. I think I can safely say that time spent with you, Bly, is the perfect cure for me.”
The End
For more of Charlotte and Alexander Bly’s adventures told with a bit more sizzle, Legal Action and Legal Heirs are available exclusively on Amazon, happy reading!
For other titles by Kimball Lee
The Best Man
By Ellie Meade
Maid of Honor, Kayley Frost, finds herself in sunny Aruba attending a wedding she should have never agreed to go to. As she settles into her room an unexpected knock at her door signals that her life as she knows it is about to change, forever. Daniel Weston, NFL star and best man, saunters into her life, setting Kayley’s world on fire. Daniel brings a desire back to Kayley that she didn’t realize she’d lost, and for that, she will forever be grateful.
Copyright 2014 Ellie Meade
Chapter One
Hearing my section board doesn’t make me as excited as it should. There are times in your life when a vacation in paradise would thrill you, and then there are times when you dread having to pack your bags. I have dreaded this “vacation” since I agreed to go on it. My “best friend” decided on a destination wedding, I shouldn’t say best friend, I should say… frenemy. My mother taught me to keep my friends close and my enemies closer. Once thicker than thieves, now I can barely stand the woman. It could be due to the fact that she is now marrying my ex.
The once love of my life, or so I thought at the time, didn’t stop her from going after him. Girl code did not apply.
I laugh mirthlessly as I settle into my seat, remembering how she’d informed me of her unashamed actions. “Kay Kay don’t be silly, you dated him like two years ago. It’s not like you were ever in love or anything. We are in love, you should be happy for us.” That was the day I checked out on our friendship. Her tone was as if she were talking to a child. I wanted to choke the shit out of her, but I didn’t. Instead I tightened my fingers into clenched fists and mentally counted to ten.
When I could act like a lady again I replied.
“You’re right, Nicky, I can do better than him. I hope you two have a wonderful life.” I smiled sweetly at her as I patted her arm and walked out of the restaurant before my lunch was even served.
Fast forward two years and here I am feeling like an asshole for not only going to her wedding, but for being the maid of honor. I remained friends with her because that is what I do. I remain loyal to the people who have been in my life for as long as I can remember. It’s more of a habit, really. Call me weak, naïve, or plain stupid, because that is what my family calls me. I remained in this friendship because if I don’t, I know she has no one that truly cares about her. She has no one that has her back and I find that sad enough to want to remain friends with her.
It's in His Kiss Contemporary Romance Box Set Page 10
