Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

  Then he’d gone down to the beach and had returned with a bottle of cold white wine.

  Wow. She took it from him and went in search of an opener. She found one lying on a window sill and uncorked the wine. It was Cretan wine, local. She scrounged up two plastic cups from the only cupboard in the cabin and went back outside.

  The sun had dropped close to the horizon, but the cliff provided shade for the rock platform behind the hut. Someone — Kai? — had nailed a metal rail along the drop-off, so that she felt safe standing over the chasm. The wind of that morning had turned into a fresh breeze that ruffled Kai’s hair as he bent over the coals to check the fish, poking it with a fork.

  He caught her smile and winked. “Observe the great chef at work,” he said, taking up a big dish. “In fact, could you hold this while observing?”

  Snorting, she put the wine and glasses down and went to hold the plate as he lifted the fish off the grill with a large fork. He fished the onions out of the ashes and brushed them clean, putting them on the side of the plate.

  “Where should we sit?” She glanced around, the heavy plate in her hand.

  “Wait.” He slipped into the hut, and came out with two rickety chairs and a foldable table. He set it down and took the dish from her, setting it in the middle. Another trip inside and he placed small dishes and silverware.

  She brought the wine and glasses. It looked festive. The sea roared below, slamming into the rocks. Kai was smiling.

  The fish was excellent, subtly flavored with sage and rosemary, and the onions were soft and sweet. At some point, Kai gave up on the silverware and got to it with his hands. She followed suit, making him chuckle with her efforts. When they’d licked their fingers and plates clean, he poured them both wine and they raised their plastic cups.

  “To you,” he said, suddenly serious again.

  “And you.” She took a long pull. It was cool and fruity and perfect. She cocked her head. “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “I don’t. But tonight I need encouragement.”

  “What for?”

  He stared into the depths of his cup and frowned. “I promised to talk about myself and I’m not sure I know how.”

  Oh god, he was really going to tell her. It hadn’t been idle talk. Excited and scared at the same time, she gulped down her wine and lifted her cup for more. His brows arched but he filled their cups again with the concentrated air of someone on a mission.

  Encouragement. Right. They both needed it.

  “You said something about dessert?” she said, trying to postpone his confession. His eyes narrowed and his head tilted to the side, as if he was trying to figure out why she wasn’t pressing him to talk right then and there; why she was giving him time.

  “I’ll go get it,” he said, setting down his cup. “Just a minute.”

  He got up and skidded down the slope, never hesitating, never slowing down. She leaned over the rail to watch him as he reached the water’s edge — the cursed, malevolent water — and jumped on the rocks on one side. He leaned over and pulled something out of the sea.

  She laughed when she saw what it was: a watermelon.

  He climbed back up, carrying his prize, and wagged his brows at her. That made her laugh harder.

  “What?” he demanded, indignant. “Chilled watermelon is the best dessert.”

  When he’d carved it up and she tried it, she had to agree. It was sweet and light and cold and crunchy like an ice sorbet.

  He came around the table and pulled her to her feet, his arms coming around her. He kissed her, then, and she kissed him back, tasting his mouth that was sweet with the fruit.

  “I want to tell you everything,” he whispered. “I need to tell you. I’ve never felt this way with anyone.” He bent his head. “Maybe it’s because I have a feeling you’ll understand.”

  Fear flared again and she took a step back. “But you don’t have to. No need to tell me. Sorry I pushed you. It’s okay.” She was babbling, she knew it. “Sorry.”

  His eyes widened. Then his face fell and his gaze turned cold. “You don’t want to know.” He swallowed hard. “I understand.”

  Shit shit shit. “I do want to know. I...” She fisted her hands, pressed them against her sides. “I know already.”

  “You know.” The words were low and choked. “What do you know?”

  “That you’re Myra Crow’s son. That,” she had to take a breath, “both your parents died in a boat accident nearby.”

  He nodded, a jerky motion.

  Then he turned around and strode to the hut, entered and slammed the door behind him, leaving her staring.

  ***

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

  Shakespeare

  Take my tears. They are the truest part of me.

  Myra Crow

  “Kai.” She stepped into the darkness of the hut, her heart thumping against her ribcage. A horizontal sunray slanted inside, a path on which dust danced and swirled. It illuminated a figure sitting hunched on the bed, struck gold sparks off his tousled hair. He had his elbows propped on his knees, and his head in his hands.

  She’d fucked up. Her stomach was like a rock lodged below her ribs. He probably hated her now, for snooping, for prying, for destroying this moment when he’d been about to trust her with something he’d never shared with everyone. Who knew why he’d decided to do it, and she’d ruined it.

  Maybe she should go, but she couldn’t make herself do it — not when he looked so downcast.

  Taking a deep breath, she closed the distance between them and sat on the bed, so close their knees almost touched. In the quiet, his breathing came harsh and shallow, as if he couldn’t squeeze enough air into his lungs.

  “Please don’t hate me,” she whispered. She wanted to touch him, but didn’t dare. He seemed coiled like a spring. “I happened to see the book under your bed this morning, and I read the dedication. I guessed who you are and Markus had told me about how your mother died, that she’d drowned in the area. Between that and some things Panos told me, I pieced it together. That’s all.”

  “That’s all,” he repeated, his voice barely a wheeze. He still hadn’t looked up.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Am I...?” He gave a bark of laughter that turned into a gasp.

  “Kai?”

  “Can’t. Breathe.”

  Worry gripped her like a fist. “Why?”

  “Don’t know what...” He gasped again. “What this is.” He was struggling to inhale, his arms wrapped around himself.

  She scooted closer and began to rub his back. “Maybe you need to lie down?”

  A shuddering sob wrenched from his throat and he lifted his head. His eyes were dry, which was odd, but when another wrenching sob came, she realized what this was. Her hand stilled.

  Kai had forgotten how to cry, just like he’d forgotten how to laugh. All that pain locked inside his chest, and now it was trying to burst free for the first time.

  Her throat tight and aching, she wrapped her arm around his back and pulled him close until he was leaning against her, his head on her shoulder. More sobs shook him as she held him, and his arms came around her waist, clutching her tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “so sorry.” For messing up, for everything she’d done wrong, for what had happened to him. She murmured the words over and over again, although she knew they couldn’t begin to cover his loss. “I’m sorry I pressured you, sorry I made you remember.”

  After a while, he pulled back, straightening. “Fuck, I’m the one who’s sorry.” He was trying to compose himself, struggling to calm his breathing. “For dragging you into this. But I’m also glad you knew. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell you.”

  He drew another hitching breath and she tugged on his arm until he lay down on the bed.

  “I’m glad, too.” She curled next to him, stroking his face, from his cheekbones to the dimple in his chin, from
his eyelids to his temples. “Tell me more.”

  He did. The words came haltingly at first, then poured out of him. As Rita had said, he didn’t remember the accident — only the storm that had seemed to come out of nowhere, the screams as the boat capsized and sank fast. He remembered drowning, trying to rise to the surface and not knowing where the surface was. Then a blank until he woke up in hospital, hooked to monitors. He’d been in a coma for three days. Panos had been there.

  “Why don’t you talk about it to Panos?” she whispered, not wanting to speak loudly and break the spell.

  “He can’t understand.” Kai cupped her cheek, his eyes glittering. “He doesn’t know what it means for the past to haunt you. How your mistakes chase you forever.”

  Like she did. He thought she’d understand how he felt.

  Maybe she did. He’d been in a horrible boat accident, and had survived where others hadn’t. Just like she’d survived when Andria hadn’t and for a long while she hadn’t been sure she was allowed to keep on living. Still...

  “The accident wasn’t your fault, Kai.”

  “Yes, it was. I angered the sea.” He swallowed hard. “Taunted her. My mom always said I belonged to the ocean. That day I shouted out loud that I would never return. That I would stay on land.”

  ‘If you anger the sea, you pay,’ Panos had said, and Kai knew it. He’d been only fooling around and believed he’d lost everything because of it. A week ago, hell, two days ago, she’d have told him this was nonsense.

  And now? She had no idea anymore, so she just took his hand and squeezed it. “Not your fault,” she repeated, because this at least was clear. “You didn’t know this would happen. How could you have known?”

  She held him as he talked about how he’d returned to America after the accident and stayed with an uncle, gone back to school and continued for a while as if nothing had changed. His uncle traveled a lot. He lived out of town in a big estate. It was lonely. It was like purgatory — all that empty time to think and obsess about guilt and memories.

  One day nothing made sense anymore. Kai snapped, hit his teacher, was expelled and sent by his uncle to a boarding school. Psychologists, therapists had been paid to help him, but it wasn’t working. He plodded through high school, barely graduated. Before the accident he’d wanted to study archaeology or literature, but afterward he’d picked a topic at random. He picked architecture. Failed the first semester. Failed the second. Insulted the professors, ruined the graduation party and was expelled.

  He decided to return to Crete, take some time and get a grip on himself. He’d hoped for answers, for closure. For anything than what he’d found. It had hurt when he discovered how much the locals loathed him, how they blamed him for the sinking of the boat and his continued survival.

  “Why don’t you leave?” she asked, caressing his face with a fingertip. “Go back home. This place is killing you.”

  “Home?” His mouth twisted. “I came here to see if the sea would have me, or leave me in peace, if the dead would take me. Now I don’t know what to do. I haven’t found any answers and there’s nothing for me in America.”

  “You have your uncle,” Olivia said.

  “He died before I finished school.”

  She grimaced. “Drowned?”

  “No.” Kai stared up at the ceiling and frowned. “Heart attack.”

  ‘I’m alone,’ he’d told her when she’d first arrived to Crete. She just hadn’t realized how much.

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “I told you, I’m planning on moving to New York to continue my studies.”

  He gazed at her searchingly. “Why?”

  She gave a small shrug. “I need to move on, let go of the past. It’d be great if you came with me.” Please, come with me. I’ll be alone, too, without you.

  He closed his eyes. “I can’t. She won’t let me.”

  The sea. “Panos says it’s magic. How can the spell be broken?” God, she never thought she’d be asking something like this.

  He huffed. “I’ve asked the professor who lives nearby. He promised he’d search for an answer, but the only thing he’s told me so far is what legend says.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Kai blinked and lifted his hand to her chin, tilting it up so he could look into her eyes. “The sea won’t let me go. I was born with the mark of the sea people.”

  She sat up, dislodging his hand. “Then where’s this mark? Show it to me.”

  “You can’t see it.”

  “How convenient.” Anger was building inside her. She poked a finger in his chest. “I only believe what I see.”

  “Then you don’t believe in many things, do you?”

  She should have smacked him for this remark, but his smile was teasing, and how could she be mad at him after what he’d been through? After what he went through every single day. She should have been running away, he was right, but couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

  “No, I don’t believe in much,” she admitted. She bent over him. “But I think people can sometimes do things that seem impossible.”

  He shifted, put his hand behind her head and pulled her down to him. “Liv...” He kissed her hard, and she kissed him back, feeling the urgency in the lines of his body. If it was a distraction he was seeking, a moment of letting go, then he deserved it.

  He uncoiled and rolled on top of her, his hands burrowing under her blouse, and she lost the trail of her thoughts, caught in his caress. It all faded away — the fear, the worry, the sadness in a whirlwind of desire and need.

  She tore at his shorts, and he dragged her blouse over her head. She lifted her back to let him take off her bra, then shimmied out of her shorts and panties. It was like a fight — each trying to get closer to the other, skin to skin, closer, ever closer. His lips kissed her neck, his stubble scratched her face, his rough hands gripped her tightly. She could feel his heart beat against her. Too many layers, too much.

  Yet not enough.

  He finally slipped out of his shorts and shuddered as he pressed his length on her belly, hot and aroused.

  She couldn’t wait; she wanted him, wanted the physical connection. “Please,” she mumbled. “Now.”

  He seemed to understand, seemed to feel the same way. She heard the sound of a package ripped open, a few choice curses that made her smile, and then he lowered himself over her, stroking strands of hair off her sweaty face.

  He waited, as if for permission, his eyes utterly dark, the pupils blown. His chest rose and fell rapidly against her own.

  “Yes,” she whispered, lifting her face to kiss his lips. “Yes.”

  He pushed into her, his eyes dazed, his face twisting in pleasure so intense it almost looked like pain. She wrapped her legs around him, heat racing up her spine, and he gasped and bowed his head, rocking faster, taking her breath away. His back bowed, his teeth gritting, and for a moment silver streaked over his skin, grey scales like gems covering his arms and legs, and feathery fins jutting from his sides.

  “Oh god, Liv...” He jerked, his whole body shaking, and she had to close her eyes as fire ignited and erupted inside her, tearing her apart.

  *

  Olivia blinked against the early morning light. Kai was grinning at her, just inches from her face.

  “Good morning,” he said brightly and brushed his mouth over her cheek. He drew back a little, his gaze moving from her mouth to her neck and lower. “God, I love your face, your breasts, your hips...”

  She hummed, groggy from sleep. “Only that?”

  “Your ass, your legs, your back...”

  “And here I thought you were going to say something profound.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

  He rolled on his back and she couldn’t help but stare at his lean chest and corded arms. “I love everything about you,” he breathed.

  She swallowed hard, suddenly lost for words. Inside she felt like she was melting into a puddle of joy. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she whispered and watc
hed his mouth curve in a smile.

  She loved that smile. She loved him, oh god she did, but couldn’t say that — not now. Too soon. Besides, it couldn’t mean anything. Lust, worry, affection, those things had to be what she felt.

  Kirsten was right in that at least: she wanted so much to save him she’d do anything, and after what she’d seen — or what she’d thought she’d seen last night, the scales and fins, the colors changing on his body, she didn’t know what to believe anymore. So confused.

  Seemed to be a pattern, these days.

  He sat up, running a hand through his messy hair. “I need to shave.” He got up, moving gracefully, with the assurance of someone whose body is strong and primed. Like a wild animal, she thought, a wolf perhaps, or a lynx.

  But he didn’t belong on land. She thought of him gliding through the water, slicing through the waves, his hair a dark halo, bubbles escaping the corner of his mouth, and shivered.

  The nets whipped at the windows, and a smell of rain hung in the air. She perched on the edge of the bed, observing him as he spread white foam on his cheeks and throat and began to shave it off. Such a mundane male ritual in the crazy magic of his life.

  When he was done, he patted his face with a towel. He looked younger now. Boyish. He turned and grinned at her, making her heart skip a beat or two. “Will you come by later today?”

  He’d go swim and then head to the beach bar for work. It was as if last night hadn’t happened, the revelations and the breakdown she’d witnessed. All back in their box, because what could he do about it other than swim and talk to the sea, ask if she’d take him?

  Olivia nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  She wouldn’t give him up without a fight, she thought, even if it meant allowing herself to believe in magic and mermaids and water that slept and woke full of anger. “Be careful.”

  He frowned. “You too. Promise not to go—”