He had to get her out of his home. Now. “What do you want, Ali?”
“I have a bet for you.”
Her voice was determined, her accent more pronounced, but he detected a slight tremble in the words. He suppressed a sigh. She might look like a woman in control, but she wasn’t. Walking to the bar, she picked up the beading glass of mineral water he’d poured earlier, turned her back to him and looked out the window. She took a steadying breath, soft but almost deafening in the charged silence of the room, and Jack had to clench his fists to stop from going to her. She looked so vulnerable standing there alone—a young woman forced to face life’s harsh brutalities by herself.
Vulnerable and utterly intoxicating.
Damn it, man. Stop it.
“A race.” Ali’s words cut though his churning conflict and he met her eyes in the reflection of the mirror. “Tomorrow. Around Middle Harbor. Just you and me. Wind Seeker against Suspicious Ways. If I win, you give me a month to find the money to refinance.” She tilted her chin and turned back to him. Waiting.
“And if you lose?”
Her laugh took him completely by surprise. “Come off it, Jack,” she said, all signs of her earlier vulnerability vanishing. “I’m not questioning your abilities as a sailor, but unless you’ve done a lot of solo work while in Florida, you still depend too much on a crew.”
Anger shot through him, threading through the hunger heating his blood. For the three years he’d known the Grahams before Andrew’s death, he’d been adamant the American had too much faith in his daughter’s ability at the helm. Yes, she was a natural sailor, but she was also over-confident and reckless at times. Jack had spent more than one sleepless night worrying about her, convinced she’d find herself in a situation beyond her ability. He’d hoped, after Andrew’s tragic death, she’d become less cocky, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. Obviously the loss of her father hadn’t humbled her at all.
He looked over at her, unable to miss the challenging certainty in her eyes. It ignited his anger. And his desire. It was time to teach Ali Graham a lesson. Before her brash conceit resulted in further agony. It was time she realized what responsibility meant. It was time he taught her. “You’re that sure you’ll win?”
A rational part of him hoped she would back down. For her sake.
And his.
She didn’t. Instead, she nodded.
His throat grew thick. “And if you lose?”
Clear sapphire eyes met his, as unreadable as a closed book. “I’ll leave that up to you.”
A smoldering tension suddenly gripped Jack’s body. Was she just offering what he thought she was?
Until that very moment he’d known—deep down in the center of his soul—that he was just going to give Ali the time to pay off her debt. He’d stopped Peterson from getting her business, and hopefully her. That was all that really mattered. Yes, he was a savvy businessman on a revenge trip, but he wasn’t a bastard.
But here she was, looking sexier than he ever remembered, her cockiness propelling her, once more, into trouble. Like so many times before.
Unbidden, carnal hunger flooded through him. There were ways to show Ali how dangerous her overconfidence was, and then there were ways. And oh, if he were a lesser man the ways he could show her…
A beat thumped in his temple. His groin tightened. A thousand images whipped through his mind—images of that fateful night when their lives had changed forever—Ali’s long bare legs wrapped around his hips, her nails scoring his flesh, blue eyes burning with a sultry intensity as her lips…
He’d gone looking for her two hours after her father’s funeral, his chest tight, his heart pounding. Finding her aboard Wind Seeker, he’d leapt into the cockpit, fury rolling through him like a black wave. “My God, Ali.” he’d stormed, glaring at her. She’d been huddled on the portside bench seat, hugging her father’s old sailing cap, her face hidden by her long, glossy-brown hair. “What were you thinking? I thought you had better sense than that?” He’d carried on like a prize bastard, unable or unwilling to see her pain. “You had no place being at the helm during a storm. Why the bloody hell didn’t you step aside? As if you could keep control of Wind Seeker in those conditions?” Shaking his head, he’d let out a low growl. “Sheer bloody arrogance. I’ve always said your overconfidence was going to cause trouble, and now your father’s dead.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he’d wanted to take them back. The shock of discovering Ali’s life had been in danger had somehow twisted into cold anger, the empty ache in his heart at the thought of losing her overwhelming rational thought. But it was too late. The accusation was out there. And Ali had heard it.
Blue eyes blazing in a face pale and drawn, she’d risen to her feet. “You hold me responsible for Dad’s death?”
She’d lashed out at him before he could answer, swinging her hand, aiming for his face.
He’d caught her wrist before it made contact, just, wanting to say sorry. Wanting to but incapable of doing so.
She’d stared at him for a long second, her eyes dark with emotion, her frantic pulse beating under his fingers like that of a terrified animal. “What do you want from me, Jack?” she’d whispered, her voice hoarse. Broken. “If I could go back in time…let it be me instead of…instead of Dad, don’t you think I would?”
His heart had ached for her.
And then they were kissing.
Jack still didn’t know who made the first move. All he knew was years of watching her, dreaming about her, telling himself she was still just a precocious girl but knowing she was a sensual, provocative twenty-year-old woman had smashed over him. And he couldn’t pull his lips from hers.
An explosion of molten fire and shattering ice had erupted through him. Like nothing he’d experienced before. At the first touch of her soft lips, self-control and common sense had deserted him. It hadn’t mattered that they were standing in the cockpit of her dead father’s yacht. It had mattered less that what he was doing was insane. All that had existed was her.
Her lips. Her heat.
He’d taken her there and then. In the stateroom of Wind Seeker. And three hours later, he’d left her. Her shining eyes following him as he’d wordlessly climbed out of the bed and out of her yacht.
Three days later, he’d up and moved to Freemantle, some four thousand kilometers away on the other side of the continent. He hadn’t spoken to her since. But damn if he couldn’t stop thinking about that night. That moment.
And now she was here in his home.
Offering something he knew would only cause them both trouble.
Offering…
He surged to his feet, forcing the erotic, taunting memory from his mind. “Just think about what you are saying, Ali.” He fixed her with a steady gaze, struggling for control. He’d held Andrew Graham in such high esteem. The American had been his closest friend despite the fifteen-year age gap, but nothing could stop the lust surging through his veins right now, the craving lust for his friend’s daughter. What would Andrew think of him now?
Suddenly, Ali was standing in front of him, lips set in sensual defiance, eyes daring him to back down. “I know exactly what I am saying,”
A fluttering pulse in the delicate dip below her jaw pulled his gaze, the only sign of the nerves he knew she must be feeling. It was hypnotizing. What would it feel like under his lips? A trembling butterfly? He raised his hand and gently placed an extended finger on the dainty beat, unable to deny the need raging through him anymore.
It burned. The contact burned, and he looked up, wondering if she felt the same hot fusion.
Mesmerizing blue eyes stared back at him, unwavering. “You haven’t won the bet…yet.”
A delicious tingle traced through Ali’s veins, licking a burning path from the soft contact of Jack’s finger to the very centre of her being. The tumultuous reaction sent a shudder into her very centre, and she took a step back, her stare locked on Jack’s face.
Oh Lor
d, he’d touched her.
A light she hadn’t expected to see shone in his green eyes. Hunger. Desire. She pulled in a swift breath, heat stripping through her veins. What was going on? This wasn’t what she’d planned? Was it?
“Go home, Ali.” His murmur caressed her senses, making her pulse quicken. “Before something happens that we’ll both regret.”
Ali’s heart beat faster. “Like the last time, Jack?” The words were barely a whisper. “You regretted it then. I know you did. It wasn’t enough to just leave the yacht club. You had to leave Sydney.”
Jack shook his head, never letting her gaze go. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
His eyes blazed with a scalding desire Ali couldn’t miss. Her mouth went dry. She raised a hand to her neck, placing her fingertips against the frantic beat there. This wasn’t what she’d planned. She was over him. She was. He’d broken her heart. He’d stolen her business and yacht away from her. He had no power over her anymore.
So why did you just offer him your body if you lose?
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Because she wouldn’t.
Really? And if you do? You can see the lust in Jack’s eyes. It’s making your head spin even now. If you lose, you know you won’t say no if he asks you to sleep with—
“I’m not going anywhere, Jack,” she glared up at him, killing the unnerving thought, “until you agree to the race. When I win, you give me another month.”
“And when I win?” With a deliberate slowness, Jack closed the small space between them, the right corner of his mouth curling into a small grin. He removed his glasses, throwing them onto the sofa as he dipped his head until he was barely a breath away from hers. His fingers found her neck again, stroking down the smooth column with feather-light contact. A wave of sensations shivered across her skin and she swallowed again, helpless to do anything else. “When I win, is this what I get?”
His mouth claimed hers. Hard. Brutal. His hands snared in the hair at her nape and he pulled her to him, plundering her mouth with an invasion that sent wave after crashing wave of burning heat through her body. A heat that burnt away any thought or awareness of the world. Nothing existed except Jack. Like a seasoned explorer, his lips moved over hers, reacquainting themselves with her mouth. He traced his tongue along the edge of her teeth with erotic purpose, turning her legs to jelly and her stomach to a rolling pit of flooding heat. He slid his hands down her back to cup the curve of her bottom and meld her hips against his. A molten hardness pressed against the flatness of her belly, long and undeniable.
Ali dropped her head, her breasts growing full and heavy with need. Her nipples turned rock hard with want. A soft groan escaped her as Jack’s hot lips moved to the wild pulse below her jaw, his teeth nibbling at her fevered flesh. She sucked in a ragged breath. And the air tasted of Jack.
God, she never wanted it to stop. It was everything she remembered and all sorts of new. Her heart hammered and ached and swelled. Even the air seemed to blister with the blazing intensity of his kiss, pouring scalding ribbons of heat into her body with every breath she drew. It had been like this before, but it had been nothing like this. There was a raw urgency to the kiss that sent Ali reeling, plummeting towards the edge of burning madness and hunger so swiftly she lost all thought and became a creature of blind desire.
His hands continued to roam her backside, sure fingers smoothing a searing path across the firm curve of her cheeks. Cupping the back of her right thigh, Jack tugged and Ali willingly complied, wrapping her leg around his hip and pushing herself harder against the rigid heat of his arousal.
His engorged length was like steel, straining at the material of his jeans. Before she could stop herself, her hands slipped from his hair and dragged down his torso to find his throbbing heat through the taut denim of his jeans, to feel its unyielding solid form under her fingertips.
She wanted him inside her. She wanted to take his strength into her. Be nourished by it.
His right hand left her buttocks, sliding over her hip and under her T-shirt. Over her bare rib cage. The contact of his palm on her flesh was a scalding brand, leaving her aquiver with want. When his fingers found her breast, her nipple, she moaned, the sound unlike any she’d heard from her own lips.
Heat pooled between her thighs, wet and exquisite. Jack dragged the pad of his thumb over the aching point of her nipple and shots of concentrated pleasure stabbed straight to her soul. She sucked in a sharp breath, pushing harder against the burning rod of his arousal. Damn it, she wanted more.
And so did Jack. With savage speed, he grabbed at the collar of her shirt with both fists and tore the thin cotton material apart.
His eyes feasted on her exposed breasts, a scalding inspection so potent it was almost a physical touch. Her nipples scratched against the lace of her bra with wicked friction and Ali’s heart leapt away from her. She stared up into his face, drowning in the unforgiving desire she saw in his gaze. It flooded her with new passion and her panties grew wet. Threading her fingers into Jack’s thick hair, she tugged gently on his head, arching her back to meet his lips.
His tongue found her nipple first, flicking at the aching nub through her bra before he closed his mouth around it entirely. Ali closed her eyes and dropped her head back, consumed by waves of liquid heat rolling through her core. She let Jack’s teeth and tongue take her to a place she remembered so thoroughly and longed for so completely.
Oh, Jack, yes…
Jack’s hands roamed her body, squeezing and cupping the curve of her buttocks through her shorts, even as his lips roamed her breasts. A growl low in his throat told her he was as impatient as she with the constricting material, and she wriggled her hips, giving his fingers access to her fly.
The sound of the short zip filled the room and her heart hammered faster.
The balmy night air kissed her newly exposed belly just as Jack continued to kiss the throbbing swell of her breast.
“Christ, Ali,” he murmured, dragging his lips up to her ear and nipping the lobe with his teeth. “If this is what I get when you lose, there’s not a hope in hell I’m gonna let you win.”
Ice filled Ali’s veins, freezing her heart and sucking the air from her lungs. “What?”
Jack raised his head, looking down at her with heavy-lidded eyes, his expression unreadable. “You won’t win.” He paused. “But you knew that all along.”
She stared with dawning horror at the man still holding her, his hands so intimately touching her. “Let me go.”
Lord, he was still squeezing her breast. He was still—
“Let me go, Jack.”
She shoved hard on his chest, stumbling backward a step when he suddenly released his embrace. Her breath strangled and she tugged at her shirt, yanking its torn neckline across her torso in an attempt to cover her straining breasts. Hands trembling, she shoved the shirt’s hemline into the waistband of her shorts and jerked up her fly.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. The muted-down lights of the room cast his face in soft shadows. “What’s going on, Ali?”
She lifted her chin, glaring at him. “Why do you think I came here?” She fought to keep her voice level. Her lips still throbbed from his kiss and she desperately wanted to press her fingers against them, to wipe away the memory of his lips. Of her response.
The shadows hooded his eyes. “I think that’s fairly obvious.”
“N-no.” She faltered, her face flaming. “I came here to challenge you to a race.”
“A race you know you can’t possibly win. Why else would you turn up here—” she felt his gaze roam over her, “—in those shorts?”
Hot anger speared into Ali’s chest. She drove her nails into her palms, ignoring the prickling heat forming between her thighs at his inspection. “This is so like you, Jackson McKenzie,” she shot back. “You’ve never thought I had what it takes. I can sail rings around you and you know it.”
“In another yacht maybe, a newer yacht,” Jack’s rep
ly was matter-of-fact. “But there is no way Wind Seeker could beat Suspicious Ways, no matter who the sailor. Bloody hell, Ali, your father built it in his backyard. Suspicious Ways outclasses it in every way. It’s won more races and awards then you’ll ever see. Why do you think your father and I raced it and not Wind Seeker in the short-course events on the harbor?” His gaze travelled her again, slower this time, and he shook his head. “This bet is nothing more than an excuse for you to get exactly what you want without the burden of responsibility. As always.”
In two strides, he closed the distance between them again and pinned her to the spot with his smoldering stare. “It’s time you learnt a lesson, young lady. You know damn well what your offer is, and so do I. When I win, I get you. All of you. Your lips, your body, everything.”
Ali’s breath caught in her throat. Oh Lord.
Jack dipped his head closer to hers. “I accept your offer. And when I win—and I will win—we’ll just pick this evening up from where we left off. Your legs wrapped around my body, your sex pressed to mine.” He chuckled again, the sound low and somehow carnal. “I’ve told you before your overconfidence will get you into trouble, and once again, you prove me right. I’ll see you back here after the race, Ms. Graham.” His lips curled in that lazy, sardonic smile she loathed so much. “And don’t bother showering before you come. My shower is big enough for two.”
Ali lay on the tussled sheets of her bed staring at her dark ceiling. A crazy whirlwind of images sped through her mind, fighting with each other for the chance to send her mad. It wouldn’t be that hard. Nothing was making much sense to her.
Blowing at an errant lock of hair, she squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to send the invasive images away. It was futile, of course. There he still was, lips curling into a satisfied grin as he stole Wind Seeker from her on the jetty, emerald eyes glinting as he stole the kiss from her in his home.
Ali’s chest squeezed tight. Huh. Who are you trying to kid, Ali? He didn’t steal that kiss from you. For Pete’s sake, you’re the one whose leg was wrapped around his hip. You practically forced his head to your breasts.
Suspicious Ways Page 4
