by Maggie Way
She drew the T-shirt over her head, foregoing her bra, and tugged her yoga pants over the exaggerated swell of her hips. His cock took notice of every swing and jiggle.
When she straightened, her puckered nipples screamed at him through the wet cotton.
With a knowing smile, she plucked the bra from his hand and carried the delicate undergarment along with her sandals as she turned toward the house.
The swing of her hips as she walked away caused the circuits of his brain to fry. Regret that he’d been deprived a glimpse of her lush ass filled him.
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Aren’t you coming?” Her husky purr wrapped around his cock and squeezed.
Then she left him standing alone on the beach in the dark.
With her panties dangling from his fingertips.
Chapter Five
On Friday, Mina came home.
Emily bounded across the foyer and flung open the front door.
Mina wrestled a suitcase over the threshold, dropped the bag, and threw her arms around Emily. “It’s good to see you. How are you?”
“I’m good. H-How about y-y-you? How was Ireland?”
Noah appeared in the doorway and let two black suitcases he carried hit the floor with a thud. “Did you tell her?”
“Tell me wh-what?”
Mina’s smile could’ve lit up the entire island. “We’re getting married.”
Hugs bounced around the trio.
“Have y-you picked a date?”
Smiling down at Mina, Noah flicked a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Halloween. It’s kind of an anniversary for us.”
At the tender lilt to his voice, Emily’s heart gave a little wrench of longing. She cleared her throat. “Halloween is less than two months away.”
Mina dragged her gaze from Noah. “It’s going to be a small wedding.”
“If you need anything—”
Mina brightened. “Would you mind helping with the menu? And the flowers? You have an eye for color and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“All you need to do is show up,” Noah interjected. “No one cares about the rest.”
Mina’s features twisted into a frown. “I care.”
Noah ignored her. “We were hoping to have dinner here after the ceremony. In the ballroom, if possible.”
A bloom of pleasure unfolded in Emily’s chest. “It’s all yours.”
Mina bit down on her bottom lip. “There’s just one more thing I wanted to ask you, but I totally understand if you don’t want to do it.”
Emily’s gaze trailed to Noah. “Now I’m worried.”
He grinned. “You should be.”
Mina elbowed him in the ribs. “Will you be my maid of honor?”
An upswell of emotion clogged Emily’s throat.
A frisson of worry chased across Mina’s face. “I promise not to put you in an ugly dress.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, who am I kidding? They’re all ugly. And uncomfortable, and overpriced, and no matter what we say when we pick it out, you will not be able to wear it again. Anywhere. Ever.”
Around her watery laugh, Emily nodded.
“You’ll do it?” Mina asked.
Emily nodded again.
Noah clapped his hands. “Great. I say we celebrate, and I’m starving. Dinner and drinks at the pub?”
While Mina and Noah disappeared to the carriage house to change, Emily dug out the breezy black blouse she’d worn to her mom’s funeral and yanked her lone pair of blue jeans over her hips. They were more than a tad snug, but they were the only pants she owned that couldn’t reasonably be mistaken for pajamas, so she ignored the way they cut into her flesh and slid her feet into her shabby sneakers.
At Lucky’s Irish Pub, Emily and Mina settled in a booth at the back of the restaurant while Noah headed to the bar.
“How are you enjoying life on the island so far?” Mina asked.
Emily only just stopped herself from launching into a full-blown tirade detailing the hellishness that’d been her life the past few weeks, but since Noah’s brother was the root cause of her troubles, she swallowed the outburst.
“It’s been an adjustment,” she said carefully.
Mina shot her a knowing smile. “How’s the bed-and-breakfast? Have you had many guests?”
Emily sagged against the booth. “Not even one.”
“Really? I thought for sure you’d be booked this time of year?”
Emily shook her head. “There aren’t as m-many tourists taking the ferry out here as I expected.”
A frown pulled down the corners of Mina’s mouth. “Yeah, they mostly stay on the mainland.”
“Maybe if it weren’t called Thief Island, but something more… enticing,” Emily said. “Like Paradise Cove or Safe Harbor.”
Mina laughed. “How about Temptation Island?”
“I’d be booked nonstop if we lived on Temptation Island.”
Noah appeared at the table, balancing a large tray loaded down with a pitcher of beer, a heaping platter of nachos, a stack of snack plates and pint glasses.
The aroma wafted over the table as he slid into the booth next to Mina, who reached for the pitcher and began filling glasses.
“To be fair, by the time we completed the sale of the house, it was a little late for you to take full advantage of the tourist season,” she said. “Next year will be better, I’m sure.”
Emily hoped that was true. In the meantime, it’d just be her and ghosts of the Winslows who’d passed. Although she disliked being alone, she derived comfort from the home’s long history.
Mina reached for a nacho chip, but then snatched her hand back and deflated in her seat.
Noah quirked an eyebrow at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” She looked longingly at the plate and sighed.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Noah asked.
Twin pink spots stained her cheeks. “I’m getting married next month. The diet needs to start now.”
Noah’s brows snapped into a frown. “Shut the fuck up. You’re perfect.” He slopped a healthy serving of nachos onto a plate and shoved it at her. “Eat. Or I’ll force-feed you.”
Mina bit her lower lip to hide her smile. Eyes shining, she ate.
Emily ducked her chin to conceal her own smile and filled a plate. As she bit into a chip loaded with beans and cheese, Noah lifted a hand and waved at someone over her shoulder.
“There’s Luke,” he said.
Emily twisted around in the booth. Her knee knocked into the table leg and their drinks rocked precariously. She dove to steady them and then jerked back around to confirm Noah’s pronouncement.
There he was, near the front entrance. Her worst nightmare.
He moved across the pub, a long-limbed, large-breasted woman decorating his right arm. Even without the oversized sunglasses, Emily recognized the woman from the airport. Her face was even more lovely than her outrageous body.
Emily swallowed back bile, recalling the last time she’d seen Luke.
Or rather, the last time he saw her.
Naked.
A groan slipped from her. Her satisfaction at having managed to wipe that smug smile off his face, if only momentarily, disintegrated like cotton candy on her tongue. He must’ve had a great laugh at her average-breasted, short-legged, butt-naked expense.
On the drive to rescue her car from the pound, he hadn’t said more than three words to her, spiced with a few grunts and overlaid with one long, deep, menacing scowl. While he was tense and snarly, for once, all Emily had felt around him was relaxed. Peaceful.
The peace was long gone now as Luke and the woman curled their way through the tables, the palm of his hand resting at the small of her back. An intimate touch in a public place.
Emily sighed and turned away from the sight.
To find Mina and Noah watching her.
She tossed up a weak smile, which quickly sputtered out. She stuffed a chip into her mouth.
Mina crad
led her chin in one hand and gazed in the direction of the bar. “He is awfully pretty, isn’t he?”
Noah frowned thoughtfully. “You think?” he asked, showing no signs of jealousy.
“Oh, yeah.” Mina snagged a chip off her plate. “It’s not really debatable.”
Emily lifted one shoulder in a peevish shrug. “Too bad the effect is ruined the moment he opens his mouth.”
Two intelligent gazes sharpened on her face.
Mina lifted her glass and took a small sip. “You don’t like him?”
Emily studied her plate, pretending the interest she’d had in the nachos just a moment ago.
“They say he’s a hero.”
Emily’s head snapped up. “Who says?”
“Yeah, who says?” Noah wanted to know.
Mina waved a nacho through the air. “Everyone.”
Emily risked another glance over her shoulder. Luke, having dropped the blonde at the bar, was in close-quarters contact with a petite, dark-haired woman in the middle of the room. He peered down into her face as she spoke, a soft smile curving his puffy lips while he listened intently to her every word.
Emily’s heart dropped to her stomach.
“He’s been nominated for an award.”
“What kind of an award?” Noah asked.
Mina lifted her shoulders. “Some award given to police officers.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “It’s bad enough he’s a cop. They have to give him an award for it now, too? And why am I always the last one to know about these things?”
Mina consoled Noah with a soft pat on the back. While he soaked up her touches, Emily toyed with her ponytail. When she was satisfied they were thoroughly absorbed in one another, she whipped around for another glimpse at Luke and the woman.
Only to find her view blocked by the planes of a flat abdomen.
She looked up, past the span of a gray T-shirt hugging lean muscles, and into the chiseled perfection of his face.
His charmer’s smile firmly in place, he regarded his brother and Mina. “I just heard the news. Congratulations, you two.”
Noah stood and pulled him into a man hug. “About time you made it over here. Your admirers are a voracious bunch.”
Side by side, the resemblance between the two men was striking. There was no denying their beauty, but as gorgeous as Noah was, next to Luke, he appeared as a blurry copy of the original.
“Nothing could keep me away. I hear wedding bells and I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl.”
“Glad to hear that, since you’ll be there, too.” Noah’s smile flashed bright. “As a groomsman.”
Luke winced. “Not content to be the only miserable bastard in a tux, huh?”
“I believe in sharing my good fortune.”
Luke’s mouth bent with a wry twist. “I’ll be sure to return the favor someday.”
Noah slid into the booth next to Mina. “You remember Mina’s cousin, Emily?”
Luke’s unnerving green eyes swiveled to Emily. Caught by surprise, she made the mistake of looking directly into their emerald depths. Her heart rebounded to bang against her breastbone.
His gaze caressed her face, and then dropped lower, down the column of her neck to settle on her breasts. Her pulse skittered.
“How could I forget?” he murmured, almost as if the notion truly puzzled him.
“And yet that’s exactly what you did.” The words traveled straight from her brain to her mouth, unfiltered.
His gaze captured hers. “A mistake I intend never to make again.”
A shiver passed through her. Seeing it, a green spark lit in his eyes, and as if by some dark magic, transported them back to the beach where she stood before him with every inch of her naked body exposed to his hungry stare.
“So, we’re to be cousins, are we?”
His words crashed into her and she blanched. “Wh-what?”
But he turned his attention to Noah, severing their connection. “I always doubted the rumors about you, but if you aren’t a genius, you’re obviously not a complete buffoon. You’ll forever be my hero for bringing two such lovely women into our family.”
Emily snorted.
At the same moment, Mina’s soft smile warmed and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. She looked so happy, Emily couldn’t muster the will to begrudge her.
“Let me buy the next round?” Luke said.
“It’d be impolite to refuse.” With Noah’s remark, Luke slipped away.
Emily sagged in the booth. She snatched up her glass, downed a large gulp, and returned the mug to the tabletop with a graceless clunk. She tossed a pointed look at her cousin.
Mina’s hands shot up. “No, you’re right. He’s perfectly wretched.”
Her light scent stayed with him as he crossed to the bar. Since the beach, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.
Naked.
Her nipples hardened against the cold. The soft fuzz between her thighs beckoning to him in the dark.
The images, unwanted and unnerving, kept coming like that, one after another. They stalked him, until his head ached with the effort to banish her from his mind.
She’d even tormented him while he slept. Though he welcomed the momentary reprieve from the nightmares, he wasn’t prepared for the vivid vision of her in his bed, her pale skin translucent atop his dark sheets. She’d called to him, but he’d refused her.
So she’d teased him. Her knees had parted and she’d drawn a shocking pink vibrator to her body. Her head dropped back when pleasure overtook her while the chorus of her greedy moans rained down on him, threatening to wrench the orgasm from his body.
He’d jolted awake. Throwing back the sheets, he shot from his bed. In the shower, he’d cranked the nozzle and shoved his face under the spray, trying to cleanse her from his mind. The water had rushed over the sensitive skin of his back and torso, and served to call forth the memory of her emerging from the lake.
His cock had given an agonizing jerk and he regarded his erection with baffled surprise, both at its appearance after so long and at the fact that Emily Cole was the cause of it.
A lot of women had tried to stoke his desire. Beautiful, available women. Not one had succeeded. At least, not fully. Not since That Day.
Not until now.
The shower had done nothing to wash away his want of her. Instead, his hand had slipped down his body, over the clenched muscles of his abdomen, to stroke his rock-hard length. Exquisite sensation ripped through him and he’d pressed the flat of his palm against the shower wall while his other hand pumped his rigid shaft.
His body roared with its newfound knowledge.
Her.
He wanted her. Had to have her.
With one final tug of the long hardness between his legs, his thoughts scattered and the orgasm screamed through him.
Now, as he approached their table with the round of drinks, he pondered how it’d happened. How, in a single night, had she turned everything upside down, and in one simple, erotic power grab, gone from the woman he wanted to fuck with to the woman he wanted to fuck?
His gaze bored into the back of her head. His face felt weird, stiff and twisted in an odd, scrunched up kind of way. Like he was scowling, except he never scowled. He was far too good-natured for such petulant displays.
When he slid into the booth beside her and her light, flowery scent reached out to him. His body grew taut and molten at once.
He glared down at her.
She shot him a pitying look. “What’s the matter? Bad hair day?”
He laid a hand over his heart. “Daaaamn, prison changed you.”
“Prison?” Mina and Noah said together.
Emily offered them a weak smile, and then lanced him with toffee-brown daggers.
He could pick out at least three distinct shades of brown in her eyes. His favorite, near the center, was a deep, burnished whiskey. His balls tightened.
He bared his teeth. “You don’t like me.”
She
shrugged her dainty shoulders and took a diminutive sip of her drink. A kiss of moisture remained on her small mouth when she returned the glass to the table.
“Everyone likes me,” he felt compelled to point out.
Her snort of disbelief rankled. “Because y-you’re so modest, no doubt.”
That was it. Time to hit the reset button on this debacle and return things to the way they were before she showed him every delicious inch of her delectable little body.
He eased back in the booth and folded his arms across his abdomen. “Ah, I get it. There’s something wrong with you, isn’t there? A personality disorder, maybe?”
A lick of fire flared in her eyes.
An answering spark shot to his groin.
“It is odd, I’ll admit,” she said. “I mean, w-why w-would I dislike the cop who, w-with zero evidence and even less reason to be suspicious, has accused me of an array of grievous crimes ranging from distracted driving to frowning?”
“Are you still mad about that?” He let loose with the smile that whipped color into her cheeks. “I apologized, didn’t I?”
“I’m sure you were just doing your job to the best of y-your abilities.”
“That’s right. It’s hard, thankless work keeping the streets of Thief Island free from thugs and hoodlums.”
“Is it hard work keeping track of all the w-women you accuse of felony frowning?”
He wanted to kiss her.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Lack of respect shown to a public servant isn’t a felony. Tactless and repugnant, maybe, but not a felony.”
She sighed. “Experienced as y-you are with moral corruption, I trust you’re right.”
From across the table, his brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law watched the exchange with wide eyes, their heads volleying like spectators at a sporting event.
Over Noah’s shoulder, Kate emerged from the women’s restroom.
Luke tilted his pint and downed the last drop of Guinness. He pushed to his feet. “Speaking of moral corruption, I need to talk to our brother about his children.”
Noah straightened. “What about them?”
“Their obsession with My Little Pony has gotten out of hand. It’s time for an intervention.”
Noah laughed and Luke clapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations again, you two. Let me know the details when you have them.” Then, with an exaggerated snap of his fingers, he swiveled toward Emily. “Oh, I almost forgot.”
