Eden Burning (26 page)

“If I touched you the same way,” she said softly, “would you enjoy it?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to. I don’t expect—”

The rest of his words shattered in a ripping intake of breath. Her tongue had found one nipple beneath the curling black hair on his chest. Even as he told himself he shouldn’t react so much to an innocent little lick, he had to bite back a groan of sheer pleasure.

While she transformed his flat nipple into a tiny, hard nub, his whole body went taut, shivering.

She felt it, understood its source. The certainty that she was pleasing him was almost dizzying. So was his taste, his scent, the heat and power of his body radiating beneath her hands. Letting her explore him. Letting her taste.

Letting her.

In breathless silence she discovered how sensitive her tongue could be to textures as well as tastes, how good it felt to twist her body slowly against his, how much she liked pleasuring him as thoroughly as he had pleasured her. Finally she lifted her mouth, only to return to his nipple again and then again in sexy little forays, licking, biting lightly, wholly lost in the sensual instant.

Hard fingers slid beneath her chin, tilting her head back. When she started to ask what was wrong, his mouth claimed hers, leaving no room for anything except the hot, deep completion of his kiss.

A wave tumbled in, washing over them in a warm surge of water that went up to her collarbone and threatened to pull her from his arms. Even as her arms tightened to hold on to him, he lifted her beyond the reach of the wave.

“One of us,” he said hoarsely against her mouth, “has to watch for the big ones. That would be you.”

With that he turned her in his arms until she faced the open ocean. Slowly he pulled her back against his chest, fitting her hips into the cradle of his thighs. When he nudged against her, aroused and hard, he expected her to retreat.

She didn’t.

“But now I can’t touch you,” she protested, looking at him over her shoulder.

The movement shifted her so that his erection ended up captured between her sleek thighs. He bit back a groan of outrageous pleasure. And need. The kind of need he had never known.

“You’re touching me,” he said almost roughly.

She flushed. “But not—not with my hands. Or my mouth.”

Silently he admitted that it was just as well he was out of reach of her mouth and hands for the moment. The pleasure she took in his body was dangerously exciting. It made him forget all the reasons he had to be patient.

“Then I’ll just have to touch you twice as much to make up for it, won’t I?” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“Sure-sure?” she pressed.

“Sure-sure,” he said against her hair. “Let me show you, butterfly.”

With one hand between her breasts and the other flattened over the blazing triangle just above her thighs, he pressed her even closer to his hungry body.

“Tell me what you like.” He nuzzled her ear, then traced it with the tip of his tongue. “This?”

Slowly he thrust his tongue into her ear, withdrew, and thrust again.

Her breathing stopped.

He nibbled not quite softly around the rim of her ear until he felt her arch into the caress, demanding more. Smiling, nipping lightly, he continued along her hairline to her neck. There he stopped. With exquisite gentleness he used his teeth on the sensitive bundle of nerves at her nape.

The currents of heat that had been gathering in Nicole suddenly shot through her with a force that made her weak. She trembled and leaned against him.

“Yes?” he asked, repeating the caress, feeling her body soften even more in his arms.

“Y-yes,” she said, her voice catching.

He bent over her nape again, and the trembling of her body rippled through him. His hands found the smooth weight of her breasts, caught the hard peaks between his fingers, and tugged the nipples exactly when his teeth closed on her nape.

She made a tearing sound of sheer pleasure.

Tenderly, relentlessly, he caressed her until she was crying with each breath and her hips were moving over him in slow, instinctive rhythms, seeking something more satisfying than his simple presence pressed between her thighs.

One of his hands slid down her body into the warm ocean, needing what she needed—to discover the even warmer woman waiting within her softness. He caressed the smooth skin of her thighs and the tangled silk of her red triangle as he gently bit her shoulder.

The combination of sensations made her gasp and press against him hungrily. His rubbed his erection between her thighs, holding her in a sensual vise that increased with each small, involuntary movement of her hips. Slowly, languidly, his fingertips found and stroked her soft folds.

“Yes?” he asked.

Her answer was a moan and a slow, rhythmic roll of her hips, as though the muted thunder of the breaking waves was the opening drumbeat of a sensuous dance.

The feel of her softness opening hotly over him made his whole body clench with a hunger that was more fierce than any he had ever known.

Pele—God, woman, you’ll burn us both to ash.

With a throaty sound he closed his teeth on her nape again and pressed two fingers deeply into her softness. She cried out and shivered helplessly against his hand, utterly in thrall to sensations she never wanted to end. He stroked her repeatedly, felt every bit of the clench and tug of her satin body clinging to his probing touch.

Then he felt the shivering take her again, felt the liquid silk of her response flowing over him. Raw need ripped through him, tearing away his control, making him shake with the force of his hunger.

Another big wave came, pressing her against him in a warm surge of power, pushing him over a hidden edge. He turned her in his arms and lifted her.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he said hoarsely.

His urgency and the sudden change of position caught her by surprise. She stiffened in his arms. “What . . . ?”

When he heard her uncertainty, he froze. Despite his promise, he was taking her, not waiting for her to come to him.

“I’m sorry, butterfly,” he said painfully. “It won’t happen again.”

With the last shred of his control he let her slide back down his body into the warm sea. Gently he turned her and pushed her toward the black-sand crescent and the fringe of palms.

“Go back up on the beach,” he said. “You won’t have any problem with sudden waves there.”

Automatically Nicole waded ashore. When she reached it, she discovered that Chase hadn’t followed her. His absence made her feel empty, dazed. Lost.

She turned back to see where Chase was.

The sea was empty.

“Chase?” she called, looking around wildly.

No one answered.

Moments later a dark body broke the surface of the ocean out where the waves were coming apart. Chase swam smoothly, powerfully, spearing beneath the breaking waves and reappearing on their far side.

Nicole watched him with an aching in her throat that she didn’t understand. It seemed like forever before he turned and began swimming back to her, riding the wild whiteness of breaking waves.

It won’t happen again.

She trembled, and tears flowed hotly down her cheeks, and she didn’t know why she cried.

Ten days later Nicole sat cross-legged on the oversize garden lounge and wondered if Chase would call tonight as he had for the last nine nights. From the mainland.

Three time zones and thousands of miles away.

Sorry, butterfly. Something came unstuck. I have to go for a while. Lisa is coming with me.

Nicole envied Chase’s daughter. Talking on the phone with him was wonderful, hearing the husky burr in his voice, making him laugh, laughing in turn; but talking wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the same as feeling his strength when he hugged her, smelling the unique scent of him on her hands, seeing his eyes go smoky when she tasted him.

Every night he told her about the quivers and burps of Mount Saint Helens that continued decades after the major eruption, and the pile of paperwork that threatened to bury him alive. She told him about the sketches she was doing and that dancing at the Kipuka Club just wasn’t the same without him. He put Lisa on the line, and she asked about Benny and kipuka picnics.

They weren’t the same either.

Lisa sent kisses and hugs and put her daddy back on the line. He and Nicole talked a while longer, a lot longer, more every time. They talked about anything and everything and nothing at all. Even though it made her ache to hear his voice and not be able to see him, to touch him, she didn’t want the connection to end. Neither did he. They talked until long past midnight in his time zone.

And every night when she finally hung up the phone, she cried. She wanted to see Chase so much that she felt like she was being scraped with a dull knife.

He said he would get back as soon as he could,
she told herself for the tenth time in as many minutes.
Now, get to work so you’ll have time to play when he does come back.

There was a lot of work to do, but the drawing wasn’t going very well. No matter where she looked or what she looked at, all she could see was his face, his smile, his hands on the drums. On her.

Stop it,
she snarled silently at herself.

Sitting cross-legged on her big garden chaise, she lectured the dreamy-eyed woman who had taken over her mind. After a while she was able to concentrate on the jacaranda trees arching overhead. They had burst into bloom, lifting masses of lavender flowers in silent, generous offering to the sun.

Thousands upon thousands of blossoms shivered when the breeze slid caressingly over their soft surfaces. Some of the blooms came undone with the gentle pressure and were swept away on transparent currents of air. In time those flowers floated to the ground to lie heaped in sweet windrows that swirled with each new touch of the breeze.

Normally she loved these days when the jacaranda bloom was at its peak and blossoms showered the land with a fragile lavender rain. But for the last ten days she had done little more than sketch unhappily during the daylight hours and pace her cottage after dark, waiting for Chase’s nightly call.

When she slept, it was badly.

When she awoke in the night, it was to a body quickened by sensations that made her breath catch in her throat and stay there until the dawn came. Just the thought of the time she had spent in his arms was more than enough to send heat lancing through her, tightening her until she wanted to scream.

It had been like that since the day he had led her into the sea and taught her how much more he knew about her body than she did. Now she waited for him to come back with an intensity that made her tremble like a wire strung too tight. She didn’t know why she trembled. She knew only that she did.

Maybe today. Or tomorrow,
she thought, doodling on the edges of a failed sketch.

She wanted to return with Chase to the warm, creamy sea. She wanted him to miss her the way she missed him, to lie awake nights and spend his days distracted, to not take three breaths without thinking of her.

So you pleased him a little,
she told herself.
So what? The world is full of women who can please him a lot more than a little.

That was something she tried not to think about.

She didn’t succeed.

With a silent curse she threw down her pencil and stopped pretending to be sketching the jacaranda trees.

“Bad day?”

Nicole spun around so quickly at the sound of Chase’s voice that her sketchbook went flying. There was no hesitation, no shyness in her greeting. She simply came off the chaise and into his arms and held on to him as though that was the only thing keeping both of them alive.

He held her the same way. “Miss me?”

Her answer was a shudder and a ragged sound that was all emotion.

“That’s the way I missed you.” He buried his face in the fragrance of her braided hair and inhaled deeply. “I thought if I couldn’t see you or touch you, I wouldn’t want you so much it felt like I was breathing broken glass.” His laugh was short, harsh. “I was wrong. I keep being wrong about you, butterfly.”

He picked her up, held her against the length of his body, and let her presence in his arms flood through him. She pressed her face against his neck and clung to him with every bit of her dancer’s strength.

All that Chase had been thinking and feeling since the moment he realized just how badly he had misjudged Nicole came pouring out in a torrent of words. He knew it was too soon to say such things, but his own exhaustion and her abandoned greeting swept away common sense.

“I kept thinking about how Lisa smiles when she sees you coming up the path,” he said. “Then I’d remember your laughter at one of Mark’s awful puns and the way you listen, really
listen,
when I talk about the islands.” He found her mouth and kissed her deeply, fiercely, shuddering at her open, wild response. “I remembered that, too. The taste and the heat of you. I don’t want to be without you anymore. Marry me, Nicole. Let me—”

“Marriage?”
she interrupted, pulling back in shock.

Even before Nicole spoke, Chase felt her rejection in the sudden stiffness of her body. Too late he remembered how she felt about marriage.

Being a man’s
thing.
All day. Every day. And the nights.

Closing his eyes, he cursed his foolish dream savagely, silently. Just because she jumped up and threw herself into his arms didn’t mean that she wanted to risk belonging to him in any important way. He had shown her only a little of the fire buried within her body, let her taste just a bit of the wild honey.

Naturally she had missed him. She didn’t know that any man could kindle the flames and drink the sweetness of mutual sensuality with her.

“Sorry, butterfly.” He set her on the ground again. “I never should have asked. Blame it on jet lag and the heat of the moment. Like I said, you keep taking me by surprise. You make me respond at every level. I make you respond somewhat at one.” With a bittersweet smile he touched the tip of her nose with his lips in a casual kiss. “But then, nobody ever said life was fair.”

Nicole tried to hold on to her spinning thoughts long enough to make a sensible statement. She couldn’t. “I didn’t mean— It’s just that I hadn’t thought about— After Ted, I promised myself that I would never, ever,
ever
—”

Chase kissed her gently, stopping the tumble of words. “It’s all right. I understand. You have no reason to trust me with your happiness and a lot of reasons not to.”

He let go of her and backed up several steps, putting her out of reach. With every breath he berated himself for jamming three weeks of work into ten days so that he could rush back to her.

And ruin everything.

“Please don’t,” she said in a raw voice. “Don’t feel guilty about what happened that morning at Dane’s house. I know you’d never hurt me. Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you,” Chase said wearily. “But the absence of pain isn’t enough. Not for sex. Not for love. Certainly not for an enduring marriage. Mind. Body. Soul. That’s what marriage has to be to work. I didn’t know that the first time around. Lisa paid the price for my stupidity. But I know now. All or nothing at all.”

“Does that mean you won’t—that we can’t—” Nicole closed her eyes and clenched her hands together so fiercely they ached. “Please don’t go away from me,” she whispered. “I couldn’t bear it. You make me feel so many things that I didn’t even think were possible for me.”

“Any man could do the same.”

Her eyes flew open. “That’s not true!”

“Oh, it’s true,” he countered calmly. Then his mouth turned down in a sad smile at her disbelief.

“But it’s only with you—” she began.

“I just happened to be the man you saw when you were starting to split the past’s cocoon,” he said, interrupting her before he could hear any more of the words that cut so deep and hurt so much because he wanted so desperately for them to be true, really true, all-the-way-to-the-soul true. The way it was for him, but not for her. “For you, I’m a stage that will pass.”

“No,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes. “That’s not true!”

With a choked sound she threw herself back into his arms and held him fiercely, shaking with emotions and thoughts that were too new and much too powerful for her to sort out, much less understand.

For several minutes Chase held her and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice about matter-of-fact things. His voice and his words belied the darkness in his eyes and the grim brackets etched deeply on either side of his mouth. Slowly the harsh tension began to leave her body.

“What’s this I hear about a big luau?” he asked.

She drew in a broken breath and accepted the neutral topic. After another breath she was able to answer him. “It’s the annual Kamehameha bash. Pig in a pit. Fires on the beach. Dancing all night. Everything tourists think of when they think of Hawaii.”

“Where will it be?”

She pulled away from him just enough to point toward the tangle of greenery that led from the high ground where they stood to the beach below. “Down there.”

He stroked her hair lightly and stepped back from her arms. “When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“That soon? Good.”

Something in his voice made her go still. “You’re going back to the mainland again, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“When?”

“Soon.” Silently he added,
A lot sooner than I’d hoped. But it’s the only way, butterfly.

I can’t trust myself around you. I almost took you that day in the ocean, and I want you far more right now than I did then.

She watched him undo his tie with a few quick jerks. For the first time it registered on her that he must have come straight from the plane, not even taking time to change out of his mainland business clothes.

“Where’s Lisa?” Nicole asked.

“With Benny. Somehow he knew we were back. He was waiting at the cottage door.”

Her throat tightened as she saw the lines of strain beneath his exterior calm. “You must be exhausted.”

“I’ve been up most of the last three nights. I got most of my paperwork done when Lisa was asleep.” He yanked, and the tie hissed out from beneath his collar. He unbuttoned more buttons, took a long breath, and let it out in a sigh. “Have any sketches for me to look at?”

“None that I like.”

The corner of his mouth lifted very slightly. “Do you ever like them?”

“Not very often,” she admitted.

“Then it’s a good thing I have the final say. I’d hate for my words to have to carry the whole
Islands of Life
project.”

The thought that he might need her professionally startled her. Silently she watched while he unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, rolled up the cuffs, and then started back up the trail.

“Can you meet me at my cottage in about an hour?” he asked without looking back. “That will give me time to clean up and eat before we look at the sketches.”

“Eat?”

“Dinner. My stomach is still on mainland time.”

“I’ll make you something,” she called after his retreating form.

“That’s all right, butterfly. I’ve been cooking for myself for years. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

Nicole watched Chase merge into the greenery along the tangled garden trail and wondered why she was crying. He was back. She could see him, touch him . . .

And he seemed farther away than ever.