Sex Drive (20 page)

“Oh yeah, I’m gonna have to start back at the beginning with
Scorched Earth
, the manuscript I’ve been working on.” His eyes sparkled in the candlelight, and I could see he relished the challenge. “That’ll occupy me nicely, all those lonely nights in hotel rooms.”

After taking one final, lingering bite of the delicious pie, I shoved the plate over to him. “You finish this. I’ve been eating while you’ve been talking.” Then, hesitantly, I said, “I’m not a writer—I mean, my writing is academic—but if there’s any way I can help, let me know.”

Belatedly I realized what I was suggesting. Keeping in touch.

Damn. I’d intended this to be only an out-of-character fling with a man who “flung” all the time. And now I’d come to care for him, to want more. That was crazy. I was the woman who’d sworn off men, so a “relationship” wasn’t in the cards for me—and Damien was a player, who no doubt didn’t
do
relationships. All the same, the notion of staying in touch was awfully appealing.

He was chewing the final bite of coconut cream pie, looking blissful.

Before he could swallow and answer me, I rushed to say, “I don’t mean to sound presumptuous. I mean, I’m sure you’ll do a great job of…whatever you decide to do.” Besides, I was the one who’d criticized his books. Why would he want my assistance?

“I’d love your help.”

“Really?” A heady rush of pleasure filled me. Tomorrow wouldn’t be good-bye. My heart was racing and I told myself that’s what I got for drinking coffee at this hour of the night. Trying to sound businesslike, I said, “We should do some administrative things, like exchange e-mail addresses and phone numbers.”

His eyes twinkled as he shoved the empty dessert plate into the center of the table. “You know what, Prof? The
administrative
stuff can wait for tomorrow. Right now there’s a moonlit beach out there, calling our names.”

Oh yes, that sounded much more appealing.

“And since you ate most of the dessert,” he said in a husky, seductive tone, “you’re going to have to give me something else to satisfy my sweet tooth.”

I remembered how he’d said I tasted sweet. My mouth, had he meant, or other places as well? My sex gave a throb and I bit back a moan of need. “Would a kiss do it?”

“Let’s try it and see.”

For once I was going to live in the moment, and at this particular moment I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d rather do than kiss Damien Black in the moonlight on Waikiki Beach. “We should drop our bags in our room. And change into shorts.”

“You are
not
changing out of that dress. Lose the shoes, go barefoot, but the dress stays. Don’t you know what I’ve been thinking about for the last four hours?”

Several dozen things, but I hoped somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always been aware of…“The buttons? Undoing the buttons?”

“Oh yeah.” He nodded, expression intent, focused on my neckline. “And since we sat down here, with the moon just outside, I’ve imagined undoing them on the beach. Seeing the moonlight on your beautiful breasts.”

I made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a girly squeak. “You can’t. It’s a public beach.”

He threw back his head and laughed. A sexy pirate laugh that made the other diners turn and look at us. “This, from the woman who had sex on an airplane.”

“Sshh.” My cheeks, overdosed on sun, breeze, and embarrassment, burned.

We’d had a lazy, lingering dinner, but now things moved quickly. Damien insisted on paying the bill, saying it was his signing, his celebration, and I’d already spent more than enough buying his books. I let him, guessing he made considerably more than I did. While I loved the academic life, the salaries weren’t one of the selling points.

Back in our room, Damien exchanged his pants for shorts but wore the same black shirt, now loose and unbuttoned, revealing tantalizing stretches of his tanned, well-muscled torso. We both kicked off our shoes. As I wrapped the filmy shawl around my shoulders, he picked up a colorful beach towel.

“Those aren’t supposed to be taken off hotel property,” I said, having diligently read the miscellaneous information in our room.

“You going to report me, Prof?”

“Maybe not. If you’re really nice to me.”

Downstairs again, I realized it was eleven o’clock—God knows what hour back in Sydney—and I was tired from jet lag and too little sleep. But a champagne-like fizz of exhilaration in my blood told me this adventure was too alluring to pass up.

We stepped from the hotel’s landscaped pool area down to the sand. It was pleasantly gritty under my feet, like a gentle scrub with a loofah sponge. We walked toward the ocean’s edge, where moonlight spilled a silvery-gold path across the velvety water, its swath broken by ripply undulations as gentle waves breathed their way to shore.

“Peaceful,” I sighed.

We walked at the edge of the water, me on the higher side where the waves tickled my feet, him a little deeper. Our clasped hands swung gently and from time to time we bumped hips or I brushed my cheek against his shoulder. Everything felt so relaxed and natural, even the tingles of sexual awareness. How could this be? Before, the only thing that had come naturally to me was excelling at school, both as student and professor.

The beach, which had been packed with sunbathers earlier, was now almost empty. “It’s quieter than I expected,” I commented in a hushed voice. “Maybe because it’s Sunday?”

“Sunday.” He laughed softly. “I keep forgetting it’s still Sunday. Crossing the international date line is so weird. Our flight left Sydney around six in the afternoon on Sunday. It’s like Sunday’s a never-ending day.”

A magic day, created just for us. A day out of time. But I wasn’t about to say something so foolish and romantic. “You know, Sunday really is going to end. It’s close to midnight.” I hoped the spell wouldn’t shatter when the day was done.

We had moved past the hotels and now the beach was even darker and more deserted. I might have worried about safety, but Damien’s presence banished any qualms. Unlike my academic colleagues, he gave off an aura of strong male capability.

When we’d walked for five or ten minutes without seeing another soul, he tugged me a few feet up the beach. There, he dropped the towel onto the sand and tossed his shirt on top of it. Staring admiringly at him in shorts in the moonlight, I saw the reverse image of a surfer-dude picture. Dark hair rather than blond; midnight sky and water rather than blue; silvery moon rather than golden sun. Edgier. Sexier. My body trembled with hunger for him.

Eyes glittering, he plucked off my shawl, then reached for the neckline of my dress.

“Damien, no.” I grabbed his hands to stop him, glancing around nervously and trying to ignore the way my nipples had tightened. “What if someone comes?”

“Then they get a beautiful eyeful. Come on, Tezzie. If Sunday’s finally going to end, let’s see it out in style.” He caught both my hands in one of his, gripping them lightly but firmly. Then, working with only one hand, he undid the next button. And the next.

If I’d said no and meant it, I knew he’d have stopped. Instead, mesmerized, I watched his deft fingers and the sides of my black dress parting an inch or two all the way to my waist. My body quivered at the cool brush of a gentle sea breeze and the heated caress of his gaze. A shock of need zipped through me, turning me hot, liquid, swollen.

He let go of my hands, probably realizing that if I hadn’t protested by now, I wasn’t going to. I reached for him, but he dropped to his knees and all I got was his thick, silky hair. I wound my fingers through it, anchoring myself as he kissed the front of my body, following the centerline down to where the dress was still buttoned. His tongue licked into my navel, swirled.

He undid the next button and pressed a moist kiss against the newly revealed flesh. And then he carried on. One button, one kiss. Tummy, mound, inner thigh. Each kiss soft, knowing, seductive, and with each one my body trembled with growing need. Finally, he reached the hem. Kissed the tender skin on the inside of my leg. Still kneeling on the sand, he gazed up and tugged on both sides of the dress.

I gave a shrug, let it fall. Stood in my peach eyelet bra and thong, a fine quivering rippling through me, trying to tell myself it was no worse than wearing a bikini.

“That’s damn pretty underwear.” He rose, shoved his shorts down, and kicked them off. Naked, the moonlight silvering him, the tattoos circling both of his upper arms, he was primitive and stunning. And supremely masculine, with his engorged cock thrusting up his belly.

Despite the hunger inside me, I whispered, “Damien, we can’t have sex on the beach. We could get arrested.”

“We’re not having sex, we’re going for a swim.”

“Wh-what?”

“You telling me you’ve never been skinny-dipping?” He reached for the front clasp of my bra and flicked it open.

Of course I hadn’t. I knew how to swim, but poorly. I’d never spent time at the beach, never hung out with someone who’d dare me to take off my clothes and run into the ocean.

Shouldn’t every teenager have an experience like that?

Better late than never. I flung the bra aside, skimmed the thong down my hips, and sprinted for the water. “Race you.”

His delighted laugh followed me as my feet hit the water and I ran in, finding it got colder the farther I went.

Then he was plunging past me, creating waves that surged around me. Suddenly he dove, leaving me alone waist high in the ocean, breasts exposed in the moonlight. Hurriedly I followed his example, shivering with the shock of cold on my face, shoulders, chest.

I came up where it was deeper and my breasts were covered by water. Shaking my head and flinging drops, I looked for Damien.

He surfaced beside me, laughing, sleek as a seal, sexy as only Damien could be. “The water feels great,” he said.

“It’s cold.”

“You’ll get used to it. ’Sides, I’ll warm you up.” He pulled me into an embrace, and sure enough the front of his body scalded mine. How could he be so hot—and still erect—when the water was this cool?

Worriedly I cast a glance toward shore. “Someone might steal our things.”

“We can always get another room key,” he said nonchalantly.

“Our clothes! I’m not walking into the hotel naked.”

“Guess I’d have to do it then.”

Somehow, I knew he would and it wouldn’t particularly bother him. “Damien Black, you’re incorrigible.”

“We could steal palm leaves from the hotel garden,” he said. “Play Adam and Eve.”

“That was fig leaves.” I tried to sound professorial as I struggled to hold back a laugh.

“Palm leaves are bigger. I definitely need a big one.”

Now I did laugh.

He tugged me closer. “Come on, Tezzie, don’t chicken out on me now.”

He was right. The time to object had passed. I was the one who’d run into the ocean stark naked, and here I was in the arms of a hot—in all senses of the word—man whose erection ignored the temperature of the ocean.

Damien let go of me and dove again. I stared around, wondering where he’d surface.

My feet were tugged out from under me. I barely had time to suck in a breath before I went under. He released me and I kicked against the bottom, propelling myself upward. I came up, spluttering, and he rose beside me.

“What were you thinking?” I cried. “What if I couldn’t swim?”

“You’re in four feet of water. And I’d have saved you.”

I knew he was right. With no warning, I launched myself at him, my full weight knocking him in the chest and sending first him, then me, below the surface.

We grappled together, arms and legs flailing, then came up, laughing breathlessly.

Damien smoothed his hands over my head, squeezing water out of my hair, then cradling my face, gazing down into it. “See? This isn’t so bad. And no one can see us.”

“I’m glad you convinced me.” All the same, I eased us into slightly deeper water, making sure my breasts were below the surface.

“Didn’t take a lot.” His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. “Ah, Tezzie, you’re beautiful, sexy, and fun. What a great combo.”

“Smart,” I whispered under my breath. He hadn’t said smart, and it was the first—often the only—adjective people applied to me. No, to Dr. Theresa Fallon. Right now, I was Tezzie, a woman Damien had created and christened. “You’re beautiful, sexy, and fun too.”

He gave me a comical leer. “So what’re two sexy people gonna do, out here in the ocean where no one can see them? We have to keep warm and fight off hypothermia.”

“Hypothermia?” I snorted. “Yes, it’s cool, but we’re in Hawaii.”

“Not buying that one? Well then, how about this?” He bent his head and touched his lips to mine, then smoothed his hands down my shoulders and around my back and pulled me close.

I stepped into the embrace, parting my lips and returning his kiss, feeling as if the water must be sizzling wherever our bodies touched. Such a provocative contrast, the cool caress of silky water compared to the heated, tensile press of his chest, thighs. Cock.

When we’d first entered the water, I’d felt daring but nervous. And then I’d been caught up in the sense of play, like a kid. But now I was all woman, with a partner who was definitely all man, and arousal rushed through me in a surge so powerful it melted my insides. My knees turned to jelly, my pussy throbbed with liquid heat. I held tight to him and deepened the kiss, my need urgent, almost as if I’d never had sex before and was desperate for that first erotic taste.

Fiercely he responded, tongue teasing mine as water dripped down our faces. He’d shaved before we went to the bookstore but now was lightly stubbled, and the mild abrasion was another sensual treat. His hips moved, grinding his cock against my belly, and his legs flexed, balancing the two of us amid the gentle back-and-forth suck of the ocean.

“God, Tezzie,” he groaned against my mouth, “I can’t get enough of you.”

I scattered wet, hungry kisses all over his face, his neck, tasting ocean salt warmed by his skin, and he tilted his head back to give me access. “Look up,” he said. “The moon’s watching.”

He was right. The sky was inky and, this far from the lights of the hotels and shops, the moon and stars were bright. The ocean was a velvety blanket, breathing softly around us. I was still gazing up when Damien let go of me and disappeared again, ducking below the surface.