The Castaway Bride (18 page)

She turned to face him and almost laughed at the wounded look on his face.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s a big one. Aren’t you clever?”

He looked mollified. “It nipped me on the finger, the brute.”

“You’re lucky it didn’t nip you somewhere else, somewhere more, uh, sensitive,” she said, laughing.

She walked across the sand to him. “Come on, show me the finger,” she commanded. He did. She kissed it tenderly then looked up at him, wide-eyed. “You’re a big he-man hunter and I’m very impressed.”

He rolled his eyes at her and tossed her the crab. “Here, go cook my catch, woman,” he growled.

C
risty found the bonfire way too hot to get close enough for cooking. Matt used a stick to roll away some hot coals and she barbecued the crab over them. Then they used palm leaves to carry their feast away from the beach to a shady bower where the tropical sun only filtered through.

“I don’t think I’ve ever tasted any thing so good,” she sighed, licking her fingers.

“Same,” agreed Matt.

Her hunger satisfied, she felt more mellow, more optimistic, more able to believe that maybe the fate that had cast her ashore with Matt would ensure she got a chance to know him better. She even felt like eating chocolate again.

“It is
so
amazing here,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. Here we are, Adam and Eve in paradise, living off the land, catching our own food.”

“Don’t romanticize it too much,” he said dryly, bringing her back down to earth.

“Hey, you’re the one that said this was the real world.”

“Yeah, I did, but it’s an unreal kind of real world if you get my meaning. How long before the novelty wears off and you long for civilization?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said stubbornly, knowing he was right and yet longing for him to be more romantic. But hadn’t he warned her that he didn’t do romantic?

Brightly colored parrots squawked and wove their way in and out of the trees, the flashes of color just adding to the wonder of it all. Back in a New York winter she’d live on the memories of this.

“My parents would love it here. What an incredible place for a commune.”

“It’s an incredible place for a hotel, that’s what’s planned.”

“Right here?”

“No. Back near the cabin. The… the developers think old Seth chose the best site for habitation.”

“That’s sacrilege,” she exclaimed. “Some fancy high rise the same as on Starlight Island, I suppose.”

“No, an exclusive small resort. Very ecologically sound, very luxurious.”

“And very expensive, no doubt. One of those rock star retreats where only millionaires need apply. What a shame.”

“Weren’t you going to marry a millionaire?”

That rigid, shuttered look was back on his face. Did he still believe she had wanted to marry Howard for his money?

She couldn’t keep her annoyance from her voice. She got up. “Yes I was, and now I’m not, and that means I’d better enjoy this island while I can because now I don’t have a job.”

She doubted she’d ever work again for the Templetton family firm—and would she want to anyway after Howard’s despicable behavior? That damn engagement ring burned on her finger. She hated it. Wanted to drop it and watch it slide away forever into the sand. But it had belonged to Howard’s grandmother and had even more sentimental value to the family than it had dollar value. For the sake of the friendship they’d shared before the engagement nonsense started, she felt duty bound to look after it. And on this island the safest place was on her finger.

She started to walk away from Matt but was stopped by his hand snaking out to grip her ankle. He held her in place—she’d trip if she tried to walk away.

“Don’t get mad, Cristy.”

She tried to kick his hand away but couldn’t. His grasp was as hard and strong as a shackle.

“I’m not letting go until you promise not to be mad.” He stumbled on the words. “I get jealous when I think about you marrying that ginger-haired weasel.”

He was jealous? Jealous of Howard?

“I’m not mad. I just—”

Matt released her ankle and got up to face her. He looked deep into her eyes as if he were seeking an answer there. His eyes were shadowed and she couldn’t read their depths.

“We’re better without words,” he said as he pulled her to him and silenced anything she might have said with a kiss.

C
risty stood rigid in his arms but then Matt felt her relax against his chest as she returned his kiss and wrapped her arms around his back.

He knew he shouldn’t have said anything about her millionaire bridegroom. Damn Julia. Her avariciousness had made him wary of women on the hunt for rich husbands. And Cristy still wore that obscenely sized diamond firmly planted on the third finger of her left hand.

He doubled his resolve to make her forget its weasel-like donor. He urged his body to transmit the feelings he could scarcely articulate to himself, let alone to her.

Cristy’s mouth was open against his lips, her sweet breath mingling with his. He slid his tongue inside to seek hers, stroking and pushing and circling until she moaned and pressed her warm, naked body urgently against him, her heart pulsing so rapidly he could feel it.

He slid his hands down her back cupping her bottom hard. She wriggled against his hardness. Good, she was as eager to be close to him as she was to her. He’d run into the surf so many times to cool down, not just from the exertion of building the fire but from the arousal of being in such intimate proximity to lush, naked Cristy.

His tongue became more demanding, his ragged breathing echoing hers as she responded to him. The urgent need to possess her almost overtook him, he could take her now, plunge into her hot wetness, thrust hard and fast and brand her with his unleashed passion. He knew she wouldn’t stop him.

But he reined himself in. Her pleasure had to be foremost—though he wasn’t counting orgasms like she did.

He broke away from her mouth to plant kisses along her jaw, down the soft column of her neck, to nuzzle against the sensitive hollow of her shoulder. She shuddered and bit him on the side of his neck, a sensual nip causing more pleasure than pain.

She stood still as he stroked the soft sides of her breasts then ran his hands down her waist and the outside of her thighs. With an impatient murmur deep in her throat, she took his hands and pulled them back up to place them over her breasts.

Delighted to oblige, he thumbed each tip to attention before bending his head to take an erect nipple in his mouth, teasing and flicking it with his tongue, suckling it hard, then giving the other the same attention as Cristy moaned her appreciation.

It was his turn to moan as she splayed her hands across his back then slid them down, coming to rest at the base of his spine where she caressed the sensitive cleft at the top of his buttocks before sliding around to his front. She cupped him in her hand then stroked the length of him.

As they caressed each other, her little shivers and sighs intensified his pleasure but when she started to say something he silenced her with a hand across her mouth. “No words,” he commanded hoarsely. Words just didn’t work for him.

C
risty had tried to say that she couldn’t stand up any longer; she was so overcome with desire that her knees couldn’t hold her steady. But she didn’t persevere with the conversation. She found staying silent, save for involuntary utterances of delight, extraordinarily erotic.

Actions spoke louder than words and Matt’s wet tongue and hot mouth, the carnal intent in his eyes, told her that she was headed for another incredible sexual adventure. When he slid his hand down her belly, then further, played with the curls he found there, caressed her so-sensitive clit, then slid his finger into her willing wetness, she gasped and sagged against him.

He laughed, low and triumphantly, picked her up and carried her a few steps deeper into the shade of the rainforest. He laid her facing him on her back on the softer ground there, pulling her knees up so he knelt between her thighs, stroking her belly, running his fingers along the insides of her thighs, teasing her swollen womanhood until she ached for the ecstasy of release.

Her hands gripped his thighs with the force of her need, she tried to sit up so she could stroke him, caress him but he pushed her gently back. Gasping, she got the message and thrilled to it—he was in charge.

She didn’t want to miss a moment. When they’d made love before she’d kept her eyes closed but in this position, as he reared up above her, it was easy to maintain full eye contact. Somehow, locked to his green gaze, she felt connected to him on more than a physical level, as if he were making love to her body and soul.

The sweet ecstasy was almost more than she could bear as he stimulated her toward the edge of no return. Her body ached for release, fast and urgent. She could read the hungry need in his eyes, could tell the effort he was making to hold back.

“Come with me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I want you inside me.”

He didn’t break his gaze as he reached back for the protection, then lifted her hips. When he entered her, she felt something that went beyond the sexual.

She welcomed him inside her, gripped him, reveled in his size, his strength, his power. She met his rhythm, urgent, demanding, relentless. The heat gathered, soared. He couldn’t stop, she didn’t want him to. She went over the top and exploded into a climax so intense she felt she would faint. His shout of release joined her cries, echoing into the wilderness around them.

Overcome, her heart pounding, face flushed, breath coming in great, ragged gasps, she kissed him and sank back onto the welcoming earth. Never had she felt so close to another person. It was an unfamiliar feeling and it frightened her. For surely the awesome connection she’d just felt had more to do with love than lust?

She couldn’t bear it if it was simply sex to Matt. And she just a convenient, temporary partner.

S
o great were the heights they’d scaled that it took Matt some time to come down. He lay with Cristy—Miss Perfect-For-Him—cradled in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.

He looked up above him, to where the light filtered down in wide shafts through the canopy of the ancient rainforest to fall upon their naked, entwined bodies, and wondered if he should be thanking some higher power.

Stairways to heaven, his grandmother Maggie had described those awe-inspiring shafts. He felt like he’d been to heaven and back with Cristy—back to this piece of paradise on earth.

Surely she had felt it, too? His body had shouted its message. But, as he turned his head to tenderly stroke her face, he was stunned to see not knowledge and joyous awareness in her eyes but a dawning wariness that made his heart contract with sudden fear.

CHAPTER TEN

Cristy
berated herself. How could she have been so dumb as to go and fall in love with Matt Slade? A man who made it clear with every second breath that commitment, to him, was a dirty word? Who, through all the lovemaking they’d shared, had not used one endearment, not given any clue that he might share the same forever-type feelings that had invaded her.

The thought churned through Cristy’s mind as, back in Seth’s cabin, she watched Matt cook the fish he’d caught for their dinner.

By unspoken accord they were back in their clothes, she in the abbreviated wedding dress, he in the black undershorts. Somehow the daytime Adam and Eve nakedness thing didn’t seem quite appropriate either to the evening or their mood.

Her body ached deliciously—she felt relaxed, sated, fulfilled. And yet while she watched Matt move around the cabin, his black jersey undershorts molded to the hard muscles of his butt, his bare brown chest and back gleaming with a sheen of sweat, she felt desire stir restlessly again.

Why had she gone and confused lust with love?
Because she knew in her heart that great sex like she’d shared on this island with Matt was due to so much more than a no-strings easing of an uncomplicated sexual hunger.

You only felt like that when love entered the equation. Until now, she hadn’t known enough about love to recognize it. She might have an MBA but she’d flunked Love 101 in a major way.

How could she ever have imagined that she would grow to love Howard? That was just a friendship thing. Certainly not enough to build a marriage on. She knew that now.

And her first lover? Again, with hindsight, she realized that the long-ago awakening of her body hadn’t even been full-scale lust. More a teenage crush, though it had certainly hurt at the time, and the consequences had been disastrous.

This—Matt—was the real thing.

Love.

When had she fallen in love with Matt? At what precise moment had her attraction to him turned to this yearning ache to have him by her side forever?

When he’d revived her on the beach with the kiss of life? When he’d held her hand and told her he’d be there to fight the baddies? Or when he’d been unable to hide the hurt of his betrayal by his brother with his girlfriend—and Cristy’s heart had been flooded by the need to reach out to him?

She didn’t know. It—the love—was just there now. Part of her. Part of her heart. Her very being.

But Matt had made it clear he wasn’t looking for anything lasting. That he didn’t want to commit. He’d scorn her if he knew her feelings toward him.

No, Matt wouldn’t scorn her; he was way too much of a gentleman for that. He’d be kind to her, try and let her down lightly. And that would be worse—she couldn’t bear his pity.

Cristy took a deep, shuddering breath of resolve. She’d have to do her best to hide from Matt how she was feeling. She remembered how he’d teased her about how her thoughts showed on her face. How was she going to conceal her new-found love from him?

At her sigh, Matt turned from the kerosene stove where he was cooking the second of the fish he’d caught. Cristy’s heart lurched at the sight of him, his jaw shadowed so strongly now it was half-way to a beard, his smile more devastating than ever now she knew—with a futile longing—she wanted it to shine on her forever.