The Trouble With Paradise (21 page)

Denny went back to brooding on the
Sun Song
, and Christian and Andy tended to the fire.

Ethan stayed with the women. “Pass the vodka.”

Dorie offered to pass the chips around as well, but Brandy shook her head. “I might as well lose a few pounds while I’m here, because if we don’t get rescued in a timely fashion, I’m going to get fired. Being fit will help me get a job somewhere else.”

“If I don’t get back soon,” Cadence said, “I won’t finish a painting I’m doing on spec for a customer, and I’ll lose my rent money for the month.”

“If I don’t get back . . .” Dorie paused. If she didn’t get back, what would happen?

Nothing would happen, and nothing would change.

Not such a great thought. “I think I have changes to make,” she said softly. “Serious changes.” She realized they were all looking at her. “It’s that whole waiting for life to happen thing. I need to stop doing that, and
make
it happen.”

“Well, you could always go kiss a stud . . .” Brandy took a big swig of vodka. “In the name of the game.”

Dorie’s gaze locked on Andy and Christian. Andy stood on the far side of the fire, staring in the flames. Christian moved from the pit, walking toward the water’s edge.

“Actually,” she murmured. “You might be on to something.”

“She is?” Cadence asked, shocked.

Brandy smiled. “You go, girl.”

“Wait.” Ethan snagged the bottle from Brandy and offered it to Dorie. “You might need a shot of this first.”

Dorie took a swallow, choked, then handed it off. She stood, grabbed her purse, and started walking.

“Which one is she going after?” Ethan whispered.

“Not sure,” Cadence whispered back. “But she has her purse and the box of condoms.”

“A
box
?” Brandy asked.

Dorie kept walking, past the fire.

She heard Cadence’s surprised intake of breath, or maybe that was her own. But she was no longer unsure of her next move. There was really only one thing to be done, probably there’d always only been one thing. Actually, one man.

And she headed directly toward him.

SIXTEEN

As Dorie approached Christian, he looked up, his face streaked with sand, sweat, and a barely banked misery that pretty much ripped her heart right out of her chest. “What is it?” she asked.

He lifted a hat, which he’d clearly just pulled from the water, an Astros baseball cap.

“Bobby’s,” she gasped.

He hung the hat off the closest palm tree and shoved his fingers through his hair.

“Christian?”

Swiping an arm over his forehead, he waited for her to talk.

She swallowed hard. For whatever reason, she’d had some misguided idea that she could approach this tall, dark, and attitude-ridden man, and seize the day.
Her
day. Now she simply wanted to give him some comfort, but was suddenly at a loss. She glanced back at Cadence and Brandy, who waved her on.
Right
.

She could do this.

“Can we walk?” It was a procrastination strategy, but he shrugged and grabbed his flashlight. They headed up the beach, Christian not saying a word, Dorie’s heart hammering so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t have spoken to save her life. The long, dark beach curved around, and within a few minutes they could no longer see the glow from the campfire, could see nothing but the dark outline of the island jutting up to the heavens on their right and the glimmer of the faint starlight on the waves on their left.

Dorie had always imagined a deserted island would be silent, but she’d been very wrong. The water crashed onto the sand. Insects buzzed, and given the ear-splitting decibels of the hum, they were damn large insects. The small, colorful, plentiful birds hadn’t gone to sleep with the setting sun, and their cries were piercing. Haunting. And she’d have sworn that not all those screeches and hoots were avian based, but she didn’t want to think on that too long.

At a sharp curve in the beach, they met the rocky climb they’d made earlier, and silently took it again.

Ten minutes later, the steep incline once again gave way to the plateau that provided a windy, sweeping view of the dark beach far below. Dorie stood there, panting for breath.

She really needed to get serious about exercise. Assuming she survived her vacation, that is.

“What are we doing?”

“Seizing my day. My life.”

“Huh?”

“I . . .”
Want to jump your bones.
“Um—”

“Shh,” he said suddenly. “Do you hear that?”

Cocking her head, she listened. She could hear the wind rustling the trees. More insects buzzing. And then the lone cry of a bird. Surrounded by the wet, dark rain forest that she couldn’t see, the lushness of it dripped with moisture, and even by the moon’s glow, seemed vacuous. “I hear lots of things.”

“Water.” He pulled her off the rock and into—big gulp—the rain forest.

It swallowed them up whole.

One moment she could hear and see the waves below, and above the slender moon and billions of stars, and then the next moment, nothing.
“Christian.”

Taking her hand, he tugged her along. Damp branches and leaves brushed her arms and legs. Something touched her cheek, and with a squeak, she glued herself to Christian’s back.

“What?” he asked.

She brushed a hand over his pagan-god-like shoulder. “You had something on you.”

Seeing right through her, he snorted, then continued on, but suddenly went still.

“Look,” he said.

She realized she’d closed her eyes in terror, and with a brave swallow, she opened them to find herself standing before a cliff that zoomed so high up she couldn’t see where it ended. From somewhere up there fell a waterfall, landing into a natural pool about thirty feet below them. Lit by the moon, the water shimmered like live crystals, but the pool, shadowed by all the lush growth, lay still as smooth, black marble. Still but not quiet. Here even more insects buzzed, and the birds continued to chirp and squawk. Coming in all around them was the damp, warm night air, making everything seem too close.

Too intimate.

“Fresh water,” he marveled, their feet sinking into the heavy, wet growth beneath them.

It looked like heaven on earth, and drawn to it, she took a step forward, only her foot went right through the thick growth and sank into the sand at the edge of the water.

“Watch it.”

Watching it didn’t seem to be her forte, but instead of letting her fall, he tugged her back against his nice, hard chest, which was beginning to be very familiar.

“You need a keeper, you know that.” Arms still around her, he leaned back, spine to the tree behind him, chest damp and hard, he stuck to her everywhere they touched, which was in some very interesting places. “Tell me you didn’t just twist your other ankle.”

She took quick stock.
Nope.
In fact, held against him as she was, her spine to his torso, backs of her thighs to the fronts of his, her bottom snugged to his crotch, everything felt pretty darn warm and fuzzy and happy.

Very happy. “Ankle’s good.”

“And you didn’t lose that purse.”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not. You didn’t even lose it in a shipwreck, so what am I thinking.”

She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was thinking damn, it felt good to be held against his body, good to forget, even for a minute, the hell they’d found themselves in. Twisting to face him, she opened her mouth to apologize for this whole mess. But he kissed her.

She’d figured maybe they’d talk through their grief, but as a grief release, this worked, too. This worked just fine. Their hands grappled for purchase on each other while their tongues did the tango. When he slid a hand beneath her tops and found her nipple with his thumb, her knees buckled . . . “I can’t stand,” she gasped.

Without missing a beat he whipped her around so that she was pressed to the tree, held there by his body. “How’s that?”

“Good.”
Incredible.

“Good.” And he kissed her again.

Her flashlight dropped to the ground and skittered away, the beam shining off into the distance as his hands claimed her breasts while his mouth attached itself to her throat.

A freight train of lust surged through her veins. It’d been a long time, too long. Over a year ago she’d gone out with a guy five times before he got this far, and in his haste to get to the good stuff, he’d removed only the essential clothing on both of them, and had touched her breasts almost by accident as he’d made his way to ground zero (which he’d missed by a good three inches), getting inside her with just enough time to go off like a bottle rocket.

Leaving her over-revving her engine at the starting gate, and once again faking it.

But Christian seemed to have a whole other agenda going on, and she didn’t have to fake anything, certainly not her reaction. He wasn’t panting like a lunatic, whispering “Oh God, please don’t let me come too fast . . .”

In fact, he wasn’t saying a word, but that might have been because his mouth had other things to do. As he kissed her, long and wet and deep, she felt herself slipping under his spell, her body coming alive so that it practically shivered with anticipation, humming with a pleasure she couldn’t quite contain. The sound of it escaped her with every whimpering breath.

Truth was, he had her halfway to orgasm without doing much more than kissing her, which made her as pathetic as her last date. She’d be mortified later, because right now her body had taken over and was demanding the rest.
“Hurry.”

God, again with the out loud thing, but he didn’t make fun of her. Instead, he slid a big, warm hand up her back, his fingers encircling her ponytail so that he could lightly tug, better angling her mouth to his. His other hand curled around her breast, his fingers rasping over her camisole-covered nipple, coaxing another gasp out of her.
“Hurry,”
she said again.

“Why? Is there a race?”

“My body thinks so,” she managed as he dragged his mouth along her jaw, to her ear, which he sank his teeth into, yanking yet another gasping moan out of her.

“Shh.” He laved the spot with his tongue, then shifted, bending his head to her throat, her collarbone. “Unless you want to be rescued by the others.”

She shook her head wildly. She did not want to be rescued, not from this. He glided his tongue over her skin, heading toward her breasts, licking her through the cotton, and she couldn’t help it, she made a noise of sheer lust.

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, his own dark, so dark with heat, his mouth wet from kissing her.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Very,
very
sure.”

He nodded with intent, a wicked, naughty intent that made her go damp. Or damper. “You still have that box of condoms?”

Oh, God.
“In my purse.”

“I’m beginning to like that purse.”

She fumbled to get to it while he went back to what he was doing. She’d been holding on to him for all she was worth, but at the first touch of his tongue, she cried out.
Damn it.

A man of his own means, he took her hands and gently pressed one finger to her mouth. She nodded.
Shh
. She really was trying, but—“Ohmigod,” she whispered when he tugged the spaghetti straps off her shoulders so that his clever, talented mouth could have more freedom.
“Ohmigod.”

Without a break in the wet, open-mouthed kisses he was trailing over her, he pressed her fingers to her lips again.

Right. Quiet.
She was doing her best, but she was only human here, and her body had shifted to high, hopeful alert status, quivering with it, in fact. She peeked down at his dark head, at the direction he was heading with purposeful intent—which were her nipples, covered only because her tops had snagged on them.

Then he tugged again and her breasts were bared to the night air and his hot, hot gaze.

She had to close her eyes. She slapped her hands to the tree trunk on either side of her hips, needing the handholds. “Christian.”

Again, he stroked a finger over her lips, then
his
hand covered her mouth, because apparently she wouldn’t possibly remain silent with him now crouching down before her, her camisoles gathered at her waist, his fingers slowly pushing up her skirt. Her hands dropped from the tree to his shoulders and dug into the muscles there, and when he’d bunched the entire skirt up past her hips so that he had an eyeful of her panties, she went utterly still, torn between wondering why she’d put panties on today at all, and what would have happened if she hadn’t.

Then he slid his fingers beneath the elastic edging at her hip, tracing it down . . . His knuckles brushed her center and she jerked at the touch. “Um—”