Trade (11 page)

“I’m not ready for that either.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve been having problems over the past few
months. Problems sleeping.” She breathed in deeply. “I had a bad experience
with a guy, problems I haven’t dealt with. When I decided to come to the island
with you, I’d planned on working on them. Healing myself.” She chewed her
bottom lip, and smiled ruefully. “That sounds pretty new age. Healing myself.”
She grimaced.

“Did he hurt you?” He didn’t even
know her story, but a dark mist of anger stiffened Sholto’s spine. And when she
nodded, he wanted to hunt the bastard down and kill him with his bare hands.

“It’s a long story. I was stupid.
He was crazy.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “It doesn’t matter.”

He reached for her hand. “It does
fucking matter.”

“We both have stuff to do. We
should choose option two.” She pressed her lips together. “I need space.”

He wanted to know all of it. Had
to know everything. But the vulnerability in her eyes stopped him from pressing
further. “There’s a third option.”

“Which is?”

“We spend the next few days apart.
You concentrate on the things you wanted to do when we set out for the island.
I’ll work on the script—get to grips with nature, and work on slipping into
character. You stay in your camp, and I stay here in mine. We meet in a few
days and spend time together.”

She tilted her head to the side,
considering his words. “So we eat together now, and then split up. Sounds good
to me.”

“In four night’s time, I’ll come
to your camp and bring dinner with me.” How the hell he’d resist for three full
nights was beyond him, but he had to.

“No need. I’ll catch something and
cook it.” Her mouth curved into a smile. “It’s sort of crazy, avoiding each
other when we’re the only two people here.”

Crazy, but necessary. Because if
he didn’t put some distance between them, he was going to spend the entire time
in bed with her.

She hacked the tops off the
coconuts with the parang. Then she handed one over. “Cheers.” She knocked her
coconut against his.

Chapter Eleven

Max lived alone. So it was easy to pretend she was
comfortable with her own company, that she was never lonely. But here, with no
worldly distractions, Max had to face the truth. In her apartment, she always
had music playing, either the radio or a CD. She was plugged in to technology
twenty-four seven. If she wasn’t reviewing emails or surfing the web, she was
updating the company website or checking out Facebook. During the week, work
consumed every spare hour, and when she wanted company at the weekends she
called on Cam or went out to the coffee shop. Watching people living lives.

Here, there was no escaping
herself, no denying that her life was empty.
I made my choice.

Her sisters’ lives were the
complete antithesis of hers. They’d chosen to be wives. To be mothers. She
remembered once saying to Caroline, “Can’t women have it all?” She’d been only
half joking, and her sister’s response had chilled her to her core.

“No. I don’t believe they can.” Caroline
had slid a tray of freshly baked cookies from the oven. “Someone needs to be
home with the kids. Looking after the family.”

“But Mum worked.”

Caroline’s smile was indulgent. “She
always put us first. You know that. It’s different to what you do.” She put the
cookies onto a wire tray to cool. “I’m proud you manage to support yourself and
have been able to buy your own home. And I know you’re happy the way you are.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Being footloose and fancy free suits you. But it wouldn’t
be enough for me. I want to be Mike’s wife. Declan and Felicity’s mother. And I
love being a grandmother.”

The unspoken inference was plain.
Max would never be anyone’s wife. Anyone’s mother. “I could marry one day...”

Caroline sat at the kitchen table.
“Sure you could.” But her smile was insincere. “A lot of women in your position
do.”

She should have just let it go.
Should have known she couldn’t change her sister’s ingrained beliefs. “What do
you mean, in my position?”

“Well, your friend Kathryn has
managed to find love. And she was pretty wild before she settled down.”

Pretty wild.

“But, you know, you’re not getting
any younger. And the way you…” Caroline swallowed. “The way you’ve known a lot of
men...well a lot of men don’t like that. A nice man might feel threatened by
your history.”

The arrival of Caroline’s grown
daughter and her kids had effectively ended that conversation. Her niece
Felicity had known there was something up, but she hadn’t probed, and after
playing with the kids for a while, Max made an excuse and bolted back to her
house.

Her hands shook as she ripped
leaves for a salad and prepared ingredients for an omelet. She hated to think
her sister was right. But the evidence of her adult life bore that out. She’d
been attracted to people who wanted the same things she did. Who valued
experience, and were sexually adventurous. The men who turned her on weren’t
looking for happy-ever-afters and long-term relationships, and she’d put up a
force field to make sure any men wanting that didn’t approach her.

She lay in her tent and stared out
of the opening at the sky.

Even now, she was involved in a
relationship that was basically a sexual one. With someone who didn’t want
more. They would get together in a few days, and make inroads into their double
stack of condoms. He’d satisfy her carnal desires, but the internal one, the
deep, emotional desire to have a life partner, to have someone in her life to
share the morning paper with, to eat breakfast with, went unsatisfied.

She’d never admitted to herself
that she wanted more. How secretly, she was jealous of the all-consuming love
Kathryn and Daniel shared.

Her aim in coming to the island
had been to recover her equilibrium so she could banish the nightmares, and be
more effective in her job. So she could continue with her life, go back to
clubs, and sleep with strangers again. But deep down, she didn’t want to return
to that life. She wanted more than empty sexual gratification. When Sholto had
thrust inside her, staring into her eyes, she’d felt more. Had opened more than
her legs, had opened her mind and her heart and let him see the real her. For
the first time, fucking had transcended the physical, and going back to her old
life, her old relationships, felt sad and unfulfilling.

She closed her eyes. Joel had been
a bad choice. He was everything she wanted in a lover, or everything she once
thought she wanted. Good looking, fantastic in bed. Fun and adventurous. She
thought he wanted the same things, that they could experience all the carnal
world had to offer without getting involved. They’d had threesomes. Had
explored all their most outlandish fantasies with each other. Her stomach
churned. But when they attended the sex party at Hazzard Hall she saw just how
wrong she’d been. When Joel found her making love to a woman bound to a
cleverly fashioned spider web, he enthusiastically joined in. She hadn’t seen
the turmoil in his eyes as he entered her from behind. Hadn’t realized his hands
were around Susan’s throat trying to squeeze the life out of her until too
late.

He’d been in the throes of a
dangerous obsession, and other people had paid the price.

The sun was setting. Max pulled
the blanket around herself and exhaled. Her therapist was right. She had to
face this before she could move on. She had to think about what she wanted from
life—what she really wanted, and alter her course to try to achieve it. Sholto
was for now, her last goodbye to the life she’d led.

*****

After a restless night, with the tasks of the day done
early, Sholto spent the day reading through the script in an attempt to prepare
a section to act in his audition, which was more or less impossible, given the
lack of dialogue. Preparing a section from the beginning of the script wouldn’t
cut it. Anyone could run the lines John shared with his mother—the boring,
predictable dialogue of a mother and son on a cruise at sea, he needed to
convince Jasper Watson he could convey the intensity of a man marooned, and
that would be considerably more difficult without props.

He scratched the inches of
stubble, fast becoming a beard. For the first couple of days on the island,
John expected to find help or to be rescued. He’d walked around the island,
looking for someone, anyone, to help. There was a scene when he realized that
wasn’t going to happen, and that was the moment he broke, and fear took over.

He had no clue how to survive. His
body, unused to such conditions, had let him down repeatedly suffering bouts of
sickness and diarrhea. The weather hadn’t been kind to him either. In denial,
he hadn’t made a shelter before a storm had lashed the island, causing him
further hardship. And during it, he hadn’t even had enough wisdom to collect
rainwater.

It was a wonder the guy survived
at all.

Sholto scratched his scalp. Seeing
the script made him understand why Jasper was unwilling to cast him for the
role. He lay on his back and covered his eyes with his arm. Could he do it? The
task seemed too hard, too impossible. But that must be how John had felt. Lost.
Overwhelmed by the difficulties facing him. Full of complete, abject despair.
He sat back up again, and grabbed the script.

First, he’d let emotion take over.
He’d cried huddled underneath the swaying palms. Had hugged his knees and
shivered in his cold, wet clothing. He hadn’t been brave, hadn’t been trying to
see a way out.

And when he’d finally been all
cried out, he tried to make a shelter without the help and knowledge of a
mentor like Max. Instinct had taken over. An instinct he never used, one he
probably didn’t even know he had. The instinct to survive.

Sholto finished the script and
turned back to the beginning to read it again.

John hadn’t been able to sleep.
His belly was empty. His stomach sore from the bouts of illness. Before he made
the decision to fight, he’d been lost, alone and fearful.

Emotions Sholto hadn’t allowed
himself to feel for years.

He breathed in a deep, shuddering
breath and opened his mind to a day he’d long tried to forget. The day two
doctors, a psychiatrist, a policeman, and a social worker arrived at his house
to assess his mother.

Years of hiding the truth of his
home life hadn’t prepared him for what was to come. He’d been like John. Unable
to believe things wouldn’t work out for the best. When they asked him to pack
some clothes for his mother, and insisted on taking her from the house, he’d
still felt the situation might be salvageable. He’d been delusional. Just as
John had been.

Sholto’s stomach twisted. He’d
never cried. Not when they took her away. Not when they told him he’d never
return to his house, and that it would be cleared and all his mother’s hoarded
possessions would be destroyed, as they constituted a health hazard. He hadn’t
even cracked when they brought him to his uncle’s house and he had to face his
uncle and aunt’s tears.

Away from the safety of her home,
panicked by the attentions of strangers, his mother suffered a massive heart
attack and died weeks later. He hadn’t even cried at her funeral. He didn’t
deserve the luxury of tears. The release of saying goodbye. He hadn’t played
his role well enough, had been responsible for them taking her away. He stared
out at the sea. Pictured her in his mind, crying and desperately gripping the doorframe
as all three doctors tugged her away. He fought them, but the cop had held him
back. “Ma.” Something inside him cracked open, spilling out raw, acid pain.
I
couldn’t do anything, Ma
. He dashed a hand over his eyes, feeling them wet.
There was no-one to see, no-one for whom to keep up pretense. For the first
time in his entire life he faced the horror of losing her. Of not being enough.

Once the tears started, remembered
images slammed into him. That same social worker arriving at his uncle’s house,
taking him into the kitchen and breaking the news of her death. Standing in a
borrowed black suit at the side of her grave, showing no emotion as the only
other two family members there sobbed and threw flowers into the grave.

Sholto cried as he should have
back then. Gave in completely to the pain clutching his heart, curled onto his
side and covered his face with his hands. When the emotional storm waned, he
didn’t even try to put himself back together. Just crawled into his makeshift
shelter and closed his eyes.

Chapter Twelve

She was as nervous as a virgin on a first date. Next to the
glowing red fire were two large gutted fish, which she’d mounted on a homemade
spit. She’d hollowed out four coconut half shells, one each for water, and one
each for food.

A hand of bananas, the surprise
she’d found the day before on her explorations, sat on a bed of palm leaves.
She wore the sundress, with a shirt open over it, to keep the cool evening
breeze from chilling her shoulders. The sun was low in the sky. If she had
music, it would be playing. If there were candles, they’d be lit.

For the past hour, her gaze had
been continually drawn across the sand. Waiting for him. Watching for him with
a twisting longing inside. She squeezed her hands together. Unclenched them to
brush non-existent sand from her dress. Looked over again.

Her heart leaped as a slow-moving figure
came into view. If she’d cared about game playing, she’d sit exactly where she
was, and wait for him to reach her. Instead, she got to her feet and smiled
wide.

He didn’t smile back. His intense
gaze locked with hers, scorched her with its heat. His open shirt fluttered in
the breeze and his trousers rode low on his hips, revealing the cut of toned
muscles in his stomach, and the deep V arrowing from his hips.

Max’s breath feathered in and out
of her parted lips.

His hair was wild, but the look in
his eyes was wilder. When he stopped close enough to touch, her heart was
racing like a metronome on speed.

“I…”

“Shut up.” With a growl, he
speared his fingers into her hair and took her mouth. There was no tenderness,
no soft teasing of her lips, just a raw, animalistic plundering that brought
every atom of her being alive. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and
breathed in his scent, dimly realizing how much she’d missed it, missed him.

Then his hands were at her shirt, peeling
it from her shoulders to fall to the ground. He shoved off the shoestring
straps of her sundress, and pulled it down to expose her breasts. His bristly beard
tickled, then he sucked one hard nub into his mouth and rolled the other
between his fingers, sending a bolt of sensation through her so powerful her
knees almost buckled.

She gripped his shoulders. Arched
her back and pressed into him, needing him closer, needing him in her aching
core. Then, somehow they were on the ground, ripping off what remained of each
other’s clothes. His thigh was between hers, creating delicious friction. He
kneaded her breasts and his hot breath feathered across her throat, then he
plunged his tongue into her ear.

“Fuck.” The word puffed out of her
on a desperate breath. She felt like she was on fire. Like she couldn’t survive
another moment without him inside her. “Fuck me, Sholto.”

He eased off her, grabbed a condom
from his pants’ pocket, and ripped it open. “I’ve been dreaming of this for
days.” His voice was gritty with need. “Dreaming of licking your sweet cunt, of
making you lose it and scream my name when you come.” Quickly he sheathed his
thick cock. “But right now I’ll die if I’m not inside you.”

She angled her knees up, and flipped
her thighs open. Flattened her back to the ground and angled up her pussy to
his cock. The brush of his hardness was so delicious, the way they bumped
together in a sensuous slide made her moan.

He claimed her mouth, his tongue
tangling with hers in a desperate dance. Notched his cock into her wet heat,
and thrust hard.

There was desperation in his
movements. Her eyes were open, but his were clamped tight shut, so different
from the last time their bodies joined. His hands bracketed her face, holding
her in place as his body pistoned. It was no slow seduction. No meaningful
connection between two people, just raw, dirty, primitive, desperate sex.

Her fingers dug into his back, her
legs wrapped around his waist. He bit her lip, his breath hot and wild on her
mouth. She clenched her inner muscles, squeezing him tight enough to feel every
inch of him filling her so totally, so completely. Shimmering shudders started
at her core, flooding out to the tips of her fingers, the end of her toes.

As he muttered hot, filthy words of
encouragement against her mouth, his cock slid in her wetness, hammered into
her until there was nothing left but passionate, explosive release.

****

Holy shit.
Sholto rolled off Max and dispensed with
the condom. The past couple of days had been rough, but this—this was batshit
crazy. The moment he’d seen her, standing there waiting for him, it was as if a
switch was flipped and any civilized instincts were drowned out with the urgent
need to have her. He’d never lost it like that before. Never cared so little
about a woman’s pleasure.

He couldn’t even look at her.

Her hand landed flat on his chest.

He turned his head.

“Hi there. Did you miss me?” Her
eyes were filled with warmth and laughter.

“I sort of…uh…” He couldn’t even
string two words together.

She leaned over and pressed her
lips softly to his. “That was fucking fantastic,” she whispered. “Exactly what
I needed.” She trailed a finger between her breasts. “Let’s eat, then do it again.”

An incredulous laugh forced its way
through his lips. “That wasn’t enough for you?”

“Oh, baby.” She did a funny, pouty
thing with her mouth, and to his amazement his cock stirred again, something he
would have judged impossible after the explosive sex they’d just shared. “I
want to do that all night.”

“You’re amazing.” He pushed
himself up on one elbow, snaked a hand to her neck under the swathe of blonde
hair, and tugged her down to his mouth. Her lips were soft, and this time the
kiss was tender and intimate.

After a few moments she edged away
and smiled wide. “I better put the fish on to cook.” She dressed, and walked
over to the spit sitting behind the glowing fire. “Help me with this, will you?”

His stomach was twisting in knots.
“I’m really hungry.”

Her eyes widened. “When did you last
eat?”

Would she understand? “I had a
revelation, reading the script. The story is more than just learning the
mechanics of survival. It’s about John’s inner struggle. I needed to try to
experience that.”

She focused all her attention on
him. Her unadorned face had never seemed more beautiful.

“At the beginning, he was in
denial. He expected to be rescued any minute, so he didn’t search for water,
didn’t look for food. By the time he faced the truth he was dehydrated and
hungry. His weakened state lowered his defenses; he broke down and let terror
in.”

She winced.

“I needed to get there. Get inside
his head. So I haven’t eaten or drank anything for a couple of days.”

“Jesus!” She grabbed a bottle of
water and forced it into his hands. “Drink. Now.” Her eyes blazed anger. “You…”
Her hands shook. “No-one can survive in this climate without water. You could
have done real damage to your body.”

He brought the bottle to his lips.
The cool water trickled down his throat, more delicious than anything he’d ever
tasted.

She sat close next to him, and
touched a hand to his arm. “Slowly. Sip it.”

He’d gone beyond thirst, but now
his body screamed for more, but he did as she asked, and held each mouthful of
precious liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing slowly.

“When I left you I never expected
you’d do something so stupid.” She crossed her arms. Her jawline was clenched,
and her mouth flattened into a thin line. “How the hell did you think I’d feel
if something had happened to you? If you’d gone unconscious, or worse?” A trace
of panic was evident in the high tone of her voice. She blinked through a sheen
of unshed tears.

He reached for her. “I’m fine.”

She pummeled his chest with close
fists, but not hard. There was no intent to hurt. “I hope it was fucking worth
it.” She breathed in deep.

He took another sip of water. “I
never would have known how fantastic water tastes if I hadn’t done it. I couldn’t
have got to where John went without experiencing the things he did.”

“So it was worth it?”

He draped an arm over her
shoulders and pulled her in close to his body. “It was.” He brushed his lips
over the top of her head. “And it’s over now. I promise to look after myself
from here on in.”

“You damn well better.” She
grasped his hand and wove her fingers though his, gripping tightly.

“You wouldn’t have been liable if
I’d suffered any injury—you came as my companion, not my guardian. And help is
just a boat ride away. You have the satellite phone…”

She glanced up at him through a
veil of dark eyelashes. “Are you really that dense? I care about
you
,
not about whether I’m liable.” She shook her head and pulled her hand away. She
walked around the fire. Then she stooped and picked up something.

“Catch.” She tossed him a banana. “This
was supposed to be a surprise dessert for you, but I think you better eat it
now. I’m going to fetch more sticks for the fire.”

*****

She had to get away from him for a moment. Because the
thought of him denying himself water and sustenance had shaken her to the core.
Their calorie intake had already been reduced since they arrived on the
island—reducing it to nothing had been a dangerous experiment.

He’d done it to get inside
Weatherly’s head. To identify as closely as possible with another man’s
struggle. But the one thing both her father and Abe had drilled into her was
that you never knowingly risked yourself when out in the wilds. The basic tenet
of survival, the one, unbreakable rule, was to eat and drink. To recklessly
risk your wellbeing for an experiment…

She slashed at the undergrowth.
Picked up a handful of dry kindling.

He wasn’t stupid. It had only been
a few days, with a clearly defined objective. She was right to be angry, but
the other emotion that had filled her on hearing about his experiment had
blindsided her, and even now, she struggled to get her feelings under control.

She’d been thrown into blind panic
at the thought of losing him. The aftershocks still shuddered through her
limbs. She breathed in deep. This was only ever supposed to be a stolen moment
in time. An escape not just from civilization, but also from reality.

No future reality could exist in
which she and Sholto were together. In a few days, they’d climb aboard that
boat and leave the island and everything they’d shared on it behind on the
beach. She was never supposed to care for him like this. Never supposed to want
him so much that her heart pounded out of her chest every time he came into
view.

“Hey.”

She turned.

“What is it?” He stepped close.
Tilted her chin to stare into her eyes.

Her bullshit generator was broken.
There was no mask to hide behind, no way to pretend any more. “I care about
you. More than I wanted, more than I thought I would. I know this was just
supposed to be a temporary thing, that it would be over when we left the
island, but—”

His thumb brushed over her bottom
lip. “It doesn’t have to be over.” The expression in his eyes was naked. True. “I
don’t want it to be over.” He took the bundle of sticks from her arms. “Come
back to the fire.”

As the dying sun streaked the sky
pink and gold, they filled their bowls with sweet, white fish-meat and ate.

“He was called Joel. We’d been
friends for months. Well, more than friends, we were lovers too, but it wasn’t
exclusive. I didn’t think it was serious. Both of us were interested in exploring
every aspect of our sexuality and we trusted each other.”

She glanced over. His expression
was set, his jaw tight, as though he didn’t like hearing her words. But he
jerked his head in a brief nod she should continue.

She swallowed. “We went to a sex
party, and split up to explore different experiences.”

A growl issued from Sholto’s
throat. He scowled, but didn’t speak.

“I hooked up with a woman, and
Joel found us. I didn’t think anything of it, we’d had threesomes before, and
he’d been fine with it. But he attacked the woman, he hurt…” Her throat closed.
She swiped at tears.

“He hurt you?”

“He hurt my friends. He was
obsessed with me. He was unstable. I never realized.”

Sholto pulled her between his
legs.

She leaned back onto his broad
chest and sighed as he enveloped her in his arms.

“I hate to think of you with
anyone else.” His voice was deep and dark. He buried his face in her hair. “Where
is he now?”

“He’s locked up in a psychiatric
facility.” Guilt roiled in her gut. “I can’t help thinking if I’d realized how
he felt, if I hadn’t…”

“You can’t blame yourself.” His
arms tightened. “It’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone else’s
head.”

He hitched up her shirt, and
flattened his palm over her flat stomach. “Be clear. While you and I are
together there will be no other lovers in either of our lives. I won’t share
you.” His fingers stroked lower, then dipped to the juncture of her thighs. “You’re
mine.”

“And you are mine?” Breathing was
becoming increasingly difficult.

“I’m yours. Until either of us
calls time on this relationship.”

Warm heat as his mouth pressed
against her exposed neck. It was impossible not to turn in his arms, to fuse
her mouth to his again.

He hitched her up onto his lap. His
warm hand stroked from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. She
leaned into him, loving the feel of every part of their bodies in close
contact.

“I want to spend every moment we
have left on Melati making love to you.” He licked the seam of her mouth. “Starting
now.”