Tropical Sin: Bandicoot Cove, Book 3 (9 page)

McKenzie’s heart fluttered. Yes, he did. On so many levels. Levels she didn’t imagine possible only six hours ago.

Nick studied them both, his sharp grey eyes unreadable in the suite’s dimming light—where had the day gone?—before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the bathroom.

McKenzie closed her eyes, content to stand against Aidan’s hardness. The fading beat of her orgasm—
don’t you mean orgasms, Wood?
—still constricted the inner muscles of her sex, sending soft pulses of delicious pleasure to her brain. The tops of her thighs were slicked wet with the sticky juices of her climax, a wholly carnal aftermath of sex she’d never enjoyed until this very moment.

“Did I hurt you?”

Aidan’s low murmur in her ear made her turn her head and she raised her eyebrows at him. “Yes.” She smiled, touching her fingertips to his bunched jaw. “And it felt so so good so don’t you dare say sorry.”

“That’s twice you’ve told me not to apologize to you today.” He narrowed his eyes. “If you keep this up I’m going to think I’ve been too nice to you all these years.”

She laughed, the vibration working its way through her body, reminding her he was still buried in her arse. The realization sent a wicked little shiver through her, pinching her nipples tight.

God, I’ve become an Aidan addict.

Her heart beat quicker at the notion. She had. It felt…right.

“Okay.” Nick’s deep voice rumbled before her and she turned her attention back to the singer, but not before seeing an ambiguous tension pass over Aidan’s face.

Something warm and moist stroked at the junction of her thighs and she blinked, more than a little surprised to discover Nick was wiping her sex clean. “Turn around and give the firefighter a kiss, McKenzie,” he ordered.

She grinned. “Yes, sir.”

She twisted in Aidan’s embrace, the friction of his shaft sliding from her anus making her moan. A moan echoed by Aidan as she raised herself up on to tiptoe and lifted her face to him. “Kiss me, Rog—”

The rest of his name was cut off by his lips claiming hers, his tongue dipping into her mouth as Nick briskly, albeit gently, cleaned her backside with the washcloth.

Chapter Six

“Now, I don’t know if either of you have noticed,” Nick said behind McKenzie, and it took Aidan a second to realize he had finished tending to her hygienic cleanliness, “but we missed lunch. May I suggest we sojourn to my bungalow for a quick supper before picking this up where we left off?”

With far more reluctance than he expected, Aidan broke off his exploration of McKenzie’s lips. He wanted to taste them again. He couldn’t seem to get enough of their soft warmth moving under his.

He looked down into her face, wondering what she would say, what Nick would say if he was to announce he was quite satisfied feasting on McKenzie’s kisses.

What would they both say if you told them you didn’t want to go anywhere at all? Not even to the big party at Bar Evoke tonight? That you quite cheerfully would stay here with McKenzie. Just McKenzie, forever?

McKenzie stared at him. As if waiting for him to say something.

“Sounds great,” he blurted out.

Idiot.

Before he could take it back, Nick nodded and scooped his discarded clothes up from the floor. “I’m performing tonight at Evoke.” The rock star shoved his long legs into his jeans. “But there’s still something we need to do before then.”

Aidan’s heart thumped a little harder.

A quiet stillness seemed to claim McKenzie as she turned to face the singer. “What’s that?”

Nick gave her a wide smile. “Where would the fun be in me telling you that?” He snatched up his boots and slung them over his shoulder, stuffing his T-shirt into the back pocket of his snug jeans, leaving his upper body bare. To Aidan, he’d never appeared more the sexual celebrity.

With another smile and a nod to Aidan, he was gone, humming the song Aidan knew was unfolding in his soul softly as he went.

“Bloody celebrities,” McKenzie muttered, disengaging herself from Aidan’s arms. She padded on bare feet over to her own clothes lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. “Think the world bows down to their every whim.”

Retrieving his own clothes from their scattered locations, Aidan forced a jovial chuckle from his chest. “Kinda getting the feeling we just did, Mack.”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she yanked her T-shirt over her head and thrust her legs into her cutoff white denim shorts, shorts, Aidan couldn’t deny, that had always driven him to distraction

“Aidan?” McKenzie lifted her attention from her fly, giving him a curious glance over her shoulder.

He grinned, zipping his fly up. “Yes?”

“Why did you finally decide to show me how you felt?”

The question wasn’t what he was expecting. He blinked, a heavy knot rolling in his gut. How did he answer this?

His hesitation must have been enough to trigger McKenzie’s suspicious journalist’s mind. Eyes narrowing, she turned to face him, crossing her arms over her breasts, her expression part expectant, part impatient. “Well?”

Aidan swallowed, a tornado of colors and sound and smells assaulting him—greys and blacks, the pop and hiss of incinerating wood, the stench of burning flesh… If it hadn’t been for his sheer strength and a fellow firefighter…

He let out a sigh, knowing exactly how McKenzie was going to react. “I almost died in the fire that destroyed the Newcastle Town Hall.”

Her face drained of color. “You what?”

The words burst from her in a choked whisper, her eyes growing wide.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to—”

“If you say worry—” she cut him off, her arms dropping from her chest, her eyes thunderous, “—I will smack the shit out of you.”

Aidan chuckled, a wry laugh he knew was going to piss her off even more. “Okay.” He reached for his shirt where it hung perilously from the edge of the suite’s writing desk. “I didn’t want you to freak out, how’s that?”

McKenzie slumped onto the foot of the bed, as if his statement had robbed her body of its strength. She shook her head, her stare locked on his face, her eyebrows pulling into a deep frown. Or was it a scowl? “Details. I want details. Now.”

Letting out a sigh, Aidan slipped one arm and then the other into his shirt, shucking it over his head and down his torso. “There isn’t much to tell you, Mack.” He walked over to her, stopping a mere inch before her bent knees and lowering himself into a crouch. “A support beam collapsed while I was underneath it. For a while, I was wearing the second floor as a hat. It crushed the airways on my gear and I was breathing nothing but smoke until I passed out. Beaso found me under the rubble and pulled me out.” He shrugged. “As far as onsite accidents go, it was pretty uneventful.”

The thunder in her eyes grew angrier. “Uneventful?”

Aidan released another sigh, smoothing his hands up the tops of her thighs. Her muscles tensed under his palms and she pulled her legs away from his touch, glaring at him.

Uh-oh.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, and his chest tightened at the controlled anger in her voice. “Is that why I couldn’t get in contact with you for those four days?” Her jaw bunched. “Those four days you told me you were on a training run up the coast?”

He didn’t answer.

She stared at him. “You were in hospital?”

Jesus, Rogers. Probably should have told her before now.

The anger in her eyes turned seismic. And icy. She stood, the abrupt move sending him tumbling backward. He landed on his arse, his elbows hitting the floor a second before she stepped over him and stormed across the room.

“You were in hospital, almost dead, and you didn’t tell me?” Her voice cracked on the word
me
. “You were in fucking hospital and you didn’t tell me?”

He scrambled to his feet, watching her pace back and forth in a short line in front of the suite’s large flat-screen television. Yeah, he probably should have told her before now.

She spun to him, fists clenched, fury etching her face. “You selfish prick,” she snarled, striding back to him again. “What did you think I’d do? Cry on your chest and beg God not to take you?” She stopped directly before him, chin tilted upward, glare firmly in place. “Go all weepy and wussy and burst into—”

She burst into tears. Just like that.

“Hey!” Aidan was shocked. No, more than shocked. Stunned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mack cry. Maybe when Lachlan Wilson called her a “frigid bitch” when she wouldn’t pay out at the school dance? How old were they when that happened? Sixteen? “Hey hey hey.”

He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her back and pulling her into his body. She fought him, trying to wriggle out of his embrace, still grumbling about him being a prick, stating quite firmly as she hiccupped around her tears that she hated him and wished she’d known he was in hospital so she could have come into his room and changed his chart to read “castration required”.

And in amongst all the bluster and foot stamping and repeated “God, I hate you, Rogers, I really hate you”, her struggle to escape his hold turned to her pressing herself closer to his body, her cheek resting on his chest, her arms circling his waist, the words “What if I’d lost you before I knew?” slipping from her in a soft sigh.

“Knew what?” he asked, his lips against the top of her head, her hair like cool silk on his warm face.

“About this?”

He closed his eyes, wanting to ask just what
this
meant. He loved her. He had no doubt of that. Unconditionally and unreservedly. But she had yet to utter the L-word and he didn’t want to push her, not after the way she’d just reacted to the revelation that he’d almost lost his life. Risking his life every day came with the whole firefighter job description, but risking McKenzie…?

He pulled a slow breath, taking the subtle scent of her—clean soap, fruity shampoo, musky perfume—into his very soul. Was what they’d just done here, on the island, more dangerous than what he did every workday?

What happened after Nick Blackthorne left their lives and it was just the two of them again? Aidan the fiery and Mack the journo? What happened then?

What happens if Nick doesn’t want to leave, Rogers? What happens if he decides he wants McKenzie for himself? What do you do then? How do you compete with the world’s biggest rock star with a dick the size of a rhino’s?

A tight chill rippled through him. A second before a hard slap struck him on the shoulder.

“Hey!” He pulled away, looking down into McKenzie’s upturned face. “What was that for this time?”

“For being a jerk.” She scowled. “Next time you decide to try and wear a building for a hat, remember that slap, okay?”

He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “I’ll try.” He grinned, snuggling her closer to his body, his hands cupping her backside with a gentle squeeze. His cock twitched in his cargo pants, more than happy to go along with the fondling.

She scowled a little harder. “Do.”

Before he could stop himself—and why would he?—he dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers. “Anyone tell you you’re kinda pushy, Ms. Wood?” he murmured, squeezing her ass again as he rolled his hips forward.

She gazed up at him, her hands resting on his chest, her lips parting. The silence stretched between them, heavy, thick. She touched the tip of her tongue to her bottom lip and her eyes widened, as if she’d just realized something very, very important.

“I—”

The suite’s phone rang.

You’ve got to be bloody kidding me.

An ambiguous frown flittered across McKenzie’s face and, with a gentle shove, she disentangled herself from Aidan’s arms and crossed the room.

Leaving him standing motionless, his dick growing stiff and his heart thumping harder than ever.

Chewing on her bottom lip, McKenzie snatched up the phone’s hand piece from the cradle and pressed it to her ear. “H—”

“What the hell are you doing?” Kylie yelled on the other end of the line, her normally soft, lilting voice far from quiet—or lilting. McKenzie flinched, pulling the phone a little from her ear. Damn, she’d forgotten how loudly her friend could screech.

“What am I doing?” She frowned, turning to Aidan. He stood looking at her, all massive broad chest, sculpted six-pack and lean hips. Hell, even the tattoo under his shirt made her sex constrict, its burning form so very much the perfect metaphor for how he made her feel—on fire.

Which is why you were just about to—

“I’ve just been informed by one of my staff,” Kylie went on, assuming a very uptight tone—far more businesslike than any McKenzie had heard her use, “that a reporter from Goss Weekly has been harassing Nick Blackthorne.”

McKenzie laughed. “Oh, that.”

“Yes, that,” Kylie snapped, and McKenzie flinched again. “I invited you here as my friend, Mack, not as a bloody journalist for that shit mag you work for.” The words tripped over each other, Kylie’s anger turning each one to a sharp report. “Do you have any idea how hard it was even getting to
talk
to Blackthorne’s
agent
? And you go and pull this stunt on me?”

“No, it’s not like that, Ky,” McKenzie said quickly, her friend’s rising ire like a blow to the stomach. “I slept with him.”

Silence greeted her statement. Not even the sound of Kylie breathing could be heard.

McKenzie licked her lips, her gaze moving to Aidan’s, watching him watching her. “I haven’t been harassing him,” she continued, Kylie’s complete lack of response unnerving her. “Well, not since I first approached him, and then Aidan stopped me from—”

“Wait a minute,” Kylie cut her off, and McKenzie could almost see her friend on the other end of the line, her eyes narrowing the way they always did when she was processing information she couldn’t believe possible, her head tilted to the side just a fraction. “Are you telling me you had sex with Nick Blackthorne?”

McKenzie nodded, a stupid thing to do, given Kylie couldn’t see her, but reflex all the same. “Yes.”

More silence. Followed by Kylie saying, “You stupid cow.”

McKenzie’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Excuse me?”