She heard his breathing, harsh and rapid, and found herself panting in response. Her nipples were hard buds pressed against the cups of her bikini top and she squeezed her thighs against the throbbing tension between her legs.
He groaned, and his hand moved faster. Light glinted on a drop of moisture at the tip of his penis. Nicole covered her breasts with her hands and bit her lip to keep from moaning. As he continued to pump his hand, she began to massage her aching breasts, squeezing the nipples, twirling them between her thumb and forefinger, the tension and wetness building between her legs.
She kept her eyes open, focused on Ian’s face, on the shock of dark hair falling across his forehead, the lines of tension around his eyes and mouth, and the fierceness of his expression. Her rapid breathing matched his, and every muscle strained with his.
His hand began to move faster, and the hammock rocked more violently. Nicole swayed also, her legs quivering. Sweat ran down her back and gathered at the top of her buttocks. The air was humid and thick with the scent of her musk.
With a loud cry, he came, his body arching in the hammock, the seminal fluid painting his torso in glistening stripes. Nicole leaned against the trunk of a palm tree and closed her eyes, slipping one hand beneath the waistband of her bikini bottoms as she did so.
Using her own moisture as a lubricant, she fingered her clit, rolling it back and forth beneath her thumb, biting the finger of her other hand to stifle her moans. She was only dimly aware of the rough bark abrading her bare back, of the screaming of gulls overhead or the oppressive heat of the afternoon sun. Her legs began to tremble violently and she moved her hand faster, breathing rapidly.
She came hard, slamming back into the tree trunk, her whole body shuddering, one sharp cry escaping her lips. She smiled, amazed at what she’d just done—and how wonderful and illicit and…decadent…it had felt.
She turned her head to look toward the hammock again and was alarmed to see Ian sitting up now. He held the towel in one hand and was frowning toward the jungle where she’d hidden herself. He must have heard her cry. Had he seen her?
Not bothering to wait for an answer, she took off, sprinting down the narrow path, not stopping until she reached the yacht, where she lay for a long time in the chaise on the deck, marveling at what had happened.
IAN SPENT THE NEXT morning snorkeling and photographing marine life around the coral reef. He kept an eye out for Adam and Nicole. He’d just as soon avoid the one—but looked forward to the chance to talk to the other. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, perhaps influenced by the chunk of Confessions of a Pirate Queen he’d read after they’d left him yesterday afternoon. The erotic tale, combined with his erotic fantasies of Nicole, had resulted in him jacking off in the hammock. When he was done he had the eerie sensation he was being watched, and had thought he heard someone—or something—in the jungle nearby. But by the time he’d recovered enough to investigate, there was no one there.
Had Adam been watching him? Or Nicole?
The idea that his voyeur had been the curvy brunette made him hard all over again. Was it that book, or this place, or merely the fact that he’d never spent so much time alone before, that had him so horny? Or was his increased interest in sex one more aspect of his quest to prove himself a real man?
He forced himself to focus on his work, aiming his camera at a red-and-white sea anemone clinging to the coral along the outer edge of the reef. As he snapped the shutter, he spotted the bright yellow-and-black form of a rock beauty angelfish swimming away from the coral and followed it with his lens.
The fish darted away, and his viewfinder was suddenly filled with a pair of long, slender legs. A woman’s very sexy legs. He followed them up and found himself looking at Nicole. She was wearing diving tanks, a short wetsuit, flippers and a mask. She smiled and waved, and signaled for him to meet her up top.
They broke through the surface together. She pushed her mask down to dangle around her neck and he did likewise. Water streamed from her hair, and droplets glistened on the tops of her breasts showing above her partially unzipped wetsuit top. Ian imagined what it would be like to lick the drops off her, one by one.
“I’m sorry if I scared off that fish you were photographing,” she said, pulling him from his fantasy. “But I wanted to talk to you.”
He started to make some comment about there being plenty of fish in the sea and realized how lame that would sound. Instead he focused on stowing his camera and trying to appear nonchalant. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I wanted to invite you to have dinner with us soon. Tonight, if you like.”
Even without the added pleasure of spending more time with her, the prospect of eating something besides his own cooking was reason enough to accept the invitation. “I’d like that,” he said. “Thanks.”
They treaded water side by side, bobbing in the waves that broke steadily over the reef. The island was a line of trees a quarter mile distant. He could see his Zodiac, a splash of orange where he’d anchored it at the other end of the reef. Where had Nicole come from? Had she swum from shore or did she have a boat somewhere?
“How long have you been on the island?” she asked.
“Eight days.” He shook his head. “Though if I didn’t mark off the days on the calendar it would be easy to lose track.” He looked around, at the sun sparkling on the water and the seabirds circling overhead. “Time doesn’t mean much out here, when there’s no schedule to keep.”
“It sounds heavenly.” She glanced at him. “I worked at a doctor’s office until recently. Sometimes I felt as if my whole life was divided into fifteen-minute increments.”
“You don’t have to worry about that out here. It’s strange, but I can spend all day working on a project and never realize hours have gone by until it starts to get dark. When I was building that shelter I worked on into the night. It didn’t matter, because I knew I could sleep as long as I wanted the next day.” He shrugged. “Very different from the kind of life I usually lead.” He wondered if he was talking too much. He wasn’t normally garrulous, but after a week of silence it was as if he had all these words dammed up inside of him that had to be let out.
“What kind of life is that?” she asked, apparently not minding that he’d rambled on so. “What do you do?”
He hesitated. Here he’d just painted this picture of himself as a rugged adventurer, building his own shelter, living on the island alone. If he admitted he was a doctoral student, he’d ruin the image. And he couldn’t forget the dig she’d made yesterday about her friend, Adam, being an academic who didn’t know how to behave. “I’m a writer,” he said. It wasn’t exactly untrue. He was here working on his dissertation, among other things.
“How exciting! What do you write? Adventure stories? Suspense?”
Better not let this get out of hand. “My focus right now is on writing about the environment.” Did that sound too dull? “But I’m playing with the idea of writing something about the history of the island,” he added. “Pirates and everything.” Where the hell had that come from?
“I’m reading a book right now about a female pirate who had her headquarters here,” she said.
“Confessions of a Pirate Queen?”
She laughed. “Yes. You know it?”
“I’m familiar with it.” Yesterday he’d only read as far as the pirate’s seduction of William D. Lying in his hammock, so close to the very spot where the activities in the book had supposedly taken place, it had been easy to imagine himself as the captured sailor and Nicole as the woman taunting him and commanding his attention.
“She lived in that tower near your camp—the one with all the birds,” Nicole said.
“When