She felt her own breath go shallow. And that hollow place inside her chest changed, too. Intensified, maybe, until it was gleaming and wild and intimately connected to that delicious ache in her pussy.
This is a professional interaction, no matter how unorthodox, she lectured herself.
But she was standing there practically naked with some wild current she barely understood streaking through her like lightning, one strike after the next, and words like professional didn’t seem to have much meaning.
Jason turned back to her at last, raking that dark hair back from his face.
He was so beautiful she thought her knees might give out. She could admit that to herself, but she was made of sterner stuff than that.
She’d already proved it once today, when she’d refused to let herself come simply because he was touching her. She would keep proving it, because collapsing at his feet in a heap of sunburned flesh and legless need wasn’t quite the power play she was going for here.
“Well?” She made her voice much sterner than she felt, and told herself feeling anything at all was a betrayal. “Did I acquit myself appropriately? This was a game to you, I assume. Did I win?”
“You got to spend hours surfing at an unspoiled beach pretty much by yourself,” he replied, his lazy drawl made of pure fire while his dark eyes glittered. “Some people would call that winning.”
“What would you call it?”
“A decent start.”
Her heart thumped at that, hard. Because that wasn’t a demand that she leave, and now. It wasn’t a smirk and a no. And anything that wasn’t a direct no was just a yes in waiting, her first boss had always said.
Lucinda had taken that to heart. She smiled at him, and reminded herself that she was, in fact, practically naked. Why not use it?
Maybe her smile got a little flirty. Maybe she shifted her weight to her advantage. Whatever worked.
“Does that mean you plan to give me more opportunities to convince you, I hope? Or will I have to fly back to Fiji on a tiny little puddle jumper wearing nothing but this?”
She didn’t know why she said that, much less in that tone—not breathy, because she was a woman of action who was never breathy, but it was close.
Until his expression changed, that was.
That smile of his turned dangerous and there was something about the way he held that predator’s body of his. She couldn’t have explained to another person what it was, or how it changed, only that it did.
With almost too much heat to bear. So much heat she was terribly afraid she would melt into a puddle right there at his feet.
Part of her even thought that would be a relief. Then she’d simply evaporate and not have to navigate this electric, sensual line with him.
“The bikini belongs to me, Lucinda,” Jason said after a long, hot moment with his gaze all over her like she was already naked and spread out beneath him. “I don’t think I’d like it to wander off to Fiji.”
She had the insane, likely overly optimistic thought that he wasn’t actually talking about a bloody swimsuit.
“Excellent,” she said, instead of giving in to all that melting. Even though her eyes felt slicked with it. And her nipples were so tight they hurt. “Shall I pick a room in the hotel, then?” His gaze darkened, which shouldn’t have been possible, and she hurried on. “To stay in, of course, while I try to convince you.”
“Only if you want to camp out with no electricity or running water.”
She shrugged, and wasn’t the only one who was entirely too aware of how her breasts swayed with the movement.
“Is that another test?” She tried to make herself sound bored. Or unbothered, at the very least.
“Why would your ability to squat in an abandoned building convince me of anything?”
“Why did you insist we get in the water? That seems even more random, doesn’t it?”
She expected a lazy smile. Some throwaway comment. But instead, something flashed across Jason’s fallen-angel face that she wished she could understand.
“I learned a lot about you out there. You’re tenacious. Stubborn as hell, in fact, but when given new information, you don’t insist on clinging to the old. You’re adaptable. And you’re not afraid to use your body. Or throw yourself face-first into new sensation.”
Her heart was acting up again, but she didn’t want to follow the sudden urge she had to reach up and cover it with her palm. Because he saw too much already, and he didn’t need to know how vulnerable she felt.
She wished she didn’t know it.
“All that from a dip in the sea and some paddling about?” It was a fight to keep her voice light. “What’s next? Will you tell me all the details of my childhood trauma after you watch me walk along a garden path?”
“Maybe later.”
He reached out then, and Lucinda knew with every cell in her body that she should dodge that hand of his. She should do whatever it took to keep him from touching her, because if he did, again, she would...but she didn’t dare finish that thought. And she didn’t dodge him, either.
Just as she didn’t question why she’d raised the issue of childhood trauma in the first place.
Or why that heat in his dark gaze gleamed with something new then that looked far too much like compassion.
She wanted to scream at that until it went away, but she didn’t do that either.
“I’m hungry, Lucinda. Are you?”
Even as Jason asked that question, his hand curled around one side of her neck, his thumb moving up and across her jaw to trace her bottom lip.
Once, then again.
Lucinda understood that she had only played with fire before. Sunscreen, his hands and jumping on and off surfboards in a friendly sort of sea the temperature of a bath. All very tame, really.
Because it was nothing next to this.
He was staring down at her, his mouth unsmiling and a blaze in his dark gaze.
As if he was daring her not to burn into ash where she stood.
Some part of her thought it was already too late.
“To clarify,” she heard herself ask in her most prissy, posh, put-on British accent, “are you talking about food, then? Or...?”
“Hunger is hunger, Scotland.”
“I feel certain there’s an argument to be made there. But either way, I like to be prepared.”
She had the sense of his laughter, that great, glorious, raucous sound that could scare the birds from the trees, though he didn’t make any noise. Still, it was there in his dark eyes. In the way he looked down at her, his wide shoulders blocking out the sky.
“I’m hungry,” he told her, his voice as black and rich as the volcanic rock scattered all over the island, looking deceptively soft when it was the opposite. “I want food. And then, like as not, I’m going to want to fuck. But I think you know that already.”
His thumb moved lazily over her jaw, as if he was already moving inside her. As if it was a preview of that thick, deep surge she was already imagining.
Obsessively.
And Lucinda’s mouth was too dry. She couldn’t seem to find her tongue. She couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, not when there was so much blazing tension between them that it felt like some kind of new element. Volcanic like everything else here.
“I