Guys, you will not believe this island! WAY more beautiful than the ads. Comes with Leilani and Ramon, live-in domestics—not to mention a mysterious Italian Contessa who has disappeared…into the Bermuda Triangle? Kidnapped by pirates? No one knows!
Why do these islanders speak perfect English? Why are angels dangling from every fixture and ceiling fan? Why do they all welcome me, and how did they know I was coming before I knew it myself? (insert Twilight Zone music here) But they’ve read all my books! They love me already!
Don’t mind me—I’m tired. Sitting in a bridal-white bedroom with a canopied four-poster, overlooking the ocean and sand that shimmers in the sunset. Ready to walk that beach and think this over, but YES! It calls to me. Leilani predicts I’ll have a love life within the week, so I have to stay at least that long!
More later. Thanks again to all of you! Miss you guys!
Love, CatWoman
She pushed back from the rolltop desk and marveled at yet another miracle of this isolated island: she could gaze out over moonbeams dancing on the Caribbean Sea while, thanks to satellite internet, she could e-mail friends in the States…a world she suddenly felt separated from by more than geography. It was a distance inside her; a sense that she had nothing to return to in St. Louis. Did she even need those clothes in her closet or the reams of blank paper and office supplies and research books she’d left behind with life as she knew it?
On second thought—
Subject: my stuff!
Grant—
Soon as you can, send my books and office supplies! Let’s hope the mail drop is working like it’s supposed to, because my pirate book is taking on a whole new life, like the sails of the Black Pearl swell with the sea breezes!
You savvy, mate? I feel like a whole ’nother woman! Ripe and ready! Too bad I’m not your type, eh?
Kisses anyway, Cat
Satisfied, she shut down her laptop and lolled in the tilt-back desk chair. The twilight had crept into her room with delicate shadows, on a breeze that smelled sweet and musky and sensual. Those long white angel’s trumpets caught the moonlight and glowed like lights on a whole forest of tropical Christmas trees…a magical sight.
On impulse, Cat stripped off her stolid black slacks and sweater set. Something called to her like a siren song and she felt compelled to step out onto her balcony. After all, who was there to see her? Her panties hit the floor, followed by her bra, and as she padded barefoot to her balcony, the deep coolness of the tile floor seeped into her soul.
Serenity. Tranquility. Total, blissful freedom here…not to mention a decadence that called from so far inside her she’d forgotten such a wild, romantic place existed. Never in her life had she ventured outside in the altogether—not even as a newlywed. Yet here she was, accepting the sea breeze’s invitation, drawn by an invisible force to be at one with the universe.
And what a universe it was! A sky of midnight blue velvet spangled with diamond stars stretched into forever, while the waves below lapped at the sand in an endless, ancient rhythm that lulled her…made her believe she could walk through the house naked and unafraid, to stroll across sand that glistened in the moonlight…to let those waves tickle her toes and coax her to laugh and frolic along their frothy edges.
Laugh and frolic. Lord, how long had it been since she’d done that?
And never naked, that’s for sure!
Why not? If not now, when? Spike whispered.
Cat gripped the balcony railing, torn between living out this fresh, brazen fantasy and staying here in the safety of her new home. Leilani would no doubt applaud her crossing of this boundary…perhaps even shed that sari to join her, which would no doubt bring Ramon along, as well. Tall and sleek and so damn sexy he’d be, as dark as the night and as potently mysterious.
But what was that on the horizon? Cat leaned forward, squinting. Something bobbed along on the water like an angular, pointy cork—
“Oh my God…oh my God!” She sucked in her breath and stared as the object sailed closer to the island. With its three tall masts and pale sails swelling in the breeze, it looked for all the world like a pirate ship!
Cat’s nipples hardened, and goose bumps tingled over her entire body. It was like something out of the Disney movies, only better! Because it was real! As the minutes and waves brought the ship closer to Porto Di Angelo, Cat could only hold her breath and gape at the ship’s antique magnificence. Not even in her wildest, most flowing imagination could she create such a vision…now close enough that she could make out the men on the main deck. They were looking this way—
Cat’s hands fluttered to cover her bare breasts. Could they see her up here? Would the palm trees shield her, or should she duck inside?
So what if they see you? Spike teased. You could do worse than have a pirate ship’s crew spot you through their spyglasses and then pull up at your dock!
“And I suppose you arranged this?” she whispered, her eyes fixed on the roll and sway of those people on the decks.
Maybe I did. And maybe I just wish I had. Lookin’ fiiiiine, Miss Kitty!
Her nipples jabbed her palms as she stood, caught in the sudden knowledge that with the light from her desk lamp behind her, she was a very visible, very naked silhouette to anyone who’d caught sight of her.
She swore someone waved…no, two or three of them waved their arms above their heads in greeting!
And then she sucked air again: two figures sprinted across the beach, waving their arms in response to the crewmen. They were silent, but their bodies spoke volumes because they, too, were naked. Leilani and Ramon had doffed their clothes to commune with nature—and those sailors!
As though by an established pattern, the magnificent ship then swung around toward the sea again. For all she knew, the captain and his crew were decked out like buccaneers and swashbucklers of old, just out for an evening joyride, following their favorite currents around the sprinkling of tiny islands in this section of the sea.
Hell, for all she knew, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were aboard, and their filming crew was checking out potential places to shoot the next Pirates of the Caribbean blockbuster!
The vision tantalized her imagination, and Cat knew it was time to start not a new chapter but a totally different book from what she’d been writing. Here, with the salt mist dampening her face and the whisper of the wind in the tropical trees, she could live the story as it unfolded. How cool was that?!
She gripped the railing, glancing down at the beach again. There in the glistening sand along the shoreline, with lacy waves running up around their ankles, Leilani and Ramon were kissing. Oh, it wasn’t just the kiss of an old married couple, either—and maybe they weren’t! Maybe Ramon had only said that to appease her civilized sensitivities today.
Does that matter, really?
Spike had a point, didn’t he? Who was she to judge?
What struck her was their absolute beauty…their belief that they belonged on the beach on this perfect night in paradise, and that they wouldn’t let this idyllic opportunity pass them by just because she had arrived. While Leilani’s psychic powers intimidated her a bit, Cat realized she had a lot to learn from her ethereal housekeeper.
“Grab me!” Leilani challenged in a husky whisper. “You know you want to, loverman!”
Cat gaped as their bodies came together, in profile to her. Ramon, so tall and lean, stooped slightly to catch up Leilani’s eager form as she reached for him. His cock jutted out at a right angle, just as her lush, rounded breasts bobbed lightly with her excitement.
“Make me!” he taunted after another feverish kiss. “Make me so crazy I’ll have to fuck you again and again,