A Perilous Eden (12 page)

“I wanted you to be alone, too, Miss Larkspur, but I'm afraid your friend the senator had other ideas.”

“I thought you were supposed to be guarding him?”

“Maybe you shouldn't think so much.”

“Maybe you shouldn't take your work quite so seriously—and leave me alone!” Amber spread out her towel and reached for her sunglasses, trying not to allow him to see just how shaken she was. It had been a mistake, she realized. She shouldn't have tried to escape. She should have stayed with the others, with people. It was dangerous to be alone with him.

Definitely dangerous.

“Why, you damn brat!” He was dripping on her. Standing over her and dripping on her. “You scared me half to death, staying under that long! I dove like crazy, sure you were drowning, and then you came waltzing back in with a mouthful of wisecracks!”

She sat up, stripping off her glasses, staring at him furiously. “No one asked you to come!”

“Even good swimmers drown!”

“But I wanted to be alone.”

“You have no sense, but there are people who still care about you. My God, I feel like—”

He broke off. Amber stumbled quickly to her feet, facing him. “You feel like what? Go on, tell me, spit it out. Don't hesitate. Really.”

“All right, I
won't
hesitate!” he shouted, reaching for her. She had no idea what his intention was, and she didn't want to find out. With a screech, she turned to run.

There was no one to hear her on her private beach, in her protected cove, her Eden. Her bare feet hit the white sand, sending it flying. The foliage dipped and swayed, scattering the sunbeams as she ran.

And as she fell.

His arm swept around her bare midriff, and his weight bore them down into the sand, where he loomed over her, his hands on her shoulders, his legs straddling her. And he was yelling again, telling her that she was a fool, her father's spoiled little darling, and that if she had any sense at all, she would learn to be more careful.

She slammed her fist against his chest. “I've managed very nicely for nearly thirty years, thank you very much. Now get off me, you gorilla!”

“Amber, you don't—”

He broke off. He was staring at her. His hands fell suddenly from her shoulders, and his fingers entwined with hers. They both looked at the soft white of her slender hand and the darker, rugged bronze of his, and then he slowly lowered their hands to the sand together. And as he did so, he lowered his face to hers. She knew that he was going to kiss her again, and she found herself bracing for the violence.

But there was none. Today, when his lips touched hers, it seemed as if they had no more force than a breath. Flickers of warmth, of wetness, touched her as he teased the rim of her lips with the tip of his tongue. Then he moaned and wrapped her in his arms, and suddenly they were rolling into the sand. When he kissed her again, it was the deep, never-ending kiss she had come to know, the fusion of life and soul, the touch of fire that entered through her lips but coiled in her belly. He held her face and kissed her more slowly, more deeply. And then he just held her there in the sand, and his groan touched her ear. “This isn't right.”

It wasn't right, and she knew it. She had touched something forbidden, but she knew that she couldn't walk away. She moved against him, her fingers brushing through his damp hair, moving over his nape. The back of his hand brushed her cheek, her eyes met his, and they both knew that there was no denial within them. He lowered his hand to her breast, peeling away the black bandanna bra to bare her fullness to his touch. His palm grazed over her, rotating around her nipple, and eliciting a sharp sound from her. But she didn't look away from him, and he spoke again, angry with her, with himself.

“Don't you understand? I have nothing to give you. Nothing at all.” But his hand shook when he touched her.

She had no reply for him, only a soft cry that escaped her as she arched against his touch, and perhaps that was the reply he needed, for his lips sought hers, sliding down against her skin, tasting the sea salt on her body. His tongue teased over her throat; then his mouth closed over her breast, sucking the nipple deep within, his tongue swirling slowly, provocatively around it.

He had found the strings of her suit, and she was freed from the black top, leaving his hands and the wet stroking of his tongue to move over her with no restraint. The sun was hot, the sand gritty, and they were both covered with the salt sheen of the ocean, but none of that seemed to matter as he made love to her.

Passion entered his touch. It was not that the tenderness left it; it was that something fierce and desperate entered again. He was no hesitant lover; having chosen his course, he touched her where he would, his fingers slipping beneath her bikini bottoms, peeling them away. And as he peeled the damp fabric away from her, his lips followed the nakedness of her flesh, tasting her belly, and below, his hair brushing her flesh, his breath touching her, on fire with the day. He shifted her weight, stripping the bottoms from her completely, and she thought that he would be swift then, too hungry to wait. And yet he was not.

She opened her eyes and discovered he was staring at her. But when her eyes met his with wonder, he rose quickly and shed his bathing trunks. The breath left her as he came down to her again, and she surveyed the man, her heart pulsing, her body trembling. Bending over her, he found her lips. He stroked her throat with his tongue, then moved leisurely downward over her body again, just touching her breasts with the same damp stroke, his hand playing along her hip as he did so. Finally his fingers moved between her thighs, touching her lightly at first, then touching her more deeply. His kiss fell against her abdomen, her thighs, and then he watched for a long moment before his head fell lower against her, before she felt a slow, intimate stroking that invaded every cell in her being and ignited a desire hotter than the blaze of the sun. A cry tore from her, and then she was in his arms, looking into his eyes again, and she felt the tip of his desire throbbing at the threshold of her own. He pulled her close, stroking her hair, and he whispered that she should wrap her legs around him, and when she did, he thrust into her.

She heard the ocean, the sound of the waves, the cry of a bird high overhead. But she wondered whether the cry might not be her own, for she felt nothing then but the power of the man, entering her, stroking again and again, shattering everything she had thought she knew of life, taking her with a passion that was both violent and tender, and with a wanting that was as never-ending as the darkness of the sea at night. Her fingers dug into muscle and sinew, and she bit his shoulder, feeling the sensations grow, feeling his shuddering power deep within her, harder, faster, nearly unbearable. And then she once more felt the sun, the sand, the breeze that caressed her. She cried out again as a climax burst through her, and he moved again, so deep inside her that she thought they were one. Suddenly he fell down beside her, the wind rushing around them, the sand gritty and soft beneath them.

Neither spoke for the longest time. And then Amber felt like a fool, or worse, and she sat up, embarrassedly trying to cover herself while she looked for the pieces of her bathing suit. And then he reached out and touched her.

“What are you doing now?” he asked impatiently, and when her eyes gave her answer, he shook his head and touched her chin. “You're beautiful,” he said almost harshly. “Please don't act like that.”

She wasn't sure whether she was angry or hurt. It didn't matter. She stood stark naked and made no attempt to hide herself—it was too late; the horse had certainly already run out of the barn—and then she snatched up her bathing suit. She started toward the water, but he followed her, swinging her around to face him. “So now you're going to be upset. Damn it, don't! You're beautiful, you're warm, you're wonderful. Too wonderful. Too … innocent.”

“Are you through?” she asked him.

“Amber, I'm sorry. I told you I had nothing to give—”

“What makes you think you have anything I want?”

She saw his jaw tighten. “I see. Maybe you
did
need a little fling. Maybe you
were
out looking for an affair, and the man, the caring, the warmth, didn't matter.”

She stopped, and the anger and everything else drained away from her. “I didn't want an affair,” she said softly. “I just wanted you.”

Then she raced for the water, anxious to dive into it, to feel it around her, refreshing and cleansing her.

6

A
dam watched her run into the water, watched the sway of her hips. Her movements fascinated him, brought new life to him. And he watched the straightness of her spine, the square set of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin. He swore softly beneath his breath and felt a tightening within him, and he wanted to give himself a solid kick, except that that wouldn't do any good, either.

She wasn't anything like Sonia. Sonia had been small, compact, lushly curved, with dark eyes and rippling dark hair. Amber Larkspur was tall and slender, a woman who seemed to flow beneath his touch. She was blond, and her eyes were the color of the sea, sometimes blue and sometimes green, and sometimes startling shades in between. And he never, never should have touched her, and he'd damn well known it, but he'd touched her anyway. Now things were churning inside, because it seemed like some kind of betrayal, as if he had forgotten Sonia, as if he had forgotten love. And that seemed stupid, too, because there had been other women. There just hadn't been another woman like Amber. He hadn't wanted anyone the way he had wanted her.…

And it had never felt so good to have a woman. He'd known how she would be, so giving, so fluid, so alive and intense in her lovemaking. Long before he had touched her, he had known that she would feel like silk, that she would move with the undulating beauty of the waves. And he had thought that she was a beautiful woman the first time he had seen her, but it hadn't been her beauty that had drawn him; beauty was not so rare a quality. He had liked her smile when the rambunctious kids had plowed into her, and he had liked the sound of her laughter; it had seemed to touch some fragile nerve within him. Most of all he had liked the way her eyes met his, always challenging. No matter what he said to her, she listened and replied with a startling honesty; she couldn't be cowed, and neither did she seem to play games. She had moved far out into the water now, and he thought he knew what she was trying to do, to let the salt and sea and the coolness slide over her, and wash away the startling heat that had burst between them. But her bikini still lay on the shore, and he could see glimpses of her bare flesh beneath the turquoise waters, and no sense of his own betrayal regarding either Sonia or the life that he lived could still the excitement that grew within him again. It was wrong, terribly wrong. In a matter of days he would be gone, out of her life. He would slip away with the kidnappers and Daldrin, and he would be out of her life completely. He wouldn't come back, because he wasn't the right man to come back; he lived with violence, and he expected to die with violence. Once it would have mattered; once he had wanted more, much more. But that had been before Sonia died. He lived a dangerous lie each day now, for it seemed he was constantly discovering more of Ali Abdul's men aboard the
Alexandria
, men who watched him because he hadn't fully earned their trust. He wouldn't know until the last moment when the higher echelon of the Death Squad would be coming for Daldrin, and the waiting was tense and hard. But the moment would come. It would come soon.

But not today.

He stared out at the water and reminded himself that he was in love with a dead woman, that he had nothing to give to Amber Larkspur, that he'd had no right to touch her, and he sure as hell had no right to touch her again.

His feet started moving anyway. She wasn't a kid, and he'd been honest with her. And she'd been honest in return. Whatever the chemistry was, it had touched her, too. She had wanted him. And anything that had felt so right and so fulfilling just couldn't be completely wrong.

His feet touched the water.

Within moments he was up to his waist, and then he was swimming toward her. She was floating on her back, but she sensed when he came near, and she stood, the waterline just above her breasts, the waves barely covering the large, dusky-rose nipples. He stood apart from her for a long moment, and her eyes searched his; then she smiled slowly. “We're not doing a very good job of staying away from one another,” she said.

“No,” he replied. Her hair, sleek and wet, was drawn away from her face, and the clean lines of her throat and shoulders and breasts were achingly evident. His voice softened, and he was surprised at the tremor in it, the touch of tenderness. “You said you wanted me. Me, as an individual man. And not because of convenience, but because when we met, certain … feelings arose.”

“I didn't say all that, but yes,” she whispered. “It's what I meant.”

“Come here.” He spoke commandingly, his tone harsh, and he thought she would ignore him.

But she didn't.

She moved through the water, coming so close that her breasts brushed his chest and he could feel the softness of her. He pulled her into his arms and held her, his mouth covering hers, and he tasted the salt and the sea and the sweetness that was uniquely this woman. He kissed her more deeply and felt her tremble, felt the rise of his passion against her belly. He planted his feet hard in the sand and drew her more tightly to him as he raised his lips from hers at last and looked into her eyes.

They were wide and luminous, reflecting the waves and the elusive colors of the water. He dipped his head again and kissed her throat, and his tongue traced a watery trail to her collarbone. He felt the trembling of her body again and cupped her breast, feeling the hardness of the nipple. “I do want you,” he whispered to her.