Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (11 page)

But it wasn’t, and she knew it.

“Does this mean that you sweep? Or do I?”

“I’ll do it.” Karma went to the closet and hauled out a broom, which she proceeded to wield with great efficiency. Slade forced himself to remain silent as he sorted out the board, racks and letter tiles.

When he straightened from putting the Scrabble game back on its shelf, Karma was spreading a large beach towel on the floor.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I could use some calm and lucidity,” she said. She sat down on the towel and crossed her legs in a position that he recognized as the Half-Lotus, eyes closed, hands placed palms up on her knees.

“Guess I’ll try some of that too,” he said. He went in the bedroom, found a towel in the old trunk, and spread it out near hers. “There’s nothing,” he said, “that I need so much as some freeing up.”

She opened one eye. “It seems to me,” she said, “that you’re getting much too freed up as it is.”

“I don’t understand why, if I’m good enough for those clients of yours, I’m not good enough for you.”

She opened
the other eye. “I didn’t say you’re not good enough for me. I want to protect our matchmaker-client relationship, that’s all.”

Slade settled himself on the towel. “What if I told you that’s not important anymore?”

The light from the lamp flickered across her face, gilding it with light. “We have a contract. I’m supposed to find you a wife.”

“What if I told you—”

“Please, Slade. Don’t tell me anything. I’m not in the mood to hear it.”

“Even if I said you have some of the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen? If I told you that your figure really turns me on?” From this angle, the shorts gave him a view up the inside of her thigh. He tried not to look, but he was, after all, a normal guy. She wasn’t wearing panties; apparently she hadn’t found any dry ones in the trunk.

Karma seemed to be ignoring what he’d said. He knew she’d heard him, however. How could she not? They were only three feet apart. He could have reached over with his hand and flicked a bit of lint off her tank top. He wondered if he dared to hope she’d do another backbend today.

Reluctant to push her too far, he tried to concentrate on his own Half-Lotus position. That only brought to mind his extreme discomfort—his hips ached and his knees hurt, for starters, and on top of that, the foot that was angled across his thigh had gone to sleep. At the point when he was ready to shout for mercy, Karma rose fluidly to her feet.

“Now what?”

“Now a few Sunrise Salutations. You can follow along with me if you like,” she said. She lifted her arms up high so that her nipples stood out against the jersey, and then she bent backward as Slade contended with another stiffness, this one in a place that could cause serious embarrassment for him if she noticed.

While he struggled to subdue his errant anatomy, Karma bent and planted her hands on the floor on either side of her feet (which meant that he had a great view up the back of her shorts), shot one foot and then the other out behind
her (so that her breasts hung downward, looking lush and full), and then gracefully angled up, chest out, buttocks down (so that he could imagine other uses for this particular position).

“Remember? We did this in class.”

“Uh—yeah. Sort of.” In class he hadn’t been able to observe Karma this closely as she went through the motions of the Sunrise Salutation, and now, watching her buttocks rise high in the air as she assumed the position called Downward-Facing Dog, he swallowed hard. With Karma’s derriere propped so enticingly in the air in front of him, he could think of a lot of things he’d rather be doing right now than yoga.

“And that’s all there is to it,” she said when she had finished. “Now you try it.”

His desire for her had settled into an ache in his belly, difficult to ignore with her standing so close and looking so fetching. He could see, however, that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

He positioned himself with his hands pressed together in front of his chest in the Prayer Position, feeling stupider by the second. No self-respecting cowboy would be doing something called the Sunrise Salutation. No rancher had any business doing yoga. He wasn’t comfortable with New Age stuff, and he opened his mouth to tell her so.

Then he realized that she was prepared to do this right alongside him, and for the life of him, he couldn’t summon the wish to make her stop. He wanted to see her go through the whole thing from Prayer Position to Downward-Facing Dog to the conclusion of the exercises, to watch every sensual move as her body so effortlessly flowed from pose to pose. To imagine how her body would move against him if they were—

“Ready?”

He nodded and thought how good they would be together. How utterly and completely in tune they would be
physically. He knew she was keeping the skill level moderate for him as they progressed through the yoga sequence, that she deliberately held herself back to accommodate his slower pace. Which is what he would do if they were in bed together. He would take his time, savoring it, letting her learn about him as he learned about her, and he would make sure she found her pleasure before he took his.

“No, no, no,” she said, scrambling up when they were side by side in Plank Position, bodies perpendicular to the floor, feet supported on toes, arms straight down, hands with fingertips spread on the wooden floor. “You’re sagging in the middle.”

She bent and reached under his torso to tap him on the belly. “This is supposed to lift up, and it’s right above your second chakra. You won’t be getting the full benefits of the pose if you don’t do it right.”

The touch of her hand was what did him in. He felt so attuned to her, so ready to emote, that to his horror his stomach sagged, his toes curled, and his elbows relaxed. He felt as if he were watching from a long way away as his hands slipped, flew out from under him, and he fell.

Down he went, taking her with him, landing on top of her with a gentle
“Umph!”

Well, not on top of her, exactly. On top of her arm. He turned his head so that he could look full into her face. She made no attempt to move, only stared deep into his eyes. She looked startled. Bewildered. And, to his amazement, overcome with—lust?

While he was registering the heretofore unlikely possibility that Karma might actually be as hot for him as he was for her, he also dealt with the fact that the fall had knocked nearly all the air out of him. He gulped a couple of gasping breaths to refill his lungs.

“Are you—are you okay?” he stammered when he could finally speak.

“I don’t know,” Karma replied softly. “I seem to have
found new benefits to that pose.” She had made no attempt to reclaim her arm, no move to put distance between the two of them.

“You—have?”

Solemnly she nodded. He didn’t want to move himself off her arm. He liked it where it was. But he rolled over on his side, never taking his eyes from her face.

“Karma,” was all he could say, the only word in his vocabulary, the only thought in his mind. “Karma.” He reached out and brushed his fingertips along the curve of her cheek.

He saw her swallow. She was so close that he could see that the tips of her eyelashes were golden, so close that he could smell the scent of her sea-washed hair.

“We shouldn’t—” she began, but he didn’t want to hear it. And so he did the only thing he could do to stop her. He lowered his mouth over hers and gathered her into his arms.

His skin warmed to hers, his arms molded her to his body, and he was gratified by her quick intake of breath and the tremor that followed it.
Right, this is right,
he thought to himself, glorying in all the long length of her as he guided her hips closer to his. The texture of her mouth was soft and smooth, her lips full and silky against his. Outside a roll of thunder shook the little stilt house on its pilings, but it was a mere echo of the thunder pounding in his own blood.

“You can tell me to stop,” he said roughly, “if you want to.”

“This isn’t—one of—the standard yoga postures,” she said between nibbles on his lower lip. Her voice was low and laced with the slightest hint of huskiness.

“Thank goodness for that,” he said, because now all he felt was pleasure from his head to his toes.

He was surprised to feel her lips curving beneath his,
and then she laughed. He had never heard a more welcome sound.

He laughed, too, from pure enjoyment, and as he moved to hold her even closer, she said, “Maybe we’ll invent some new postures, what do you think?”

“I
think,” he said unevenly, “that sounds like a real good idea.”

N
EW POSES ELUDED HIM
, however, as his fingertips feathered up her back to tangle in her hair and his mouth sought out all the places he had dreamed of kissing since the moment he realized that he was attracted to her. Her nape, her earlobe, the hollow of her throat, the other earlobe—warm and salty to the taste, all of them.

Karma was definitely the more experimental one. She was as curious about his body as he was about hers, and she was definitely not the type who laid back and let the man do all the work. She kissed his eyebrows, his nose, ran her hands along the muscles in his back and tunneled her fingers through the hair on his chest. She bit his neck and laughed when he was startled.

“Let’s call that position Bug Looking For Bites,” she said as she rolled over on her back and pulled him on top of her.

“Only if we call this one Dog Lying On Treats,” he told her, and was pleased when she laughed.

“Once you get started, are you always this eager?” he asked playfully, staring down at her.

Her eyes became serious, her expression somber. “No,” she said. “No, Slade, I’m not.”

He would have liked an explanation, but he didn’t want to talk. Instead he crushed his mouth down upon hers, their lips fusing until he felt her tongue unfurling against his. He didn’t know when he had ever known a woman to take the lead as Karma did. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he filed away the thought that this wasn’t merely biology—
two people mating. It was chemistry—two people so attuned to each other that their mating promised complete gratification. That wasn’t something he had expected. But it was something that he wanted. Oh, yes, he wanted this to be more, to be everything, to be all.

He wanted this to be love.

But how could he think about that now? With Karma touching him, teasing him, smiling at him in that tremulous way? Shaken by the depth of his feeling for her, he bent and kissed her nipple, which was pebble-hard beneath the thin jersey of the top she wore. If she had objected, he would have stopped, but instead she guided his mouth to her other breast, raking her fingers through his hair and making a sound deep in her throat that let him know that he was doing this right.

He slid his hand up under the jersey and trailed his fingertips along the bottom curve of her breast. Her eyes opened wide, and he said, “Do you like this?”

“How could I not?” was her reply. His eyes never leaving hers, he pushed the fabric up and out of the way so that both breasts were exposed to view. They were pale in the dim light, the nipples long and rosy.

He jolted back to reality. “I don’t have any protection. I didn’t expect this.”

“It’s okay. I won’t get pregnant. I take birth control pills. Not because I need them for—well, you know. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a long time. I kept taking them for my complexion.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said. He reached for her again.

“Wait,” she said, and he moved to one side, propping himself on his elbow as he watched her slide the shirt over her head in one lithe movement and toss it to one side.

He reached out to cup one breast in his hand, his thumb rolling upward to tease the nipple. “You have,” he said unsteadily, “the most beautiful breasts I have ever seen.”

“Doubtful,” she said, looking down at herself, and at
the expression on her face, all he could do was pull her into his arms.

“I’m being honest. I wouldn’t tell you that if it weren’t true.”

“They’re too small,” she murmured as he took one nipple into his mouth and explored it with his tongue and teeth. She closed her eyes and braced her hands against her shoulders.

“Not too small,” he said. “And the perfect shape. Let’s stop talking and enjoy. And lean forward.”

She did, and he filled his hand with one breast while kissing the other, pulling her over him. It seemed that his senses were full of her—touching, tasting, smelling, seeing—and he was glad that she wasn’t that tiny delicate woman he had come to Miami Beach to find. No, he liked Karma, and he liked her the way she was—a woman he could sink into, a woman who could match him length to length, a woman like no other he had ever known.

A woman with a desire as strong as his if her present occupation was anything to judge by, because she was pulling the waistband of his shorts down.

“Boxers,” she said.

He thought he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”

“You wear boxers, not briefs. White silk. And the pattern’s kind of cute.”

His lips twitched. “That’s our black Diamond B Ranch brand. My father once ordered several dozen pairs of boxer shorts with our brand and handed them out to every guy who works at the ranch.”

She smiled. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope. You’d have to know my father. He has a sense of humor. But I admit that I like silk underwear.”

“It’s very sexy,” she said.

“I’ll pass that information along to our ranch hands,” he said with a grin.

Speaking of hands, he wanted Karma’s to be caressing something more relevant than the silk of his boxers. He slid
quickly out of them, shoving them aside as her hands closed around him. Her fingers were cool against his heat, calm against his urgency.

“We could move into the bedroom,” she suggested, her words all breathy and rushed.

No, they couldn’t. Not with her hands working their magic on him, not with her body so eager to be explored. Even one minute apart from her, even one second, would be too long. For an answer, he tugged a pillow off the couch and positioned it under her head. “Later,” he said.

“Well, then,” she said, and before he knew it, she had slid out of her own shorts. He couldn’t speak, he was so moved by her beauty. Her skin was creamy and white where her bikini had protected it from the sun. The small trim triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs was pale and soft, and when he was touching her there, he felt her frisson of anticipation, her eagerness that he would bet was every bit as strong as his.

“I would never have guessed that you were a highly sexed woman,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known from the way you acted.”

“Maybe that’s why I acted that way,” she said softly. “Maybe I knew that there would be no turning back.”

“That’s not an excuse I’ve ever heard before,” he said, kissing her between her breasts and moving lower.

“It’s not an excuse. It’s true,” she said as his hands moved to the cleft between her legs and parted them.

And then
he didn’t talk for a long time. A long, long time, during which he learned about every part of her body and she learned about every part of his. But even learning, even finally knowing, wasn’t enough. He wanted to touch her in every conceivable way, to drive her to heights that she had never before imagined and that he hadn’t imagined either. He only knew that there were things about this woman that he needed to know in this lifetime, and the sudden thought occurred to him that even a lifetime might not be long enough.

Before he had time to settle that thought into a part of his mind where he could revisit it at leisure, Karma sat and urged him up with her. Her arms folded around him, pulling him closer, and he couldn’t believe it when she murmured with the utmost good humor and a twinkle in her eyes, “Now, cowboy, you’re going to teach me how to ride.” And then she slid over him, bearing down all warm and wet and ready, laughing gently when all he could do was gasp and circle his arms around her hips.

Ride him she did, flowing into the act so naturally that it seemed as if they had been indulging in this sweet pastime forever. He drew her into a kiss of passion, tongues tangling in haste, their worlds merging with exquisite delight. He lost himself in her—no, not in her, but in the newness of being truly one with another human being, with Karma.

Her fingernails bit savagely into his back, urging him on, and when her breath quickened, when she arched her back and cried out his name, he drove himself into her with a fury unmatched by the storm raging outside. She surrendered to him with a recklessness that was matched only by his own, and he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs, his blood screamed in his veins, his heat threatened to ignite them both. He rose up and bore her to the floor, never letting her go, and as he pinned her beneath him, her cry of release set him free and allowed him to plunge into her with a fierceness that brought on his own climax only seconds after hers.

He collapsed on her, his whole weight, wanting their bodies to fuse, wanting to be part of her for more than this one night. He felt her trembling beneath him, and he whispered in her ear, “Karma?”

“Oh,” was all she said, and then again, “oh.”

He lifted himself up so that he could see her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted.

“Is
that all you can say?” he asked tenderly.

She swallowed and repressed a smile. “It’s better than, ‘Oh, no!”’

“What? Are you having regrets already?” His mock seriousness didn’t produce the reaction he’d hoped for. She frowned.

“You’re a client. You’re supposed to go out with another client on Friday night. I have really screwed up, Slade.” She pushed him off and rolled away.

“I wouldn’t say you’ve screwed
up,
exactly, but—”

“You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly,” she said, pulling on her shirt and then her shorts. He was stunned that there were tears shining on her eyelashes.

“I’m willing to try,” he said in total bewilderment. He reached for her, wanting nothing so much as to kiss those tears away and to enfold her in his arms.

“Oh, Slade,” she said, breaking into sobs. “This is my one chance to succeed. Rent-a-Yenta fell into my lap, a gift from my generous Aunt Sophie and Uncle Nate. I didn’t have a—a job, and I—I needed one, and so I came to Miami Beach to be a matchmaker. And—and I’m failing at that, too!”

She grabbed her clothes before jumping up and running into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Slade pushed himself to a sitting position and raked a trembling hand through his hair. He had just participated in the most memorable lovemaking session in his life with the most sexual and exciting woman he had ever met, and she was pushing him away. He didn’t know what to think.

Oh, yes, he did! Gritting his teeth in determination, he yanked on his shorts and strode into the bedroom.

Slade burst through the door to find Karma sprawled across the bed, her clothes obviously pulled on haphazardly. She had lit a candle and set it on the table beside the bed, and he saw that her face was puffy, her eyes swollen. It was clear that even though some women might be attractive when they cried, Karma was not one of them. This endeared her to him somehow. Who would want a
woman who was perfect in every way? It would take too much energy to try to measure up to her.

“Karma?”

“Don’t talk to me right now, Slade.”

It took all his restraint not to drag her off that bed and pull her into his arms. Instead he sat on the bed beside her and brushed the damp hair back from her hot face. “Do you wish we hadn’t made love?” he asked gently.

She eased over on her back. Her blotchy face was beautiful to him, and her eyes, though exceedingly red of rim, spoke volumes. “If that had been making love, I wouldn’t mind so much.”

“It felt like it to me,” he said.

She stared. “It did?”

He nodded. “I’m thirty-five years old, and I haven’t exactly been celibate. But Karma, I’m telling the truth when I say that it’s never been like that for me. Never. I care about you.”

She swallowed and tentatively touched his arm. “I’m scared, that’s all.”

“Scared of me?”

“No. Scared of what this means. I’ve wanted to make a success of this business, and I can’t do that if I’m going to rip off my best clients for myself.”

This disconcerted him. “How many clients have you slept with?” He realized after he said it that this was none of his business.

She sat up. “None, except you. And I don’t intend to do it again. Oh, Slade, I’m not clear about exactly what’s going on here.”

He leaned closer and took her hand. “Neither of us knows what has begun, but why don’t we find out?” He drew a deep breath. “Come home to Okeechobee City with me, Karma. Meet my parents. See my ranch.”

She closed
her eyes for a long moment, then opened them. “You’re inviting me to meet your parents? Isn’t that a bit hasty?”

He regarded her seriously, his eyes searching her face. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I have a business to run.”

“We could go this weekend. Surely you don’t keep office hours on the weekend.”

“You have a date with Jennifer tomorrow night. She wants you to pick her up at seven o’clock.” He was learning to recognize the stubborn set of her chin.

“I don’t want to go out with Jennifer. I want to be with you.”

“I promised her! You have to go!”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t promise anything. Karma—”

He stopped talking when she buried her face in her hands. When she lifted it again, she was steely-eyed.

“Obviously you don’t understand how important the business is to me. If you don’t go out with Jennifer, she’ll pass the word around that Rent-a-Yenta doesn’t follow through on its promises. Who would come to a dating agency that lets its clients down? What kind of memorial would that be to my aunt Sophie?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he allowed.

“Now that I’ve pointed out the problems, you’ll take Jennifer out. Won’t you?”

He shook his head. “You’re invited to Okeechobee over the weekend, like I said.”

She clenched
her teeth. “I haven’t said I’d go.”

“That makes two of us. I’m not going out with Jennifer and you’re not going to Okeechobee. But you and I are going to make love again. For sure.” He stood up and turned his back on her, striding into the kitchen to check a leak in the roof, going to the door to make sure the blanket that they’d stuffed in the hole where they’d broken the glass was still keeping most of the water out. But his mind wasn’t really on those chores. He was thinking about how he could get Karma to Okeechobee.

After a while, she came to the door of the bedroom, an afghan wrapped around her shoulders. “Slade?”