Rival Forces (31 page)

Kye wiped both hands down his face. Oliver was right. He was mourning. Stupid. Useless. Waste of time. The fucking thing was, he'd known going in that she was in love with another man. Nothing had changed once she realized David Gunnar was alive.

So why couldn't he get his last image of Yardley out of his mind?

She'd been bending over David, kissing him. He had been coming to tell her Oleg had been located and saved by the vet doctor. As he arrived at the door of that hospital room, David had pulled her across him into his bed.

That sight was like a boot kick in the gut. He hadn't been able to catch his breath. He hadn't even bothered to try to gloss over the blow and knock at the door and pretend the sight wasn't killing him. Instead he'd backpedaled out of there. But Yardley had seen him. She caught up with him in the unsterile noisy hospital corridor.

He didn't remember what they said. He knew he didn't look her in the eye, afraid she'd see his pain. Or that he would completely lose his shit in front of her. It was a lose–lose proposition. He just remembered the need to get the hell out of Dodge.

He found a bar and drank enough beer to make him sleepy.

He hadn't realized until he woke an hour later, with a sympathetic waitress shaking him, that it had been more than three days since he'd had more than a couple of hours of shut-eye. No wonder his emotions were surfacing through his laid-back pose. Because all he had wanted to do for the next month was break something. Hurt something. Destroy something the way the kiss had devastated him.

Kye thumped a palm on the post holding up the lanai. Lily pushed in against him, a reminder that he wasn't paying enough attention. He bent and picked her up, absently petting her as his thoughts continued in train.

After the surgery to repair his broken nose, he'd taken the first SAR job that came up. Wildfires had broken out early in the Pacific Northwest. It was the kind of mission that required full attention all the time. Good for his mental health. While he and Lily worked, alerting residents of the need to evacuate and searching for those who hadn't been heard from, he couldn't think about anything or anyone else. He'd left there and gone to Central America. And from there to Chile. For three months he'd been a moving target for his emotions.

Now home, finally, he was breathing easier. It wasn't a mortal blow. He would recover.

He rubbed his nose. But Oliver was wrong. There would always be scars.

His cell phone rang.

“
Aloha ‘auinala
, grandson.”

He smiled. “
Aloha. Hau‘oli la hanau, Tutu.
Happy birthday.”

“You are not here with the others, grandson. You promised.”

“Yes,
Tutu
. I will be there.”

*   *   *

Yardley hung off the rail at the bow of the ferry between Maui and Molokai as it docked at Kaunakakai Harbor. Everything she'd ever seen and heard about the Hawaiian Islands was true. Paradise dropped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She couldn't look long enough or hard enough at the sights. Somewhere on the mountainous green island glowing in the setting sun off the bow was the man she'd come to see. But would he be happy to see her?

“Here you go, Ms. Summers.” Oliver handed her the travel kennel with Oleg inside as they stood on the dock a few minutes later. “He's not much for the water, is he?”

Yard bent down to see her poor Czech wolfdog looking wobbly. He licked her hand gratefully. She could sympathize. Her stomach was still rising and falling though they were on land. “He prefers snow.”

“No accounting for taste.” He picked up both her bags in one fist. “Come on, then. We're late for the luau.”

“Oh, Oliver, thanks. But no partying for me. I need some sleep before we talk to Kye about hiring me.”

Oliver slung an arm around her shoulders. “If I was to tell you there's something waiting for you that you'd kiss me full on the mouth not to miss, what would you do?”

Yardley gave him the stink-eye. “I'd think you were trying to sell me a very cheap bit of merchandise.”

He threw back his head in laughter, gathering the eyeballs that weren't already glued to the gorgeous man.

Two hours later, Oleg had been walked, engaged in a hard-and-fast game of Frisbee, and fed; he now slept gratefully in a kennel that didn't fly, soar, or bob like a cork in the bathtub.

Yardley, showered and changed, came into the open-air lobby to find Oliver waiting for her. He wore board shorts, a hideously loud flowered shirt, and flip-flops.

She looked down at herself. She wore sandals and a simple white dress with scooped neck and spaghetti straps with a single large hibiscus flower printed at the hem. She hadn't known what to do with her hair so she'd just parted it and let it fall over her shoulders and down her back.

When she looked up to see why he hadn't spoken, his drop-jawed surprise confirmed her suspicion. His gaze lingered over every swell and curve of her body, making her worry that the thin material might burst into flame.

“Too much?” She held a hand up to the scoop neck. Maybe too little. The dress didn't allow for the kind of bras she'd brought. “I bought it in the gift shop when you dropped me off. I wasn't expecting to attend a celebration.”

He murmured something that sounded like, “The whole package,” and then turned and walked out of the hotel.

Yardley's mouth dropped open and then she went after him, getting hotter by the second. He could just suggest she change. But to walk out?

She found him outside the hotel doorway, paying for a flower. He grinned at her, accepted his change, and then came right up to her and pushed the hibiscus into her hair behind her right ear. “That ought to do it. Come on, we're late.”

Yardley heard the party before they swung around a curve and the stretch of beach came into view. Under a large pavilion several dozen people were serving plates of food. Out under the stars, dozens of burning torches were staked in the sand. Several flanked a wicker chair with a high circular back in which sat a woman in a bright-purple floral muumuu with a garland of flowers in her hair and another around her neck.

“That's Tutu. I'll introduce you later.” Oliver waved at a few people and then said, “Come this way.”

He steered her toward the large group of partygoers who stood listening to musicians playing traditional Hawaiian music up on a makeshift stage.

With a hand at her back, he propelled her past a blur of smiling faces toward the front of the crowd. Growing a little nervous even in a smiling crowd of strangers, Yardley turned to Oliver. ‘“Look, if you're escorting me because Kye doesn't want me here, I can just go back to the hotel.”

Oliver swung his head toward her, an incredulous look on his face. “Do you
ever
look in your mirror?”

“You heard of the Maori
haka
? It's a war dance. This is
Kane Hula kahiko
. Hawaiian male hula, ancient-style. Some call it the muscle dance.” He winked at her. “Fair warning. You'll want to kiss me.”

Yardley swung her attention back to the stage. The music had ended and the musicians quickly cleared the stage. A man appeared on stage carrying what looked like a large two-lobed gourd. She'd read about the instrument in the inflight magazine. It was an
ipu heke
gourd drum.

The musician began to chant, pounding the drum against the boards and using his hand and fingers to tap out a rhythm. It began slow. The chanted rhymes were in Hawaiian but they reminded her of powwows on the reservation where she grew up. Familiar and yet new. Her feet began to move in tiny stomp steps of sympathy.

Yardley had seen women in traditional grass skirts and leis and flower garlands in their hair standing next to the stage. She expected they'd be the dancers. But as she watched the stage wing in anticipation, the women parted, revealing a line of bare-chested men and boys wearing nothing but simple loincloths with a tantalizing strip of cloth hiding their modesty front and rear.

Oliver leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Kye's
tutu
requested that all eligible male descendants dance a traditional hula for her birthday.”

A ripple of excitement ran over her skin like wildfire as his meaning registered, and then ten men were moving onto the stage. Youngest in the front and more mature in the rear. All bare-chested with crowns of leaves on their dark heads, necks, wrists, and ankles. At center back, the tallest, was Kye.

Yardley licked her suddenly dry lips as the syncopated rhythm caught at her pulse. The two lines of men began moving in time to the beat. Footsteps and small precise kicks that were powerful yet graceful moved them first right and then left across the stage as the audience erupted in applause.

But for Yardley there was only one man on stage. All she could do was stare at Kye as the muscles of his powerful thighs moved him across the floor, bent knees swiveling in and out, mesmerizing in his power, grace, and strength. Arms flexing and flowing through actions even she recognized as paddling and pulling fishnets. They all wore serious expressions in concentration for the performance.

How had she ever thought the hula was a dance strictly for women? This was raw, vigorous, masculine grace on view.

The rhythm picked up as first one and then another of the dancers took center stage to show his prowess.

When Kye stepped forward, Yardley could not stop herself from gasping as lust flash-banged through her body. Then laughter erupted from her.

Too late to stop the sound, she saw his gaze roam the crowd and then catch on her face and hold. If he was surprised, it did not show in his serious face. He seemed to grow taller, the ripped muscles of his chest and arms shown to great effect by a fist on each hip, flexed. He saw her. The raw energy of the moment causing those nearest her to glance around and look her way.

And then he was moving. The rhythm slower now, more deliberate. His hips began to move in slow circles. The suggestive undulating motion riding liquid though the rhythm was all for her. That's what his gaze said.

The rhythm increased, forcing his concentration away from her.

But it didn't matter. The raw energy of his dance belonged to her. Others might view the flick of his hip that flashed a butt cheek, but it didn't matter. He was the most beautiful beast in creation. And she wanted him, wanted him with the same urgency and power that moved his gorgeous body across the floor. When his turn was done, he fell back in line for the next dancer. It didn't matter. They were surrounded by others, but the connection between them held. The profoundly sensual experience of Kye dancing for her left her weak and aroused, overheated and shivering in anticipation.

All the things she had feared—the conversations, the recriminations, the hurt and regrets—melted away under the powerful rhythm of the visceral need to be together.

She barely heard the thunderous applause and cheers and whistles. She was moving toward the edge of the stage and the push of the crowd fell away for her. Several people patted her shoulders but she didn't have the power to acknowledge them. There was only this drumming in her soul and the need to reach Kye.

And then he was as before, glistening with sweat, his powerful chest rising and falling with the exertions of the dance. He looked at her, the raw hunger in his gaze nearly buckling her knees. But he didn't speak. Didn't touch her. So she did.

She flung herself at him, pushing through the crowd.

“That's the sexiest thing I've ever seen.”

He watched her uncertainly. “Really?”

“Fuck yeah.” She slapped both hands to her mouth. “Sorry.”

He shook his head, thinking harder than she'd ever seen him. Then the
aloha
smile spread across his face and he grabbed her hand. “Okay. Come on.”

She stumbled after him as he plunged into the crowd, cheering now his obvious conquest. “Where are we going?”

He looked back at her. “Do you care?”

Abso-
freakin'
-lutely not.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Leaves from his floral collar and cuffs littered the floor. His loincloth was out in the hallway. Her dress hadn't made it two feet inside the front door. He'd murmured something about buying her a new one as he broke the straps and let it slide off her damp body. Her panties didn't fare much better. Kye in heat was a wonder not to be missed.

Somewhere in the middle of their steps toward the bedroom, the need for a bed gave way to a more basic need. They subsided to the highly polished wood floor.

Their bodies, slick with sweat, slip-slid over each other as they grappled to bring themselves skin-to-skin and then even closer.

The kisses were just as quick and hungry, tongues licking and flicking, lapping up the taste of each other.

She breathed him in as the heat and weight of him settled over her. The floor beneath her felt cool against her feverish skin.

He pulled up. She heard foil rip. Condom. She didn't ask. She didn't care. But she wondered. Where could he have gotten it?

And then he was kissing her again. She groaned into his mouth as his tongue ravished hers. She wanted to feel his tongue any- and everywhere on and in her body, but that would have to wait. The heat coursing through her veins demanded release before it turned her inside out. It felt like life and death. Or something even more serious.

She grabbed at his shoulders, smoothing her hands over the wide expanse as she remembered how his body had rippled and flexed, much like the ocean she had been staring at earlier. The push–pull motion of the sea. That's what she wanted to feel inside her. Kye inside her. No doubts. No regrets.

He looked down at her, dark eyes glittering in a face tight with need. “It's going to be hard and quick, Yard. I'll make it up to you later.”

She frowned up at him. “Quick and hard is what I need, Kye. Hurry!”