Suspicious Ways (9 page)

“Why didn’t you make love to me again?” Her voice shook but her gaze stayed locked on his. “And again?”

With a harsh grunt, Jack removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. He could recall that night so easily. Christ, he relived it every night in his dreams. Sweet burning bliss scorched by scalding shame and self-disgust. “I was holding you in my arms.” He lifted his head, meeting her unwavering stare. “Your warm body pressed against mine, your taste still on my lips. I heard a soft noise in the back of your throat, a little catching of breath. I thought it was from pleasure and I wanted to see it in your eyes. Wanted to know I’d affected you as much as you had me.” He shuddered as that moment hit him again. “What I saw was fear.”

“I—”

Jack shook his head. “I had no right to use you like that, Ali. It was unforgivable. I’d used you at your lowest point. You had every right to be scared. Hell, you had every right to hate me. It still makes me sick when I think about what I did. Yet even then, even with fear in your eyes, I wanted to bury myself in your body. To make love to you again. I still do.” His words were raw, tearing at his constricting throat. “You’d set me on fire. And I wanted to burn.”

A long silence stretched between them and nothing existed for Jack in that moment except Ali.

Her teeth caught her bottom lip and she let out a soft sigh. “I was afraid,” she finally said, “but not of you. I was never afraid of you.”

Jack stared at her. His green eyes seemed to bore into her soul. “What were you afraid of?”

She swallowed, struggling to find the correct words. “What I was feeling,” she said, pulse beating in her throat like a cannon. “Afraid of the wave lifting me from the ground, from the world. Twisting inside me with such heat I thought I’d die. I’d never felt like that before…” She faltered, dropping her head to gaze blindly at the table. “It was scary in its sheer power. I was over-whelmed. Drowning. How could I survive? What if you didn’t feel the same?” She returned her eyes to Jack. “But the look on your face…you looked at me with such disgust…and then you just got up and left. Without a word. Three days later you left Sydney.” Ali felt a burning sting at her eyes and clenched her jaw.
Don’t you dare cry, Graham. Don’t you dare.

“I couldn’t stay,” Jack’s voice was strained, a choked breath. “You were Andrew’s daughter. I’d used you when you were most vulnerable.”

“I knew what I was doing,” she said, surprised at how steady her voice was. “I’ve never forgotten the way you looked at me that night, Jack. With such repulsion, such disgust. And I’ve never forgiven you for the way you made me feel either.”

“Ali,” Jack began.

But she cut him off, anger beginning to heat her blood. “I’d wanted you since the day Dad first invited you aboard
Wind Seeker
. I dreamed of you every night, and cursed myself for being a stupid girl.” A wry laugh slipped past her lips and she shook her head. “You were so horrible to me at first. Do you remember? Mocking me, teasing me. Telling Dad I needed to be taken down a peg or two. But it made little difference. Every time I closed my eyes, there you were, grinning at me in that lazy sarcastic way.”

“Ali—”

“When we made love that night, you not only took the pain of losing Dad away, you fulfilled every dream and desire and hope I’d held since meeting you. You made me feel…” Her throat constricted and she stopped, needing to drag in a breath. “You made me feel whole. Complete. I could handle the agony of Dad because you were with me. And then you weren’t. You were meant to stay beside me forever, but you didn’t. You just left.”

Jack opened his mouth, green eyes stunned, but before he spoke a word their waiter appeared, asking if they wanted to see the dessert menu as he collected their plates.

Ali shook her head, turning from Jack for the barest second. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she was surprised the restaurant wasn’t shaking. Surely everyone could hear it? But with the exception of a little girl dressed like a fairy, no one paid her any heed.

“Ali—” Jack tried again, but she interrupted him.

“I think it’s time you take me home, Jack.” She managed a wan smile. “We’ve talked enough about mainsails and reef knots.”

She thought he would argue. Jack McKenzie never let her have the last word. Instead, he signaled for the check, his face as tumultuous as a summer storm.

The trip back to her unit was silent. Jack drove wordlessly through the busy Sydney streets, never taking his eyes from the road, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. When he pulled into the curb at her home, Ali opened the door before he could cut the engine. She climbed from the car and walked to the door of her apartment, keys in hand. Ready to go.

The low thrumming of the Ferrari’s motor died behind her and her throat slammed shut. He was coming after her. A bolt of hot anticipation shot straight to the pit of her stomach. God, he was coming after her.

Fighting to slide her key into the lock, Ali muttered a curse under her breath. She had too much to think about to talk anymore tonight.

Talk?

Another squirming bolt hit her. Lower. Wetter. If she didn’t get him to leave
talk
would be the least of her problems.

“Ali.” Warm hands curled around her hips. Her name was a murmured whisper in her ear. “Don’t ask me to leave.” He smoothed a slow path along her arms, halting her desperate battle with the door lock. She could feel his heat wrap around her, enveloping her. Caressing her. His warm lips touched the sensitive curve of her neck, soft yet firm. A shot of burning mercury ripped through her veins, pooling between her thighs in a throbbing blossom of heat. She pulled a shaky breath, skin flushed with an elemental need.

“We’ve wasted four years, Ali.” Jack’s lips brushed her ear. “Yet we’ve lived this moment every night in our dreams.”

Sure fingers traced a delicate line along her bare arms before slipping to her waist, holding her still. Ribbons of pure pleasure rippled through her and she closed her eyes, wanting nothing more than to lose herself in the moment. In his exquisite heat. When Jack’s teeth nipped lightly on her ear lobe, she pulled in a silent breath. God, did she want to lose herself. Over and over and over again.

“Don’t tell me to leave,” Jack murmured, sliding his hands over her ribcage, fingertips brushing ever so lightly against the swell of her breasts. Her nipples stiffened, straining against the material of her dress, aching little tips of hunger. Jack traced his thumb over one tiny peak, slow, reverent, and Ali gasped, bolts of sheer bliss shooting through her.

“Christ,” he ground out, his voice raw. “Don’t tell me to leave tonight.”

“Jack,” she moaned, trying like hell to ignore the messages her body screamed. “Please…don’t…”

The tip of his tongue touched her temple. “Why not, Ali? Why do we deny ourselves what we both want so much?”

A blazing heat radiated from her breasts, devouring her resistance. There’d never been any one else since Jack. And her body was starved for his touch.

His hands roamed her, traveling the dips and curves of her body with heavenly purpose. Ali pressed back against him, a burning, rigid strength against her butt testament to the effect she had on him. She pushed against it, feeling its length brand the cheeks of her butt through her dress, wanting to feel it without the barrier of material.

Nothing had felt like the touch of Jack’s flesh on hers. The memory of that night aboard
Wind Seeker
tortured her. Yet is also fed her. Nourished her. When her hands roamed her own body, deep in the middle of the night, it was Jack’s she imagined. Jack’s hands, Jack’s fingers. Delving into the tight folds of her being. The damp creaminess of her sex. Bringing her to a release that was both bitter and bliss. What would it be like to not have to imagine, to not pretend anymore?

Rapture.

Hot, sure lips followed the line of her jaw, down her neck. She dropped her head, resting it on Jack’s shoulder as he flicked and teased the pulse under her ear with his tongue. Each little contact sent flutters of wet tension squirming through her, stabbing into the very centre of her existence. She wanted more. She wanted his flesh on hers. Heat threaded through her, consuming and demanding. Every time his lips seared her skin, she was marked. His and his alone. Every time the tip of his tongue touched her bare flesh, she lost another heartbeat to him.

“Oh, Jack,” she moaned, pushing harder into his body. God help her, she was drowning.

“I’m here, Ali,” he murmured, pressing back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Reality called her from the shore.

She couldn’t let this happen. There was still too much to work out. As long as With the Wind Charters was Jack’s, she could not do this. It would be too easy—in the dead of the night when her doubts and fears stalked her—for her mind to insist she’d made love to him to get her yacht back.

That he’d slept with her to guarantee control of her business.

And don’t forget, a cold voice whispered in her mind, he still blames you for your dad’s death. He’s never taken that back. Or apologised.

A chill stripped through her. She needed to get inside. Alone.

His mouth found her ear again, teeth nipping on her lobe.

“Jack.” Oh God. “Jack, I have to go.” She pulled away and turned to face him, her breath short in her throat.

Nostrils flaring, he looked down at her. “Why?”

Ali pressed her back to the door, her body crying out in protest. “I need time to think. And so do you.”

Trusting Jack wouldn’t reach for her again, she turned, unlocked the door, slipped inside before her traitorous body could take over, and pulled the door closed behind her. Leaning against the cool wood, she waited, her blood roaring in her ears, heart hammering in her chest.

Long moments passed before she heard the Ferrari’s powerful engine start up. Torturous moments of denied desire and painful longing, knowing Jack had stood on the other side of the door the whole time. Wanting her. In the very way she wanted him.

And her body ached.

Chapter Five

The late afternoon sun bounced off the water like a rippling blanket of glittering sequins as Jack, a lazy smile on his face, navigated
Suspicious Ways
through the channels of the marina.

Three days had passed since he’d taken Ali to dinner. Three days and three sleepless nights spent staring at his ceiling, thinking of her.

She’d let him take her to dinner twice more, and each time they
had
talked about mainsails and reef knots and which GPS units they preferred. Ali’s face shone when she spoke of sailing, filling with infectious excitement, her accent growing more pronounced, her clear blue eyes sparkling with joy. He’d been completely caught up in her enthusiasm, laughing often as she told him of some of her more adventurous charters, enjoying her laughter as he shared some of his American sailing tales.

Yet at the end of each night, his heart tightened. Not just because he knew she would send him on his way after only one kiss at her door, no matter how explosive that kiss was. Not because she continued to deny the longing that tore at them both, but because excruciating hours would pass before he’d see her again. Before he could hear her voice and see the light in her eyes as she smiled.

Before he could just be with her.

Not once had she let him raise the topic of their relationship or her business. No matter how he approached it, she always changed the subject, expression either stiff and formal or closed and unreadable.

Tonight however, that was going to change.

Steering his yacht into the marina’s far arm, Jack’s smile stretched wider. Ali had spent the morning attending to business—a sailing lesson for a family from Ryde followed by a tour of the harbor for an elderly couple from the country, and he had missed her like crazy. If it weren’t for the fact he was seeing her tonight, he didn’t think he’d have survived the day. Every time his thoughts turned to her—which they did almost every hour—he found himself smiling goofily. Tonight, he was cooking dinner for her and they would eat on his deck overlooking the harbor and the Opera House with the late summer breezes playing off the water to keep them cool. The perfect setting for the perfect evening.

Tonight, he planned to give her back With the Wind Charters and
Wind Seeker
. It served no purpose waiting another twenty-seven days when he knew damn well that’s what he was going to do anyway.

“I forgot just how fast this bloody thing of yours is.” A gravelly voice called from the bow, jerking Jack’s attention back to where he was.

Mike Turpin stood on the foredeck, organizing the collapsed spinnaker, the smirk on his weathered face almost hidden by the worn baseball cap on his head. “Tell me again how Ali Graham beat you in that race?”

“Shut up, Turps.” Jack grinned, turning the helm to direct
Suspicious Ways
into her pen.

“Speaking of Ali…” Mike nodded toward the far jetty.

Jack followed his friend’s gaze, that goofy smile spreading over his face as his gaze fell on Ali heading towards the clubhouse.

Long bare legs moved with graceful purpose as she strode along the wooden boards, familiar cut-off shorts hugging her butt to perfection. A small gust of wind rippled the loose white shirt she wore, pulling it from her shoulders to reveal a smooth, flat stomach and a midnight-black bikini top.