Trial Run: Addicted To Love Romance Collection (9 page)

Amelie let her fingers rifle aimlessly through her clothes while she worked on subduing the conflicting sensations in her body and stopping the flow of tears. She couldn’t quite understand why and how they’d started, but they were probably due to the clash between her life plans and her wishes – her hopes, more like. Whichever way, the tears were welcome. Thanks to their unexpected appearance, she was now able to put some distance between her and Rob, and take some time to collect herself.

Rob’s kiss had been by far the most wonderful experience of her life, his lips tender and warm, demanding, but oh, giving so much in return, just as she’d always imagined them to be. She couldn’t believe he’d crumbled her walls and melted her resolve with just one kiss, though the feeling wasn’t completely unexpected. After all this time, she’d hoped she’d be immune to his all-male magnetism. How wrong she was!

And now she found herself in the unenviable position of having to mend her defenses once again, as fast as possible, to protect her aching heart. He’d broken it once, without even realizing it, and through no fault of his own. But she’d worked too hard to have her independence, she’d fought her feelings for him for too long... Damn it! She wasn’t in the mood to re-hash all those battles because of just one kiss.

Besides, she sniffed, she didn’t need a man. She was a strong, independent woman who was taking firm strides toward building herself a life free from drama and complications, all of which were the result of mixing men – be they as hot as hottest magma, like Rob – with women. Especially women who hated men, like herself.

Admittedly, the men-hating allegation was no longer standing in her mind, and she’d never managed to lie convincingly to herself before, so there was no point going down that avenue now. Okay, maybe she didn’t hate
all
men. Just… most of them.

The proximity of Rob’s body had had an intoxicating effect on her senses. She could still feel in her fingertips the tingle she’d experienced when she’d caressed his strong chest, his shoulders, his jaw and neck. If ever she decided to give up her solitary spinster life status, she would do it for Rob, the only man who could turn her knees to jelly with just one kiss.

She pushed aside a zipped wallet full of toiletries and scooped her sodden clothes in one hand. Maybe if she hung them up, they would dry up by morning.

Rob was squatting by the fire, working at a piece of wood with his hunting knife.

“What are you making?” she asked in a friendly tone.

He lifted the lump of wood to show her. “A bowl for heating up water.” Then his face crinkled in a wry smile and he added, “I hope… Never tried to make one before.”

Amelie smiled. His insecurity made him look so cute.

“I… uh… I never said a proper thanks for getting these for me.” She gestured to her clothes. “Thank you.”

Rob nodded in acceptance, his smile warming her through to her bones, then he turned back to his task.

He didn’t laugh, didn’t throw her thanks back at her, didn’t mention the kiss or the odd way she must have appeared to behave. He’d simply smiled. And it dawned on her in that moment that all Rob had done until then added up to make him the sexiest man ever, in her book. A true gentleman. How on earth was she going to resist him?

For whatever reason, she wasn’t particularly concerned about not having a ready answer.

She hung up as many tops and skirts as she could find space for, using the ends of the cross-beams as hooks, all around the shelter wall. The rest, she just left in a pile by the entrance. In a few more minutes, she’d catalogued the remaining items – mostly make-up, hair accessories, toiletries and her beloved GHDs. Then she sighed. That still left four bags missing. She had no shoes, and her laptop was also among the missing items. It was a good thing she’d saved all her business plans to the cloud. Shoes, she could live without.

Rob had his back to her when she joined him by the fire. His ‘bowl’ looked more like a trough, but it held a decent amount of water. He’d set it on hot rocks, not directly on the fire, which would have been what she would have tried to do. She shook her head at her own lack of common sense before her eyes fell on the open foil packets laid carefully by the fireside.

“Umm… What are those?” she asked, worry gnawing at her mind.

“Ready-to-eat rations. Your brother stuffed them in with the first-aid kit. They were inside a locked compartment, so they didn’t get lost. Lucky, hey?”

Lucky was not the word she would have used to describe them. Disgusting would have been more appropriate. She’d tried some of those once, on a mountain trek she’d taken during her first year in business studies, and they’d made her stomach turn. It was beginning to churn now, and she hadn’t even tried one mouthful.

“I’m not eating those,” she said firmly, her mind made up.

A look of confusion played on Rob’s face, and then he smiled. “Amelie, you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday lunchtime. Don’t you want to live?”

She winced as her tummy agreed with the man, but held her ground. “Last time I ate those, they made me sick. I’ll have the pretzels or pound cake, or whatever the dry snacks are. Is there any coffee?”

Rob chuckled and passed her the two bars of chocolate and one of the two sachets of coffee. “You’ll have to wait until the water warms, for no other reason but that we have no other container for making coffee.”

He held up the two food packets and stared at them for a moment. “Beef ravioli or Mexican stew? Hmm… What shall I have?” His gaze drifted to her. “You sure I can’t tempt you?”

“Positive.”

“What if we don’t find any better food tomorrow?”

“We will. I have confidence.”

And she did, but mostly in Rob. As she sat by the side of the fire, listening to Rob chatter away about some of the funny filming experiences he’d had in his career, she realized she was relying on him to look after her, expecting him to do that even, a fact that didn’t sit all that well with the independent woman who had been certain she would cope in any situation.

Rob picked up their trash and slung it on the fire. They’d decided to share one of the two sachets of coffee and leave the other one for the morning. The one sachet they’d used had made a very weak solution, but it was still coffee, and it was warm. It helped improve their mood a lot.

He kept the conversation light; for some inexplicable reason, he really liked to hear Amelie speak. She recounted stories from her university days with humor and charisma. It made him envious of her friends. He caught himself wishing he could have spent those few years by her side. Instead, he’d been too busy carving a name for himself in Hollywood, always at the fringes of great things, never quite making it big. Movies had just ceased to be his scene lately. He’d had enough of the high-life bitchiness.

Amelie was in the middle of an explanation about the different types of students she’d tried befriending in the hope of finding better matching friends. She’d finished talking about the sporty types and was just moving on to the geeks.

“When Elijah took me on a date, it was obvious I was his first. He was so anxious, he didn’t know what to do with himself. We got all the picnic stuff out of the car, and he just loaded my arms with bags and blankets, then he shut the trunk and walked right ahead, just signaling for me to follow. It didn’t occur to him for one minute to ask if I was okay carrying all that stuff, or just offer to help. What a dumbass!” She laughed.

The guy sounded like a moron all right, and Rob chuckled, but he still couldn’t help himself. He had to needle her.

“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten what a princess you are.”

Amelie’s smile dropped and she elbowed him in the ribs. It only made him laugh harder.

“I’m not a princess. I’m a normal human being.”

“Really? And since when does a normal human being need six travel bags for a short trip to Nassau? Did you see how many bags I had?”

“No, actually. I’m not sure you had any. Did you?”

“Yes, one.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not sure how that would be enough. I only packed the essentials. You obviously don’t care much about appearance or personal hygiene if you think you can fit all the necessary clothes and underwear in one bag. What about toiletries? Don’t you have a deodorant you prefer, or a favorite brand of shampoo?”

“I only came here on holiday. I’m not planning on emigrating.” Rob laughed again and stretched to her stash of little tubs and bottles. “Come on, let’s see what you call essentials.”

“Hey, get off. They’re my personal items.”

“Oh, look,” Rob ignored her. “Day and night anti-wrinkle cream.” He made a show of scrutinizing her face. “Nope. I don’t see the use.” He tossed the bottle over his shoulder and picked up another while Amelie scrambled to collect the discarded bottle. “Mango and passion fruit body scrub. That would really come in handy here! What else? Two bottles of shampoo, one of conditioner. A whole bag of make-up. Is that to impress the fish?”

Amelie whipped her things out of his hands and moved them out of his reach. Rob let them go without a fight, too amused to watch out for the explosion brewing behind her eyes.

“I’m sure they’ll swim over and nibble on your toes if you smell of mango,” he marched on, oblivious. “Even more so if you’ve straightened your hair especially for the occasion.” He grabbed the hair straighteners and twisted them in his hands, pretending to hit an imaginary Ping-Pong ball in the air.

“Well, I’d have more than fish to see if we had actually arrived at our intended destination. I was planning to use these items at leisure, relaxing in my tub, or walking down the water’s edge, after a wonderful dinner. Instead, I’m rotting away in my own filth on a stinky beach, God only knows where.”

Rob sobered up instantly. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t predict the storm.”

“I know. I should have followed my instincts. When I saw the boat, I knew… I… I shouldn’t have come.”

“You think me incompetent? You actually believe I would have put you in danger if I’d had the slightest worry about the craft or the weather…”

Amelie shrugged and averted her eyes.

That did it. Miss Princess-of-the-Bahamas could just go get herself screwed. He’d had it with her whims and snobbish fancies. For a moment then, she’d fooled him. He even thought she was worth a little attention, but no. She was just as bad as he’d expected her to be. A spoilt brat in a woman’s body, a rich chick with a superior attitude. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for it.

“You know what? I can’t deal with this anymore. You’re on your own, Princess. Enjoy your penthouse.”

He lobbed the hair straighteners to land at her feet, then turned around and walked away from the drama.

For the second night running, Amelie cried herself to sleep. All right, the first night she didn’t actually get to fall asleep, but this time she was too tired and too emotionally drained to stay awake.

Rob had stripped out of his clothes as he’d walked away from her and then he’d wriggled into his temporary shelter beneath the rocky overhang at the edge of the beach without so much as a glance back. He must have been furious, but even after so many hours of soul-searching, Amelie still didn’t know what she’d done wrong. Was it something she’d said?

She wanted to run to him and beg forgiveness. She could have crawled the length of the beach on her knees if only that would have earned her a few minutes in his arms. What wouldn’t she do for the feel of his lips on hers again?

Groaning, she stretched her aching muscles and opened her eyes, hoping to see Rob laying by her side, but knowing it wouldn’t happen.

Her assessment had been correct, she realized with a sigh. Rob was nowhere in sight. At least the daylight had a brightness to it that hadn’t been there the day before.

She wriggled into a skirt and t-shirt that felt a little crispy, but thankfully dry, and walked out of the shelter. The first thing she noticed was the absence of rain. The second was Rob’s head breaking through the surf. He gulped some air and dived, displaying a toned shoulder, back and a set of bare buttocks good enough to bite.

He was gone for a minute, and then he came back up for air and stayed up, his hands clasped around two large crabs. The water swept around his shoulders as he walked slowly towards the shore. When he looked up, he spotted her, grinned wide and waved the crabs in the air.

Amelie smiled. Fresh crab for breakfast was better than ready-made meals any day. She began piling wood on the coals from the previous night’s fire, and then rushed over to her stash of toiletries and make-up and hurriedly scooped the lot of them into a bag and out of sight. She was determined they wouldn’t have the same argument today. Or ever, if she had anything to do with it.

Next time she looked over to the sea, her mouth fell open. Rob was still making his way out, the surf playing around his knees. She knew perfectly well what she’d find if she let her eyes travel up, she knew it and she also knew she shouldn’t allow herself to do it… but her eyes seemed to have a mind of their own.

The man was glorious in his nakedness! Eyes locked on his crown jewels, well-defined and standing proud front and center even in his relaxed state, Amelie whimpered and grabbed onto a post. It wasn’t fair! How was she supposed to reject this rush of feeling when he looked like that?

She’d been in love with him for more than ten years of her life, and that was before she’d seen him naked. All that time, she’d fought hard to keep him out of her every thought and almost managed.

What was she supposed to do now? Until a few minutes ago she’d only known him clothed.

“Stop staring at me like that; you’re making me feel self-conscious.”

Rob had stopped just twenty inches or so in front of her. Amelie dropped her gaze at once, her skin tingling at the speed with which her blood rushed up to her face. Oh, God! He’d caught her staring! Could there be anything more mortifying to live through in a lifetime?

The two crabs landed on the sand between their feet, startling her. “Keep an eye on them while I put on my shorts,” Rob said.

“Keep an eye?” she repeated, watching the two creatures turn straight for the ocean without a second’s hesitation. They were pretty fast, too. “What exactly do you expect me to do?” she asked, sounding like a frightened little girl, even to her own ears. “I’m not touching them.”

Rob laughed. “It’s okay. You can look now.” Amelie’s eyes stayed locked on the crabs. “I’ll take care of them,” Rob said again. “If you don’t want to watch breakfast being prepared, you could always… umm… see if you can spot some coconuts, up in those palm trees, that may be ripe enough to eat.”

Grateful to be given a way out, both from Rob’s scrutiny and also from the food prep duties, Amelie rushed to the line of trees and did as she was told. She was looking up, but what danced in front of her eyes was a different bunch of images. Why couldn’t Rob go swimming with his shorts on? She resolved to tell him – no, demand, actually – that he was expected to stay clothed from then on. He may like behaving like a savage, but she had standards.

The trees were obliging, or maybe the storm had been the real helper. She spotted a few coconuts in the grass, by the base of one of the trees, and several more bunches looked like they were about to drop. Quickly, she scooped up three of them and rushed away from the trees. Those things were lethal – hard enough to knock out the unaware or the stupid, and she was most certainly neither.

“Ten minutes till breakfast time,” Rob announced cheerily when she dropped the coconuts by his feet. “Oh, good. I wasn’t looking forward to climbing those trees on an empty stomach. It’s not as easy as it looks, you know.”

“Actually, I can do that. Climb the trees, I mean.” She smiled at Rob’s impressed expression. “There was this guy from Burma, back in business school…”

“Is there anything you didn’t do, back in business school?” he cut in.

Amelie giggled. “Not much, no. I like my freedom. And it was easier to go through all of those experiences while unsupervised.” Rob was staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face, so she hastened to explain. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you must have thought when you and Jason had to come and rescue me from that dubious tattoo parlor the other night. It’s just that… Jason is being too protective. He’s worse than a new dad. It’s stifling. So I… I guess I did go out of my way to embarrass him. I wanted to make sure he hated having me around, and maybe force his hand that way to release my inheritance so I could just get on with my life. You can’t understand what it’s like, being female, and a little sister.”

“Then tell me,” Rob said softly.

“I… I wonder if I might offend you again, saying something wrong. I don’t want us to fight.”

“Neither do I,” said Rob, and suddenly his fingers were turning her chin his way, and in the next breath he was kissing her, softly tasting her lips, savoring the sensation. Then he lowered her to the leafy mat she’d woven with her own hands and his lips became more demanding, taking what he needed forcefully. She responded and threaded her fingers through his hair, keeping him prisoner.

Rob’s hands slipped under her top and he broke their kiss for a moment. With one motion, he whipped the flimsy piece of cotton over her head. He groaned deep in his throat, his eyes dark and hooded at the sight of her bare chest. “Oh, Ammy, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered as his head dropped to her breasts.

She didn’t have time to think. No time to consider the implications. Rob was everywhere – his hands and lips sending tongues of fire right under her skin, scattering her concentration. All she could focus on were the sensations he caused and how she might be able to get him to do the same thing again. Hadn’t she wished for this to happen all this time? Well, now she was getting her wish, and she was determined to make the most of it.

Her hips lifted off the ground when he sent a zing of feeling from her nipples straight to her core, and he lay on top of her body, pressing his considerable erection between her thighs. She gasped and wriggled to accommodate him better, one of her hands moving of its own accord to the waistband of his shorts.

He caught her hand in his, his expression dark yet gentle.

“I want this,” Amelie whispered.

Rob’s sweet breath fluttered her eyelashes. His eyes were piercing as he murmured, “Are you sure?”

What did the man want? A written invitation? Oh. Maybe he was worried about STDs or getting her pregnant. “I’m clean. And on birth control.”

His answering moan told her he’d given up trying to resist. His lips were hot on her throat. She angled her head to the side, to give him better access, and he didn’t need encouragement.

Her skin was on fire, and Rob was relentless. He left a trail of soft kisses interspersed with sharp little nibbles all over her upper body, starting from the soft spot beneath her ear lobes and finishing right… ah… right at…

She felt Rob lift her leg up in one swift move, and then he drove himself straight in. When had he removed his shorts? And her panties? It didn’t matter. She felt so hot, so full, so exquisitely aroused.

Rob’s hand hooked her knee over his shoulder and he pulled himself almost all the way out, then buried himself inside her to the hilt. She moaned at the pleasure, her eyes too glazed with lust to see clearly anymore. Hot… she was so hot, so unbelievably needy for his touch.

He was twisting his hips into hers, hitting the same sweet spot each time he drove in – was that her G-spot? – and each time he pulled out she could feel her clit ring move and excite her further.

“More,” she breathed. “Harder.”

Rob’s breath came in gasps now, his face screwed up in concentration, in his effort to hold back. She was so close, hanging on by a wispy thread, tipping over the precipice. His finger brushed over her clit, and she screamed. She just let go and screamed out her release so loud she might well have been heard from mainland U.S.A. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she rode her wave like a shooting star, more free and uninhibited than ever before.

After a while, awareness began to seep back into her senses. She could feel Rob’s tight body above hers, his face buried into her neck and her hair. His lips were placing gentle kisses along her jaw line when she noticed he was talking.

“…Beautiful, most amazing woman on earth. You were flying. I’ve never seen someone climax so hard…”

She wanted to tell him it was all his doing, that she’d never felt that way before, but talking was still beyond her abilities. She was lucky she could breathe, so for a long time, she concentrated on that one simple action.

When she could focus, she searched for his eyes. They were wide with awe and soft with adoration, so dark and so deep. She blinked and her gaze dipped to his lips. Before she could ask for it, he covered her lips with his. Warmth flooded through her body again, so she grabbed hold of his head with one hand and his shoulder with the other, and kissed him with all the pent-up passion she had saved for half her lifetime especially for this moment.

She hadn’t realized Rob had stayed inside her until his member twitched as the heat of her embrace touched him too. He began to rock slowly in and out, in and out, and she wriggled beneath him, urging him on silently. They took it slow this time and didn’t allow themselves to be overcome by lust until they had explored every inch of each other’s bodies.

Rob took her nipple rings into his teeth and tugged, making her squirm. “I always wanted to do that,” he said, making her giggle. She sank her teeth into his left nipple and sucked hard, which made him let out a muted howl and then pick up the pace a notch. Four different positions and quite possibly a couple of hours later, they lay side by side, lost in a second wave of ecstasy.

Amelie couldn’t remember ever having felt as sated as she was in that moment. How ironic that, after trying and failing to improve her level of sexual satisfaction using every high-tech gadget of the civilized world, she’d found faultless gratification on a gadget-free island in the middle of the ocean, with just a man – the right man – to get her there.

Already, her mind was beginning to come up with strategies to ensure she could keep him, her dreams of independence a distant memory.

Then Rob said, “You ready to go exploring yet?” like nothing had happened between them, and she remembered that this was nothing but a holiday for him, and soon he would go back to his movies and his parties with A-listers, or maybe sign that long-term contract and be lost to the world of soft porn forever. Her loss, their gain.

Struggling not to let her sadness show, she got up and reached for her clothes.