Turning Up the Heat (6 page)

He gazed at her for a long moment, so long she thought he might actually ask her why she was getting her information about him from television announcers. Given that they had been married for over ten years. But his mouth curved, not too differently from the way it curved when he was on
Top Chef
, when his hands were flying, his brain fermenting with brilliance as he strove to beat the opposing chef at whatever insane challenge the show threw at them, all while his mouth stayed almost tender in its calm.
He makes love to the food,
the announcers would say,
watch him.
“Do you remember the first time you got me a spot on that show? How happy you were?”

Well—yes. It had been such a coup. She had hugged him and hugged him, so happy with herself to have given him this window to shine. To show the whole world how wonderful he was.

“And do you remember the first time I won?” He stroked his own cheek, as if he was feeling something there. “You couldn’t stop touching me.”

She smiled. “Yes.” How they had celebrated. He had been so
awesome.
Absolument merveilleux.
For weeks afterward, some vision of him at a particular moment in the intense battle would flash before her eyes, and if he was anywhere within reach, she would fling her arms around him and kiss him again, just for being so wonderful. Oh, had he ever shown the world.

He looked away again. “I thrived on that.”

The meaning was so strange, it had to percolate through her slowly. Like another language, with no Rosetta Stone that could help her pick it apart and make sense of it. “Wait...you didn’t do it for yourself?”

A sharp gray glance. “You must not understand me. Of course I did it for myself.” He touched his cheek again.

“Ah.” She relaxed. That was, in fact, what she had always known. He had that drive. He wanted to be the best. She had poured everything of herself into supporting his need to be incredible.

Everything.

Something prickled through her at the thought, an almost-awareness, an answer. Was that what—

“To make you that happy with me? What man wouldn’t do everything, for that?”

She was so dumbfounded, she thought she might cry. The perspective was so radically different from anything she had ever believed. He did it…he did
all that
because she kissed him?

“Léa.” That inexplicable hostility had faded. Daniel touched her cheek. “Don’t.”

And she realized she
was
crying. Again. “
O purée
,” she muttered indignantly, making him smile a little. Probably the only reason her language stayed so clean after a lifetime in the restaurant business was the way he smiled at her polite little swear words. “Not again.”

“Again?” He rubbed one tear away with a callused thumb that made her hungry for more caresses. Her face curved into his palm before any doubt could override the instinct.

She shrugged, deeply reluctant to admit to him how weak she felt right now.

“Léa.” Daniel rolled back, using her wrists to tug her astride him. He had almost no control of her body with her wrists alone, so she had to cooperate, but she had never resisted Daniel. Their teenage fear of crossing lines, of going too far, and Daniel’s romantic urge to treat her like something precious had been all that slowed them down.

She smiled at him a little tremulously as she settled astride him. But the warmth of his body between her thighs felt utterly perfect, pushing back that wariness she couldn’t explain. Still without a shirt, he lay on the sand beneath her, all flat stomach and defined ribs and lean muscled strength. He made her want to cry again, he was so utterly beautiful.

Still loosely clasping her wrists, his thumbs stretched high to stroke down the sensitive insides of her forearms. Over and over. A caress that took over her will, melting her to him. “Léa.” His voice deepened. His eyes had gone brilliant again, but nothing hard or angry in them now. He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed the palms. “I love you.”

She nodded rapidly,
me, too,
feeling shaky and shivery with hunger and vulnerability and that caution that had driven her to the other side of the world without him.

He kissed up to the insides of her wrists. “Still love me, Léa?” he whispered.

Her eyes widened. “Of
course
!” How could anyone not?

He stroked her fingertips over his cheeks, petting himself with her, his eyes half closing. “So that’s all right,” he murmured, caressing his cheek into his own strokes.

“I told you it’s nothing to do with you!”

His mouth hardened, under her palm. “Don’t feel you have to repeat yourself. You’ve given me plenty of opportunities to grasp the point, if I choose to.” He tugged her hands a little to pull her down closer to him, pressing them to the sand on either side of his head. Her pelvis rocked forward on his. Her face came close enough to his that it would be less effort to kiss him than to hold herself up. Even less effort to curl up against his chest and just stay there. He loosed her hair from its ponytail, combing it forward to brush his face. “There,” he whispered with satisfaction.

She drew a long breath. The feel of his sex hardening against hers liquefied her. She could feel her eyes drifting closed, her body growing pliant and helpless. She had never been any good at this position. Arousal melted her muscles, left her too yielding and soft to take control. This position was always for playing, until his body was all one hard need to drive into her, to take her over. Until her body was all one supple need to be taken.

His hands pulled her long tunic up until he could slip under it, his fingers tracing ever so delicately the line of her bikini bottom. And then teasing over her bikini-clad butt. “I suppose this is the only space of skin where you aren’t sunburned?” he whispered.

Her hips twisted against his. She nodded, already growing heavy, wanting.

His fingers followed over the little line of the string bikini. “There’s not even enough space to fit my hands to grasp your hips,” he murmured, twisting up suddenly with his own hips, trying to obtain pressure without gripping her.

She responded, pressing down because she knew it was what he wanted her to do, but she was shivering and losing strength. She wanted him to grab her now, drag her sex against his, take over her body. But he was bound more strongly than if he had been tied to a bedpost. He couldn’t take her without hurting her.

He thrust up again with his hips, and his fingers trailed around to tuck into the front of her bikini.

She shivered again, her sex melting. His eyes glittered like stars as he watched her face, sinking his fingers lower inside her bikini.

She made a little moaning sound, her head hanging heavily. He lifted his own head off the sand enough to catch her mouth, kissing her like sex, lushly, invasive.His fingertips slipped far enough down to brush her clitoris.

She gave a little gasp and collapsed on top of him, clinging, her cheek rubbing against him like an animal. His hand got crushed between them, no wiggle room. She moaned a little, rocking her hips against his crushed fingers.

“
Chérie
, you have to sit up just a little,” he whispered. “I can’t turn you over, on the sand or on me. Not with your back like that.
Allez, bébé
.” He pushed her up a little by one shoulder. She tried, but when his freed fingers flicked again, deftly, all her weight sank back down, hanging against the brace of his hand.

“I want to hold you,” he breathed. “I want to suck your pretty
tétons
until you babble my name. But I’ll forget—I’ll grab you too hard, and I’ll hurt you. And you’ll let me.” His hand dove lushly into her parted sex. She whimpered, twisting frantically, unable to stand this position held off him. She never had been able to hold herself separate from him when she came. And yet the pleasure built in her, to be held apart and yet so helpless to him. To be so vulnerable to his deft control.

“Sit up.” He pushed at her shoulder. “
Bébé
, let me do this.”

“No.” She shook her head, because she
couldn’t.
Emotionally too shy to hold herself so exposed to him while she came, and it was a pure physical impossibility. Her muscles just didn’t work that way, when his hand was in her sex.

“
Yes
,” he said fiercely, his fingers thrusting into her while she shook and arched, his other hand flat on her breastbone now, forcing her off him enough to give him room.

“No, no,
no
, Daniel,” she said, “
no
”—And then she was coming, convulsive little frantic waves, clutching at his hand in her, and he kept moving it, pleasure swamping her, the waves building and building and crashing again until she fell on him, kissing him wildly, and then convulsed again in one sharp, high cry and rolled away into the sand.

The sand scraped against her sunburn. After a moment, he reached and gently rolled her over onto her tummy. She buried her face in her arms.

“I like it,” he whispered, fingers tracing over her skull. He blew over her shoulder, and sand skittered off her. “I like seeing you come. Don’t be embarrassed.”

She kept her face buried in her arms, not answering. She was very conscious of how aroused he must be, and her own body still shivered with hunger for him to drive into her. The sunburn wouldn’t hurt that much, she wouldn’t care…and from this position, he wouldn’t have to touch
too
much sunburn. She arched her butt up just a little, shifting it back and forth in a hint.

He came to his feet suddenly. She twisted her head on her arms enough to see him stride waist deep in the waves and stand there with his hands locked in fists behind his head, staring out at the horizon.

She thought about following him, slipping in behind him and slipping her hand around to the arousal against which he was pitting the force of waves too warm to kill it.

He still stood there, and then suddenly, she didn’t know why she
shouldn’t
follow him, and she rolled to her knees.

But he turned at that moment and came back out of the water, still enough aroused under his suit that at first she thought he was coming back to her and she sat back on her heels. But he just gave her a little smile that made her blush crimson, and that made his smile deepen as he ducked his head and crouched down by their picnic basket, packing it with deft, fast fingers into a much better arrangement than the resort kitchen staff had ever thought of. “Let’s go find that waterfall.”

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN

They hiked along the stream, a narrow, haphazard footpath that not enough feet had worn, the forest rich and thick around them, birds calling, a tree dripping flowers. Green surrounded them, and rich dark earth, and the stream flowing over dark rocks, leftover from volcanoes lost in the depths of time.

They could hear the waterfall before they reached it, but still Léa drew a breath of surprised pleasure when they came out beneath it. The stream was small, and the rocks angling above them spread it out fine, so that it fell into the pool below in a wide veil, nearly transparent. The place was a deep, magical secret, compared to the vast possibilities of the ocean. A spill of red hibiscus near the falls brightened the dark, safe colors of rock and water and green, and the waterfall shimmered with white.

She had hiked to a waterfall the day before, narrower, higher, more pounding, but also beautiful. And it was a sharp, sweet realization, how much more pleasure there was in the moment because Daniel was with her.

Already waded halfway out to the falls, she turned enough to smile at him, an absurdly shy smile for how long they had been married. But she felt shy. She felt as if she had come out here to find a piece of herself, and he already wanted that piece for himself, and she didn’t even know what it looked like yet much less whether she wanted to give it away.

And she still felt embarrassed, from earlier on the beach. Soft and sticky and vulnerable.

His eyes searched hers rather gravely for a moment, and she dipped her head. His eyes narrowed at the evasion, that way she knew, that meant that nothing was going to stop him reaching what he wanted.

She shifted away from that look, feeling even more vulnerable than before—like she had a chance in hell of protecting that fragile nascence that had brought her to this island alone—and stepped under the waterfall, to wash off her sticky embarrassment over the beach.

The veil of it was a gentle pleasure to stand under rather than a pounding force. She kept her back to him, stretching up her arms to savor the sensation of the water washing over her.

Her string-tied bikini top loosened suddenly and washed entirely away.
Oh.
Her head tilted back sharply to hit a strong shoulder just as hands cupped her breasts, warm hands, and everywhere else the wash of cool water.

“Léa,” he whispered, squeezing her gently, thumbing the nipples.

Oh
. The pleasure of it washed through her, sweet and intense. But
oh, not again.
He was taking over every part of her.