In the six months since he’d met her, he’d fantasized scores of different scenarios. One of them had involved a beach. There’d been moonlight and champagne, and a long and sensuous seduction. He hadn’t anticipated being jumped and rolling with her in seawater or being as rough and needy as a teenager high on hormones.
He hadn’t anticipated her.
Gathering what will he had left, he lifted his head. Her lips were moist, parted, and swollen from their kisses. Her eyes were half-closed and clouded with at least some of what he was feeling. What was she—who was she—that she could do this to him?
“Cole…”
The desperation in that one whispered word triggered an explosion of feelings she’d stirred in him from the first. He crushed his mouth to hers and devoured her. With Pepper, everything was new. Hunger had never been unmanageable. Desire had never made him ache. Once again, control was slipping away as surely as the sand streamed from beneath them with each wave that pulled back from the shore. Fear shot through him, sharp and real, at the power that she had over him.
When he tried to draw back, she tightened her arms on him and said, “More.”
Choice and will drained away in an instant. Levering himself off of her, he dragged at her clothes, ridding her of her T-shirt and pulling at the snap of her jeans. Her hands were as desperate as his, scraping his skin with her nails as she jerked his shirt loose and tugged at his belt.
When they were both naked, their clothes scattered on the beach, he pushed her back on the sand and took his mouth on a quick journey over her. He found her skin rainwater soft over her breast, smooth and taut down her torso. The need to savor warred with the need to hurry until he reached her thighs. When they parted and she arched her hips in invitation, he had to linger, had to sample her hot, sweet center. One taste and he feasted.
He knew the moment the orgasm moved through her. She gasped his name, and he experienced the power of knowing that she thought only of him. When her body went limp, he ruthlessly used his mouth on her again. This time, he varied his timing, keeping her shimmering on the brink, spinning out the pleasure for her before he drove her to the next peak and beyond.
She was still trembling, still struggling for a breath when he finally drew back to take care of the condom. Blood pounding, heart hammering, he ranged himself above. “Look at me, Pepper.”
When she did, when her eyes were open and on his, he thrust into her in one long, hard stroke. As he withdrew and pushed into her again, she moved with him, and his own climax began to build. Groaning, he picked up the pace, driving her and driving himself until pleasure exploded and shattered them both.
REALITY DRIBBLED BACK in bits and pieces. The first time Pepper opened her eyes, her vision was still blurred. As it gradually cleared, she saw the pile of rocks to her right and the ocean to her left. The sun beat down, and she smelled the ocean, and Cole. He still lay sprawled on top of her, and she wasn’t sure if it was her heart or his that was still racing so furiously. Or both together.
Closing her eyes again, she tried to think. But pleasure and satisfaction were still streaming through her. Nothing had ever been like this. Like him. In a moment, she’d have to lecture herself for going with her impulses again…and worry about the consequences…and probably have a panic attack. But right now, she just wanted to stop time and savor the press of that hard, muscled body on hers.
He stirred then, lifting his head, and another bit of reality penetrated. He was still inside her. The realization shot a new rush of heat through her body. She quivered and felt herself tightening around him.
“Well, well,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” she said. It was a lie. She felt a little like Humpty Dumpty after his fall. She drew in a deep breath. “We should go. Someone might come along.”
He rubbed a thumb along her bottom lip. “From what I observed yesterday, this is siesta time on the island. People are either snoozing around the pool, or they’re back in their rooms doing what we just did.”
“We could go to my room,” she said dryly.
“I’m not sure I can move yet,” he said, bending down to lick one of her nipples.
Her breath caught in her throat as another wave of desire coursed through her.
“I want you again, Pepper.”
“I don’t think it’s a…good…mmm.” She lost the rest of her sentence when he moved his hips and she felt him harden inside her.
When he lifted his head, he was smiling. “Oh, it’s going to be good. And it’s going to take a lot longer this time. I promise.”
5
Friday, February 13—2:30 p.m.
“MARLENE, ARE YOU CERTAIN Ms. Rossi registered?” With the phone pressed to his ear, Butch Castellano paced back and forth in the office he kept off the hotel lobby.
“I’ll double-check it, Mr. Castellano.”
“And find out which room she’s in. Call her and ask if there’s anything she needs.”
“Right away, Mr. Castellano.”
Damn. Three hours had passed since the morning staff meeting when he’d seen the name Irene Rossi on the day’s list of arriving guests. Renie was coming to the island. Three hours, and his nerves had yet to settle. Once he’d known that the one daily flight to the island had landed, he’d hung out in the office, watching the lobby, waiting for a glimpse of her at the registration desk. And when H had arrived to escort him to the poolside café for his meeting with Evan Atwell, he hadn’t been able to think straight. That never happened to him. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Renie. Why was she coming to the island? He’d told her not to. He’d explained to her that he’d considered it from all angles and decided it was best for them both if they just remained friends. Hadn’t he made his feelings clear enough?
He strode over to the one-way glass window where H stood, watching the lobby. Good thing someone was keeping his mind on business.
Butch shot a look at his personal assistant. “I told her not to come.”
H said nothing.
“She fell in love with a boy. She doesn’t really know me. It just wouldn’t work out. And her friendship is too important to me. Surely, she must have seen the logic of that. Why couldn’t she just follow orders?”
“She’s a woman,” H said. “They don’t think the same way we do. And they’re hard to predict.”
Butch grunted his frustration. H had been his cell mate for the last ten years he’d spent in one of upstate New York’s finest penal facilities, and the single initial was the only name Butch knew him by. Standing six foot five in his stocking feet and built like a professional wrestler, H had a high intimidation quotient. That was no doubt why the staff and hotel guests called him Mr. H.
Over the years, Butch had come to value his friend for his qualities that were less immediately apparent. H had an excellent business sense, and best of all, he had a flair for interior design. It had been his idea to decorate and furnish the lobby like one of the old sugar plantations that had once flourished on the islands. Butch particularly favored the ceiling fans and the overstuffed cane furniture.
In his opinion, the décor made a perfect backdrop for his art collection. Butch shifted his gaze to the three French Impressionist paintings that now graced the walls of the lobby, and deliberately shifted his thoughts to the new Monet that he would soon acquire. That was what he should be thinking about.
“What do you think of Atwell?” he asked.
“Soft,” H said.
This time Butch grunted a reluctant laugh. “And the Frenchy?”
H shrugged. “Slick. And he’s not soft. I think the accent’s a fake. I’m running a check on him.”
Butch frowned and swore. “I shouldn’t have missed that.”
“The woman is distracting you.”
No shit, Butch thought to himself. What else had he missed in that meeting? He frowned down at his cell phone. “What is keeping Marlene? All she has to do is pull up the registration record on the screen.”
“The system is slow today.”
Butch shifted his gaze to the spot on the lobby wall where he intended to hang the Monet. His fascination with the French Impressionists had begun thirty years ago when he’d taken a correspondence course in art history. His desire to begin a collection had been one of the reasons he’d decided to go straight. Renie had been the other reason.
In those early days behind bars, he’d had the foolish idea of trying to turn himself into someone who would be good enough for Renie. Her regular letters had not only inspired him but they’d kept him focused. And he’d dreamed of one day building a life with her. But it was a pipe dream. He couldn’t change who he was or what he’d done with his life. And Renie had turned herself into such a success. She had her own TV show, for heaven’s sake. And she had a family in San Francisco. She shouldn’t give all that up for a man like him.
Butch took a cigar out of his pocket, stuffed it in his mouth, and tried to ignore the knot of nerves in his stomach. Now she was here on the island. He pulled out the cigar, then shoved it back in his mouth. Hell. He was a grown man of sixty-two. He couldn’t recall the last time a woman had affected him this way. His palms were actually sweating.