Page 17 of Beachcomber Enemy

“You going to call the authorities in Australia in the morning to let them know where he is?” He held his breath. This was important. If she called the authorities in Australia, that would mean she was conceding that this was someone else’s fight, someone else’s responsibility to deal with. Fat chance. But he held his breath waiting for her answer anyway.

“By rights I should call them now, this minute.” She put the tablet aside then and looked at him.

“But you won’t,” he said.

She shook her head. “You know I’m coming with you tomorrow, right?”

And that was it. Her composed determination and disbelief that he would really try to stop her saved him from her anger.

Now all he had to do was lie to her. Without her knowing it. Without it eating at him.

“How would I stop you?” It was an honest question. He’d really like to know the answer.

She laughed and turned to him, putting a hand on his chest, running it over one of the scars near his shoulder.

“You can’t,” she said.

Fear and pain ran a savage shot of fire through him, making him more determined than ever to try. Making him desperate to hold her to him now, to make her part of him now, while he had her so close.

He tightened his arms, moved in to kiss her, but she pulled back.

“Did Cap find Sassy?”

“No.” He couldn’t say more. He hated lying by omission, not telling her about the note or Sassy’s phone call to Ronnie. Didn’t tell her about Ronnie planning to meet them. He couldn’t. Because he couldn’t tell her he’d be leaving in the middle of the night without her.

It was damn hard to deceive her. Not the deception part, but the guilt. It caused a biting edge of pain along his already tense shoulder blades, digging in like a long sword across his back.

Her eyes searched his for a long time before she gave in, before she let him pull her close and devour her mouth, devour her whole. His need to feel her—every single molecule of her—to consume her, drove his mind to blessed blankness.

* * *

Shana’s struggle to keep her composure, to remain rational and detached when it seemed her world could end at any moment, that she could lose everything, tugged at her. Dane was her anchor in reason, her solid, touchable reality. Everything about him was reassuring from his rock-hard muscle, to his determined protective streak, to his loving hands and mouth on hers.

His lips were a welcome balm, in spite of the niggling that there was something off, that there was a note of desperation in him. She fought to ignore it, wrapping her arms around to feel the hot flesh of his back and his rippling muscles under her hands.

Since when had she become so needy of his manliness? Or maybe she always had been. Maybe she had always needed that cocky male bravado backing her up and pushing her on at the same time. Maybe—

Hell. She dug her teeth into his lip, nipping harder than she ought to, but she needed it. She needed to feel the control she had over herself. And over him. His response was a low growl as his hands cupped her ass, pulling her up against his massive hard-on. The feel of that solid writhing against the pulsing V in her thighs made her smile inside. On the outside, she trembled and pushed back against him.

“We need to get you out of these clothes. I want to feel your creamy pussy against me.” He nuzzled her ear, his specialty, while he whispered words of desire. They weren’t loving words, nothing poetic. But they made her feel all-powerful, womanly, they made her ache with longing for him to be inside her, where she would never let go. Where she would own the world. Where the world was only the two of them.

While his deft fingers slipped inside her panties and yanked them down her thighs, she kicked out of them, then separated her mouth from his, stared into his eyes, and pulled the tank top over her head.

The slip of her heart up into her throat caused her breath to catch as she experienced the fiery gaze of his eyes that ignited her from the inside out. With all thought incinerated by his eyes and hands on her now, and his mouth so close to hers, she darted her tongue to his lips, licked the salty sweat from his upper lip and traced the heart achingly sensual curve of his mouth with her tongue.

Rolling back, he pulled her on top of him and spoke into her mouth raspy words she could barely understand, but knew the message, felt it in his heat, in his rough hands roving over her thighs and ass, over her back and threading into her hair, pushing her mouth to his. At the same time she felt his cock under her belly, hard and smooth and hot as a branding iron. She wriggled to center herself over him, to rub herself against him, feeling the exquisite sensation of her clit pressed against him. She moved faster, her arms shaking as she held herself to feel the pleasure roiling inside her as if she were a living, breathing pressure cooker of desire.

Until he clamped his hands down on her hips and held her still against him.

“Not yet. Not without me. Not this time.” He spoke into her mouth as he rose up with seemingly little effort, abdominal muscles clenching in hard knots, and flipped her onto her back. Over her in an instant, he pinned her down with his entire body as if she might try to escape. Or take control. She thought fleetingly about his need to be in control this night, but when she felt the hot tip of his cock intruding into the swollen folds of her pussy all other thoughts were blown away. Her legs trembled as she wrapped them around him and pressed. But he held himself off her enough to slip a hand between them to touch her. His other arm held him up so that he hovered over her, face to face, staring intently, eyes drawn like golden magnets to hers. She focused on him, communicating with everything in her what she couldn’t say because she was unable to speak, her mind full of him and her and their joining and the pleasure building relentlessly.

Biting her lip as his fingers slid into her, circled her nub in a torturous ritual, she held in her peaking, tried to control her rising arousal, needed to hold her climax to go there with him. They slid through the wet folds and inside her, testing. She barely held herself from crying out. Drips of sweat fell to her cheek from his temple and he moved, his cock twitching against her thighs. She arched into him, needing him inside her now.

Understanding the look she knew must be in her eye, or maybe unable to hold off his own rising needs, Dane slid his hand from her pussy and took his cock, placing it at her nub, caressing her mercilessly as he stared, then nibbled at her mouth, uttering some words of love that she knew without hearing.

Finally he let go, letting his cock slip inside her as he brought his hand up to frame her face while he pushed inside her slowly, steadily until his hips ground against hers. She smelled her sex on his hands as he caressed her jaw, as he kissed her deeply, breathing hard. Moving back now, pulling himself out to his very tip, she held her breath, stopped herself from arching up until all at once he shoved back inside her. Then she arched up and back as he moved steadily and faster with each thrust, breathed harder and faster, lunged his tongue into her mouth and tangled it with hers, tasting her, tasting him.

The sensations of swirling blackness, of impossibly swollen sex, impossibly tight muscles heated to the point of singing, took over as her legs vibrated and she strained to peak, to capture that perfect point in space and time and him, that perfect joining with him.