Swept Away (10 page)

He’d never questioned until this moment why she was who he thought of when he needed a
good fantasy to sweep him away from real life. He could only figure it was because she was
the one he’d never quite had and that it had left a big question mark in his mind. And now she was getting married. And turning him down even though her eyes said yes.
Unfortunately, eyes that said yes didn’t count for much given that she was about to belong to someone else, which meant the two of them would never have sex. It wasn’t exactly like he’d ever made a point of tracking her down once they’d gotten older, but he should have. He’d felt
that in his gut, too—pretty much the moment he’d seen her nearly naked body again, stretched
out so pretty over that lounge chair.

Which reminded him... “Was I right about that sunburn?”

She stayed quiet, but he didn’t think she was asleep. He had the feeling she was wide-awake,
just like him, and the more arrogant side of him suspected she was lying up there wrestling with herself, wanting to invite him into her bed just as much as he wanted to be there.

“Yes,” she finally admitted, grudgingly.

“I don’t know, being a guy, but I’m betting that’s a lousy place for a burn.”

“Only if I were wearing a bra. But I didn’t even bring any, so I don’t have to worry about that.”

His groin tightened reflexively as a vision of her bared breasts came back to mind, and he did what came naturally—kept trying to seduce. And since he was tired, his words came out with
unedited, full-on lust. “Do you have any idea how much I want you right now, kitten? How
much I want to kiss those pretty breasts and make them feel better? How much I want to take
what you wanted to give me that night?”

Above him, she stayed quiet. And that alone made him a little harder than he already was.
Because she wasn’t yelling at him, offended, angry—she wasn’t saying, “How dare you!” or
“Leave me alone!” or the host of other things a woman who really wasn’t interested would
probably be flinging at him right now. No, she was blessedly silent, weighing, considering...
wanting. She would probably turn him down again, but he could still feel that wanting
practically emanating from the bed, seeping from her pores.

Finally, her voice wafted softly through the stillness. “That night was a long time ago, Brock.”

“Too long. And my fault,” he added, his voice low, steady. “Why don’t you let me make it up to you.”

More silence. More wanting. The room pulsed with it.

That’s when she cut through the silence with grating words. “I think I liked you better when
you were the jerky silent type.”

“And what am I now?”

“The jerky... more-talkative type.”

He laughed quietly. “Sorry, kitten—just your bad luck my job forced me to learn to
communicate.” The truth was, his job had changed him in bigger ways, too. It had taught him to be less angry and rebellious, and it had made him grow up and face the world head-on. If he’d been more mature back when he’d known Kat, he’d have handled her differently. Hell, he’d have handled a lot of things differently.

He thought again of Clark Spencer and wondered if her father was pressuring her to marry this
guy. It all sounded too... tidy, her marrying Spencer’s best friend’s son. A little too “all in the family.” Especially given that Kat had a wild streak, which he’d seen firsthand and had sensed even long before that. She’d have been the last person he’d expect to marry some straitlaced
lawyer who was probably a clone of her dad.

That notion made his stomach pinch. He knew Spencer loved Kat—and maybe Brock had once even been a little jealous that someone had a parent who loved them that much—but he also
wondered if you could love too much. If that was possible, Clark Spencer was guilty as
charged. And Kat didn’t need yet another man smothering her.

And as for her plan to stay out here by herself right up until two days before her wedding, he
couldn’t help thinking it was sort of like running away, maybe wanting to avoid the wedding as
much as possible for as long as she could. He just didn’t believe Kat was really into hooking
up with Mr. Family-Friend-and-Lawyer for life.

“This guy you’re marrying,” he said, his voice breaking through the darkness again.
“What about him?”

“Is he good in bed?”

“Why—do you want to sleep with him?”

He smiled. “Funny, kitten.” When she didn’t answer further, he said, “Well? Is he?”
“Is it any of your business?”

“You didn’t say yes,” he pointed out.

“So?”

“If he was, you’d have just said yes.”

She stayed quiet and he figured she was probably concocting ways to kill him, until finally she
replied, “If you must know... we, uh, haven’t really... done it yet.”

Now it was Brock who bolted upright to glare at her shadowy form across the bed, illuminated
just slightly by the security bulb outside the window. “What do you mean, you haven’t done it
yet? You’re actually marrying a guy you haven’t even had sex with?”

She rolled to face him and he saw her eyes, made out more of her shadowy shape, and loved
the sleepy, tousled look of her with a sheet pulled to her waist. Her hair lay messy around her shoulders, which were left silkily bare in another little strappy top he hadn’t quite gotten a good
look at before lights out. “For your info,” she said, “there was a time when people in our
culture waited until marriage. I know it’s hardly the trend these days, but forgive me if I wanted
to be a little... old-fashioned.”

He flashed a wicked grin and stated the obvious. “Kitten. You’re about the least old-fashioned girl I know.”

The sound of her sigh carried over to him. “Well, maybe not in some ways, but in others...”

“Let’s stick to sex,” he insisted before she could go on. “You mentioned you’re not a virgin
anymore.”

She raised her head with a start, her eyes going indignantly wide. “I’m twenty-seven years old!
What do you expect?”

He held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not criticizing—”

“Of course you’re not, because you dislike virgins so much.”

Man, she remembered everything. It earned another laugh from him, but he had to get back on
track and make his point, because it was important. “I’m just saying that what I know about you and sex kinda tells me that you...”

She propped up on her elbows, looking thoroughly pissed now. “That I what?”

Tread carefully here, dude. “That you, uh... well, don’t hold sex to be a... sacred act or
anything.”

She shot back up, directly into the pale beam cast through the window by the security light. Her
eyes blazed and her chest heaved within a thin top of light green, the ridges of her breasts
bowing from the low neckline. “How dare you!”

So now he was getting the ‘How dare you.’ Feeling the instant need to calm her down, he
made a swift move up onto the bed, grabbing her hands in his. “Honey, honey, honey—I’m
not criticizing, really. I don’t treat it like a sacred act, either. It is what it is—what two people do
when they’re attracted to each other. I’m just saying it sounds weird to me, if you’ve had sex with other guys, that you wouldn’t just go ahead and do it with the guy you’re marrying, too. Just to... take a test-drive, if nothing else—make sure everything goes okay.”

With eyes narrowed venomously, she withdrew one hand from his to shove a wayward lock of
hair behind her ear. She let him keep holding the other. “You seem to have an awfully vested
interest in my impending marriage.”

The words sank to his gut. He did seem to care an awful lot, now that she mentioned it. So he was honest with her. “I just don’t want to see you end up unhappy.”

She glowered at him, looking incredulous. “My God, are you listening to yourself? You
haven’t seen me for ten years, then you swim up onto my beach today and suddenly think you
know enough about me to assume I’m making some sort of mistake?”

She was right about that. Logically. Only she couldn’t see it from his angle. She couldn’t see
the doubt in her expression when she’d talked about this guy earlier; she couldn’t hear the
slightly flustered sound to her voice—then, and now. And she definitely couldn’t see the heat
that had flashed in her eyes when flirting with him over dinner, the same heat he’d once seen a
long time ago. For him, not some other guy.
And from a different girl, he might buy some claim about waiting for marriage as a romantic
gesture—but not from Kat. He’d never had sex with Kat, but one thing he knew about her
instinctively—she loved sex. She was into sex, she wanted sex, she wasn’t afraid of sex. So he
just couldn’t believe that if this guy was really the man of her dreams she wouldn’t have
hopped into bed with him by now.

Despite all that, though, he simply said, “Okay, you’re right. It’s none of my business. Forget I
said anything.” He didn’t drop the hand he still held, though, and she didn’t pull it away as he
looked into her eyes and said, “But just tell me something, Kat. Just tell me, again, that you
love the guy.”

“I do,” she said softly, with a quick nod and eyes trying hard to convince.

Only you don’t, kitten. You look like a deer in headlights right now, and whether it’s any of
my business or not, I know you don’t love him. I see it in your eyes, and I feel it in my bones.

Yet the expression on her face made him so sad for her, deep down inside, that he couldn’t
bring himself to keep pushing this right now; he couldn’t be that mean. He forced a teasing
smile instead. “So, now that I’m in bed with you, can I stay?”

She blinked, and finally drew her hand away. “No.” Then she pointed. “Back to your
mattress.”

He cast a dry look. “Even the peasants had straw.”
“Wash up onto a better-appointed island next time.”

One last shot. It was late, and he was exhausted—but she looked too adorable in that little
pajama top, and he had started wondering what she wore on the bottom now. And her face had
softened just enough for him to detect that blessed little bit of temptation he’d been hoping to
bring back into those blue eyes.

Brock lifted his hand to gently brush the hair out of her face and back behind her ear because it
had fallen free again, then brought his palm to rest warmly on her cheek. He waited to hear her
snap some objection or push his arm away, but it was clear she felt the touch as much as he did
—sensation spiraled down through him as keenly as if he’d just pressed his whole body

against hers. Damn, how was that even possible?

Their eyes met, held. The need inside him grew heavy, and if the room hadn’t been bathed in
darkness, she might have seen how hard he was for her through his shorts. I want you, baby—
so, so much.

He kept looking at her, thankful for the shaft of light shining in from outside, just enough that
he could see the anguished longing in her eyes and knew she could see the smoldering desire in
his.