Wicked Sexy

She’d grown up, too, though. She’d left the island behind her and earned her finance degree from UCLA. She’d analyzed risks for Fortune 500 companies and then suggested ways to manage those risks, earning her way to the top of the consulting firm she worked for. Right now, however, the biggest risk of all was standing in front of her, and she refused to let him leave her tongue-tied. “Hello, Daeg.”

“Dani.” Her name was a rough growl on his lips. Was that a hint of something deeper in those watchful eyes of his? He was eyeing her, she realized, like she was dangerous.

The sensation was intoxicating.

And infuriating.

She hated how anger and desire competed inside her, leaving her uncertain and wanting. Mostly, she wanted to leave him standing there alone on the beach. Daeg Ross was wicked temptation, but as she reminded herself again, she’d grown up a long time ago. Maybe this meeting was a chance encounter, a handful of seconds soon over. But then his eyes were taking in her body, making her insides clench with need, and that definitely made her mad. How could he just look at her and the years fell away?

She wanted more. More memories. She should be the one to leave this time, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He’d upended her whole world ten years ago with a simple kiss, but she still hadn’t learned her lesson.

The fact was, she still wanted Daeg Ross.

* * *

SHE WATCHED DAEG the entire two weeks of his leave, never getting up the nerve to approach him. He was five years older than she was, but decades older in terms of experience. She knew that. She knew there were at least a dozen good reasons why she shouldn’t go near him.

But she hoped.

And when he found her walking on the beach that night, after her prom date ditched her, she was glad. The whispers about his rough past before he’d come to the island didn’t scare her. He was big and sun-darkened, his hair cut close to his scalp with military precision. All the time he’d spent training in the water had given him broad, powerful shoulders, and she wanted to put her hands on those shoulders and hang on, because she knew he could take her with him, take her somewhere special.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Daeg told her, and concern filled his voice. “It’s late, Dani-girl.”

That smoky voice aroused her past a point of no return. “I don’t care.” She didn’t. Tonight was supposed to be magical and yet her date had been a dud, showing more interest in his friends and their bootleg six-pack of beer than in her.

Daeg looked down at her, and she wondered what he saw. “You should.”

“It’s late.” She used his own words on him. “You should walk with me.”

He frowned, but wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. At first, their bare feet splashed through the surf. She’d ditched her heels back where the steps cut down from the road to the sand, but her dress dragged in the water. She’d chosen the dress for its lavender color, the color of crocuses and bubble bath. The yards of tulle and sequins had winked at her from the rack in the store. When she’d tried it on she felt like a princess.

So far, the night had yielded none of that magic.

Later, she wasn’t sure if she’d stopped to check out the stars and everything else had just happened—or if she’d dropped her head back, turned toward him.

He groaned something—her name, she’d decided afterward, replaying the memory of it in her mind—and the arm around her shoulders brought her impossibly closer toward him. She went willingly into his arms, her body pressing into his full-on. He bent his head and his mouth met hers.

This was what she wanted, what she’d been waiting for.

Daeg’s mouth was everything she’d dreamed about and more. Some delicious, new sensation tugged at her.

He took charge of their kiss and her. When the incoming surf caught the backs of her knees, her mouth opened on a gasp and he swept inside. The rough, masculine taste and texture of his lips and tongue sent an unfamiliar pleasure rocketing through her.

He guided her from the water and down onto the sand. Covering her, he cupped her head gently in his hands as he devoured her mouth. Don’t stop, she begged silently, entranced by the feel of him, the weight of his big body pressed against hers.

He kissed her and kissed her and she didn’t know where the kiss might have taken them because she recognized instinctively that he was as lost as she was, but then the surf broke over their feet. The cold water was a shock. She shivered and he cursed, rolling off her.

“This is a bad idea, Dani. Go home.”

Confused, she reached for him, but he shoved to his feet. He held out a hand to help her up. However, he was back to being a stranger.

A stranger she’d kissed on the beach.

She had sand in her hair, on her legs. The sodden weight of the dress pulled at her and she didn’t feel like a princess anymore. The magic abruptly vanished from the night.

“Go home,” he repeated harshly. “You drive here, Dani?”

Mutely, she nodded.

“I’ll follow you home,” he said. “Make sure you get inside okay.”

“And then?” She needed there to be something more. Tonight couldn’t end like this.

He shrugged and then shook his head. “There is nothing more, Dani. This was just a kiss.”

* * *

TEN YEARS LATER, on the same beach, the man of her dreams was watching her again, and he sure didn’t sound as if their parting had done a number on him. Of course, he’d been every bit as eager to get off the island as she’d been to stay. She’d lost count of the number of states she’d lived in growing up. Her father would move them to New York one year for a big real estate deal, followed the next by Florida for a condo development her father had been sure would be the investment of a lifetime. Six months after that, they’d headed to Nevada because the Florida project was bankrupt. Ranches in Wyoming, a ski resort in Vermont... Her father had tried them all, ending, of course, with California because the Golden State had a white-hot real estate market. Summers on Discovery Island had been the one sure, stable thing in her life.

He scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “It’s been a while.”

“Has it?” she asked sweetly, instead of telling him to get lost. Something about Daeg Ross sent her straight back to her younger self. That part of her wanted to tease, to coax or to even hurt him the way he’d hurt her.

The adult part wanted to kiss him again.

Her taste in her men was clearly suspect. The guy she’d been engaged to for two years had become Mr. Wrong. And he’d excused his own infidelity by claiming she was terrible in bed. No matter how she looked at it, her love life was either a disaster or a disappointment. Take your pick. She was supposed to be on Discovery Island having hot, raunchy honeymoon sex in Sweet Moon’s finest suite. Instead, she was holding down the fort while her grandparents sailed down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a cruise to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. They were undoubtedly having hot, raunchy second-honeymoon sex—which she was so not thinking about.

No more men, she insisted. Eventually, when she was ready to put her ex-fiancé behind her and start dating again, men like the soldier facing her wouldn’t make her list. Military men were outrageously built and beautiful, but they’d never be keepers. They shipped out, moved on and did everything but stay.

He peered down at her, and those eyes of his were hard. He’d seen things, done things. Those tours of duty had changed him. Well, she’d changed, too. She wasn’t that innocent girl walking along the beach.

Not anymore.

“Ten years,” he said, as if their timeline—or lack of one—was a challenge he was throwing down. “It’s been ten years, Dani.”

Numbers had always made sense to her. She was an actuary, which meant she turned risks into something you could calculate. In her world, loss was a formula and all you had to do was hold enough assets in reserve to offset those losses. Daeg lived in a different world, by different rules. Where she calculated risks, he took them.

Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know you were counting.”

Counting implied caring, and he’d never cared about her.

* * *

DAEG HADN’T COUNTED. Not every minute. But he thought about her more than he should have. He’d wanted to come back here to Discovery and finish what they’d started. He’d wanted to push that cupcake of a gown down her body. Touch her. Learn every lovely inch of her, inside and out.

She’d been too young.

She was a woman now. No longer a girl. She’d have had lovers. He captured her hand in his, entwining her pale, slim fingers with his. He noticed she didn’t have a ring.