After Midnight

“You’re very big,” she remarked.

He chuckled. “Tall. Not big.”

“You are,” she argued. “I’m five foot five and you tower over me.”

“I’m barely six foot two,” he told her. “You’re a shrimp, that’s why I seem big to you.”

“Watch your mouth, buster, I’m not through growing yet,” she said pertly, cutting her sparkling eyes up at him.

He chuckled. “Smart mouth.”

“Smart, period, thank you so much.”

“Now that we both know you won’t sleep with me, can we hold hands? Mine are cold.”

“I might have suspected there would be an ulterior motive,” she mentioned. But all the same, she took her left hand out of her pocket and let him fold it under his warm fingers.

“You aren’t cold,” she protested.

“Sure I am. You just can’t tell.” His fingers tightened, and he smiled at the faint flush on her cheeks as the exercise began to tell on her. “You ninety-seven-pound-weakling,” he chided. “Can’t you keep up with me?”

“Normally I could run rings around you,” she said heavily. “But I’m getting over a bout of pneumonia.”

He stopped abruptly, scowling. “Idiot! You don’t need to be out in this early morning chill! Why didn’t you say something?”

His concern made her heart lift. “It’s been a week since I got out of bed,” she assured him. “And I haven’t been sitting home idle all that time.”

“You haven’t done much exercising, either, have you?”

“Not really,” she admitted. The help she’d given with the Spoleto Festival had involved a lot of telephone calls and assistance that she could give sitting down. Her strength was still lagging behind her will.

“What a waif and stray it is, and it hasn’t much of a mind at times, either,” he murmured softly.

She started to take offense when he moved suddenly and swept her into his warm, strong arms. He turned and started walking back the way they’d come.

Nikki was totally breathless with surprised delight. It was the first time in her life that she’d experienced a man’s strength in this way. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling of vulnerability it gave her, and that doubt was in her eyes when they met his at close range.

“I can see the words right there on the tip of your tongue,” he said softly, his deep voice faintly accented and very tender as he smiled at her. “But don’t say them. Put your arms around me and lie close to my chest while I carry you.”

Shades of a romantic movie, she thought wildly. But the odd thing was that she obeyed him without question, without hesitation. There was a breathy little sigh escaping from her. She dropped her eyes to his throat, where thick hair showed in the opening, and she felt a sweet swelling in her body as he drew her relentlessly closer. Her face ended up in the hot curve of his throat, her arms close around his neck.

“Nikki,” he said in a rough, husky voice, and his arms suddenly contracted, crushing her soft breasts against the wall of his chest as he turned toward the car.

It was no longer a teasing or tender embrace. Her nails were biting into his shoulders as he walked, and she felt the closeness in every single pore of her body. Her breasts had gone hard-tipped, her heart was throbbing. Low in her stomach, she felt a heat and hunger that was totally without precedent.

“Oh, baby,” he whispered suddenly, and she felt his open mouth quite suddenly on the softness of her throat where her tank top left it bare to her collarbone.

She closed her eyes with a shaky gasp. The wind blew her hair around her face and cooled the heat in her cheeks. He was warm and strong and he smelled of spices. She wanted him to strip her out of her clothes and put his warm, hard mouth on her breasts and her belly and the inside of her thighs. She wanted him to put her down on the beach and make love to her under the sky.

With a total disregard for safety and sanity, her hand tangled in the thick, wavy hair at the back of his head and she pulled his mouth down to the soft curve under her collarbone.

Chapter Four

Kane’s head was spinning, but when Nikki coaxed his mouth down, he came to his senses with a jolt. It was a public beach, for God’s sake, and he was a man who didn’t need this sort of complication!

He jerked his face up and put her down abruptly. He stepped back, trying not to show how shaken he was. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything so powerful. He looked into her dazed, misty, half-closed green eyes.

She was shaken, too, and unable to hide it. His lips had almost been touching her bare skin when he’d withdrawn them. She felt as if she’d been left in limbo, but she had to keep her head.

“Thank you,” she said. “I knew that you could save me from myself,” she managed with irrepressible spirit.

He smiled in spite of himself. “I suppose I did. But I’d never have believed it of myself. I’m not one to throw away opportunities, and you have a mouth like a ripe apple.”

“I’m thrilled that you think so.”

He burst out laughing, absolutely delighted. “In that case, don’t you want to come with me to a quiet, deserted place?”

“Of course I do.” She pushed back her disheveled hair. “But we’ve already agreed that it wouldn’t be sensible.”

“You agreed. I didn’t.”

She was having trouble with her legs. They didn’t want to move. And the throbbing need in her body was getting worse, not better. How ironic of her to suddenly explode with passion for a man after all this time, and the man had to be her brother’s worst enemy in the world!

“Stop tempting me to do sordid things,” she told him firmly. She pushed back her disheveled hair. “I’ll have you know that I’m a virtuous woman.”

“That may not last if you spend much time around me. How about going sailing with me?”

Her hand poised above her hair. “Sailing?”

“Your eyes lit up. Do you like sailing?” he asked.

“I love it!”

He chuckled. “I’ll pick you up early tomorrow.” He paused. “If you’re free?”

She knew what he was asking. He meant, would her “live-in lover” mind?

“He isn’t jealous,” she said with a slow smile.

“Isn’t he?”

His dark eyes sketched her face and he began to worry. He knew he was losing his grasp on reality, to take this sort of chance. She appealed to him physically. That was all. There was an added threat. What if she found out who he was?

His own apprehension amused him. What if she did, for God’s sake? What could she do, blackmail him because they’d spend an innocent night together?

“The man I live with and I…we have an…open relationship,” she assured him.

“I hope you aren’t entertaining ideas that I might be willing to take his place,” he said slowly. “I enjoy your company, and I find you very attractive. But I’m not in the market for a lover. I already have one.”