Captain's Paradise (18 page)

Robin stared at him for a moment, then glanced toward the end of the pier at the boats tied there. At, in particular, Michael’s boat. She looked back at her father and smiled, realizing what was going on. “What does Michael say?”

Daniel grimaced slightly. “That it’s up to you. He isn’t the kind of man to make the tough decisions for a woman, no matter how he feels about her.”

That had been Robin’s intuition about Michael, but she was glad to have it confirmed. Her own nature was far too independent to allow anyone else—even the man she loved—to make those “tough” decisions for her. “If I’d wanted safety, Dad, I would never have fallen in love with Michael. I’m staying here with him.”

Daniel wasn’t surprised. “That’s what I thought.” He hugged her again. “Watch yourself, honey.”

“I will. ’Bye, Dad.”

She stood there until the cutter roared off,
then turned and went back to the house. Michael was still on the deck, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he watched her approach.

When she reached him, he said quietly, “You should have gone with your father, Robin.”

She met his steady gaze without flinching, even managing a smile. “Should I have? Why? Because your boat tied out there is as good as a flag in case Sutton comes looking? Because the house here is a mile or so from the Maze, and far from the girls, isolated, and a dandy place for an ambush or a trap? Is that why I should have gone with Dad?”

“The odds are against his coming here,” Michael said. “But there’s always a chance.”

“I’m staying, Michael.” She braced herself. “Unless you want me to go … for other reasons.”

After a long moment he reached out and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. “No, I don’t want you to go,” he said huskily. “I want you with me.”

Robin pulled back just a little and smiled up at
him, content for now with the small victory. “Good. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. Let’s eat.”

If Michael thought clearly at all during the next few days, it was always of Robin. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. And it wasn’t just their lovemaking, although that grew more unbelievably explosive with every touch. And each time they made love, it was as if they each knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there would never be another time, ever, for either of them. As if they were greedy. As if they had both learned that the only certain tomorrow was today, right now, this minute.

Still, it was more than passion Michael felt for Robin, more than simple desire. Or even complex, greedy desire. Just being with her satisfied a hunger he had never felt before. Watching her, listening to her voice, feeling the effect of her smile and her laugh. She had gotten under his skin in a way no woman ever had, and with
every passing day he found it more and more difficult to guard himself from her.

But he tried, wary of feeling or inflicting pain, unwilling to hurt her or himself. He tried.

The helicopter came on schedule each afternoon to take them to Fort Myers. Robin visited the other girls but insisted Michael spend what time he could alone with Lisa. It was little enough right now, she said, and he and his sister needed each other.

He didn’t protest.

At the house they spent the remainder of their days together getting to know each other in ways they hadn’t been able to explore before. Likes and dislikes, habits and hobbies; they found out about each other in the ways people always had, by observing and asking questions.

The suddenness of their relationship had caught each of them unprepared, and the dangerous situation they’d been caught up in had provided a kind of intimacy that had forced them to accept each other more or less on faith; because of that there were few inhibitions between
them, and a casual camaraderie that was a direct result of what they had been through together. Those feelings, recent but unusually strong, were a solid base for friendship; the passion between them, equally recent and more powerful than anything either had felt before, made them inevitable lovers.

But even though this shared experience of danger had drawn them close together, had even made it impossible for many of the usual barriers between virtual strangers to exist, it had created barriers of its own. And they were the kind of barriers that couldn’t be broken through; they had to be lowered, voluntarily, by each of them.

That was the hard part.

“It’s almost like paradise,” Robin said, three days after they had arrived at the house, as they stood on the deck gazing out over the ocean.

Michael, who had been automatically quartering the horizon, searching for anything threatening, looked at her for a moment and then back
at the view, seeing it through her eyes. “I guess it is,” he agreed, gazing at the peaceful ocean dotted in the distance with small islands.

She smiled up at him, but said, “You don’t see paradise very often, do you?”

He turned his back to the view, leaning on the waist-high railing as he looked at her steadily. “No. But how often is it really there?”

She understood. “Always some darkness under the surface? Some shadow hanging over it?”

“Not always. But the potential is there.”

“Your life has taught you that,” she agreed.

“What about your life? What have you been taught?”

Robin took the question seriously, as it was obviously meant that way. “That paradise isn’t less than itself just because there’s a serpent or two lurking under the bushes. We always seem to want perfection in theory, but we’d be bored silly with it in reality. And bored silly without something to fight against … or for.”

Michael was smiling faintly. “Did Daniel teach you that?”

“I guess he did.” She thought about it. “By example, I suppose. We’ve never talked about it. All these years of fighting the bad guys, yet Dad never got cynical about it. He never talked the way you hear some cops talk, about being garbage men, or keepers of the zoo. He always acted and talked as if the world were a great place with just a few troublesome serpents in the bushes. No problem at all. That amazing optimism seemed to give him part of his strength. And I guess it was one of the reasons why I …”

“Had all those misconceptions about heroes?” Michael finished for her.

Robin shook her head a little bemusedly, still coming to terms with that particular demon. “Well, those serpents scared
me
to death. It seemed so fearless just to pick up a stick and start bashing the snakes.”

“That’s what you did on the yacht,” he reminded her.

“But I didn’t think about it—” She broke off abruptly, realizing for the first time what had happened.

Michael nodded. “That’s right. You didn’t think about it. You just did it. You had a job to do, and you did what it took to get the job done. You didn’t freeze up; you didn’t let fear paralyze you. What you were most afraid of never happened, Robin. And it never will.”

Since that day on the yacht, there had quite literally been no time to think about her almost lifelong fear of freezing up, of getting someone killed because she was paralyzed with fear. Robin had been preoccupied with her growing feelings for Michael, and although she’d told her father about those fears, she hadn’t had a chance to re-examine them since the assault on the yacht.

She looked up at Michael, realizing something else suddenly. “That’s why you never protested when I said I’d go with you and Dane. Even though I was a liability—”

“No, you weren’t a liability. You had the skills, the training, and the will to get the job done. I knew that, honey. But you didn’t. And it was something you had to find out for yourself.”

“You took an awful chance,” she whispered. “Those girls … Lisa. I could have frozen, I could have—”

“But you
didn’t
. And I knew you wouldn’t. I’ve spent too much of my life weighing people not to know strength and courage when I see it.”

Before Robin could say anything, he was going on, his voice roughening a bit.

“I didn’t want you on that boat, Robin. I didn’t want you in danger. The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to watch you disappear down those stairs. But I had to. Knowing you were capable and skilled, knowing you wanted to—and had to—took that choice out of my hands.”

“You had to fight your own … chivalry?” she managed unsteadily.

He looked into those heartbreaking green eyes, and had to swallow hard before he could answer. “No. No, it wasn’t chivalry. I’ve sent women into dangerous situations before. This business teaches you to value skill and ability irrespective of sex. Professionally I had no qualms.”

“And personally?” Robin was almost holding her breath, knowing that this was it. She hadn’t dared push, hadn’t dared question, but if Michael was still unwilling to lower that final barrier after these last days together, then she had lost.

“Personally …” He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then straightened abruptly away from the railing. His hands reached to grasp her shoulders hard, and his voice grated over the words. “The last thing I wanted was to watch the woman I loved going into danger.”

For a moment Robin couldn’t move or speak. She stared up into gray eyes that burned in a way she’d never seen before—unshuttered, raw. And then she went into his arms with a sound of joy that was almost a sob.

“I bet on the long shot, honey,” Michael said huskily, holding her tightly against him. “You were one bet I couldn’t find a way to hedge.”

“I love you,” she whispered, her arms around his lean waist, feeling his heart pounding against her.

“I love you, Robin.” He swept her up into his
arms, carrying her through the open French doors and up the stairs to their bedroom as easily as if she weighed nothing. The admission of love had broken something in Michael, that final wall, crashing it into rubble. And though that inner destruction seemed a violent thing, what it freed in Michael was a depth of tenderness he hadn’t guessed he was capable of.

He set her gently on her feet by the bed and began unbuttoning her blouse, concentrating fiercely on the task. He wanted her as wildly as he always did, yet this time some compulsion drove him to rein that primitive desire. And Robin seemed to sense that in him, seemed to understand; though always instantly responsive and quick to reach for buttons herself, this time she stood perfectly still, her wondering eyes fixed on his face.

He pushed the brightly colored blouse off her shoulders, catching his breath as the late afternoon sunlight painted her bare breasts in gold and shadows. She had gotten used to not wearing a bra, she’d told him, and the frilly things in
her reclaimed luggage had remained packed. His hands found her narrow waist, and he bent slowly, trailing his lips down her throat and between her breasts. He eased his weight down on the bed and drew her a step closer, until she stood between his knees, trembling, her breath coming quickly.

He was fascinated by the play of the sun on her, by the silky texture of her flesh, by the contrast of dark nipples against creamy pale skin. His hands cupped her breasts, his senses flaring at the sensual weight. The rough pads of his thumbs brushed her tightening nipples rhythmically while his tongue stroked the shadowed valley slowly. He could feel her hands tangle in his hair, and in his hands her breasts swelled, filling with the blood of passion.

His hands slid down over her rib cage, her waist, finding the rough material of her cutoff jeans, and his mouth moved slowly over a quivering mound until he captured a hard nipple and drew it strongly inward. He could feel her shiver, hear the low, throaty moan that escaped her
lips. He was hungry, filled with a want that could never be completely satisfied, and the taste of her just sharpened the craving.

He found the snap of her jeans and opened it blindly, his mouth moving slowly from one breast to the other. The shorts were pushed down over her hips and slipped to the floor, and his fingers delighted in the slippery friction of her silken panties between his flesh and hers. Then they were brushed gently down her hips, and pooled with the shorts around her ankles, until Robin automatically stepped free of them.

Michael’s hands slid over her rounded buttocks, shaped the slim hips, trailed down trembling thighs. His lips remained at her breasts, nipping gently with his teeth, soothing with his tongue, sucking the hard, aching nipples until Robin could hardly bear it. Her shaking legs refused to support her any longer, and she slumped against him with a whimper. Instantly he lifted her until she was astride him, her knees on either side of him on the bed, and the heavy material of
his jeans was a rough caress against her sensitive inner thighs.

She held on to him desperately, her eyes closed as waves of heat swept over her, feeling her very consciousness dim, narrow in its focus until there was only him, only him and the incredible sensations he was rousing in her body.

Michael held her tightly against him, his arms around her, hands roaming over her, caressing wherever they touched. Every time his teasing mouth closed over her sensitized nipples, she cried out softly and jerked, until finally she was writhing against him, the sensual tension he had built inside her reaching a sweet, unbearable agony.

“Michael …” Her voice was a shaking, helpless plea, beyond thought.

And he responded instantly. Half rising, turning, he tumbled her back onto the bed. His mouth trailed down over her quivering belly while his hands gentled her shaking thighs and slipped under her to cup her buttocks.

His mouth was fire on her flesh, and Robin
was burning, consumed, and she wanted more. She couldn’t hold her body still, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t beg him to stop or not to stop; she couldn’t do anything except feel, her nerves on fire, mindless and lost. The aching throb of need filled her whole being, and then his mouth found that core of pulsing heat, and Robin cried out wildly, her body arching. It was too much, it wasn’t enough, her senses shattered, flinging her. And then she was boneless, dissolving, like sugar melted for candy.

She opened her eyes at last, focusing on him, realizing he was standing by the bed and she’d been too dazed to feel him move. He was stripping rapidly, his burning eyes fixed on her. Her thudding heart skipped a beat, and she felt the ebbing heat inside her renew itself under his passionate gaze. Before she could move, he was with her again, pulling her legs high around him and sinking his flesh deeply into hers.