Real Men Do It Better (34 page)

The boat was gone and they were stranded in the middle of the deep blue sea. Just the two of them.

All alone with the potent aphrodisiac of the Siren’s Call.

*   *   *

They swam for Dead Man’s Island.

The impending storm whipped the waters. Annie felt a bizarre exhilaration. She should have been upset that their boat pilot had taken off and left them bobbing in the middle of the ocean. Instead, all she could think about was how sexy the water made her feel as it splashed across her body. And how happy she was to be here with Duncan.

Her skin heated, her nerve endings tingled. Just looking at the hunky man beside her made her pussy ache with need. The Siren’s Call was doing its dastardly deed. Making her throb for a man who was no good for her.

Additional clouds hunched on the horizon, darkening the sky. Lightning flashed. Annie shivered as her desire became a living thing, burning like a torch inside her. They stumbled onto the sandy beach in their swim fins. Annie thought of the sexy movies she’d seen with people making hot frantic love on the beach. Her mouth watered.

Duncan seemed to be feeling the effects of the mermaid idol, too. He was looking at her with the sultriest eyes she’d ever seen, heavy-lidded and dark with sexual need.

Annie gulped. She could tell it took everything inside Duncan not to jerk her into his arms and kiss her mouth raw.
Do it,
she mentally dared him.
Do it, do it, do it.

“We have to get to shelter.” He nodded at the sky. He looked like Neptune in the wetsuit. Big and strong and bronze. Water dripping from his hair.

“Where?” She scanned the beach.

“Inland. There’re cliffs and overhanging rocks.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“I studied a map of the island.”

Prudence. She hadn’t expected that of him. Maybe Duncan had changed. She cocked her head and studied him. He looked different. Solid, more peaceful than before. Hope sprouted inside, took root, and grew. Maybe they could turn back time and start fresh. Maybe they could revive their lost friendship.

Be careful,
she warned herself. Those are dangerous thoughts.

They stripped off their swim fins, oxygen tanks, and diving mask, and found a safe spot to leave them on the beach along with Duncan’s harpoon, out of reach of the rising tide. They headed inland, their feet sinking into the damp sand. The cooling air was rife with electrically charged ions, and goose bumps danced along Annie’s arms.

The storm was rolling in fast. Lightning flared again, hot and brilliant in the dark blue sky.

Duncan led the way, the Siren’s Call inside his diving bag banging against his thick, muscular thigh clad in the sleek black material of his dive suit. His shaggy, damp hair curled against his head. Here walked the King of the Sea.

Her stomach tightened, sending sexy messages shooting straight to her pussy. She tried to ignore them, but she knew she was in trouble. Stranded. Alone. With an incredibly hot-bodied man and a magical mermaid idol with the potency of an aphrodisiac.

Duncan pushed back the overgrowth, clearing the way for her. By the time they’d walked half a mile into the tropical forest, the storm was swirling overhead and fat drops of rain were splattering against the palm fronds.

“Look there.” He pointed to an outcropping rising out of a stony bluff. It overhung a nice alcove, providing shelter from the storm. “Crawl under.”

She ducked her head and slipped beneath the cliff. Duncan didn’t follow. Instead, he slipped the utility knife from his pocket and began slashing at palm fronds.

“What are you doing?” she called, the wind whipping so loudly she had to shout to be heard.

Duncan didn’t answer, just kept slashing at the fronds until he had collected a large pile. He gathered them up and strolled toward her. He looked down at her, and she looked up at him as the ache inside her grew to fever pitch.

She saw the pulse pounding in his neck and she felt a corresponding throb between her legs. There was too much rubber between them. She wanted him naked. Now. Biting into her lip to suppress that crazy thought, she dropped her gaze.

“Scoot over,” he commanded.

When she did, he laid the palm fronds out across the rock slab, cushioning it.

“Strip.”

“I beg your pardon.” She bristled.

“Take off your wetsuit.”

“I will not.”

“You can’t sit around in it. Besides, we can use the wetsuits to pad the palm fronds.”

He had a point. What was comfortable in the water was miserably clingy and hot on shore. She had to leave the protective overhang in order to stand up. Duncan loomed over her, breathing hard and heavy, watching her shimmy out of her wetsuit as rain pelted their skin and lightning danced through the clouds.

“Turn your head,” she said, feeling vulnerable and exposed.

“What for, Annie? I’ve seen you naked before.”

“I’m not naked. I have on a swimsuit.”

His eyes blazed with overt sexual desire.

“I mean it.” She tapped her foot.

“Afraid the Siren’s Call will send me into a lust-filled frenzy at the sight of your bare skin?”

“Something like that.”

He laughed.

“You’re such a tease,” she groused.

“Admit it, you like that about me.” He wriggled his eyebrows.

She did indeed, but she wasn’t about to admit it. She snapped her fingers and pointed in the opposite direction. “Avert your gaze.”

He pretended to look away, but the minute she went to work on the zipper of her wetsuit she could feel his eyes on her again. She chose to ignore him, peeling the wetsuit off her body like it was a banana skin.

Duncan audibly sucked in his breath, and belatedly Annie realized the top of her bikini had shifted underneath the wetsuit and one of her breasts was hanging out.

She snapped her head around and met Duncan’s gaze.

The look in his eye was so feral, so wild and hungry, she could scarcely breathe. He was the only man who’d ever looked at her with that much raw desire. It was a scary thing to acknowledge. Did she really hold that much sexual power over him? Before she had time to explore this new realization, a fresh clap of thunder brought a downpour. She tucked her breast back inside her bikini top and tossed him her wetsuit.

He had taken off his wetsuit, too. God, he looked so good with those washboard abs. He laid their wetsuits atop the palm fronds, sat down, and held out his hand to her.

In spite of her doubts about what was happening between them, she took his hand and crawled up under the overhang beside him.

He wrapped one big strong arm around her waist and stretched them both out across the length of their makeshift bed. He nestled her into the curve of his body, her bottom pressed against his pelvis. She felt the determined poke of his cock through his swimsuit, but he made no move to take things further. They lay together, watching the rain tumble.

Annie tried to deny the desire pushing up through her, closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on something other than the need knotting her entire body.

They breathed in tandem. Close. Snug. Pressed together. But Duncan did not make a move on her.

Why wasn’t he making a move on her? What in the hell was wrong with the man? How was he staying so controlled? He’d never been this controlled before.

He
had
changed.

And the more restraint he showed, the more desperate she became to have him. Oh, fuck this.

She wanted him and she was going to have him. She wasn’t so young and naïve anymore, expecting happily-ever-after from a man who could never promise it. She was going to enjoy the sex for good sex’s sake and not read any more into the encounter. The Siren’s Call might be responsible for her uncontrollable horniness, but this time she knew what she was getting into. It was just sex and she was in control. This time, she’d keep her heart safe.

“Let me see the Siren’s Call. I want to see her up close.”

He sat up. She felt him rummaging around in his diving bag and a second later he was leaning over her, dangling the idol in front of her. She claimed it.

Here was the enemy.

The Siren’s Call stared at her through sultry, somnolent eyes, stirring her hormones, daring her to forget her pride, urging her to block out the chatter in her brain for one minute and listen to the throb of her hot, wet pussy.

Do it. Fuck this man. You know you want to. It doesn’t have to mean happily-ever-after, just happily-ever-now.

Her body responded in a gush, chemicals colliding, expanding. She felt a racy sense of exuberance, of a glorious feminine power. When she’d made love to Duncan the first time she’d been a shy virgin. But no more.

She was a woman indulging her sexuality. Like froth on the ocean’s tide, captured by the pull of the moon, carried by the swell of pheromones, mesmerized by the lure of the Siren’s Call, she let herself be swept away. Setting the idol aside, she rolled onto her back on the bed of palm fronds and wetsuits.

Duncan was propped up on one elbow, his head just inches below the top of the overhang. “I know exactly what you need,” he murmured.

Normally she wouldn’t have let him get away with sounding so cocky, but she wanted him so much, and her aching clit was just throbbing for his caress. “Oh, yeah?”

He winked wickedly.

She swallowed great thick gulps of air. “What’s that?”

“You need to be cherished by a man who knows how to take care of you.”

She wasn’t going to let him turn this into something romantic. “Wrong, I need your hard, hot cock, and I need it now.”

He looked taken aback, but just for a moment. A smug smile curled his lips. “Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

“Hurry, hurry, I can’t stand waiting.”

“That starved are you, Harvard?”

“You have no idea.”

“The Siren’s Call strikes again. Unfortunately she’s played a cruel trick on us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No condoms.”

Dammit! The Siren’s Call had made her so irrational she hadn’t even thought of protection. Annie bit her bottom lip and then smiled provocatively. “Um … there are other things we could do.”

“Why, Annie Graves, what are you suggesting?” He pretended to be shocked.

Her pussy was already slicked up and juicy for him. The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice was driving her to distraction.

The overhanging rock cast his face in shadows. He looked savage, primitive. His high cheekbones appeared razor-sharp, his lips full and foreboding, his chin a cleft darkened by beard stubble. For a moment, the man she had known since she was thirteen looked like a total stranger.

The sensation skyrocketed her arousal. Her erogenous triggers went off, nipples pebbling, womb contracting, every nerve ending taking note of this strong, determined male.

“You look like you’re about to go on a salvage dive, Duncan. That’s the only other time I’ve seen such focus on your face.”

“I am on a salvage dive, babe,” he teased, and she caught his meaning. He slipped a hand between her thighs, which she had pressed tightly together, just above her knees. “Going after the treasure I lost.”

Every muscle in her body clamped down hard, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from moaning.

“Go ahead.” His voice lowered, went huskier, just like in her dream. “Moan all you want. There’s no one around to hear you but me. Ah, the things I’m going to do to you.”

Things? What things? A dozen stimulating images tumbled through her head.

Keeping his hand wedged between her thighs, Duncan twisted his body around until his head was resting at her feet and his own bare toes were rubbing against her hair. He dusted off her feet, dispersing the fine grains of sand clinging to her skin, and then slowly took her big toe into his hot mouth.

“Oh, Duncan,” she breathed. The sensation was so erotic. “You’ve acquired a toe fetish, you big perv.”

He suckled her toe while his hand tickled the inside of her thigh. She let her knees drop outward, giving him easier access. He made a noise of satisfaction, took his fingers and massaged the sole of her foot as he continued to lap at her toes.

What a feeling!

He must have hit some kind of reflexology trigger point because a glorious sensation shot through the bottom of her foot, straight up into her clenching womb. Automatically, her hips arched up off the ground. A desperate keening cry slipped past her lips. She fisted her hands, swept away like a boat in a storm, as his mouth left her toes and trailed up her right leg, his fingers gliding over her left.

His tongue was her master, commanding her to moan and squirm and beg as he inched from her ankles to her shin to her kneecap. This was the sexiest thing that had ever happened to her. She had no idea her toes and feet and legs were so sensitive, so desperate for attention. Who would have thought that Duncan’s mouth against her inner thigh would feel so fucking erotic?

He reached up with one hand to touch her bare midriff. His fingers brushed against the pearl at her navel, enlivening things even more. His mouth moved higher and higher up her thigh. One hand was strumming her navel. The other hand was rubbing the back of her kneecap.

Annie was in tumult. She shouldn’t want this. She should resist. Should fight the lure of the Siren’s Call. But she was hamstrung by her desire. Overcome by the passion she tried so hard to deny. All her long-held values and beliefs about life and passion and safety just crumbled. Helplessly, she quivered in his arms.

“You’re more beautiful than ever,” he breathed, pulling his lips from her skin, raising his head, and gazing into her eyes.

Nervously, she reached up to finger her chin.

“Stop doing that,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Touching your chin. The scar doesn’t detract from your beauty one bit.”

“I’m not beautiful,” she denied. “I’m well-rounded, not leggy. I’m short and I have freckles and, of course, there’s this.” She touched the scar again.

“Who says well-rounded and petite and freckled isn’t beautiful?”

“You.”

“When did I ever say that?”