“Do you know of any endangered biota here, in this kipuka?” Chase asked.
His voice was too husky to be quite normal. His fingertip was slowly, lightly caressing the flower. She stared, unable to look away from the intensely feminine flower being so tenderly stroked.
“No, nothing endangered,” she said. Then, silently, she added, Just me. Do I count? I’m on the edge of losing my heart to a man I’ve known only a few days. That qualifies me as endangered, doesn’t it?
No? Then how about stupid?
But it didn’t feel stupid to trust Chase. It felt inevitable, like plants losing their thorns and poisons when they found their gentle Eden. When she was with him, she discovered new things about herself. Each time he touched her, the discoveries multiplied.
Like now. She had just discovered that she was jealous of the flower that was shivering so softly against his fingertip.
“Then it would be all right for us to explore this?” he asked, his voice deep, his eyes watching her rather than the flower.
“Do we have a choice?” she asked huskily.
“There are other kipukas.”
“Not here, not now.”
Gently Chase picked the flower. “You’re right.”
He inhaled the delicate scent on a long breath. Then his tongue flicked out to try the deep, interior smoothness of the blossom, where its yellow shaded into a deep mahogany. Once, twice, three times, he tasted the flower before he caught the edge of a petal with exquisite care between his teeth. After a moment he released the creamy softness. There was no mark to show the sensual testing.
“Very nice,” he said, turning toward her. “Do you know what this is?”
She said the first thing that came to her distracted mind. “A flower.”
A smile curved underneath the midnight slash of his mustache. “You’re sure?” His voice was deep, teasing.
Color crept beneath the golden tan on her cheeks. “It could be a morning glory that doesn’t know it’s nearly noon.”
His smile widened. “Actually, I think it’s a kind of hibiscus.”
She touched one of the curving petals and reined in her muddled thoughts. “Actually, you’re right. The natives call the plant hau and the flower pua. They were reserved for royalty.”
Gently he tucked the blossom into the V of Nicole’s halter before he bent and tasted the flower again. Shivers coursed over her when his black hair and mustache brushed against the rising curve of her breasts.
“I’m going to enjoy finding and tasting all the flowers,” he said, letting his lips drift over her warm golden skin.
“Chase—” she began, her voice trembling.
“That’s what we’re here for, remember?”
“Tasting?” she asked, startled.
“And learning.”
She closed her eyes and thought of all the things Chase Wilcox and this gentle Eden could teach her, wonderful things she had almost given up hope of ever knowing. But no longer. Now she sensed the possibilities trembling within her reach. All she needed was the courage to extend her hand. Herself.
She waited for fear to come at the thought of being as vulnerable as a jacaranda bud. Instead of fear, certainty bloomed as softly as a flower inside her.
If he asked for her, she would give herself to him.
She couldn’t do anything less. If she held back, she would spend the rest of her life wondering what might have been. And all of that time, every hour of it, she would hate herself for not having the courage of the simple living things that changed when they took root in a new, safer place.
There was no reason to hold on to fear any longer. She was his. She had always been his.
She just hadn’t known it until now.
That night, as Chase settled into position behind the drums at the Kipuka Club, he told himself that he had his hunger for Nicole under control. He wanted her, sure. What man wouldn’t? But he was riding the passion rather than having it ride him.
He kept on believing that right up to the moment Pele stepped out onto the small stage. Spotlights turned her skin to molten gold and her unbound hair to fire. Her hips moved with liquid ease, describing sensual arcs that made his blood pool thickly, hotly, focusing and hardening his desire with every heavy beat of his heart.
One look and he knew he had to have her. Tonight. He couldn’t wait any longer.
On the drums his hands first whispered and then pounded out the elemental truth of his need. The other dancers simply didn’t exist for him. Impatiently he drummed them off the stage. He wanted to be alone with the woman who danced like passion unleashed.
And then they were alone on the stage, thunder and lightning perfectly matched in dazzling display. Instinctively each knew when the other would peak, when the perfect match of sound and motion would begin to blur. Yet neither one of them wanted it to end. They drove each other higher, then higher still, until there was a soft cry and suddenly silent drums, midnight slamming down while wild applause broke over the stage.
Nicole found Chase even as he reached out to her. His mouth was hard, hungry, hot, like the powerful body flexed beneath her urgent hands.
“Come with me.”
“Yes.”
Hands joined, they fled into the darkness.
When the curtains opened again, the stage was empty.
Chase heard the startled silence and the spreading murmur of speculation as he quietly shut the club’s back door behind them. Hand on the small of Nicole’s back, he urged her toward his car. He didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want anything to dim the feeling of triumph and relief that had come to him when she had simply whispered “Yes” and followed him into the darkness.
Deep inside, hidden even from himself, he had been afraid that she wouldn’t want him as much as he wanted her.
Nicole gave Chase a quick glance and then looked away. She was grateful that he didn’t want to talk. She was having enough trouble hiding the nervousness that had hit her like cold water the instant she was no longer in his arms. She didn’t think she could handle one end of any kind of conversation without giving away her fear.
She wondered if Hawaii’s first thornless plant had trembled with fear when it unfolded its vulnerable leaves to the sun.
The door to the Porsche was open, waiting for her. She didn’t know how long she had stood, staring at it. Quickly she pulled her hair forward over her shoulders and slid into place. When she fastened the seat belt, the long strands of her hair rippled and shimmered in her lap like flame.
The car started with a feral sound of power and leaped out into traffic. Nicole felt captured as surely as any woman ever thrown over a raider’s saddle and carried away into the night toward an uncertain fate.
Helpless.
Eyes closed, she reminded herself of the moment when Chase’s teeth had closed so delicately on the fragile flower. The image had haunted her, whispering to her that a man capable of such ravishing tenderness wouldn’t hurt her.
Even if she failed to please him with her response in bed.
Chase drove quickly, silently to the Kamehameha estate. He sensed Nicole’s unease. It didn’t surprise him. They shared a mutual desire, but they didn’t know each other very well at all. He was much bigger, far stronger. If he chose to hurt her, there wasn’t much she could do to protect herself.
If the roles had been reversed, he would have been nervous as hell. But he didn’t want her fearful and hesitant. He wanted her to be the way she had been onstage, coming to him eagerly. Burning for him.
When he ran a fingertip from her shoulder to the back of her hand, she jerked and made a startled sound.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I won’t be rough with you.”
She gave him a look out of surprised golden eyes that told him he had guessed accurately what was on her mind. Then she smiled and touched his cheek with her palm.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m just . . . nervous.”
Silently he cares
sed her again, thinking of how to handle the inevitable awkward moments getting from car to bed. He didn’t want her to get cold feet. He wanted her the way he was—hot. As he pulled up to the estate, he decided she would feel more at ease in her own cottage than in his.
Neither one of them spoke while he handed her out of the Porsche and they walked toward her cottage. Beneath the moon’s brilliant silver radiance, concealed landscape lights glittered among the foliage like captive stars. Wind smoothed through the trees. Leaves made soft sounds, as though pleased to be so gently stroked.
The scents of flowers and sea mingled in the warm night, making yet another kind of caress on Nicole’s heightened senses. She felt her nerves uncurl and courage return with every step closer to her cottage. The estate was familiar. The cottage was her haven.
And Chase was a man like no other.
He opened the door to her small home and waited for her to make the next move. Moonlight poured through the wall of windows that faced the sea, giving a silver, unearthly radiance to the room’s interior.
“The lights are on the right,” she said.
His hand swept along the wall. Recessed lights glowed, gently illuminating the room. A single glance told him that Dane had been right—financially, Nicole lived very close to the bone. Her furniture was minimal, patterned after Japanese designs for living. A futon was stacked along the glass wall, waiting to be unfolded into a bed. Scattered cushions, a dining table big enough for two, and a desk completed the spare furnishings.
But the woman who lived here was anything but plain. Subdued flames twisted and shivered in her long hair as she stood in her own doorway, pausing as though uncertain of her welcome.
He caught a handful of the fire that was falling over her shoulder and between her breasts. Lifting the silky hair to his lips, he gently pulled her closer. He sensed the moment of hesitation before she put her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to be kissed. He reined in a flash of impatience that she wasn’t fully eager; he was a grown man, not some teenager in rut. He knew how to seduce rather than demand.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to get close to me.” His teeth were a flash of white beneath his dense black mustache. “After all that drumming, I need a shower.”
“That’s not wh—” she began.
Words and thoughts scattered when his lips fitted over hers. His tongue dipped into her mouth as delicately as though she was a flower reserved for royalty. The tip of his tongue tasted her once, then he withdrew as softly as he had entered.
“Shower,” he said huskily.
As he spoke, her halter fell away from her breasts. She hadn’t even been aware that he had undone the ties until she felt the air against her hot, naked skin. Reflexively she brought her hands up to cover herself, a protective gesture left over from the bitter time before Eden.
Her reaction didn’t make sense to Chase. It could hardly be modesty or embarrassment about revealing her body to him. Her breasts were as firm and lush as her hips, and the narrowness of her waist was a temptation for any man’s hands.
Just looking at her was enough to make his mouth water for the taste of her.
“Chase . . .” she said softly, and then her voice frayed. She wanted to explain her retreat, but she had no idea where to begin.
“How did you know,” he asked, bending down until he could nibble on her right hand, “that hide-and-seek is one of my favorite games?”
His tongue traced the fingertips of her hand with hot, darting touches as his mustache nuzzled against the sensitive skin between her fingers. With the same ravishing care he had used on the flower petal, his teeth closed on her index finger. He nibbled delicately down the smooth skin, then inserted his tongue between two of her fingers, caressing them and the soft breast beneath.
Nicole made a small sound of mingled surprise and pleasure as he continued teasing her, teaching her how very sensitive her skin could be. Each time his tongue slid between her fingers to her breast, her breath caught. Each time his teeth tugged tenderly at a finger, her breath came out in an uneven rush.
She didn’t realize that he was gently, carefully nuzzling aside the barrier she had raised until his tongue probed between her spread fingers and found the pink crown of her breast. With a thick sound of satisfaction, he tasted the nipple with swift darts of his tongue.
She froze, expecting to be hurt.
She felt only the firm, moist tip of Chase’s tongue exploring her textures, smooth to nubby, satin to velvet.
The seductive caresses continued until she shivered and felt herself changing, her nipple tightening into an erect bud. The feeling was so exquisite that she gasped.
Still he stroked her, drawing her nipple into a taut peak and then tugging on that peak with his lips. She forgot the painful lessons of the past and felt only the pleasures of the present streaming through her. Helplessly her fingers opened until she was offering herself to him rather than protecting herself from him.
A low thread of sound came from Chase as he took her gift. He drew her deeply into his mouth, suckling her with a rhythmic motion, drawing out breathless little cries with each shift of his mouth.
Nicole felt light-headed, almost dizzy. Her breast tightened even more, shaping itself to his insistent tongue, sending tiny quakes rippling through her body with each sweet tug of his mouth. It was like flying, like soaring, like nothing she had ever known. Closing her eyes, she gave herself up to the incredible sensations as she had already given herself to him.
“No,” she whispered when she felt his mouth leave her breast. “Not yet.”
The words were too soft for Chase to hear. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t ready to end the tantalizing intimacy any more than she was. With equal care he nibbled and nuzzled and probed the hand that still shielded Nicole’s other breast.
If her fingers were slow to move aside this time, it was because she wanted to prolong the sweet anticipation of the moment when his tongue would curl caressingly around her, urging her to sensations that she had never felt before. Miraculous feelings, like being a bubble whirling in champagne, like breathing the softest kind of fire.
When at last his tongue slid between the barrier of her fingers, her nipple was already hard, waiting for his mouth. Wanting it. She couldn’t control the throaty cry of pleasure that came when he captured the taut prize.
The husky sound she made sent heat ripping through Chase, threatening his control. Slowly, slowly, you idiot. Don’t devour her.
But, sweet God, she tastes good.
He forced his mouth to release her, only to find that the sight of her wet nipple rising proudly between her fingers was even more arousing than her cry had been. He touched each nipple with a hungry fingertip, wanting only to taste her again, to feel the sensual trembling take her, to hear the hungry cries ripple out of her.
“Shower?” he asked, his voice deep. Then, almost harshly, “It’s now or never, Pele. Your choice.”
As his words registered, she opened eyes that were dazed. She looked down at herself as though she couldn’t believe that it really was Nicole Ballard standing half naked in the living room of her cottage, offering her breasts to a man.
No. Not half naked. Fully naked.
Chase’s lean, nimble fingers had loosened her lavalava while his mouth caressed her. When he opened his hands, the cloth slid down her legs to the floor. Before she could draw breath to object or accept, her silky thong underwear whispered down her thighs and pooled at her ankles.
Kneeling in front of her, eyes narrowed, he made a sound as though he had just been struck.
“Fire goddess,” he said hoarsely, looking at the pale perfection of her skin and the bright flame burning at the apex of her thighs.
Abruptly he stood up. He knew if he looked at her again, he wouldn’t be able to wait another minute to sink into the lush fire. Already he had rushed her more than he wanted to, more than she was comfortable with.
Idiot. Rutting idiot.
&nbs
p; Even as he raged silently at himself, he knew it was useless. His hunger for her was as unruly as magma on the edge of breaking free, a molten force seething and testing the boundaries that restrained its hot release.
He felt as though he had waited years for this moment. The pressure for relief was nearly unbearable.
She’s not ready. Get it through your thick head.
She enjoyed the love play, but she wasn’t ready for the rest. Not the way he was. Guts knotted. Feeling like he was made of twisted ropes of flesh.
Aching for it.
Needing it.
Burning alive.
“Shower?” Chase asked again.
Nicole simply stared at him.
He didn’t know whether to smile or swear at her expression. She looked dazed, almost edgy, lost, surprised—everything but ready for him.
“Through there,” she said, pointing toward the opposite side of the living room where a small door opened into the bathroom.
Before he could think better of it, he dropped to one knee and lifted first one of her feet, then the other. He took off the shell anklets and the mist-thin panties that had slid down her legs at his urging.
The scent of her made his mouth water all over again. He wanted to tease apart her legs as he had her fingers, to find the hidden textures, to suck on her tender flesh. But if he did that, they wouldn’t make it to the shower.
They wouldn’t even make it to the bed.
“Do you—” Nicole’s voice broke when she looked down. His thick black hair lay like a shadow just below her navel. She sensed the warmth of his breath against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Suddenly she felt disoriented, almost weak. With the last of what passed for her wits, she blurted, “Do you want to go first?”
“First?” He looked up, startled. Then he smiled slightly. “No. And I don’t want to go second either.”