‘Maybe. And she
is
an emotional hurricane.’ And, because he could really talk to his dad, he cursed and muttered. ‘And she’s freakin’
hot
.’
Patch pursed his lips but his eyes danced with mischief. ‘I might date younger women, but I’d never look at my second daughter and think she’s hot. But I can see why my healthy son would think so. He might notice that she’s grown up very well and has a killer bod.’
Seb twisted his lips. ‘And I have a killer hard-on for her.’
Patch let out a low, rumbling laugh. ‘Oh, geez, this is not going to end well. Especially since your modus is to bag her, tag her, and send her on her way when you’re done with her. Isn’t that the way you roll?’
Crude, but true.
‘And if you hurt her I’ll kick your ass,’ Patch added.
Seb rolled his head around in an effort to relieve the knots he’d discovered in his shoulders and neck since Rowan had moved into his life. ‘We have a history. My sister is her best friend. Her parents are important to me. I don’t particularly like her; she’s everything I’d run from in any other woman. Unconventional, free-spirited, slightly eccentric. And I forget all that every time I look at her. All I want to do is—’
‘Don’t say it.’ Patch held up his hand and grimaced. ‘Like Callie, I prefer to think of her as untouched and unsullied.’
‘Hypocrite.’ Seb laughed and then turned contemplative. ‘I’ve never had such a strong reaction to any woman—ever. So why her and why now?’
‘It’s fate bitch-slapping you. It likes to do that.’
‘Sucker-punching, more like it.’ Seb picked up his oar and dipped it into the sea. He glanced over to Patch as they easily covered the gap between them and the group. ‘No pithy words of advice?’
‘From me? The king of bad decisions pertaining to women? Nah! I’m just going to sit back and enjoy watching you making a fool of yourself over this girl.’
‘That’s not going to happen. My brain is still firmly in charge of my junk,’ Seb lied through his teeth.
Patrick’s deep laugh rippled across the sea. ‘Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, my boy!’
‘Thanks for your help,’ Seb said dryly. ‘I’m going to head back. Which bed are you sleeping in tonight?’
‘The cottage, since crazy Miranda changed the locks on my house.’ Patch shrugged. ‘I’m really going to have to do something about her soon.’
‘You think?’ Seb did a quick turn, slapped Patch’s hand and started to paddle away. His dad’s soft words had him looking back.
‘Is she okay? Your mum? I know that you...check up on her now and again.’
Seb blew out his breath. ‘As far as I can tell, Dad.’
‘Where?’
‘South America.’
Patch suddenly looked every one of his sixty-plus years. ‘Ro’s not like Laura, Seb. She’s kinder, smarter, less self-involved.’ Patch dipped his paddle into the water and launched a stream of water into Seb’s face. ‘Go on—get out of here.’
FIVE
When he walked
into his kitchen forty minutes later—sweat-slicked and puffing—and saw Rowan bending over the kitchen sink, eating a juicy peach, he knew that Patch was right about his brain not being in control.
In fact it pretty much dissolved as he watched her from outside the door. Juice dripped down her chin and down her toned, tanned arms. She’d pulled her hair up into a messy knot and wore a lumo-purple bikini, the bottom half of which was covered by a thin multi-coloured wrap. Thanks to the afternoon sun pouring into the kitchen he could see the outline of her legs beneath the wrap, the shape of her hips, the rounded perfection of her butt. Sunlight on her back illuminated her spine, the soft skin between her jaw and neck, the slope of her thin shoulders.
Unaware that he stood there, she groaned as she bit into the peach again and more juice dripped.
He didn’t—couldn’t—think. His feet moved of their own accord, his hand whipped out to grab her hips and spin her around, and his mouth slammed onto hers. Peach juice, warm and sweet, thundered over his tongue, quickly followed by the taste of Rowan, as sweet and a hundred times spicier. He thought he heard—felt?—her squeak of surprise, but he didn’t care; all he needed was to taste her, to feel her breasts flattened against his chest, her pelvis lifting into his to ride his erection.
Seb hooked his hand around her thigh and yanked her leg upwards, mentally cursed when her thigh encountered the barrier of her wrap. Without leaving her mouth—how could he?—he dropped his hands and fumbled at the loose knot at her hips. He needed to feel her, taste her, consume her... This was madness and fiercely unstoppable.
Unable to undo the knot, he pushed his thumbs between the fabric and her hips and shimmied it down so that it fell into a rainbow at her feet. Plastering his hands on her back, on her butt, he yanked her even closer until he doubted they could slip a piece of paper between them.
And, miracle of miracles, she was as into the kiss as he was. Little nips here. A long slide of her tongue there. Small hands were exploring his bare chest, down his ribcage, over his obliques and around to his back. She linked her arms around his neck and he was dimly aware that she still held the half-eaten peach in her hand, the juice from which was dripping down his back.
She could lick it off... She could lick anywhere she wanted to. Hopefully the thought would occur to her...
* * *
It was like being caught up in a hot, sexy, whippy storm, Rowan thought. One moment she’d had a peach in her hands and mouth, the next moment they were filled with a hard, sweaty, sexy man.
With the peach still in her hand she made a sticky path of juice across his shoulder, down his pec and over a flat nipple, lightly covered in blond hair. Dropping her head, she watched a bead of juice hit that nubby surface and shot her tongue out and licked it up, sighing as she tasted the saltiness of his skin, felt his muscles contract under her tongue.
‘What’s good for the goose...’ Seb muttered, pulling the half-eaten fruit from her hand.
Rowan’s eyes clouded over as he pulled the triangle of fabric covering her right breast away and touched her with the tips of his fingers, tanned against her much lighter skin. Her eyes watched his intense concentration as he played with her breast, running the wet peach over her distended nipple, alternating with subtle brushes of his thumb.
‘To hell with this.’
Seb tossed the peach onto the floor, wrapped one strong arm around her bottom and, with the other arm, lifted her onto the dining room table, yanking the chair out of his way. Rowan barely noticed that the chair had toppled over and clattered to the floor because Seb’s warm tongue was curled around her nipple and his other hand was burrowing into the back of her bikini pants, tracing erotic patterns on her butt.
He claimed her mouth again in a kiss that flew past heated and went straight to molten. Her legs, operating independently, hooked themselves around his waist and she scooted closer to him to feel that hard ridge against her mound.
Nothing else was important but to feel Seb, taste him, know him.
Seb pulled his mouth away and his hands, still on her breast and her butt, stilled. ‘Point of no return, Ro. Yes or no?’
Like she had a choice, Ro thought, dazed. There was only one answer and her body was screaming it. ‘Yes. Now.’
‘Here?’ Seb demanded.
She couldn’t wait—had no patience to climb the stairs to a bedroom, to spare the couple of minutes that would take. ‘Here. Now. Please.’
Seb muttered a curse and tried to step away. Rowan slapped a hand against the back of his neck and dragged him into a kiss that caused their feet to curl.
Seb yanked his mouth away and held up his hands. ‘Ro, one sec...condom.’
Rowan bounced on the dining room table, her body one long electrical current. ‘If you have to go upstairs for one I’m coming with you,’ she told him, deadly serious.
‘There’s a deal.’ Seb picked up his wallet from the counter near the door and cards and cash were scattered over the floor. ‘There should be one in here. Bingo.’
He held it up in his fingers as he stood between her legs again. ‘You going to do the honours or must I?’
Rowan smiled slow and deep as she pulled the little packet from his fingers. ‘Oh, I think I will. Why don’t you make yourself useful and get me naked?’
Seb nipped the corner of her mouth as she pushed his running shorts over his erection, down his hips. ‘That’s a hell of an offer, Brat.’
Rowan sighed as her fingers whispered the latex over him, encircling all that masculine strength in her fist. ‘I’m a hell of a girl, Hollis. Now, why don’t we slide your Part A into my Plot B and see if we fit?’
* * *
The luminous hands on the bedside clock informed Rowan that it was past midnight as she rolled over onto her stomach to watch Seb walk into his
en-suite
bathroom. She’d been in Seb’s arms, in his bed, for more than six hours. Six hours of intense, bone-dissolving, earth-spinning pleasure. She was one gooey, sexy mess and she wanted nothing more than to roll over and drift off to sleep.
Instead, she forced herself to sit up, then stand... Ooh, wobbly legs. The nearest garment was one of Seb’s T-shirts and she pulled it over her head, unable to stop herself from sniffing the collar for that special combination of soap and cologne that she couldn’t get enough of.
Just as she couldn’t get enough of his kisses, of the feel of his hard muscles under her hands, the way she felt...
complete
when he slid inside her.
In between their lovemaking they’d dozed, before one of them reached out for another kiss, another stroke, and they fell into passion again...
It was time to face reality. She didn’t want to, but she had to.
She didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t do this... Well, she had—but not enough to feel comfortable waking up naked in his bed, with his room looking as if a hurricane had hit it after them rolling around like maniacs and bouncing off the furniture. She didn’t want to stay but she couldn’t just leave.
She really, really needed to polish up on her one-night stand etiquette.
And a one-night stand was all it was—all it could ever be. She had to be sensible about this... This was sex. Nothing more. They had acted on impulse, had used each other’s bodies for brief, intense pleasure. It wasn’t anything more—could never be anything more...
Rowan placed the balls of her hands into her eyes and pushed. It was okay, she told herself. She was allowed to have sex with a single man. The world hadn’t stopped spinning. Wasn’t free choice high on her list of values? She hadn’t agreed to anything more than one night, to a casual hook-up, a night of pleasure.
It didn’t change anything... In a couple of weeks her parents would be back. She’d say hello and how are you doing, make nice, and then she’d borrow that money from Seb and fly away. Because that was what she did best: she flew, caught trains, ox-carts, buses... That was how she lived her life. She didn’t stay in one place, in one house, couldn’t imagine a steady life with one man.
Staying still, coming face to face and heart to heart with a man terrified her. Mostly because she’d been disappointing people all her life and she’d have to love a man very much to stay still. The thought of losing her freedom—so hard earned—caused a cold, hard ball of something
icky
to form in her stomach.
She should leave, go back to her own room...take some time to regain her equilibrium.
‘God, you look like someone shot your favourite dog,’ Seb said from the doorway of the
en-suite
bathroom.
Rowan’s eyes shot up and met his. Earlier they’d been warm with desire, laughter. Now they were cool and flat, and his expression was guarded and remote. Ah, so she wasn’t the only one in the room having second—or third—thoughts.
Good to know.
‘Ah... I was just...’ Rowan placed her hands on her hips and looked around.
‘Leaving?’
Since she was clear across the room and two feet from the door, what was the point in lying? ‘Yeah...’
Was it her imagination or did she see his face harden? It was hard to tell in the dim light spilling from the bathroom.
‘No cuddling required? After-dinner pillow-talk?’
Oh, that was sarcastic, and it blew any of her few remaining warm and fuzzies away. The problem was that there was a part of her that would have loved a cuddle, a gentle hand down her back, listening to his heartbeat under her ear, drifting off to the sound of him breathing next to her...
Because she felt weak and vulnerable—girly—she gave herself a mental slap and straightened her spine.
‘Do you need pillow-talk and cuddling?’ Rowan demanded, equally facetious.
‘Of course I don’t,’ Seb ground out, walking naked back into the room.
There was no point in feeling embarrassed, Rowan realised, since she’d explored most, if not all of that luscious body. He had a swimmer’s build, broad shoulders, slim hips, muscular thighs.
Rowan felt she should say something to dissipate the heavy, soggy blanket of emotional tension in the room. ‘Look, Seb, you don’t need to get all weirded out by this... I’m not going to get all hearts and flowers over you.’
‘Oh, goody.’
Sarcastic again. He did it so well. ‘For someone who is anti-commitment, and who doesn’t do emotional connections, I would’ve thought that me leaving and getting out of your face would be the perfect scenario for you.’
‘Yep, you’d think,’ Seb said, in that bland voice that made her itch to smack him.
Rowan threw up her hands. ‘How can we be so great in bed but so pathetically useless at actual talking?’
‘Beats me.’
‘You’re ticked because your big brain is running at warp speed, trying to rationalise this, trying to intellectualise what just happened. You’re frustrated because you don’t understand how you can have mind-blowing sex with a woman you’re not sure you like and who has driven you nuts your entire life.’
‘I am not doing anything of the sort!’ Seb retorted.
But Rowan caught the flicker of guilt in his eyes. Of course he was. She sighed. It was what Seb did. When something caught him off guard he put his extraordinary intellect to work and tried to figure it out on a cerebral level. Hadn’t she watched him do exactly that growing up? She and Callie would wail and whine when things went wrong. Seb and her brother Peter would ignore the emotion and look for the cause and effect.
Men are from Mars, indeed...
‘Your brain is going to explode. Attraction and lust can’t be measured, analysed, categorised. It just
is
—like some things just are,’ Rowan said softly. ‘It was just sex, Seb, not quantum physics.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
Seb made a production out of yawning, pulled back the covers on his bed and flicked her a quick glance before climbing into bed.
‘I’m going to sleep. Night.’
Rowan narrowed her eyes at him as he punched the pillows before rolling over and snuggling down. No
Thanks for a fun time
? No
See you in the morning
? He couldn’t be more clinical about it if he left a couple of notes on the dresser table...
No—
no!
—that wasn’t fair.
Be honest, here, Dunn. You were the one who set the tone for the way this ended... You were heading out of the door when he returned to the room. You were running scared and saying that you didn’t need the mushy stuff...
And you don’t.
You don’t need anything but to research your netsuke, gather some cash, say a brief hello to your folks and hightail it back to...where? London? Canada? South America?
You need to be free, on the road, responsible to no one but yourself.
Rowan sent Seb one more look—was that snoring she heard? Really?—and half banged, half slammed his bedroom door closed.
Tangling with him had been fun physically, but mentally—huh! A toxic spill...
* * *
His brain, when blood finally reached it, was red-lining, Seb decided as the door banged shut behind Rowan and his eyes flew open. He was doing exactly what she’d said: intellectualising, categorising, analysing. He didn’t understand what had happened earlier—that tsunami of want and need and pure animal instinct. He was a rational and stable guy. He didn’t get caught up in the moment or swept away by passion.
He needed to understand why it had happened tonight with Ro. He had to understand. Because if he could comprehend it then he would regain control of the situation. It was his modus operandi—the way he approached and dealt with life, with his problems. When his mum had left he’d expected her home within a month, then three, then six. The only way for him to deal with the slow-dawning reality that he and Callie had been essentially abandoned by the person who was supposed to love them most had been to rationalise it, to find a plausible—though mostly improbable—explanation.
She was ill and couldn’t come home. She’d been kidnapped by Colombian drug lords and/or an alien space ship. She was an international spy.