Anything But Love (8 page)

“I know.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Nope.”

His arm under her hand felt strong and warm and solid, even encased in a rain-soaked suit jacket. Everything about him was strong and warm and solid.

He started to turn when the path branched off toward their cottage, but Jessica tugged on his arm. “The beach is this way.”

“Sure, but aren’t we going to change?”

She laughed and dropped his arm, spinning around in a circle. “What for? We might as well go in like this.” She kicked off her shoes and reached down to pick them up. “I’ll race you to the water,” she called over her shoulder, starting to run barefoot toward the beach.

He caught up with her almost immediately, of course, and by the time she felt the sand under her feet, he was already at the water’s edge.

He turned and faced her as she came to a stop, laughing.

“My God,” she gasped. “I haven’t run like that in years.”

He grinned down at her. “It suits you,” he said.

“It does?”

“Your face is glowing.”

She pressed her palms to her face. “How can you tell?”

The nearest light came from the windows of the cottages and the lanterns along the path, and there couldn’t be enough to see the color of her cheeks.

“I can tell,” was all he said. Then he kicked off his own shoes, peeled off his socks, removed his jacket and tie, and tossed them onto the sand. “I hope my phone stays dry.”

“How much are you planning to take off?” she asked.

“This is it,” he said, wading into the water in his pants and dress shirt. “What about you?”

“I’m good,” she said, wading out beside him.

The falling rain made music on the water. At night, the ocean seemed even bigger: dark and mysterious and unknown.

Her dress floated up in a circle around her.

“You look like some kind of water fairy,” Ben said. “The spirit of a water lily, or something.”

He was waist deep and she was up to her shoulders. Between the ocean and the rain, she was surrounded by water but still able to breathe, as though she really were some kind of sea spirit—a mermaid or other creature that could live underwater.

She closed her eyes for a moment, her face upturned. After a moment Ben asked, “Do you want to swim?”

She opened her eyes and turned to face him. After parading through the rain in a new Prada, she should have felt capable of anything—but she was suddenly so nervous her heart raced.

“I want something else,” she said.

And before he could answer or back away, she slid her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

F
rom the moment he’d seen Jessica with her pink silk dress plastered to her body, Ben had been struggling to overcome his baser instincts. She was tipsy, for one thing—and she’d been left at the altar the day before. She was the poster child of a vulnerable woman no man had the right to take advantage of.

He’d redoubled his efforts when she’d put her hands on his face, even though she’d looked so beautiful in that moment she’d taken his breath away.

Once they were in the ocean he’d relaxed his guard a bit, figuring this rain-soaked night swim was her way to let off some steam . . . steam that might otherwise have led to a one-night stand she’d regret the moment it was over.

Maybe that was why she managed to take him by surprise. Whatever the reason, when she kissed him, his mind short-circuited and his instincts took over.

She smelled like the ocean and tasted like rainwater, and the instant their lips touched, his arms went around her.

His heart slammed against his ribs as he pulled her close. She made a noise in her throat, and for a second he was afraid he’d hurt her.

Then she gripped his shoulders and pressed herself against him.

Electricity surged through him as his tongue slid into her mouth. She was hot silk and sweet fire and rain-warmed skin, and her hunger and need were so unexpected that for a few feverish moments he forgot everything but kissing her—kissing her with so much intensity that the fusion of their mouths felt like alchemy.

But when she reached through the water for the waistband of his pants, he dragged his mouth from hers.

“No,” he panted, his body throbbing with so much heat he half expected the pelting rain to steam when it hit his skin.

Jessica’s blue eyes looked huge and dark as she stared up at him. She was panting, too, and her lips were so damn tempting he had to look away for a moment.

“Why can’t we?” she asked, grabbing the front of his shirt as he tried to take a step back. “You said I should do things just because I want to. You said I should experiment. You said—”

The tremble in her voice and the feel of her small hands fisted in his shirt were doing things to him he didn’t want to think about. “I didn’t mean you should experiment with
me
,” he said roughly, trying to control himself.

“But—”

“Stop.”

She stared at him. “Are you angry?”

“What? No! Of course not.”

“But your voice is all growly.”

“That’s because I’m trying really, really hard not to rip your clothes off right now.”

“But that’s what I want you to do!”

“No, you don’t.”

She let go of his shirt with one hand, but only so she could smack him on the arm. “Don’t you dare tell me what I want after you harangued me about finding myself.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I just . . .” He bowed his head and let the rain fall on the back of his neck. “Look, I don’t claim to be a saint, but . . . there’s no way I could live with myself if something happened between us tonight. You’ve been drinking, and—”

“Only that dark and stormy—and, well, the martinis I had before dinner.”

“You had martinis before dinner?”

“Two.”

“I didn’t know that. Okay, so you’ve
really
been drinking. Not to mention you’ve had a pretty traumatic twenty-four hours. Even if you signed a contract in your own blood swearing I wasn’t taking advantage of you, I’d never be able to absolve myself.”

“But—”

He closed his hands over hers. “Listen to me. If you still feel this way tomorrow morning, it’ll be a different story.”

She blinked. “You mean . . . if I still want you in the morning . . . then we can sleep together?”

His heart clenched in his chest—and other parts of his anatomy tightened as well. “Yeah,” he said gently. “If you feel the same in the harsh light of day, I’ll be with you in a heartbeat. Okay?”

“Well . . . okay.”

Her head dipped down, and she heaved a sigh. “So . . . I guess we should go back to the room, huh?”

She looked so depressed that his heart twisted again.

“Are you kidding? It’s incredible out here. I’m not ready to go back yet.”

She looked up. “Are you sure?”

“Hell yes. No deeper than this, though, okay? It’s dark and I don’t want to lose you in a tragic drowning accident.”

“Okay,” Jessica said.

She took a step away from him. Then she tipped herself backward and floated supine, closing her eyes and lifting her face to the rain.

He stayed by her side, holding her hand but letting her drift. As the minutes went by, the rain lessened and then stopped altogether. Once it did, he became more aware of the sounds of the ocean—the lapping of the waves against the dock and the beach.

After a while he stretched out on the water and floated beside Jessica, gazing up at the cloud-covered sky.

The wind freshened, and a ghostly crescent moon gleamed through a rent in the clouds. When they parted farther, a sprinkling of stars glowed against the velvety sky.

“It’s so beautiful,” Jessica said beside him, her voice low and rich and clear.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It is.”

They floated for another minute of blissful silence. And then, suddenly, there was saltwater in his face and Jessica was laughing.

“What the—”

He stood upright again as he realized that Jessica had splashed him. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said.

“Well, I wanted to do it. And I have it on good authority that if I do things just because I want to do them—”

He didn’t let her finish. He grabbed her around the waist and tossed her, grinning when she came up sputtering a few yards away.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she gasped.

“Believe it, lady.”

She flung her wet hair back and grinned at him. “Are you ready to go in?”

“I guess so.”

They thrashed their way to shore, and Ben grabbed their things. Then they walked barefoot up the beach to the path and from there to the cottage.

“You should take the bathroom first,” Ben said at the door. “I’ll wait out here.”

“You don’t want to come inside?”

“I’ll just drip all over everything,” he said. “I’d rather stay on the patio and stargaze.”

“You’ll get cold,” she objected.

“No, it’s a warm night. I’ll be fine.”

“Well . . . all right. I’ll be quick.”

“Take your time, Jess. I’m fine out here.”

The truth was, he wanted a chance to recover his composure a little bit. Seeing Jessica come out of the water like a mermaid, her dress clinging to her like a second skin, he’d gotten so hard so fast he was glad for the darkness and a bundle of clothes he could hold in front of himself.

Once Jessica was safely behind the closed door, Ben sank down onto one of the patio chairs and ran his hands through his wet hair.

That kiss. That
kiss
.

It had been the most surprising, electric, erotic kiss of his life.

He’d always known there was more to Jessica than what most people saw, but even he would never have expected that.

The way she’d surged into him . . . He’d experienced some good kisses in his life, but nothing like that. The rain, the ocean . . . and Jessica, so unexpectedly passionate that he still couldn’t believe he’d been able to control himself.

His wet shirt was starting to feel clammy. He unbuttoned it and pulled it off.

He’d done the right thing. She’d had even more alcohol than he’d thought at first, and she was vulnerable. So he’d made his offer: if she still felt the same way in the morning, they could do something about it.

It was an empty offer. He was one hundred percent certain that when Jessica woke up tomorrow, she wouldn’t feel the same way. Which, in itself, was a reason to rein in his libido.

If he needed another reason, well . . . there was the fact that this was Jessica.

Jessica.

He’d made his share of mistakes with women, including a few one-night stands that had been the result of too much alcohol and too little judgment.

But Jessica wasn’t some woman he’d met at a bar or a party. She was . . .

What the hell was she?

Not a friend, exactly. Not an enemy, either—not anymore.

He shook his head slowly. Whatever she was, he knew what she wasn’t: a woman he could sleep with casually.

He scrubbed his face with his hands, leaned back, and shut his eyes.

Unfortunately, with his eyes closed, he was free to remember exactly how sexy Jessica had looked in that ocean tonight.

“You can’t stargaze with your eyes shut.”

He jerked upright. How in the hell had he missed the sound of the doorknob turning?

Jessica smiled at him from the doorway. She was wearing silky pajamas that clung to her slim curves as lovingly—if not quite as dramatically—as her soaking wet dress had. Her hair had been blown dry until it was silkier than her pjs, and her face was free of makeup.

And damn if he wasn’t getting hard again.

But the fastest way to deal with that problem—and to put this night behind him—was to take a shower himself and go to bed. So he surged to his feet, grabbed his wet clothes, and went through the door Jess was holding open for him. Careful not to let himself look at her, he dropped his wet things in a pile by the closet, grabbed the sweats and T-shirt he planned to wear to bed, and headed for the bathroom.

The hot water felt good. He stood under the spray for longer than he needed to get clean, reminding himself of all the reasons to leave Jess alone tonight. He toweled himself off, pulled on his clothes, and went out into the bedroom as though wild animals might be lying in wait for him.

No wild animals, but there was definitely danger in the form of Jessica Bullock, all of five foot four and a hundred and ten pounds, lying in bed curled up on her side. It was a big bed and she was at the extreme right side of it, but the prospect of sliding under the covers with her—even if he was on the extreme left side—was too much for his peace of mind.

The light on her nightstand was off, but she’d left his on. Her eyes were closed, so he moved softly to turn off the light before heading for the sitting area.

“Where are you going?”

He froze. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, so he couldn’t see Jessica’s expression—only the fact that she was sitting up in bed.

“I’m going to sleep on the floor tonight,” he said.

“That’s silly. Are you afraid I’m going to ravish you or something?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “No.”

“Well, good. Because I have to wait for tomorrow morning to do that, so you don’t have anything to worry about tonight. And this is a really big bed, so why don’t you sleep here?”

She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could see her a little more clearly.

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. But don’t forget that come daybreak, you’ll be at my mercy.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” he said, coming back to the bed and getting under the covers.

They lay in silence for a few minutes. He was on his back, but he could see Jessica out of the corner of his eye. She’d slid back under the covers herself and was lying on her side again, facing away from him.

He’d gotten up way too early that morning, and he was more than ready to fall asleep. So why was he keeping himself awake?

After a while he realized why. Because once he let himself slip into oblivion, it would be the end of this moment.

This moment when Jessica Bullock, whether because of alcohol or emotional vulnerability or a combination of the two, actually wanted to sleep with him.

He frowned up at the ceiling. Why would he want to hang on to that moment? Was it possible that he—

Suddenly frustrated with himself, he turned onto his left side and closed his eyes.

It took him less than a minute to fall asleep.