Burning up the Rain (Hawaiian Heroes) (11 page)

Lalei shook her head. “Is that a riddle? Sorry, I’m too upset to figure it out. I need to go…get myself together.”

“It will come to you, my dear.” He waited until she’d reached the door to speak again. “Jack is a good man, yeah?”

Lalei froze, her hand on the door, her mind a perfect blank of shock. ”Yeah,” she mumbled. She fled out into the hot sunshine, her skin burning with embarrassment.

She ran down across the lawn and into the tangle of trees at the east end of the bay, not caring who watched. She had to get away.

Oh Pele, she’d meant for her mother and Benton to overhear her with Jack, but she’d forgotten about the Ho’omalus.

How could she have been so stupid? This was their house, their retreat, and she’d practically had public sex with another of their guests, right under their noses. Certainly in range of their ears. She’d wanted to shake things up, and she’d done it, but at what price?

Chapter Seven

Deep in the tangle of trees that clustered at the east end of the bay, Lalei sank onto a large lava boulder at the edge of the water, smoothed by eons of waves. She felt as if some reckless stranger had come to visit her, mind and body. But was this new Lalei a stranger, or was she simply the Hawaiian girl who had once eagerly emerged on her visits to the Kona Ho’omalus?

Slumping back against the upright rock behind her, she gazed unseeingly at the gentle surf lapping at her feet. She sat in shadow, but outside the trees, the sun sparkled on the sea. It was as if she sat in a tunnel…or a hallway.

Slowly the scene slipped away and became another place. Day became night.

She walked along the broad upper hallway of her family’s Honolulu home. Moonlight shone through the tall windows, limning the familiar walk in soft shades. As she neared the end, instead of her own bedroom door she saw a huge doorway.

Her heart pounding, limbs shaking with fear, she reached out and took the old-fashioned door pull and opened the door.

Her father stood there. He was just as she remembered him from photos, slim and smiling, with ebony Ho’omalu eyes.

“Lalei,” he beckoned. “
E hele mai
, come.”

But the darkness behind him was beginning to glow with red-gold light, as if the very heart of the mountain burned beyond.

She stepped back, shaking her head frantically. “No, no, Papa. Don’t ask me. You come with me.”

“Lalei, come,” he repeated insistently. “You are your mother’s daughter.”

The fiery light grew, flames licking so close she felt their heat.

Lalei screamed.

She woke up with a start to find herself standing in the close tangle of trees, her feet in the surf, shaking, her skin at once cold and clammy with perspiration, her throat still raw from her cry.

Shoving back her hair, Lalei looked around her. She was safe at Nawea Bay, but what had just happened to her? Had she had some sort of blackout, or had she fallen asleep? If so, she’d never had any dream like this before.

Up on the mountain, thunder muttered portentously. The clouds gathered, dark and full.

“
‘Ae,”
voices echoed in the thunder. “
Join us, little sister. Bring the rain.”

Hugging her arms around herself, Lalei gazed at the clouds massing over the mountain, as turbulent as her emotions. The dream, if that was what it had been, had frightened her, so real. But more than that, it seemed to have opened up something inside her, like turning the handle of a pressure release valve. Or maybe she’d opened it last night, quarreling with her mother or having sex with Jack.

She was so tired of battling to keep her emotions and her desires, her needs bundled deep inside. She wanted…to be herself. To set free her anger like the thunder, her tears like the rain.

Turning her head, she peered up through a gap in the trees at the driveway behind the house. Underneath the lowering clouds, her mother and Benton hurried along the driveway, Benton’s arms full of luggage.

Anger breached the dam of emotions jammed inside her. Oh, she’d like to send them on their way, all right. Her body unfurled, standing straight and tall. Head high, she looked up the mountain.

“Pele,
laue mai
ka ua loka
, bring the pouring rains.” Lifting her hands, palms up, Lalei beckoned to the clouds. Then she froze, transfixed as power twined through her, her body shaking, as if she stood on the verge of some new knowing, some new facet of her being. Her hair floated around her, crackling as if static electricity shot through it.

Part of her was terrified. Was she about to be struck by lightning, here among the trees? Would they find her, another cinder blending with the ancient lava under her bare feet?

The new Lalei smiled fiercely, a woman on the verge of knowing her true nature. “Bring the rain,” she repeated, louder this time. “Come on, Pele, bring it!”

Thunder rolled. Somewhere in the clouds above, lightning flashed. A gust of wind blew through the trees, followed by a sheet of silver rain that swept down the driveway of the house like a curtain, enveloping the man and woman beside the vehicle.

Lalei clapped her hands over her mouth and watched, aghast and gleeful, as Benton and her mother scrambled inside the small SUV, soaking wet. Then, as the vehicle’s lights came on, and the motor raced, she threw back her head and laughed.

Euphoric, she lifted her arms to the warm rain as it reached her hideaway, and closed her eyes, letting it wash over her, sluicing over her hair and face, her bare skin. Not washing away her anger but baptizing her with the right to her own emotions, to her true nature.

She whirled in a dizzy circle, opening her mouth to drink the rain. It tasted sweet and wild and left her thirsty for more. For life and all that it contained, all that it promised for her.

She was her mother’s daughter. Pele, mother of all who dwelt on these islands.

Jack found her this way.

Watching her confrontation with Choy, he wondered what hold the bastard had over her and why her mother seemed to be throwing her at him. Maybe he should just go and punch his smug face. Not only did the dude treat Lalei like a possession, he supported the predacious TropicSun. None of what Jack had heard about Frank Decker was good.

Homu stepped out of the house, and Lalei ran to him. Jack relaxed a little, but part of him wished he could’ve solved it his way. Would’ve felt good to punch the guy. He boxed once in a while, sparring at his gym, and he had a hell of a right.

He stood watching as the others wandered toward the dock, along with Claire’s parents. Then Lalei ran from the house, still in her little bikini, her long hair flying behind her. She tore down the lawn and into the trees, disappearing. Ouch. He wondered uneasily if her uncle had lectured her about their tryst, wondered if he should go up and apologize to his host for his part in it.

Then the clouds began to lower, and he heard thunder.

“Oh no,” Claire complained from the dock, her voice carrying clearly in the hushed air. “We can’t go in the water if it’s going to storm.”

“Weather sure comes in fast here,” her father said, eyeing the clouds with astonishment.

Jack had to agree with that. But as the rain rolled down across the mountain to the shore, instead of joining the others under the awning on the dock, he turned the other way. The rain poured down in a silver sheet, sluicing down on his hot skin, while the thunder beat like a bass drum. Lightning flashed overhead from cloud to cloud.

Lalei was alone in the forest. She was a city girl; she’d probably be terrified. And was that a cry of fear he’d heard?

He jogged across the wet lawn, slipping once on the sloping grass and catching himself with an outstretched arm. Back upright, he ran on, down among the tangle of vegetation that lined the shore. The ancient path led into the trees, lined with rocks worn smooth by centuries of footsteps.

And there he saw her. Near the shore, under a huge fig tree that leaned out over the water, sat a high, flat rock, with another leaning back behind it. Great place to sit and enjoy a quiet moment in the forest…or something else.

Lalei stood before the rock, her head tipped back joyously to accept the rain pattering down on her upturned face. She was a beautiful pagan, her hair plastered to her head, rivulets of water running down her bare skin, catching on the tips of her silver-clad breasts and the tiny triangle of her bottoms, her eyes closed and that luscious mouth parted as if waiting to be filled.

She opened her eyes and saw him. Tipping her head down slowly, she stared at him, her black eyes pools of feminine mystery. Then she put out her tongue and licked a drop of water from her full lower lip, and he found himself moving across the damp earth until he stood directly before her. So close he could feel the warmth coming off her skin and smell her…that indefinable, seductive scent of a woman.

He remembered how it had felt to have her in his arms, her breasts and her sweet treasures bared just for him. To be deep inside her, surrounded by her sweet, wet heat.

Desire swept down through him in a lava-hot rush, from his brain to his cock and everything else in between. He wanted her, just like this, wet and wild and free, here in the forest. His earlier aggression morphed into hot, gut-clenching lust.

And judging by the way her nostrils flared and her breasts trembled as her breathing sped up, she wanted him too.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice guttural, coming clear out of his chest.

“Yeah,” she answered and reached up for him at the same time he put his hands on her little waist and pulled her to him.

She was lithe and slender and soft, her skin cool on the surface but so warm underneath. As their skin met, he wanted to curl himself around her, envelop her, draw that warmth into him and hold on to it. Her mouth was so soft, so warm under his, opening to let him inside that warm, honeyed lushness, share her sweetness with him.

He slipped one hand under her ass and lifted her up against him, turning blindly to set her on the ancient, smooth rock. Her legs parted, drawing him between them, and he leaned into her, holding her in his arms, cocking his head to deepen the kiss, deaf and dumb and blind to anything but her.

Her hands stroked his head, slender fingers furrowing through his wet hair. Then they stroked down his neck and over his shoulders, squeezing the breadth and heft of his muscles.

He shuddered, loving the feel of her hands on him. Her soft little breasts pillowed against his chest, the combination of skin and wet cloth making him crazy.

Breaking away from her kiss with difficulty, he leaned back enough to glimpse her breasts. “Take your top off.”

Breathing as hard as he was, she reached for the clasp between her breasts. Her hands shook as she unfastened it and then pulled it open. Jack groaned as she shrugged it away, leaving her breasts bared to him, bobbling with her movement like luscious fruit.

“Lie back, baby. I didn’t get to taste these last time. Today, they’re mine.”

She reached up and held on to him, pulling him with her as she lay back on the wet, black rock. Jack went willingly, his hands already reaching for those tempting mounds of sweet flesh, each topped with a sweet nipple, waiting for his tongue to lick them into his mouth. He captured one in his hand, squeezing it and rolling the nipple as he sucked the other, softly at first as he tested the feel and taste, and then harder as she bucked under him, her nails digging into the skin of his back.

“I guess I am good at that,” he muttered as he obeyed the tug of her hands, urging him to her other breast. God, he loved the taste and feel of her nipples on his tongue, the beaded areolas and firm little points. He could go on suckling her all day, intoxicated by the sweetness.

“You’re okay,” she retorted but spoiled her off-handedness by whimpering as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, hard, and rolled the wet one between his thumb and forefinger.

She writhed under him, wrapping one leg around his ass and digging her heel into it, pulling him hard into the soft furrow between her thighs.

With a groan of near pain, Jack obliged her, flexing his hips hard to drive his cock along her labia, again and again. Ah, he could feel her heat through their swimsuits, and more than his next breath, he needed to get inside her.

Without letting go of her breast with his mouth, he reached down and yanked his trunks down, freeing his cock. Christ, he was ready to come just holding himself, with his mouth full of her breast. He couldn’t wait long enough to let her go and get her damn bikini off, not this time.

He pulled the narrow band of her bikini bottom aside, praised the Lord in a haze of lust for stretchy fabric, and then took himself in hand, found her wet, swollen heat and stroked the head of his cock into position.

He thrust once, driving halfway into her wet, tight heat and tipping his head back with sheer agonized bliss at the feel of her.

Then a cold shard of reality speared him, and he froze, opening his eyes. He stared down at her, nearly whimpering himself at holding still when she was gazing up at him with those slumberous black eyes, lips parted, just asking for his tongue inside her mouth while his cock drove inside her tight little pussy. Her face was taut, her cheeks and bare chest flushed with passion, her hands tugging at him.