Hawaiian Holiday: Destination Desire, Book 2 (17 page)

Lifting her so she could twine her legs around his waist, he groaned as he eased her down on his erection. She whimpered, her arms wrapping around his neck to hang on for the ride. He fitted his palms over her ass, holding her in place for his thrusts. There was nothing that felt as fantastic as being inside her, forging their bodies into one. The heated water slid in beads down their limbs, adding another layer to the sensations.

He shoved his tongue into her mouth with the same rhythm he used to penetrate her sex, and her thighs clamped tight on his hips, her heels digging into his buttocks to spur him on. Not that he needed any encouragement. There was no holding back from her. This was all he could give her, and he wanted her to scream his name in ecstasy before he was done with her. Pistoning his cock into her channel, he raced her for orgasm, pushing her hard and fast the way he knew she liked. He ground his pelvis into her sensitive little clit, and she bucked against him.

“
Lukas!”
She threw her head back against the wall, sobbing as she shook apart in his arms. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and her sex fisted on his cock in pulses that ripped his control to pieces. He couldn’t wait, exploding into her warm, giving body. His climax went on forever as she dragged everything out of him. But he didn’t want it to end. He never wanted it to end, and there was no choice. There never had been. He groaned, the sound as much pleasure as pain and he pounded into her until she shuddered with completion again and buried her face in his shoulder.

They rested against each other, gasping in the steamy air. He didn’t know how much time had passed before she stirred. Reluctantly, he let her regain her feet. They finished showering in silence, and he assumed she was as wrapped up in her thoughts as he was in his.

She shut down the water and climbed out first. He followed more slowly, grabbed one of the spare towels lying folded on the rack above the toilet, and rubbed the terrycloth over his body.

Julie let herself air dry while she ran a brush through her hair, her gaze meeting his in the foggy bathroom mirror. “So…I was wondering if you’re available for dinner.”

“Tonight? Of course.” His grin was lopsided. “Maybe it’s presumptuous, but I assumed we would be dining together.”

“No, I meant…” She smiled nervously, played with the bristles on her brush. “I meant dinner when we get back to California.”

He jerked as if she’d slapped him. For one heart-stopping moment, he wanted to say yes. To take what she offered and never look back, escape the past and all its doubts forever. But he couldn’t. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I—I thought you understood this was just for the week.”

Her gaze dropped to the countertop, but not before he caught the gleam of tears in her eyes. An awful, crushing weight slammed down on his chest and he felt as if he were drowning.

Her lips trembled, but she didn’t turn to face him. “Things have been so good between us. I thought…I hoped you felt the same way.”

“Julie…” His fingertips brushed the back of her shoulder. He needed to touch her so badly he ached with it, wanted to draw her into his arms and try to soothe her pain. But he was the cause of that pain, and he had no right to offer comfort.

She closed her eyes. “Maybe you should go now.”

“Julie, please. Try to understand.” But how could she, when he’d never really told her anything about his marriage? Just that it was bad. A lot of people had bad marriages, including one of her friends. But there was bad and there was
bad
.

She set her brush on the counter with slow, deliberate movements. “Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve spent a week with me, and we’ve had a great time. You’re too smart a man not to realize that we’re good together, in and out of bed. We fit. That doesn’t come along every day.” She turned around to look at him, defiance and hurt molding her expression. “So why would a date be such a bad idea? It’s not like I’m saying we should get married, I’m just talking about dinner back in the real world. It
shouldn’t
be a big deal, but apparently it is. I want to understand, like you said. I want to know why you won’t at least consider the possibility of continuing the awesome thing we have going here.”

“My divorce…” How the hell did he say this? He’s never told anyone about Lilith. Her family knew what had happened because they’d been there, but no one else. He didn’t even know how to put it all into words.

“A lot of people have relationships after they divorce, Lukas.” She shrugged. “Many of them even remarry.”

He blew out a breath. “I know, but…I don’t think I could ever be one of them. I promised myself I would never go through anything like that again. That meant never getting into a solid relationship again, never going down a path that might even hint at the possibility of marriage.” He swallowed, trying to gather enough spit in his mouth to force out what he needed to say. “I know it sounds extreme, but my marriage
was
extreme, at least in the end. My ex-wife—Lilith—was not…stable.”

Her tone was just as hesitant as his had been. “She had…mental problems?”

He nodded, wrapping the towel around his waist. He didn’t want to have this conversation naked. He already felt stripped bare as it was. “When we first got together, she was on the controlling side. She liked every little detail to be perfect. I understood that, since I like things
just so
myself.”

Two strides took him out of the bathroom, and Julie followed him. But once he was in the bedroom he didn’t know what to do with himself. Sit on the bed where Julie and he had made love so many times? No.

Julie slid on a nightgown and flopped down on the floor, her back against the bed. “But she got worse?”

He sat down beside her, gripping the towel tight so it wouldn’t slip. “It became unhealthy. I managed to dismiss and ignore it for several years.” He flashed a bitter, self-deprecating smile. “Hindsight is 20/20, right? It got to the point where I couldn’t ignore it when I came home from a summer research trip and she’d found a spider in the kitchen cupboard, decided that meant the room was ‘dirty,’ put all the dishes in garbage bags in the middle of the floor and demolished the cabinets.”

Confusion clouded her features. “Like…called in a contractor to redo the kitchen because of a bug?”

He snorted. As if anything had been so simple with Lilith. “I wish. When I got home, there was nothing but a sledgehammer resting against the wall where the cabinets used to be. She’d spent the summer eating take-out and had no idea why I was upset when I confronted her about the fact that we had no kitchen.” He shook his head. “When I suggested that she might want to talk to a psychologist, she claimed that nothing was wrong. What she’d done was perfectly reasonable.”

Julie shifted around to face him, her eyes round. “And she was serious?”

“Very.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to relive it all, but Julie deserved to know why he couldn’t be with her. He wanted to—God, he wanted to—but he couldn’t.

“Then what happened?”

“Things went downhill from there. The more I insisted that she needed help, the more she decided that
I
was the problem. Every time I pointed out something that she did or said was more extreme than the situation warranted, she just got more stubborn about her way being the only right way. I even tried to get her parents to stage an intervention. That was a spectacular failure.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. His stomach churned, and his body tightened as the memories assaulted him. He’d been sure they’d have a good life together when he’d married Lilith and he’d been so wrong. How long had he lived with a crazy woman before he’d even noticed? “Our fights got uglier, as you can imagine. Soon
everything
was ‘dirty,’ including sex and anything that had to do with me. On the next trip I took—only a few days for a conference that time—I came home and our bed was gone. In its place were two twin size beds.”

“Because you were too
dirty
to even share a mattress with.” Julie’s hand closed around his wrist, and he could feel the tremor in her fingers. Or maybe that was him shaking. “Oh, Lukas. I’m so…oh my God.”

He looked at her, his voice dropping to an agonized whisper. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone you love think you’re disgusting? That touching you makes them unclean? That you’re no better than a
disease?”

A little sob escaped her and she clamped her free hand over her mouth.

“After that, I asked for a divorce.” He shrugged helplessly. “Living with her had become impossible, and I couldn’t force her to seek help.”

The sad thing was…he’d still loved her, still cared, still hoped she’d get better. There was that awful word again: hope. Bitter bile burned at his throat. Back then, he would have done anything she needed if she’d just been willing to work on the problem. Because that was what a husband was supposed to do. Be strong and supportive. He’d tried and he’d failed.

Julie scooted a little closer to him. “The day we met, you said the divorce was ugly.”

“Oh, ugly is far too pleasant a word for our breakup.”
That
was when the love had died and been replaced with something far less kind. He didn’t think it had gone as far as hate, but loathing definitely came into the picture. “She moved out of the house, but came back while I was at work and stole things that my parents gave me, just for spite. The stuff wasn’t worth anything except sentimental value, but she took it to get back at me for wanting a divorce. Then she argued over every single thing in the settlement because she didn’t want me to have anything.
Dirty
people don’t deserve to be treated fairly, or so she told me.”

“Jesus,” Julie whispered. “Did she ever get help?”

His smile was humorless. “About a year after everything was finalized, I found a box of her family’s old photo albums, so I called her parents to see if they wanted them back. They thanked me and said yes. Her father told me that Lilith had been admitted to a mental institution by her doctor.”

She made a startled little sound. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. A headache began hammering at his temples, the weight on his chest growing heavier by the second. “That was the last I’d heard of her, until her email this morning. I’d really hoped never to hear from her again.”

“I don’t blame you.” Julie slid her arms around him and burrowed against his chest. “I’m so sorry, Lukas.”

He held her tight and felt tears burn the backs of his eyes. For the innocence Lilith had ripped away from him, and for what he was about to lose with Julie. “So…the idea of dealing with another relationship is…I can’t do it,
mein Liebling
. I swore to myself I wouldn’t do that again. It’s emotional suicide.”

“I would never—”

He pressed a palm to the back of her skull. “Lilith would have said the same thing when we first got together. I know that you’re not like her, but what happened with her left way too many scars for me to risk it. I don’t know how to trust a woman anymore. Hell, I don’t know how to trust my own judgment when it comes to choosing a woman. So I’m not going to. I’m sorry.” He squeezed her closer. “If it helps at all, in the five years since my divorce, you are the
only
woman who’s made me second guess my decision never to get into a relationship again.”

“It does help, and it doesn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wish…” He sighed, shook his head. “Wishing is pointless. I never meant to hurt you. That would be the very last thing I ever wanted.”

“I wish too.” A smothered little whimper burst from her, and he felt her tears splash against his chest.

If there was one thing this week with Julie had showed him without any doubts, it was that not all women he was attracted to were like Lilith. He’d worried about that for a long time. But Julie was sweet and easygoing and not at all controlling or controlled. Unfortunately, he was still the same man he had been when they’d met. He was still cynical about love and relationships and knew that getting into one would be a mistake. He could tell himself that going out a few times in California wouldn’t hurt anything, but it would be a lie. He was already in over his head with her. The only thing saving him was the fact that their affair would be over when they left the island.

The problem was, Julie was not only the first woman to make him second guess his no-relationship policy—she was also the first woman to ever make him wish he were a different kind of man. Sure, he’d wished many times that his marriage hadn’t gone south, that he’d never married or even met his ex, but he was a practical soul. The past couldn’t be changed. He had to live with his mistakes. He’d looked at his situation, his history, and made the very practical decision that relationships were a risk he should never take again. He just wished he had never had to make that decision. He wished he were the kind of man who could claim a woman like Julie for his own and know that it would be fine in the end, but he’d felt that way before and look where it had gotten him.

No. He couldn’t do it. He’d barely survived the last time; he wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not even for Julie.

He was who he was. Nothing had changed. He just wished things were different.

He lifted her hand, pressed a lingering kiss to the back of it, then shoved his fingers into her hair and forced her head back so he could slant his mouth over hers. It was wild and desperate and tasted like goodbye. She sobbed against his lips, clutching him tight. Their tongues tangled, the kiss so fierce he tasted blood. Hers or his, he wasn’t sure and he didn’t care.