Heather Graham (12 page)

Ian was frowning. Brittany felt like protesting simply because he was acting like an elderly brother. As if he was certain that she couldn’t possibly take care of herself.

She had no chance to do anything, verbally or otherwise. Flynn uncoiled himself and stood, dragging her with him. “You’ll have to call back, Ian.”

“Brittany,” Ian scrambled to his feet, too. “Tell the Loch Ness Monster here to go home alone.”

“Maria will be horribly disappointed,” Flynn reminded her.

“Oh, good God,” Ian moaned. “Brittany—watch out for him. And tell Maria that next Friday night she mustn’t plan on you coming back for dinner. Breakfast, perhaps, but not dinner. In fact, perhaps I shall be able to persuade you not to return at all.”

He gazed at Flynn and slowly, elegantly kissed her hand. Then he stepped on past them.

“That was atrociously rude!” Brittany told Flynn.

“Was it?” he queried softly. He gripped her arm. She felt that grip like a jolt of steel. “Let’s go. Up the bluff—my car’s in front.”

“Well, my shoes aren’t,” Brittany said, starting back toward Ian’s.

“Leave your bloody shoes,” Flynn told her, and then, right then, she knew that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

“Flynn—”

“Now, Ms. Martin.”

She was suddenly so frightened she felt like screaming, yet that scream died in her throat when she felt his gaze. It was all there, all the danger that hovered but never surfaced, like the tension that riddled the air but could never be touched.

Flynn’s mask was down. His face was hard, his eyes were like steel and even as she struggled to determine what could have come about so suddenly, he turned, dragging her up, along the bluff.

“Flynn—!”

Panting, she tried to wrench from his grasp. She stepped on a burr with her bare foot and staggered, crying out with pain. It took him several seconds to pause, and then it was only to scoop her into his arms, and carry her more quickly to his car, parked out in the long drive.

She was frightened, a little dazed from the tequila, and massively confused, though even then logic told her that she should have been forewarned. He was so hot, so tense, as if some leashed anger had suddenly been set free, and that anger was directed against her.

“Flynn …” It came out as a whisper. She had little choice but to lock her arms around his neck, and though she should be furious in return, she could not be righteously so, for she knew the lie she was living. Nor even as she shivered could she fight the dizzying draw, the feel of his arms about her, the hardness of his chest.

She had dreamed of his arms. Dreamed about his body. Running her fingers over the muscles in his shoulders, down his back, through his hair …

His heat, his touch, were suddenly gone. She had been neatly deposited in the passenger’s seat of his car. The door slammed on her before she could think of bolting.

Her teeth were chattering by the time he came behind the wheel and she didn’t think to speak as the ignition roared to life and the car soared like a jet out of Ian’s long drive.

“Flynn—”

Face set and grim, he stared ahead at the road, giving her no heed. She sat back, gripping the door, wondering what he knew, desperately trying to think of something to say to save herself.

Save herself … she thought a bit hysterically. From what? Surely, even if he was an embezzler, he wouldn’t think to—to hurt her.

No! instinct wailed again. He would never hurt her. He would never hurt her. He would never …

The car suddenly jerked off the main road, seeming to shriek in protest. Brittany swallowed, sinking further into her seat, then feeling a growth of anger herself. Needed anger; she wouldn’t sit there cowering no matter what she had done herself, she determined fiercely.

Trees rushed by them; the car went over a dozen bumps, and then they were facing the ocean again.

On a private, lonely beach. A stretch of cool white sand completely guarded and shaded by the trees, with only the blue of the sea as witness to anything that occurred there. Oh, God, Brittany thought, courage fading. She didn’t really know the angry man sitting beside her, she didn’t know him at all, only the polite and unerringly cordial mask that the stranger had chosen to show her.

Flynn sat there for the longest time, staring out at the sea. Then he opened the car door and got out. Brittany looked after him. He walked to the shore, hands in jean pockets, still barefoot, stiff, cold, unyielding. She pressed her hands against her cheeks.

God in Heaven, what did he know?

Time ticked away. She watched it disappear on the dashboard clock. And then she couldn’t stand it any longer. She slammed her way out of the car and walked down to the shore where the waves washed over his feet. She kept her distance from him, at least ten feet. She placed her hands on her hips in a show of bravado and tried desperately to keep her voice from shaking.

“What? What?” It didn’t work. The last rose in a scream.

And drew reaction. He turned to her, eyes blazing. They were the color of the sea, and the night. Silver blue and gray all in one, startling against his tan. And step by slow step he approached her, while she could not find the good sense to move.

“What? Ms. Martin?” he began softly. “Poor, dear Ms. Martin. Trying so hard to contact your parents. You might have mentioned that they were dead. I could have called in a medium and we could have tried a séance.”

She felt as if he had struck her. She stepped back at last.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

Oh, God, it hurt. It hadn’t felt like such a terrible lie until he spoke it—his way.

He paused, cocking his head. “Why not? You apparently don’t mind.”

“How long—” She paused, biting her lip.

“How long have I known? A while now. It didn’t take a great detective to discover who you were, and from there …” He shrugged. She noted vaguely that he had begun to walk again. That he was almost on top of her. Towering over her in anger. Suddenly all she heard was the crashing of the waves. The roar of the surf.

And then she heard his voice again. Deep, biting, cruel.

“I knew you were living a lie, Brittany. And that didn’t really bother me. It intrigued me. I could never quite decide whether you were the grand impostor or a hopeless innocent. You were using me for something. And not even that bothered me. I’ve met fortune hunters before. It’s all a game. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. What finally bothered me was the realization that I just don’t move fast enough for you. I wasn’t enough. You had to play for Drury at the same time.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I saw you!”

“You saw nothing!”

It was wrong. Whatever she might have done then, what she did do was wrong. He began to laugh, and it was deep and throaty and both sexual and dangerous and even as she attempted to analyze the sound it was too late because his arms were around her and the breath was knocked from her. Suddenly she was lying in the surf and the warm ocean water was playing over her toes. Oddly, she noted the water when all the heat and warmth of his body was over hers, crushing her against the sand. She gasped and gazed upward and saw his eyes and then didn’t see them at all because his head had bent low over hers, because his lips were pressed hard against hers, firm and forceful, and the edge of his tongue seared over her lips, seeking entrance.

She fought him. She clamped her lips tightly shut and pressed against the force of his chest. It was hard and unyielding. His arms felt like corded steel and her touch against them did nothing either and of all things she thought stubbornly that this shouldn’t be, that she should be able to move …

Then he moved, of his own accord. Once again the fire of his eyes was above her, searing into her, and she thought desperately that she needed an explanation, but words had deserted her entirely.

She didn’t need words. He had enough for the two of them.

“I’m so sorry, Brit. And such a fool. I stayed so near and just dreamed. Dreamed and ached—and sent you straight to Ian. Against whom you can take care of yourself. Well, here we are. Ian is a fairly hearty bloke. You can’t seem to budge me, can you? Or does it even matter to you? Me or Ian—we’re both rich. Is that all that you were after.”

“No!” Brittany cried out in horror. He laughed again and kissed her. A kiss that was demanding and brutal and despite herself, she let out a sound of desperation. A cry, from deep in her throat. A protest against the force, against the brutality.

And where all her strength could not stop him, the cry did.

He did not move, his assault ceased. She felt him, the warmth, the strength, so hard against her. She felt the rasp of his breath, the pounding of his heart.

And she felt his hand against her cheek. The touch of his thumb so very gentle.

His lips touched hers. Gentle again. The tip of his tongue healed where he had been so brutal.

She touched his cheeks, instinctively. She felt all the planes there, she explored the curves and hollows. Her fingers moved into his hair and she couldn’t remember his words, all she knew was the sudden sensation.

This had been her dream—the sand, the sea, the touch of the breeze … him. Flynn. Coming to her. Needing her. Wanting her. Instinct had told her time and again that he had to be good, that he had to be right.

She couldn’t remember why she was there, how she had come to the Costa del Sol, how and why she had come to this place. She was mesmerized by sensation. The feel of his breath against her flesh. The tip of his tongue, first against her lips, then gaining entrance beyond, finding the most insinuative and erotic pleasure there.

The feelings were good, and deliriously right. More feelings. His fingers at the nape of her neck, finding the hook to the halter dress. Breaking it apart, pulling the material down and baring her breasts to the sun and the breeze …

And his gaze.

“My God.”

He murmured things against her throat. Against a pulse that thundered there, against the lobe of her ear, against her breast before he took the taut nipple into his mouth, laving it again and again. Her fingers locked into his hair. She felt a great rumbling within her. A trembling, hot and fluid. Where he touched her, the feeling was fire. Where he did not touch her, the warmth spread anyway. She had never felt so totally weak.

So desperate to know more.

Perhaps it was the tequila. Perhaps it was the breeze, or the sound of the sea, a heartbeat that joined with her own. She didn’t think to protest. She didn’t want to protest. She didn’t want anything to come between them, to come between what was, and what could be.

She didn’t know if there really was a pink haze, a crimson mist of sunset. She just knew that it was a dream. That it had begun the first time she had seen him, that it had been growing ever since. Each time she inhaled his scent. Each time she felt his eyes or the brush of his fingers against her.

He stared at her, and she returned that stare. Her lips grew dry as she fought for air. She touched them at last with her tongue and brought movement from him again. His hand, searching along her thigh, traveling higher and higher, bringing the skirt of her dress with it. She moaned softly at the touch of his fingers, inhaling sharply, so dizzy with the sharpness of sensation that she would have fallen were she not already down. She felt weak; she felt alive. There must be … more. That she ached for something intangible that had to come …

He said something, he muttered something. The little strip of lace broke and she was aware that she was bare above the waist and below and he was looking at her and that she should have been embarrassed or horrified and she was neither; she was only anxious, unable to move, praying that he didn’t go away.

Another hoarse sound escaped him and he was on his knees above her, casting away his shirt, unzipping his jeans. She did not draw her eyes away, but watched him, too.

And more warmth sizzled through her. Warmth created by the fine breadth of his shoulders, by their bronze glow. By the deep brush of dark hair upon his chest, tapering at his waist, to grow in profusion again below, to nest and cloak …

The urgency of his sex.

He gave off a husky little cry. She felt his arms around her; the delicious stroke of his tongue within her mouth. She gave way to temptation. Her fingers pulsed and caressed along his nape, along the length of his spine. She felt him, so much a part of her already. All that she breathed, the fire, the trembling, the hard, rampant thunder of his heart …

His hand, stroking her thigh, then his weight, settling over her, between her.

Her breath caught with sudden pain. She would have cried; she bit into her lips instead. Her nails curved against him with no conscious volition, yet when he would draw away she twisted her head and held to him fast.

He whispered things to her. She opened her eyes and the sun was setting. The air around them was in rainbow shades; the surf continued to pound as if it were inside of her.

She bit lightly against his shoulder. She was seared, as if electricity flowed through her.

She could not let him go.

He moved.

Slowly … quickly. And the feeling rose. Rose like lightning, rose like thunder, rose like the most wondrous storm, tense and exciting, vivid, exquisite. The moments were so keen, so precious. She wanted it to go on forever. She ached so, she reached so, it was a bit like dying.

Like dying …

It was life. Life so keen, so acute, it was painful.

Life …

She reached for a star, and plucked it from the heavens. She shivered, she arched, she shuddered, and yet that was not all, but again and again in little aftershocks.

She opened her eyes. She saw his face. Tense, taut, strained. He cast his back and moved against her again and she felt him shudder, shudder, tremble … as she had. Shudder, and fill her, and fall against her, and they were both damp and panting and exhausted beneath the sun.

Slowly, slowly, the glow faded from her. The breeze touched her and she was cool, and then acutely aware of what she had just done.

And she was still speechless.

Flynn moved away from her at last. She closed her eyes and swallowed miserably.