Once a Rebel... (11 page)

And she’d started it.

The adrenalin, of course. The skipper of the pickup boat had excused it as much. In that moment she’d needed nothing more in the entire world than someone to connect with. But would she have done that with some stranger that she’d just met?

No.

This was about Hayden.

She’d felt it when she’d first walked up to him at his cottage and he’d looked at her with such sultry interest. She’d felt it surrounded by children, crouched across a suburban battlefield from Leonidas, and doubly so when they’d lain in the sun drying. She’d definitely felt it when he’d kissed her half to death to make his point just a few nights ago.

All of those moments were just leading to the one they’d just shared in the boat.

And he knew it.

You started to buy in to me touching you months ago …

He’d warned her. He’d told her how his vision of strategic seduction worked. Why should she be surprised, now, to discover his manipulations were working?

Except … was it manipulation if you really wanted it?

If you started it?

Then again, wasn’t that one of the key principles of his theory? Convincing her it was her idea all along.

She emerged at the top of the gorge slightly ahead of him and didn’t wait. She struck out across the car park, shaking her head briefly at the staff member waiting at the top to upsell a second jump.

Seriously? People could do it again after just a short break?

‘Shirley …’

She kept moving.

‘Are we jogging back to the ship?’

That slowed her. Where exactly did she think she was going? She had to face him sometime.

‘Stop.’ A strong hand curled around her upper arm and drew her to a halt.

She let him pull her into a standstill, smack bang in the middle of the car park out here in the middle of nowhere. Halfway back to the locker that held their daypacks.

She spun on him. ‘What?’

‘We kissed. It’s not the end of life as we know it.’

Not for him, maybe. The chances of her ever forgetting how she’d felt with her skin merging with his? Not high. ‘It wasn’t what I wanted.’

‘You kissed me.’

‘I know!’ That was what was so infuriating. And confusing.

‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

Again, not for him, maybe. She lifted her eyes. ‘It means your stupid games worked.’

He wasn’t about to pretend he didn’t understand. A tiny part of her acknowledged the respect that hinted at. ‘I thought it was a pretty good way to cap off an amazing experience.’

‘That’s because it wasn’t your mother we were doing this for.’ She frowned. How had her mother come into this all of a sudden?

‘No. We’re a decade too late for my mother. And she never had a bucket list. She was too busy surviving.’

A car tooted politely behind them and Shirley realised they were standing in the middle of the vehicular thoroughfare. She stepped back, away from Hayden, and he did the same. The car progressed through.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked when he stepped back up next to her.

His eyes stayed fixed on the building their lockers were in. But he avoided her question. ‘You can’t use your mother as a shield every time we start getting close.’

She stiffened. ‘I don’t.’

‘Yeah, Shirley. You do.’

‘Then we see it differently.’

He hissed his frustration and she turned and kept walking. ‘I’ll tell you how I see it,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘We have massive chemistry but, instead of indulging it and working it out of our systems, we go head to head constantly and leak it out that way.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ she muttered.

‘I am speaking for myself. I just stand near you, Shirley Marr, and my cells start twitching. If that little boat had been slower and emptier and if what I wanted was the only thing that mattered, then you and I would be having sex right now instead of standing up here getting our kicks verbally.’

‘You make a lot of assumptions, Tennant.’

‘You’re lying if you say you don’t feel it.’

She spun again. ‘I don’t
want
to feel it.’

He snorted. ‘I get that, loud and clear. It must infuriate you to find yourself attracted to
a man like me
.’

‘Oh, will you let that go? I was angry.’

‘You’re always angry, Shirley. And it’s getting pretty old.’

She stared at him, shuffling through all the words available to her and none of them seemed adequate. Except maybe the truth.

‘You’re not safe, Hayden,’ she whispered, pressing her fingers to her left breast. ‘For me.’

The rapid change of direction had him shaking his head. He took a moment to choose his words.
‘Life isn’t safe, Shirley. But you have to live it or you might as well not bother.’

‘Like you haven’t been for the past few years?’

His eyes didn’t waver. ‘Yeah. Exactly like that. I was just taking up air.’

Her lips pressed together. But on some level she recognised his use of the past tense. ‘Why?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t get to have it both ways, Shirley. You can’t keep me locked at arm’s length but then expect me to share myself with you.’

‘Is that why you never have close relationships? So you don’t have to share yourself?’

His jaw tightened and his skin seemed to drop colour. ‘The bus is coming.’

She followed his eyes and, sure enough, the hourly shuttle bus back to Queenstown was trundling over the traffic bridge that spanned the Kawarau River.

They turned for the locker area and retrieved their property. Shirley checked in briefly with the owner and got a contact for a later interview on the history of this insane sport, then jogged across the asphalt and climbed onto the waiting bus.

Hayden sat three-quarters of the way back, staring out of the window. Expression closed. As she approached, she saw that his bag occupied the empty seat next to him.

Right.

She pivoted on her feet and returned to a seat immediately behind the driver and promptly engaged
him in a conversation long enough to pass the entire trip back to Queenstown.

The driver radioed ahead and arranged with the departed Invercargill bus to slow its progress long enough for them to intercept it on the highway. They did a quick roadside bus-swap and found themselves heading south. This time Hayden left the seat next to his open and she sank into it wordlessly. She pulled out her notepad and made some fast notes from her discussion with the driver and then busied herself admiring the stunning scenery as they travelled south to the coast. Out of the window, away from Hayden. But the whole time he dominated her thoughts. Him and the heated moments in the boat.

They cleared port immigration and headed for the waiting
Paxos.

‘Welcome back,’ the crewman they’d first met said as she hurried up the gangway. Not because the ship was waiting to leave but because she couldn’t wait a moment longer to get a nice solid door between herself and Hayden.

So much hung, unsaid. Yet they’d also said too much. How could both be true?

He led them back up to the accommodation corridor and turned to them with a flourish.

‘Two rooms,’ he announced in passable English, clearly pleased with himself.

They’d had to surrender their rooms on arrival for immigration reasons but their bags sat waiting neatly in the hallway outside their previous accommodation.
Shirley stared at her bag as though she were seeing it for the very first time.

Hayden’s words back up at the gorge whooshed through her head.

Life isn’t safe.

She could spend the next few months running from the feelings that were growing more confusing and more intense by the day, or she could turn and face them. On her own terms. Maybe she could control it if she was driving it.

Or die trying.

‘One room,’ she heard herself saying past a dry mouth.

The crewman’s lined face wrinkled further. Hayden’s eyes swung her way.

‘One room?’ the two men said together.

She locked eyes with Hayden. Shock filled them. And that was pretty rare in the Master of the Impassive. She lifted a brow. Took a breath. ‘Any objections?’

Five little syllables that changed so very much.

He stared at her, a question live in his blue eyes. The crewman glanced between them, still uncertain.

‘One room.’ Hayden nodded.

In a flourish of reproachful Greek, the crewman collected her bag and Hayden’s and swung the door to his old room open and placed the suitcases inside. Then he turned and stomped off. Shirley followed Hayden in, her heart wringing every single drop of blood out of its tight chambers. He spun
around to face her as soon as she clicked the door shut behind them. And locked it.

‘You have to live life or you might as well not bother,’ she quoted, bolder than she felt.

Suspicion lined his handsome face. ‘You didn’t want this.’

‘I still don’t.’ He frowned. She swallowed slowly, dampened her lips. ‘So why do I? So very badly?’

Then she was moving. And so was he. They came together in the middle of the tiny room, all hands and lips and tongues and clumsy haste. Hayden pressed her up against the locked door and plundered with his tongue, forking his fingers into her hair and yanking it roughly out of its elastic band. She did the same with his T-shirt from the band of his shorts. It was still damp from their river dunking and bus travel. But freeing it meant she could slide her hands around his searing flesh and mould the refined, lean contours of the back she’d glimpsed when he was Leonidas as he pressed into her hard from the front.

‘It’s like the surf at night,’ he murmured, nuzzling his face into the dark waves of her hair and breathing fire into her ear. She smiled at the poet still in him, knowing well what it must really look like after their adventures today, and tipped her head back as far as the door behind her would allow so that he could suck and bite his way across her throat.

Then he returned to her mouth, pressing short and long kisses into her receptive flesh as he
ground his hips into hers. ‘I’ve wanted to do this since you first sat in my living room all prim and proper and with boots fastened up to your knees.’ His hands left her hair and traced a path down to her waist. ‘I wanted, then, to unlace you one eyelet at a time. This will have to do.’

Her dark maroon shorts were a surf brand, tied at the top for effect. He impatiently yanked each lace free of its eyelet and then pulled her backwards towards the two tiny beds. He released her only long enough to get behind one while she got behind the other and they pushed them together, the momentum flinging them back into each other’s arms as they met in the middle.

She kneeled on her side of the bed, stretching up to find his mouth again, breathing heavily. Gasping as she had in the boat. Overwhelmed by her own audacity. And need.

He fisted his fingers in her hair and tipped her head back, away from his lips, until her heavy glance lifted and focused on his.

‘Are you sure, Shirley?’

She was sure that she’d never felt this swirling, uncontrollable need in her life. She was sure this moment would never come again if she stopped it now. She was sure that people had survived entire lifetimes on a single glance, a touch, and that just wasn’t going to be enough for her.

Was she sure …?

‘No,’ she breathed. ‘But I’m doing it anyway.’

He circled her with his arms and twisted her below him, lying at right angles across the rift between
the twin beds, pressing down hard and hot on top of her and gently finding her lips with his. If he’d come on heavy just then—seducer Hayden—she might have baulked, the intensity of feeling soft mattress below her and solid man above just a little bit too real. But he didn’t; he timed his switch to explorer Hayden just perfectly—long, leisurely, lazy—and it sucked her into a place where the room spun gently and her breath shallowed out, and the only thing that wasn’t spinning or stealing oxygen was right in front of her.

Hayden.

Heavy and protective lying across her. Stroking her hair back from her damp face, taking his time, getting to know her, his blue eyes creating an anchor for her out-of-control emotions. He levered himself up onto one hand and stripped his shirt off with the other, watching her closely the whole time. Waiting for her to freak out and change her mind. Waiting for her to follow suit.

She lay there, breathing heavily as his eyes raked her body. Flat out refusing to back out now. Just when she was getting everything she didn’t know she wanted.

‘You want some help getting those off?’ he whispered, his eyes darkening dangerously and his fingers tracing down her shirt to her unlaced shorts.

‘What?’ She gasped at his fingers low against her belly and forced herself to focus.

‘Your shorts. Your shirt.’

She sucked her lip between her teeth and breathed, ‘You want them …?’

His body answered for him. His eyes darkened. ‘I want what’s inside them.’

She locked eyes on his and smiled—determined, desire-heavy, defiant—and then purred two magical words into the air between them.

‘
Molon labe.
’

C
OME
and take them.

Boy, had he. He’d practically torn them in his haste to get them off her, to strip off all the final trappings of Shiloh and get back to the raw essence of Shirley.

Raw.

The right word. That was how they’d been long into the evening. They’d missed the captain’s supper—
bad passengers
—and he’d had to sneak up to the galley late that night to guilt the cook into bundling together a few things for them to eat. To refuel.

A few hours later they’d fallen asleep, slick and spent and wrapped in each other’s scent in the pushed-together bed.

And now it was morning. And Shirley was stirring.

Hayden used the last precious moments of her oblivion to scan her face once more. Free of make-up, free of stress, free of any kind of judgement. Greedy, guilty, stolen moments. He lifted a single
lock of dark hair from her face with his little finger.

Her eyes fluttered open, confused. But they cleared again a heartbeat later as she remembered what they’d shared the night before.

He put on his game face. ‘Good morning.’

She stretched like a cat under the sheets. Winced. Then blushed at the reason for the wince. Then smiled.

A smile.
Could’ve been worse.

‘Morning,’ she murmured.

‘Hungry?’

‘Ravenous.’

‘Want to head up to breakfast?’

‘In a bit.’

He nodded. ‘Want first run at the bathroom?’

She shook her head. ‘Let me wake up first.’

‘Want to talk about what changed between Queenstown and the docks?’

He didn’t mean to say it, didn’t even know he wanted to ask it until the words tumbled off his lips. He wasn’t in the habit of questioning—or pushing—his luck.

She watched him steadily. ‘Other than the scenery?’

‘Ha ha.’

She sat up and kept the sheet tucked carefully under her arms. That seemed a crime now that he knew from first-hand experience what was under there. The memory of her skin sliding against his was still so fresh.

She shrugged. Slowly. ‘I just decided that casual sex shouldn’t be merely a male prerogative.’

His gut tightened. ‘Casual as in one-off?’ It hadn’t felt very casual as she’d writhed under him and clenched her long fingers into his flesh.

She arched a brow. ‘I think we’re already over our quota for that, don’t you?’

Point.

‘Casual as in … casual,’ she went on. ‘Not a big deal. Something nice to do when we see each other.’

Nice.
He stared at her, not letting the twist in his belly grow into anything harder. ‘Those might just be the last words on the planet I ever expected to come out of your mouth.’

She leaned back against the wall and kept her eyes guarded. ‘Maybe I’ve found myself at sea.’

Or lost yourself.
And he had a nasty feeling he might have been responsible for that.

Shouldn’t he be celebrating now? He’d got to have sex with Shirley. Shirley-the-untouchable. She’d let him touch her wherever he wanted last night. Repeatedly.

A man like you …

Had he dragged her down to his level?

Her scowl returned and that, too, was a crime after the ecstasy that he had seen stamped on her features last night. ‘Relax, Hayden. You haven’t corrupted me. I’m here because I wanted to be.’

Had she meant to use the past tense?

And … by the way … could he
be
more of a teenage girl about this?

He gave himself a mental punch.
Come on.
This was what he did. He had sex with beautiful women, enjoyed them in the moment, kissed them goodbye and moved on. Occasionally he came back for round two but never round three. On principle.

Moments like this were not new to him. But this … disquiet certainly was.

This felt all kinds of wrong.

He glanced at naked, make-up-less, alabaster-skinned Shirley. Carol-Anne’s little girl. But he would totally have hit on her way back when she’d sat in his living room like a gift from the gods of sensuality if he’d thought he had a chance, and he’d known
then
who she was. So it couldn’t just be about her genes.

This was about her.

He was uncomfortable because it was
her.

Shirley. The person. The woman. The soul.

He pushed to his feet. ‘I might just grab a shower.’ It was down the hall. A decent physical separation so that he could think.

Khaki eyes tracked him silently as he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt over his nothingness and bundled up some clean underwear and a towel. That beautiful mind turning slowly over. It made him nervous. But he made himself turn back and smile. Just because he was wigging out didn’t mean he had to show it.

‘Back in a tick.’

She nodded and he was gone. The one bathroom on the floor was small but serviceable and,
given how few of them there were on this skeleton-crew voyage, it was in reasonable condition. He stripped off again and stepped under the spray before it was fully warm.

Shirley hadn’t responded to him as if she was caving under pressure. On the contrary, she’d taken the lead. She’d been more than decisive at his door yesterday afternoon. Far more than he’d managed. All he’d done this trip was moon around feeling misunderstood. Last night Shirley had been a wake-up call. A healthy reminder that short, passionate affairs were his past and his future. And roughly what he had a right to expect, given the kind of man he was. If she’d gone on being enigmatic and chaste and so bloody
uninterested
he might have started getting unhealthily obsessed. Clouded and off-track. Started doubting the lessons of his life.

He was a man who did best with his emotions firmly holstered.

She was a woman who had impeccable timing and a sense of the dramatic. Just because she played him better than most didn’t mean it wasn’t still a play. Hell, he admired her all the more for it. That kind of sense for people would do very well at his firm. Below the intrigue and the professional disguise, Shirley was a woman just like any other—infinitely less inhibited as the night wore on and she let herself open to him—and hard to walk down the hall away from. But basically made of the same cloth.

And, frankly, he was relieved.

If she’d been cut from any other fabric he might have had a much harder time walking away from her. Not just down the hall to the shower but
away.

He built himself a decent soap lather and then slopped it everywhere that mattered. Rather more roughly than was warranted.

Again—why wasn’t he celebrating? He had a gorgeous, flammable woman in his bed offering him a no-strings out, and the significant pleasure that he gleaned from being right. Last night had been in their future from the first time she had let him touch her.

So why would he really rather be wrong?

Shirley let her breath out slowly and evenly as Hayden’s footsteps diminished with distance. She sagged back against the wall.

What was she doing?

Had she truly gone all
friends-with-benefits
on him? Hayden? The man who’d made an art form of the one-night stand? As if there was any other way of doing things in his head. She might just as likely wander up to the bridge of the
Paxos
and tell Captain Konstantinos the difference between port and starboard.

Part of what she’d said was true—she was here because she wanted to be. But he’d looked so earnest when he’d asked her what had changed after Queenstown, and then so
sick
when she had assured him how much she wanted to be here.

Way to play all your cards at once, Shirley.

But done was done. And there were worse outcomes, for her, than having him believe none of this was a big deal. Though it was. A very big deal. She might have made her decision suddenly but she hadn’t done it lightly. She knew exactly what she’d be sacrificing by being with him. But she hoped her dignity would be partially salvaged by making it clear that them being together was not because of any
influence
he’d applied, but because it was her choice. What she wanted.

And was it ever.

She’d stood there in the corridor and tried to imagine them going to their separate rooms and maintaining a careful distance all the way back to Australia, the way they had on the way out. And she couldn’t do it. Too much had passed between them.

She’d hung, upside-down, from that old bridge and curled her fingers around his as he pulled her into his strong orbit and she’d known there and then that they would be together one way or another.

Her subconscious just hadn’t updated the rest of her until the last moment.

And maybe it had been wise not to if it had had a clue of the ferocious charge that would surge between them once she opened the proverbial floodgates. The moment her decision had been made and his lips had touched hers … she’d been lost.

Lost enough to still feel it now.

Lost enough to want more the moment he got back.

But sane enough not to let it show.

Ever.

Four days back seemed to take half the time of the journey east. Maybe it had something to do with the ocean currents or trade winds, or the way time altered when she was with Hayden. And how it lagged when they were apart. Which wasn’t often. They slept together, they ate together, they walked together, they worked together.

A whole lot of together considering they were two very un-together type people. But having no right to claim on someone was strangely liberating. Either of them could walk out of the door at any moment and the other would have no fair cause for complaint.

But something kept them tethered to each other like they had been up at Kawarau gorge.

Maybe it was knowing that as soon as the boat docked in Sydney—this moment, now—their relationship would be over. Their
thing.
No legitimate reason to be with each other any longer. Until next time. A few more precious, extraordinary days.

Shirley turned and peered up the vast hull of the docked
Paxos.
She waved back at Captain Konstantinos on the bridge. Funny how rapidly friendships formed when you took meals together.

Going back to eating alone was going to be tough.

She turned back to Hayden, standing on the dock. Funny how rapidly friendships formed when you took pleasure together, too. The past four days
had been the shortest and longest of her life. He’d liberated parts of her she’d never met before and let her get closer than she could ever have imagined getting to him. Not all the way in, but part way.

For him, she sensed, that was a lot.

‘So …’ He swung around to face her once they were clear of the busy port activity.

She smiled up at him brightly, determined not to let anything show. ‘So …’

‘I guess that’s it then?’

Did he have to sound so relieved? ‘Guess so.’

‘Until next time?’

Right. The list wasn’t done yet. That meant neither were they. ‘The next one’s yours,’ she breathed. And that meant the ball was in his court. If he didn’t want to see her again then he only had to drag out organising the next list item.

She wasn’t going to beg.

He looked away, watched a dispute between forklifts nearby. Then he brought his eyes back to her. ‘I really enjoyed New Zealand. The journey. Our time together.’

Lord … Were all casual things this awkward to walk away from? ‘Yeah, it was fun.’

And intense and challenging and scary and deeply moving all at the same time. But ‘fun’ just seemed safer to go with under the circumstances.

‘Thank you,’ he finally said. The first honest thing to come from his mouth.

‘What for?’ Throwing herself at him or not making a scene about their parting?

‘For letting me come on this journey with you.’

‘I know you probably would have been more comfortable on one of those.’ She nodded at yet another cruise liner berthed across the harbour. And suddenly she was imagining being with him in an opulent suite with a spa bath and a king-sized bed and a really plush, really comfortable carpet.

‘Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable. Actually, I was thanking you for letting me in on this whole journey to fulfil the list. It’s been—’ he struggled for the right word ‘—good for me. To have direction. Purpose.’

That was such a profound thing to say twenty seconds before they parted ways.

Unless …

It wasn’t too profound for a goodbye statement. It would be just like Hayden to seek closure with some grand gesture. Maybe he wouldn’t follow up with the next list item after all.

She stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. Ridiculously chaste. Determined to save him the trouble of ending things. ‘Goodbye, Hayden. I’ll see you—’
Soon? Later? In my dreams?
She didn’t have control over any of them, so she just settled for, ‘I’ll see you.’

‘I’ll be in touch.’

Which was just one step removed from
‘I’ll call you.’

She had no experience with the whole friends-with-benefits thing. What was the protocol here? Cool, aloof and
take it as it comes?
Or warm, open and
on like Donkey Kong the next time I see you?
She was almost certain it wasn’t
throw your arms around him and beg him to stay.

That burning urge couldn’t be good for anyone. And, as she’d once bragged, her strongest trait was supposed to be her self-discipline.

She turned for the long-stay parking and reached for her bag. He bent for it at the same time and their fingers tangled on the handle. He straightened, his eyes locked on hers. He relinquished the bag.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he repeated. Somehow his intense eye contact was like an elaborate signature at the bottom of a legal document. So she knew he meant it.

She smiled. Turned. Left.

Walking away was even harder than stepping off the platform up in the gorge. At least then she’d had the press of his hot, urgent lips to distract her.

Now she had nothing.