Tempting Isabel (Paradise South #1) (31 page)

CHAPTER 42

S
unday morning at
dawn, Isabel was up early with a cup of tea on her back deck overlooking the bay. And being confident that Roberto was no longer a threat, especially since the fence had been finished during the wedding on Saturday, she sat there practically naked, back to comfortable in her desired state.

But nothing else in her life felt comfortable. Or right. She was ragged from worry over her position at Golden Rings, and fuming, confused, and nauseous over Zack, the entire cluster it had all become. God, that look in his eyes, it suffocated her—still.

She blinked it all away and sipped her tea slowly.
Find something to distract
you.

Okay.
She focused on the rolling tide below. Always soothing to her. The roll in and out, like breath, like life.

Just then a flitting monarch butterfly caught her eye. She had been in awe at their great migration as a little girl, but this one was without its group, its kaleidoscope she recalled learning in school. The lone soul fluttered over her and out over the bay. Her heart sank knowing that if the orange and black beauty continued its course west, it would never reach its destination, nor would it ever find rest––the sea would destroy its wings if the thing tried to touch down. Its only hope would be to meet its end with a hovering seabird, a quick, and likely painless, conclusion. What a shame—such a delicate and dazzling creature. She turned her head, unable to watch.

And as she faced her front door now, a sudden knocking, then the doorbell, brought her back to her own cruel reality.

Too early, even for a
Mexican
visitor, well, except maybe in an extreme situation.

This is it. Lucinda must need to do this in
person.

She wrapped herself in her soft satin robe, took a breath for courage, and went to her front door.

*

Peering at him through the stained glass window was the vibrant yet blurred image of his Isabel.

“I needed to see you, Isabel.” He had heard the light patter of her bare feet from inside. “And you don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to, but please just listen to what I have to say from out here?”

Nothing.

He stood outside like a
door-to
-door salesmen, completely at her mercy. Minutes passed.

Looking around, waiting and hoping, Zack couldn’t fucking believe that only four units down was the place he’d called a second home for his entire young life. The old gardener trimming the bushes on the grounds waved to him, the man had been working the property for so long.

Zack smiled and returned a wave, then turned his attention back to Isabel’s door when he heard four beeps, a deadbolt clank, and a chain lock drop.

She opened the door.

*

Without a word, but in all her stunning glory, she let him enter her home. His entire being quivered. He always wondered how she did that to him. No one else on the planet ever had.

Upon entering, he tripped but caught himself and recovered before she even noticed.
Keep it together, Zack.

He continued to follow her into the main room, soaking her in with his anguished eyes while breathing her coconut scent deep into his lungs as if his life depended on it. She continued out onto the deck, still without a single word. All he could hear were the waves tumbling in below them, they got louder as he moved farther out onto the deck. He paused then. With Isabel at the deck railing and the wide blue Bay of Banderas set behind her, he couldn’t breathe for an instant. The ultimate masterpiece. He squinted his eyes to better capture the exquisite subject of the virtual photograph: Isabel, in her gossamer satin robe highlighted by subtle reflective light from the sunrise to the east. He couldn’t be sure that she, or any of it, was real at all. So much like a dream, he feared that breathing would wake him from it.

“Tea?” Her
soft-spoken
offer startled him back.

She’s real…that’s a
start.

“No. No, thank you.”

He sat down at the patio table across from her, and as he adjusted his chair to see her more fully, a strange chorus of screaming whines floated past his ear from somewhere close by, maybe to the north? Zack searched for the origin from his seat because having been haunted by the mirror that morning, such eerie sounds couldn’t just be shrugged off.

“Just cats…next door. The place is abandoned now. Actually, the one on the other side of me too. That one’s overrun by sea birds now. When I moved in, the neighbors moved out.”

He digested what she said and shook his head. She was obviously referring to her “curse.”

“That’s insane,” he mumbled. Was Vallarta, or the entire country, even, so superstitious? It was such foreign thinking to him. And he thought he knew Vallarta so well. So maybe it’s a deep cultural indoctrination that Isabel had grown up with that made her actually believe she was cursed. Things started to become clear. He remembered the bouncer at the nightclub who wouldn’t let her in. The guy wouldn’t even look her in the face! So crazy.
Mind-boggling
! No wonder she believed this…curse. It completely surrounded her!

And the mention of her mother last night…had the woman ended her life because she’d believed her youngest was a walking hex?

Well, he’d asked for this, wanting to know what she had been hiding, what she was so terrified of.

But it wouldn’t terrify him. No, nothing could terrify him more than his future without Isabel in it.

*

They sat there in silence for some time just watching the tide. Then a sigh escaped her lips, showing him a sense of surrender he hadn’t seen in her before. As if she stoically awaited an oncoming storm and was completely resigned to it.

He moved an inch closer to her with his chair. “Isabel, I realized something this morning. You care enough about me that you’d choose to deny yourself a chance at happiness
with
me…just to protect me. Whether
I
accept your theory, your
curse
, or not…I’m willing to take the risk. I’ve been told, fairly warned, but I’m choosing to take my chances. They are
my
chances to take. I just need you, Isabel. Bottom line.”

“Zack, you need to understand, my decision isn’t all selfless.
I
can’t handle the loss—
another
loss. I can’t handle any more guilt! Years of guilt, starting with Sebastian.” She paused and looked away from Zack’s gaze.
Sebastian.
He’d heard Roberto say the name and deduced from there. Hey, she was at least opening up to him. A good sign, even if by mistake.

“My heart was
yanked
from my chest, Zack. From my life. I was left to face the blame, knowing I was the cause of his death and of the others’ deaths.” She held her chest and took in a deep breath. Her eyes closed, letting glistening tears show from behind her long dark lashes.

God, her pain was raw. And it knifed him.

Please, Isabel, let me in.
To ease the hurt, calm the storm, she just had to surrender.

*

“Listen to me, Isabel.” He leaned in to her, so wanting to take her face in his hands. But he knew not to. She had a strong invisible wall up around her that he needed to respect. For now.

“I’ve been taken by you. Fuck it!—I am indisputably and undeniably in love with you! And I would rather die at the end of a single, glorious, unbelievable
Isabel-filled
day than to continue living a life of pure nothingness without you.”

She had no response, not a word. A good sign, no bullshit rebuttal. He couldn’t take anymore of that.

“I’m sorry for the drama I’ve caused. I’m sorry for threatening your career, for the stress, for putting your needs and goals behind my own. Damn it, just all of it. I’m just learning how to get my own head out of my ass.” A grin, then a straight stern line. “I beg you, take a solid day to think on what I’ve said. Think on
us
. I will walk out of your life if that’s what you want, even though it would be worse than the most torturous death. But I will do it if you ask me to. But just give it a day?”

She turned her head from him and stared out over the water. Her rare silence meant to him that she’d agreed to think on it.

He stood up, having said all that he’d intended. He walked by her to let himself out, only allowing his fingertips to brush over her hand in passing. His heart fell. Would this be the last time he’d ever feel the warmth of her skin?

CHAPTER 43

S
he clutched his
wrist before he could take another step, as if she’d been possessed by her alter ego. Then words fell out of her mouth in the form of a question.

“Do you promise that when I give you an answer…tomorrow, that you will accept whatever my decision is? If it’s no, that we cannot be together, you will agree to let me be and we will never see each other again?” She heard her own words as if a separate voice spoke them.

What the hell was she considering? What exactly was her plan? She felt the warring elements within her battling to the death.

“If I have to wander this planet alone, rotting in misery”—he scoffed, but still deadly serious—“yes, Isabel. I will respect your decision.” He’d whispered it while staring at her strong hold on his wrist.

She didn’t know why, but she needed him so badly, even for one last time, one last injection of his
all-loving
energy straight into her soul. She had nothing more to lose, and she trusted he would let her go if she told him the following day that was how it had to be. Which of course was the case. That she knew.

But Isabel Ruiz, whose alter ego was in complete and utter control at that point, pulled down hard on Zack’s arm, taking him to his knees. Both of his arms landed on her thighs to catch himself.

She sat up and leaned forward. She lifted his chin to hers, and with gazes locked, she slowly touched her lips to his. A delicate last kiss.

Which she could not bear to end.

She combed her fingers through his
wind-strewn
hair, and then devoured his mouth whole, her tongue meshing with his while tightening and clenching between her thighs, trying to control the need for him down deep inside her.

*

He yanked her to him, pulling her off the chair onto his hard lap. The light mesh chair tipped forward onto her and he tossed it backward with ease.

He enveloped her tight in his arms and relished the rise and fall of her breasts against his own anguished chest. The tide below mimicked her heavy breathing and at that moment, he had to be one with her. The satin robe loosely tied at her waist opened with ease, presenting the lack of any barrier for his thick, pulsating entry.

He kept her on his lap with one arm, and with his other, released himself from his pants, starved to fill her infinite universe. He was hard and ready, dying to dive into the deep pool of warmth and home residing between her
forever-sprawling
legs.

But first he lifted them both up to allow his hand access to his rear pocket for his wallet.

“Condom, inner fold,” he told her as her fingers fumbled and found, tore and rolled it over and down his length.

He exhaled then brought her back down onto him, gliding her
ever-so
-smoothly onto his throbbing lust. He raised up and then down with her, echoing the coming waves below.

Her body tensed, her long canal squeezing his steel within her as if she would never let him go. She moaned, competing with the sound of the sea. He could tell she was ready to release, but he couldn’t bear to have it end yet. He took her soft warm ass in his clutches and lifted her up and off his shimmering erection and devoured her breasts, one then the other. She whimpered. He lined his lips with each nipple, relishing their sharp response.

She begged him, “Please, Zack. Be back in me. Please…” He loved it. He felt her tortured bliss in the raw quality of her plea.

He would give her anything, anything at all. He let his grasp slip from her supple bottom, and slowly slid his hands up her
sweat-soaked
back, while letting his yearning cock plunge back into her tight, silken lotus.

She let out a loud yell laced with what sounded to him like
never-ending
sadness.

He gripped her long
salt-crisped
hair and pulled back slightly, getting her to a deeper place of pleasure, her body buckling on top of him. She gushed relentlessly while he kissed her face sweetly, tasting her salty tears as she went and went and went.

He began his deluge again, knowing he could bring her to yet another wave of elation and join her there. Pumping her smoothly and rhythmically with his engorged and insatiable length, he added his finger moistened with the sex juices from her recent spout of release, and delicately circled her clit.

She moaned longingly while her core constricted his thickness again. Taken off guard, a wave of full sensation drove up
his
back from his very center. He rolled with her down to the deck planks, vibrating from his
pre-ejaculatory
orgasm, holding on for dear life to not let it end. He needed to keep her for as long as forever, if only he could.

His cock engulfed again by her sweet hot serum, she opened her eyes wide and brought her face to his. With her burgeoning lips at his mouth, and with her body under him, full breasts pressed against his chest, her hard nipples angry and sharp, he plunged into her infinite tunnel and exploded like a geyser, infusing every last inch of his hope that this would not be their last time fitting perfectly together as one.

CHAPTER 44

I
sabel sat there,
tired and spent. The scene from minutes before flashed in her mind, him lifting her up with him to her feet, shaky and feeble from him and his torrent. He had steadied her, then stepped back and walked around her as if to mentally record her figure, her birthmark he outlined with his finger, then her arms and her back, then coming back to the front of her, his finger delicately outlining her swollen lips. He’d closed her silk robe over her body, dragging his two thumbs down the lapel of the wrap, down her cleavage, down to her belly. As chills rocketed up her, he’d brought her robe tie around to her front, his fingers dusting her loins which were still reeling. He’d pulled her to him, leaned his face to the side, and pressed his lips to her neck—as if he’d shatter with even one more shared look.

And then he left her standing there.

Now her phone’s buzzing brought her back to present. A text message:
Lock the front door behind me.
She smiled, forced herself up, and went to secure the house. She saw him still in her driveway and texted him back.
Thanks, and why are you still here? Stalking won’t help my answer ;-)

She resumed her position on the back deck, vibrating and thinking and waiting while the bay’s warm morning breeze swept her face. Like a kiss. Was it Zack riding the wind? Because even as he drove away, he felt so close, so near.

Startling her out of her second round of stillness, her phone went off. She was sure that this time it was her boss. She reached for it with less hesitation than she expected of herself, but still, her breath caught in her chest as she looked at the screen.

She shook her head, another text from Zack:
No stalking, I promise.
Her breath released and her lips curled up for an instant.

And as if on cue, the lone butterfly that had taken its earlier suicide mission out over the bay fluttered back in her direction. It landed on the railing right in front of her and her nearly empty teacup. It slowly opened and closed its wings as if in disbelief that it had finally come to a solid place to rest, and that it was even alive to do so. Or maybe Isabel projected that onto the delicate little thing. Either way, she was glad, relieved. Maybe fate wasn’t as evil, as sadistic, and as merciless as she’d thought. Maybe, amidst torturous flights over vast and dangerous waters, fate decided from time to time to give beautiful and helpless creatures a rail to rest on—just every now and again.

She picked up her phone, set to text Zack back with her decision.