Walking in Fire: Hawaiian Heroes, Book 1 (5 page)

“
No ka oi
,” Malu agreed, smiling at Leilani. Melia knew only a few phrases of Hawaiian, but she knew no ka oi meant the best.

He set the cooler down and leaned back on the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. His biceps bulged. Melia realized she was staring again and looked quickly away. Darn it, she had to quit that. She had the mad urge to race out of the house and dive into the water again, to quell the flush of heat under her skin—equal parts arousal and embarrassment. She always seemed to be flushed around him, as if heat emanated from his very persona.

“You just saying dat because I have to cook so much when you’re here,” Leilani said to Malu, but she was smiling. “Dis man eat for days.”

“Hmm,” Melia answered. Hard not to notice when he sat across from her eating two helpings to the others’ one—he obviously had to fuel that physique.

“Maybe Melia cook for us, yeah?” He was laughing at her again, darn him. Not out loud, but that sensual mouth was tilted up at the corners, and his dark eyes held a suspicious gleam. She’d like to cook for him all right—a nice serving of ipecac. “
Melia paha
.”

Leilani laughed easily, then looked quickly at Melia. “Sorry, not laughing at you.
Malia paha
mean ‘maybe’. Close to your name.”

“Meh-lee-ah,” Malu said, rolling her name on his tongue. “You have a Hawaiian name.”

“Yes. It means plumeria. My parents spent their honeymoon here,” she said. “They liked the name.”

“So, you cook Hawaiian?” he went on, still with that gleam in his eyes. “Know any good Spam recipes?”

Melia frowned, wary of a trap. She knew the canned ground ham product was an island favorite, but she’d never actually eaten it. Malu grinned, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m sure I could come up with some recipes, just for you.”

Leilani shook her head at him. “She cook fresh, not canned. Anyway, dis girl here on vacation.”

“Yes, I am. Nice talking to you, Leilani.” Without looking at Malu, Melia turned and sauntered out the nearest door, which turned out to be the one to the rear lanai.

Behind her, she heard Malu say something to Leilani. Both of them laughed. She wondered if they were laughing at her, and then rolled her eyes at herself. That was so junior high. And Leilani was nice, even if Malu was a big recipe gone bad.

It was dark on the back lawn, just the light shining from the windows. The only sounds were the rustling of foliage and a few frogs piping in the forest.

Melia flipped her hair off her shoulders and blew out a long breath. Good grief, why did she let him fluster her this way? She wandered slowly along the lanai. The soft caress of the humid air and the sweet scents wafting on it soothed her. Walking on, she stopped to sniff a familiar acrid odor, then wrinkled her nose. Eww, some of the group were smoking pot, right up in the trees. She heard Clay or Jimmer laugh, and shook her head. What a useless waste of time, not to mention illegal.

She followed the faint sounds of island music around the corner. Frank was perched on the porch railing, playing a small ukulele. He smiled at her as she walked into the light of the tiki torches stuck in the garden. Curling up on one of the rattan loungers, she listened to the soft melody and let her mind drift.

She was bothered and bewildered by her attraction to Malu. She’d better handle it before she was bewitched. The Big Island was exerting its magic on her. That was it—he was part of the tropical ambience, like the lava flows, jet black against the green-and-gold mountainsides, like the turquoise water in the bay, the surf curling into frothy white on the golden, sandy beach.

Just another Hawaiian native, as beautiful as the fish eddying over the reef, the sea turtles paddling slowly along or the dolphins leaping joyously from the waves, as full of quiet power as the mountain that towered behind them. Hopefully without the menace.

Realizing the poetic nature of her thoughts, she blushed, glad no one else could see in the dim, flickering light of the torches. Good grief, next she’d be putting it to music and playing the ukulele in the moonlight.

She opened the nearest door into a quiet sitting room now in shadows. She bumped an end table, and something fell with a rustle to the woven floor mat. Melia fumbled for the nearest lamp and snapped it on. A sketchbook lay on the floor, a page poking out as if torn.

Bending, she picked it up and opened it, then blinked in surprise as she gazed at a pencil sketch of the bay, obviously done by someone on the front lanai. The sketch was rough, as if it had been done quickly, but even to her untutored eye, it was very good.

She sank onto the rattan settee next to the lamp and turned the page. Another sketch of the bay, like the first, only a little more refined, the black lava rocks shaded in, the palm trees textured. Were these by the same artist whose work hung on the walls?

She flipped to the next page and the next. To her disappointment, all were bare, except the loose one. As she pulled the page carefully from the sketchbook, she caught her breath. This sketch was of a woman. She was seated on a rock, foliage behind her, her head bent. She held a single flower in her hands, and she looked down at it with dreamy concentration. Her shoulders were bare, a few vague lines suggesting she was nude.

Melia narrowed her eyes. The woman’s hair was undefined, her features only a few tender lines. And yet she looked somehow familiar.

The edge of the paper was crumpled, as if the artist had begun to discard it and then changed his or her mind. A little guiltily, Melia set the sketchbook back on the end table, the sketch of the woman still in her hand.

The artist had nearly thrown it away. Surely he or she wouldn’t miss it if she just enjoyed it while she was here. She’d return it before she left.

She went to her room. After setting the sketch carefully on her bedside table, she readied herself for bed, her mind full of the activities and tensions of the day. When she closed her eyes, she felt as if she were still in the water, being rocked gently by the waves. She turned onto her side and hugged the extra pillow to her.

She dreamed of Malu.

He lounged in the shade of the beach palms, smiling lazily at her, even though Cherie and Jacquie snuggled close at his sides in their bikinis.

Melia walked toward him, drawn by a force beyond her control. His dark eyes slid down over her in a caress as strong as if he had stroked her with his hand. Heady triumph filled her—he wanted her, even with the other women available.

He beckoned her with one finger.

Her heart beat in slow, heavy strokes. She knew what he wanted. Slowly, she lifted her hands to the ties of her bikini top and unfastened them. The top dangled from her fingertips, then fell to the sand, leaving her breasts bare to his gaze. Her nipples hardened, thrusting toward him, feeling his gaze like a caress as soft as the fresh flower lei she wore.

He gestured again, and, naughty excitement flooding her, she hooked her fingers in her bikini bottoms and slowly pushed them down until they fell in a soft puddle around her bare feet. As his hot gaze fell to her mons, she caught her breath, trembling with the force of her excitement and arousal. She felt daring, free, and so turned on her legs were weak.

In the perverse way of dreams, she suddenly realized that Dane sat nearby, watching her with an enigmatic look on his tanned face.
Clay and Jimmer were there too, smiling avidly.

Uncertainty filled her. She looked back at Malu, and he smiled as Cherie and Jacquie pressed close to him, their hands all over him.

With a whimper of sheer humiliation, Melia turned to run.

Her own cry woke her, and she lay in the bed, staring blankly into the night. She shuddered. Oh God, what a bizarre dream. She was still turned on, her pussy throbbing. This was embarrassing—aroused by taking her clothes off in front of other people? She hadn’t even had the courage to wear the bikini, for heaven’s sake, much less do a strip tease.

It was only after she’d gotten a drink of water and calmed down that she realized, in her dream, Malu had worn a traditional Hawaiian crown of leaves and a breechcloth of kapa cloth, like those she’d seen in a painting of King Kamehameha and his chieftains in the Royal Kona hotel.

Holy coconuts. She was into the ambiance of this place wa-aaay too much. She went back to bed and lay watching the shadows move on the wall as the night breeze moved the foliage outside her window. Finally, she fell asleep again and slept dreamlessly until morning.

Chapter Four

Recipe for recklessness—take one tourist, add surf. Shake well.

On the south end of Nawea Bay, a path wound through the palms and banana trees to an ancient fence fashioned of lava boulders. Visitors tended to stop there with an ingrained societal respect for fences, assuming the property on the other side belonged to someone else.

With the ease of long familiarity, Malu climbed over it the next afternoon, using crevices as footholds, and leapt lightly to the worn lava shelf on the other side. The path continued down through the trees to a secluded cove even smaller than Nawea. It was a pretty place, just an indentation in the shore rimmed with black lava boulders, smoothed by centuries of rain, sun and waves. There was a house hidden back in the trees, but Malu knew the owner was gone now. The sun glinted off the turquoise water and the black boulders in the center of the cove, but deep shade lay under the tangle of palms and fig rimming the water. It was a scene straight from a Gauguin or a Herb Kane.

And there in the water, where the waves began to build up on the shore break, was his prey. Snorkeling along, probably following a fish or turtle, her rash-guard shirt white against the blue water, bright green snorkel tube poking up as she paddled with the matching flippers.

Melia, the fresh and sexy. Melia, who had appeared in his dreams last night. A very nice dream, in which she had walked up to him on the beach lanai and smiled shyly, then proceeded to take off her bikini for him, revealing first her round, white breasts tipped with nipples like guava-tinted buds, and then the sweet little triangle of blonde curls between her thighs.

Cherie and Jacquie had been at his side, grasping jealously at him, and with a look of hurt, Melia had turned away. Malu awoke with a groan, his cock so rigid and pulsing he’d been forced to go into the shower and take care of himself with a handful of slippery soap. He’d come, his release spurting against the shower wall as he imagined her opening her thighs to him with that shy smile.

He watched her now, eyes narrowed against the sun glinting off the waves. Why her? Why the hell now? Oh, he’d been restless for months, tired of the parade of women that wandered through his life. He didn’t take all the opportunities he was offered; he wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t want to catch something he’d have to live with. But he had a woman when he really needed one.

This one was different—she tugged at him in ways he didn’t understand, and didn’t like. He wanted to fuck her long and hard, but he wanted to talk with her, too. He wanted her to smile at him and ask him all about himself and tell him about her. He wanted to keep her close and protect her.

He wanted her to sit so he could look at her, admire the sweet curves and hollows of her body, the way her smile lifted her cheeks and crinkled the corners of her big green eyes. He wanted to capture her likeness, see if she was really so lovely, or if it was merely sexual attraction, not transferable to a mere image.

But he wasn’t sure he could capture her essence—she eluded him somehow. That pissed him off, no wela. He’d always expected to feel this way about a woman one day, but he’d expected her to be Hawaiian, not a shy blonde haole with freckles, one who could barely look him in the eye without blushing.

He still hadn’t quite figured out how she’d gotten hooked up with this group of hard-core partiers, but maybe Dane simply liked her. From a conversation he’d overheard, one of Dane’s friends had cancelled at the last minute, and he’d asked her to join the party.

She definitely didn’t fit—although Dane had dropped hints that she’d joined his group to do some hard partying, Malu’s gut said otherwise. She hadn’t joined in the heavy drinking after dinner, and she hadn’t gone with the twins when they slipped off into the forest to smoke a joint. She also hadn’t come on to him the way Cherie and Jacquie had. He suspected those two would be up for a threesome. Another time, he might have taken them up on it.

Leaning on the twisted roots of an old fig tree, he wondered why an attractive woman like her was in Hawaii alone. That was just one of the questions he intended to ask when his business here was done. But for now, he just wanted to make sure she made it in to shore safely.

He’d been sketching on a quiet rocky stretch of shore out of sight of the party for most of the day. He had no desire to be the center of conversation if they discovered he was an artist. The image of the two party girls offering to “pose” for him was enough for him to keep it a deep dark secret.

Finally taking a break, he’d noticed a short time ago that his wahine wasn’t part of the group lounging on the beach lanai. Frank was still out fishing, so he wasn’t looking out for their guests. The twins remembered seeing her snorkeling on the reef, but no one had seen her for several moments. He had refrained from doing what he wanted, which was to bash a few of their empty heads together, and suggested that next time they keep an eye on each other. Jimmer had, at least, looked embarrassed.