Wild Honey (13 page)

He tugged on the towel again, balling the material up in his fist until his hand was perilously close to her breasts.

“Marc,” she said breathlessly, her heart racing, “stop this. I said I was sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You loved it. I could hear you squealing with delight.”

He was close, so close that Sasha could feel the quickening force of his breath. She even caught the salty, musky scent of his skin as his hand flexed on the towel. “What are you going to do?” she asked as his fingers grazed her bare skin, thrilling her, burning her.

“I’m not quite sure,” he said. “I had one thing in mind when I came in, but somehow drowning you doesn’t have the same appeal now.” He stared into her eyes. “What would you like me to do?”

“I’d like you to let go of this towel and leave.”

“Are you sure?” Easing his hold on the wad of terry cloth, he slowly and very deliberately slipped his fingers over the knot that was holding the towel in place at her breasts.

She shuddered as his knuckles pressed against the flushed warmth of her skin. Her nipples contracted so abruptly, so painfully, it brought a gasp to her lips. “This...isn’t fair,” she whispered, glancing down at his hand. The sight of his fingers nestled in the soft cleft between her breasts sent a bolt of lightning through her body.

“Fair?” He laughed softly, huskily. “A woman who trips her opponent in a race sure as hell doesn’t play by the rules, does she?”

“That was just for fun.”

“So is this.” He brushed a jeweled bead of water from her collarbone with his thumb and pulled her closer, nearly undoing the towel. “You are so damn beautiful, McCleod.”

His hand curled into her cleavage and Sasha could feel her heartbeat slamming against his fingers. The exquisite sensations in her breasts drew her gaze to the bronzed strength of his coiled fingers, the rugged bones of his wrist, and the corded muscles of his forearm.

“And so damn willful—”

His voice was raspy and soft, but its underlying note of steel told her he was a man who didn’t stop until he got what he wanted. And he wanted her. The satisfaction he was after now wouldn’t come from tossing her into the surf. It was about taking her into his arms, into his bed. She could feel herself trembling beneath his fingers.

Marc was aware of her tremors too. They fed a current of excitement to his groin. The perfumed scent of her skin was an aphrodisiac.

“I don’t approve of this, Renaud—not one bit.”

Lord, that voice, he thought. It was delicious. She had the quivering huskiness in her voice of a woman who wanted to taste the forbidden fruit, to do all the things with a man she knew she shouldn’t.

“You don’t approve? Of what? This?” He drew his forefinger along the golden rise of one lush breast and watched her flinch. “My touching you? Is that why your heart’s so wild?”

The rich amber of her eyes deepened with sensuality. A raspy warning was all she could manage. “I could scream for Arturo.”

“Yes, you could...but you won’t. You don’t want to wake up from this dream anymore than I do.”

She averted her beautiful eyes as a sexual flush crept up her breasts, radiating out from where he touched her with his forefinger. Her tiny whimper sounded like surrender, and Marc’s response was instantaneous. Damn, he swore silently, it was too swift, too hot. Too hard. His gut muscles strained against the urgency, against the fire that infused his veins and surged into his loins.

“Somebody had better scream,” he said, his laughter abrupt and harsh, “before I do something crazy.” He released her with a half-breathed curse and tugged her towel back into place.

Sasha made no attempt to hide her astonishment. One puny remark about calling for Arturo had stopped him? “That’s it?” she asked, feeling her skin burn and tingle where his hands had been. “You’re giving up that easily?”

A smile shadowed his features. “Giving up? That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“I meant only that you seem rather relentless. I didn’t expect you to behave like, well—”

He shrugged. “Like a gentleman? Don’t overestimate me. Maybe I stopped because a frontal assault wasn’t the best way to get what I wanted.”

“And what is...the best way?”

“A sneak attack.” His eyes flashed a warning signal, but Sasha’s reflexes weren’t nearly quick enough. She caught at the towel as he grabbed the edge and flicked it right out of her hands and off her body.

Sasha’s gasp hit the air like a balloon exploding.

Nothing could have prepared Marc for the sight of her naked body...the creamy white bikini lines, the firm, golden flesh. Her breasts were high and full with dusky-pink aureoles and a translucence that accentuated their swollen state. He could even see a faint blue tracing of veins. Her legs were miles long, and yet, despite her obvious muscle tone, they had a delicate, shivery quality that made his chest ache.

He knew what was supposed to happen next, at least his body did, but his mind was fighting to comprehend the beauty, the grace expressed in every inch of her proud, trembling pose. His intuition was telling him what the spike of arousal in his groin couldn’t, that loving her was going to be a mind-blowing, metaphysical experience.

Sasha was paralyzed, a riot of emotion locked in her throat. Her experience with men wasn’t vast, but she had never seen a man look at her the way Marc Renaud was looking at her now, with such raw desire in his eyes. A part of her questioned why she didn’t cover herself, why she stood there, breathless with shock, naked and flushed in his gaze.

“Lord,” Marc said, walking to her. The rigid muscles of his arm ached as he framed her throat with his hand and pulled her to him.

Behind him, the ocean thundered relentlessly against massive cliffs, and a coastal gust sent the patio door flying open. His body shuddered, registering the sounds, but in his mind he barely heard them.

Sasha didn’t hear them either.

A moan came out of her as she let herself be drawn into his arms, a moan that was full of awe at her own helplessness. A river, she thought, there is a raging river of feeling inside me, dragging me under. She was weak with the sensations that were streaming through her body. Whatever strength she might have had to resist him was lost as she felt the first contact of his thighs against hers. The sensation of his damp jeans, icy cool against her hipbones, brought a gasp to her lips.

He tilted her head up and stared down at her, warming her with the shimmering blue heat of his eyes. “What the hell are you doing to me?” he whispered. “I don’t even know my own name.”

It was the same question he’d asked during their rehearsal, and this time, as before, there was a jaggedness to it. She knew pain was fueling him, and she wanted to ask why—and what it had to do with her, but the words never made it past her lips. She lost touch with everything but her own frantic heartbeat as his hand rode up her spine, drawing her closer until her breasts brushed his chest and her nipples peaked against the erotic dusting of dark hair there.

He fit himself to her body, his hips testing hers, grinding rhythmically as he lifted her hair and murmured sensual things into the hollow of her neck. He told her how lush and sexy her breasts were against his ribs, how sweet her skin tasted on his lips, sweet and utterly feminine. Excitement raced through her veins as his arousal burned its dimensions into her flesh, hot and hard in the valley created by her hipbones.

It came to Sasha then, in a split second of reality, that she was stark naked in the arms of the director of the picture she’d been hired for, that she was teetering on the brink of an abandoned encounter with Marc Renaud, the man she’d clashed with almost continually until this point. A torrid scenario of seduction and ravishment engulfed her imagination.

She pressed a hand to his chest in a crazy attempt to stop the runaway train they were on. Sensing her resistance, he stroked her face and thrilled her with his mouth, brushing his lips along the length of hers, back and forth.

The awareness that swept through Sasha was languid and muted, a voice calling from a distance. Am I supposed to let him kiss me this way? Am I supposed to let him do these things?

The answer that came zinging back was no.

But did she want him to? As his mouth pressed into hers and he stroked the delicate tip of her tongue with his, a response snuck through the call of her conscience. Yes...ohhh, yes.

Releasing the breath she’d been holding, she curled her arms around his waist. She’d never been so aware of the male form before, of coiled muscularity and jutting strength. She thrilled to the contours of his thighs, the washboard ridges of his belly.

Marc closed his eyes and sighed as Sasha’s fingertips did a butterfly’s caress along the waistband of his jeans. He sensed her acquiescence, and it beat in his blood—but he wanted more. He wanted surrender, on his terms. He’d held back from touching her too intimately—and that was no easy task with her naked body pressed against him. The silky shiver of her breasts when she moved was agonizing. Every nerve, every muscle in his body anticipated what would happen when he eased his hands up her rib cage, cupped her breasts and kissed their delicate flesh, arousing the nipples to dusky pink buds. Yes, he wanted to touch her, to taste and arouse her, all of her. But he also wanted to hear her purr, to feel her shudder and arch against him like a cat. He wanted to hear that wild animal cry of need.

Her skin was satin-cool as he slid his palms down the curves of her midriff to the high, flared bones of her hips. She trembled under his caress and looked up at him, her eyes wide and wary. The sparks in her amber irises were iridescent, like stars at twilight. Desire shot through him as he imagined those sparks igniting into flame.

“Have you ever been touched here?” he asked, tucking her hair behind the graceful curve of her ear. “Like this?” Stroking the petals of her lobe with his forefinger, he delved inside with the intimacy of a lover. Her lips parted expectantly, and her fingers dug into the muscles of his back. Yes, just like that, he thought.
Respond to me, Sasha. Let me know you want this. Show me how
much. He could feel the need, the ripening passion in her, but he was waiting for the sighs, the little cries, the signs of surrender. This was not a woman to be hurried into bed. She was the type to be aroused for hours and hours, days if need be, before finally spreading open her sleek legs and taking that heartbreaking trip to paradise.

Holding himself in check, he brushed his thumb over her parted lips and shuddered at their softness. A fantasy flashed in his mind...of her mouth, sweet and hot as she moved her lips over his, and then erotically light as she trailed kisses down his neck and his chest to the rigid planes of his stomach. A stab of pain pierced his consciousness. He could feel the urgency in his own body, the hard ache between his legs. No woman had ever stirred his imagination the way she did. He fought down the urge to hook his hands beneath her knees, lift her and curl her legs around his waist, fought the urge to drive himself into her deeply, mindlessly, thrusting until he was lost forever in the hurtling bliss of bodies and heartbeats.

Behind him, the patio door was swaying open and shut, hurling shadows across the room. The ocean roared like a lonely, angry lion.

Surrendering a notch to the hunger inside him, Marc pressed his hardness into her belly and insinuated his tongue into her warm, soft mouth, tasting deeply, stealing her sweetness. Her flushed skin was a slipstream of sensuality running up and down the length of him. Her breasts were vibrantly pillowed against his ribs. Easing back a little, he touched her lower lip with his tongue, moistening its silken pleats—and groaning with pleasure as she opened her mouth to him. The invitation was wanton and inflaming. It was irresistible. He thrust into her again and again.

The whimper that trembled through her was anguished and sweet. It aroused and enraged every male instinct Marc had. She was the roaring thunder in his head, the chain lightning in his groin. He had to have her. Now.

Breaking the kiss, he turned with her still in his arms and stooped to pick her up. She seemed almost fragile and much too light for her height as he lifted her into his arms.

She tossed her hair from her eyes, and he was struck by the dreamy, dizzy shyness in her smile. She looked awed and apprehensive and outrageously sexy all at once. Suddenly, snuggling into him, she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder and emitted a sound that made his heart catch.

“Sasha?”

She looked up at him at last. He searched her whiskey eyes and, without thinking, bent to kiss her.

“Marc—” Her breath rushed against his lips. Gently she pressed her fingers to his mouth and held him back.

It was the unsteadiness in her voice that stopped him. “What is it?” he asked.

“I’m afraid—”

“Afraid of making love?”

“No...” She looked up at him, her shoulders lifting with a deep breath. “Of falling in love.”

The jolt of surprise inside Marc was so painful he could hardly breathe. He’d never seen her so open, so vulnerable. But wasn’t that exactly what he’d wanted? Vulnerability? Surrender? His heart pounded in his chest. At last he set her down and caught her by the arms, hesitating, gazing at her, and finally holding her away from him. Her hair flowed like corn silk around her body, and her mouth, unsteady and still slightly swollen from their kiss, bewitched him. Falling in love? With him? Was that what she was saying?

The door swung open behind them, and this time Marc heard it all, the deep roar of the ocean, the creaking and groaning of wood and glass against the hinges. The sounds resonated through his consciousness like a storm warning, but he didn’t respond. In that moment of staring into Sasha’s rich, wild-honey eyes, he could taste the sweetness, the hot, stinging need in his throat. His entire body hardened at the thought of making love to her. But his mind, his mind was reeling from what she’d said. His restricted breathing did what the elements couldn’t do. It warned him of the pain, the heartbreak he would be letting them both in for.

In that split second of accountability, he knew nothing but grief could come out of an encounter with her. He couldn’t make love to her. He couldn’t let himself love her—or her him. Marc Renaud destroyed the people who loved him. Marc Renaud left emotional wreckage and dead bodies behind him....