Bare In Bermuda (8 page)

He released determination to last in one exhale. From every inch of his body, the energy that had been accumulating gathered in his groin then exploded with a bang. He came like he hadn't in longer than he could remember. Ripples and convulsions shuddered through his body, shaking him to his core as hot cum shot from him in a seemingly unending stream.

He leaned forward slightly as she held on tight with her mouth. The rapture of her mouth, not only through the last waves of his orgasm but while he calmed and softened had no comparison in his past experience. Henna took it all in and didn't release him until he was fully satiated. With a final suck and a slick pop, her mouth slid away.

Eduardo watched her with his head resting against the back of the seat as she moved gracefully from her knees to the seat next to him. He managed to raise a hand and ran a finger down the line of her jaw. “Thank you. I don't know what you were worried about, but you were perfect.”

Her smile amused him. The smile of a woman who knew she had a man in the palm of her hand. Which she did. “You're very welcome.” She pulled her spare compact out of her carry-on and checked her face. “You mussed me,” she scolded, smoothing her hair. “Do I look like I've been up to no good?” She put her compact on her knee then combed her fingers through her hair.

“Does that bother you? That I messed up your hair?” If it did, then he would be crushed.

“No, not really. I came to terms with my hair a long time ago. Regardless of how little sex I've had recently, I always look like I just had a roll in the hay. Something you'd know about... Rolling in the hay.” She looked at him. “Being a farmer, that is. Tell me the truth. What are you? Some sort of telenovela actor? International man of mystery? Please tell me you are not a model.”

He laughed loudly. “Telenovela? I really am a farmer. It's a big farm, but I am a farmer.”

She pulled lipstick from her purse and managed to juggle it and the compact while studying her face. In his opinion, her mouth was perfect as it was without need for enhancement. But that was the nature of women. He concluded many years earlier that they fussed with the lipstick and the hairspray more to show each other up than to be more appealing to their men. Most men, himself included, preferred the women they were with to be their most natural selves with just the pink flush of desire coloring their skin.

Eduardo watched her while he gathered his composure and enjoyed the feel of his body’s awakening. The simple female gestures and feigned irritation reminded him how much he missed the company of a woman he shared true intimacy with. “You're beautiful.”

Her cheeks were pink, her pupils large black saucers, her skin flushed. She looked like a woman who had been recently satisfied. If the world knew he was responsible for the rose in her cheeks, then all the better.

She gave him a small smile as she snapped her compact shut. His gaze passed over her as he studied all her incongruities. The modest and practical slim black pencil skirt that covered up legs he wanted to wrap around his body. The simple black cardigan that covered an equally simple pale yellow camisole, which allowed just a peek at a lacy bra that held breasts he wanted to hold in his hands.

Cool and sophisticated on the outside but filled with fire and passion. Meeting her at the moment he had in his life created a string of complications that would have to be managed. Destiny was a complicated thing that enjoyed throwing obstacles in the paths of people seeking their way. Questions would need to be answered and truths clarified.

Inside his soul, he somehow knew they had been brought together as a challenge and a reminder to him that life was never simple. His body, his soul, and the universe refused to let him ignore the sexual needs of his physical being. Forcing that part of his nature to sleep had failed.

Henna had awakened the primal animal in him and there would be no putting it down again. His lesson had been learned. No matter how much he wanted to build a wall made from his work and his family around him, there would always be outside influences.

Chapter Four

Eduardo enjoyed the quiet in the back of the car along with the comfortable closeness of Henna wrapped in his arms during the final few minutes of the ride to the hotel. The familiar pink Hamilton Princess appeared. He double-checked his trousers were fastened and left his shirt untucked. He was on vacation. A beautiful woman had just sucked him off in the back of a limo.

The call from his secretary might have annoyed Henna, but it confirmed he was a wealthy man who had just gotten a lot richer. Life was better than good. Life was great. Life hadn't been great for a long time. His day, which started badly, had turned around. Proof that excellent things had a way of happening when least expected sat next to him in the car with her head on his shoulder.

Henna leaned toward the window. “It's pretty.”

He looked out the window to see the hotel and grounds as she saw them. It was pretty. “Have you never been here before?”

“No,” she said. “You?”

“Many times.” Many, many, many times. Nearly every summer of his childhood. His honeymoon. His fifth, tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth anniversaries. His thirtieth and fortieth birthday parties. He hadn’t wanted to come back ever again. But here he was.

That morning, as he had attempted to ruin any chance of getting to the airport and on the plane through multiple instances of self-sabotage, he would have done anything to get out of having to return to Bermuda. What he learned as the car moved closer to the hotel was that the reality of returning wasn't half as bad as what he had imagined it would be.

“It's very nice,” she said. “I'm glad I'm here. This isn't usually my thing for a vacation, but I figured I'd give it a try since I had to come here anyway.”

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“I have a thing,” she said. “I told you I was meeting people. You and I are going to need to have a conversation about discretion.”

“What kind of thing?” A suspicion no bigger than the heart of a fly began growing in the deepest corner of his thoughts. He had a thing, too. That they might be in Bermuda for the same thing… It was possible. Anything was possible. The world was filled with the possible.

“A family thing,” she said.

The suspicion was no more than an itch when the car pulled up outside of the hotel. But once that question grabbed hold, it would not be dismissed without an answer. Life, destiny, the universe, something in the cosmos had its eye on him.

The limo door opened before he had a chance to ask more subtle yet probing questions about her family thing. He was in Bermuda for a family thing. He knew, as he stepped from the air-conditioning into the perfect afternoon air, that destiny very well might not be the only thing that had brought them together.

Eduardo offered her a hand, and she took his hand as her body unfolded from the back of the car until she stood next to him. He arranged to have the bags carried inside, then put an arm around her to lead her into the cool colonial interior of the Hamilton Princess.

When he'd first encountered her at the airport bar, he assumed she had to be a prostitute. A very expensive and extremely professional working girl, but still a prostitute. Not that he judged. He was a business person with a product to sell and had assumed she was no different from him. He regretted asking her for the truth, but he'd been caught out twice since his wife had died.

His status as a widower rather than divorced, was something he'd have to clear up with Henna after he was wholly satisfied she wasn't a very clever woman who had targeted him. He hated that he'd grown skeptical, but experience, fortunately not his, but rather a friend of his, had taught him that wealthy men could be targeted by unscrupulous women. He'd never been taken for a ride, but he had been mistaken. He wasn't going to be fooled a third time into believing a woman wanted to bed him just because she wanted to and not for financial gain.

The raw sexual feelings and the attraction he felt for this stranger totally bewildered him. Everything about Henna made him curious. Her every move and her every word stoked an ember of longing and desire within him he thought had been extinguished.

He wanted her near him and feared the moment she finished with him. He desperately wanted her to touch him and recreate that feeling of being alive she'd given him in the airplane and then the limo. He wanted to do whatever it took to feel his heart beat and his body spark as it had when she touched him.

The sound of her shoes clicking against the marble tiles mixed with the rhythm and the sway of her hip under his hand equaled contentment. That morning in Miami, he'd dreaded returning to Bermuda. His reward for bravery in confronting his past, walked next to him.

Henna slowed her pace then halted. “Stop. Just a moment.”

She dug in her purse as he discretely looked down, trying to get a look into the giant leather sack filled with minutia she probably absolutely, implicitly, totally, and categorically needed to have on her before she'd even consider leaving her home. “Can I help you find something?”

“No.” She shook her head a little. “It's in here...” With a triumphant cheer, a slim wallet emerged from her bag. “I can never find anything in this bag.”

“Have you considered carrying a smaller bag?” Did those words actually come out of his mouth?

She turned her head and looked up at him. “No.”

Returning her attention to her bag, she then pulled out the black banded notebook she had carefully written down the details surrounding her lost carry-on, including names, telephone numbers, birthdays, and social security numbers of every person who knew something about her carry-on.

“Do you often lose your luggage?”

“First time,” she said. “I'm actually pretty lucky, which I don't actually attribute to luck but rather careful planning and an attention to detail. You haven't exactly seen me at my best today.”

“I would have to disagree.” He believed he had caught her during a moment in which she was her most authentic, which, in his mind, equaled her best. “If this is not your best, then I cannot imagine better.”

“That is a very sweet thing for you to say, but I am really not me today. In fact, you may find yourself profoundly disappointed very soon when you discover the real Henna isn't nearly as fun as the one you've spent the past few hours with. I don't know what I was thinking. I cannot believe I left my bag behind in that bar.”

“Tell me the truth,” he whispered in her ear. “Did you forget your bag because you were overwhelmed by thoughts of what I might have done to you if I hadn't left?”

“You know,” she said. “That really might have something to do with it. You left an impression. No doubt about it. The bartender thought I was a hooker, too, by the way. He offered me the fifty you tipped him to blow him in the backroom.”

An irrational and instant jolt of jealousy erupted in his core. “Do you want me to have him killed?” He could. He knew people. Especially in Miami. Not that he would. He forced himself to calm down. When the moment of murderous rage had passed, he smiled. He was alive. He felt jealousy. He felt passion. He felt like himself again.

She looked up at him from the corner of her eye. “No. But thanks for the offer.”

He walked up to the counter with his arm still around her waist as if letting her go might make her disappear. But she did disappear. She stepped away from him as she fiddled with her phone while he checked into his room. He stood to the side as she checked into her room.

“It's under Schwartz,” she said to woman behind the counter as she finished sending a text. “Dr. Simon Schwartz.” Eduardo felt another bolt of jealously strike his core. Henna had said she was supposed to be traveling with a friend but not that her friend was a man and that they were sharing a room.

“Will Dr. Schwartz be joining you?” the woman asked.

“Sadly no,” she said. “I'm on my own for the next two weeks. Please cancel his reservation and put it in my name.” She handed over a credit card. “Charge it to me instead, and can I have a room with a big bed, instead of two doubles?”

“I'll see what I can do.” The woman behind the counter clicked a few keys then looked up at Henna. “I have canceled his room and refunded the charge to his card.”

“Thank you,” Henna said.

Eduardo calmed immediately. The idea of taking a woman to a room paid for by another man scratched him the wrong way. That the room had been reserved with two beds, also caught his attention. This man she should have been traveling didn’t sound like a lover or a potential lover. He concluded that Dr. Simon Schwartz was a gay friend or a family member. Any other man would not be able to share two weeks in a hotel in Bermuda with Henna without at least the thought that they would become lovers. Gay friend or relative. Had to be. Either way he didn't care. But why were they sharing a room? Could it be that she truly held on to her money that tightly?

He began tapping his fingers impatiently against the counter as the two began a discussion about what room would offer Henna the best possible view and comfort. He didn't care what floor her room was on, when it would be in direct sunlight, or how far it was from an elevator. He just wanted to get her in it with the door locked behind them.

“Just put her in a room near mine,” he practically growled.

The woman gave him a look, then just shook her head slightly and smiled. “I've put you across the hall from each other.” She handed Henna a folder with her keys. “When your bag arrives, I'll have it brought up immediately.”

When Henna had the key card in hand and the porters were leading them to the elevator, he pulled her tighter against his side.

There was no knowing what might or might not happen next. Electric sparks of anticipation crackled and snapped in his body. Under normal circumstances, he could guess what would come next, but Henna was different from most of the women he knew. The voice that had been guiding him told him there was much to gain and little too lose from being totally honest with the beautiful stranger who had catapulted into his life.

He placed his lips to her ear as his arm curled around her body. “I want to take you to my room.”