Swept Away (45 page)

She thought he looked touched by her words, but he merely offered a small smile and said,
“Well, good that you got over me.”

Her heart beat too hard in her chest—with honesty. “What makes you so sure I did?”

He pressed his lips gently together, looking thoughtful. “Well, I don’t get the idea you’ve been
holed up at home all these years pining for me. Come on, kitten—I know all about your wild side, remember?” He concluded with a soft grin, clearly trying to lighten the moment.

Yet Kat only sighed. She wanted him to know, to make him understand. “But maybe you were
the only guy I ever really felt wild for, and everything that came after, anything else wild I’ve
done maybe my heart hasn’t really been in it.”

His eyebrows knit slightly and his embrace tightened around her waist. The smile vanished.
“Then why did you do it?”

Another sigh. “I don’t know.” Yes, you do. You just admitted it to yourself. All she had to do
was look at him to know. “Because of you. Because I thought you didn’t want me. And if the
only guy you ever really wanted turns you down, why not cut loose? Why not rebel? Why not try to hide the pain by being a wild child?”

She’d spent the last ten years trying to live, find excitement, find something unattainable—
and now she knew what it was she’d been looking for all this time. Maybe she’d always
known it. All she’d ever really wanted was one guy—the right guy—to be her wild self with. Which maybe wasn’t really so wild. But that was what she’d wanted—and she’d found it with Brock the last few days.

“Ah, kitten,” he breathed, their faces close, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I don’t blame you anymore. I did, all this time, but not anymore.” I love you.

Once again, she kept herself from saying it, thank God, and kissed him instead. Thinking how
she loved the responsible man Brock had become just as much as she’d ever loved the
wayward boy he’d once been.

“I want to make you feel good, baby,” Brock whispered, letting his hand glide down over her
ass, pressing their bodies more snugly together. The first enchanting notes of Styx’s “Lady” sprinkled the air around them as Kat lowered her lips back to his, letting her body move against him, creating a perfect friction that drew soft moans from them both. His hands slid inside her
bikini bottoms, molding over her rear just as her fingers curled into the waistband of his trunks.

They exchanged still more gentle but smoldering kisses as she pushed his shorts down to
reveal the magnificent erection she’d become so well acquainted with these past days. But the
wonder she experienced upon seeing it, closing her hand around it, still felt new. “I love this,” she purred, letting her gaze linger on the hard shaft before she lifted her eyes to his. As close to

I love you as she could possibly come.

His small smile was sexy, penetrating. “It loves you, too.”

Oh. God. Pretty damn close to I love you, as well, and she knew that wasn’t what he’d said,
but the very word love, passing between them, in any capacity, felt relevant and powerful in her
heart.

He lowered her bikini bottoms and she kicked them off, over the edge of the hammock to the
sand below. As she moved up over him, lifting her knee over his hip, he pushed the triangles
of her top aside to mold her bare breasts in his hands. “I love these,” he said before lifting a
gentle kiss to first one pebbled pink tip, then the other. The sensation whirred through her like
bottle rockets on the Fourth of July.

She arched toward him instinctively, lowering one breast to his welcoming mouth as she
rubbed her moisture against him below. He licked her beaded nipple, then drew it in, suckling, suckling, so deep, good. The pull reached clear to the center of her desire as the romantic song
filled her senses still more. I love you, I love you, I love you. She longed to say it, to tell him.
She almost didn’t even care how he responded—just needed for him to know.

Yet she held it in, because rejection still lingered a heartbeat away. And even though she knew
now that he hadn’t wanted to reject her all those years ago, the harsh hurt still remained near, and she couldn’t risk ruining this moment.

She continued to move over him, let the juncture of her thighs hover and play, rubbing gently, until he released her breast and said, “Kitten, I need inside you.” He pressed her hips firmly
downward and they both groaned at the impact, then kissed, moved, touched—slowly, slowly.

She rode him in hot, grinding circles, letting her arousal heat her flesh from the inside out. He
watched her face, her breasts as they swayed with her movements—then let his gaze drop to
where their bodies connected. She moved harder, pressing her palms to his well-muscled chest.
She bent toward him, lowering one breast back to his warm mouth, where he captured it, tight.
She twined her fingers through the thick white netting at both sides of his head as his hands splayed over her ass, kneading with her slow, rhythmic grind, adding to her deep, expanding
pleasure as he seemed to pull, parting her, opening her to him even more. “Ah, God,” she
sobbed as fresh ribbons of sensation spiraled through her, taking her closer, closer. She bit her lip, heard her own labored breath, shut her eyes, and tumbled over the edge.

“Yes,” she managed on a hot sigh, then simply let the pleasure consume her, own her, until the
hot, sweet pulses finally drifted away.

She opened her eyes in time to see him peering up at her as if she were the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Then he swiftly, gently, rolled her onto her back in the big hammock
until he was on top and sliding back inside her, deep. “Yes,” she said once more, then
whispered, “I don’t like it when you’re not there.”

He rained hot kisses over her neck and said, “I’m back now, kitten.”

He was. Back in her life. Where she’d never thought she’d have him again. A miracle.

She locked her legs around his firm ass and he laced his fingers with hers, pinning both hands
over her head. He moved in slow, deep, powerful strokes that made her cry out at each and every one. She’d never before thought she could like being controlled, but right now, she
couldn’t have imagined anything more perfect than being beneath him, completely within his
domination.

His eyes fell shut as his groans grew hotter, more guttural, and she used her legs to press him deeper, deeper. “Oh God, baby, I’m coming. I’m coming in you.”

She met those final strokes, lifting her hips, wanting to take him inside her as much as humanly
possible. I love you, Brock. I love you so much I can barely breathe beneath the weight of it.

Afterward, he lowered a soft kiss to her forehead, another to her lips.

Hot, intense—but it was also the sweetest sex they’d shared. Because she’d opened her heart to
him in so many ways. And she’d felt his response in his lovemaking. He would surely never
use that word, but she’d felt it—he’d made love to her in that hammock as surely as the sun
would rise tomorrow morning.

Of course, when the sun next rose, it wouldn’t come up from behind the palm trees that
shrouded the bungalow—they’d be somewhere else, and life would be a hell of a lot more
complicated than it felt in this perfect, serene moment. She hated remembering that—and she
knew that when her parents arrived, she wouldn’t be able to speak freely, so she had to speak
now. “What happens tomorrow?”

They lay side by side in the netting, faces close. She drank in the musky scent of him, loved his
nearness. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Will you... head back to Miami right away, or...” She sighed. “Will we see each other,
Brock?”

He didn’t answer, and she suddenly hated herself for asking. Hated her need for this man.
She’d just thought...It had felt so...

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I don’t want this to end. And I know this—the
island—has to end, but I don’t know why you and I have to end. Because I thought we were...
having fun together.” More than fun. Deep, abiding passion. “We’re good together, Brock. I
know you feel it, too.”

He remained quiet as Cat Stevens began singing “Wild World” on the radio, and her heart
started to crack in her chest.

“Of course I feel it, too,” he finally said—only his tone had turned brisk again. “But I have a
dangerous job, kitten, that takes up my whole life. I’m not around most of the time. And even if I were...”

She swallowed, her stomach sinking. “What?”

“Haven’t we already talked about this? I don’t...do relationships. I wouldn’t have the first idea
how. I’m just not that guy.”

Sitting up next to him, Kat pulled the triangles of her top back into place, then rolled out of the
hammock to grab her bikini bottoms. She accidentally dumped him on the ground in the process—she heard him plunk in the sand with an Umph—but didn’t even look, didn’t care.
She just wanted to get some clothes back on, get herself covered.

“Kitten, what are you doing? What’s wrong?”

She still didn’t glance back, couldn’t face him, couldn’t stand to peer into those sexy eyes right
now. Her heart beat too fast, and she felt naked—in a vulnerable way. She had no idea what she’d been thinking, trying to believe Brock Denton could want her for anything other than
sex, but somehow, somewhere along the way, she’d let herself be deluded—and now hurt
consumed her. A hurt much worse than what she’d suffered at seventeen, because as real and
as painful as that had been, she’d shared so much with him now—her body, her heart her
freaking soul, for God’s sake. And he didn’t want any of those things.

“Kitten, don’t be mad. It’s not that I don’t care for you—it’s that my life just isn’t that kinda
life.”

After hurrying back into her suit, she grabbed up the sarong she’d tossed aside earlier, too,
securing it around her hips. She sensed him getting to his feet behind her, and when she
yanked the radio up from the sand and started toward the house, he followed.

“What the hell is so wrong?” he snapped behind her.

She finally turned to face him, still feeling just as alone as when she’d been ignoring him. His
dark eyes were painfully beautiful. “Maybe my dad is right! Maybe I should just marry Ian! At least he wants me. You never have, and you still don’t.”

He slowly began shaking his head, and the shock and disdain in his gaze gave her strength.
“You’re kidding me, right?”

But she wasn’t. Because Brock had just reminded her of one of the big reasons she had agreed
to marry Ian. Money aside, lack of passion aside, Ian was crazy about her. And that felt so incredibly nice, secure, compared to this. “No, I’m not. In fact, I think I’ve just come to my
senses.”

He stood gaping at her in pure disbelief as the song on the radio warned her there was a lot of
bad in the world and that she should beware. At the moment, she just couldn’t be sure if she was looking at the bad or running back to it—everything was so confusing.