Touching Paradise (6 page)

He smiled. “It’s not often a man hears those words from a woman. But then, you don’t know me.” He almost added
yet
.
 

One of her eyebrows raised. “Why do I get the impression that you think I’d be saying it
more
if I knew you?”

He smiled, broader. “No comment.” He liked that she’d trusted him and that she’d gamely given it a try. He knew better than anyone just how nervous she’d been, and still was, though her pulse was finally slowing.

Which he shouldn’t know because there was no reason to have his hands on her hips right now. And in a moment, he’d have to let her go completely.
 

With great reluctance, he said, “So we’ll try it floating.”

“Back or stomach?” she said.

“You’re so funny,” Sosie said, breaking the spell. “Don’t swim off right away. I want to get a few more photos from above.”

“Ready?” he asked Monroe.

She nodded and put the snorkel into her mouth. Her hands tapped along the long tube as if she wanted to reassure herself that it was still there and still pointing in the right direction, and Koenraad felt his cock stirring. He shoved impure thoughts from his mind.
 

“Same thing as before, and this time I’m going to let you float. I’ll be right next to you.”

When she was breathing, her body relaxed enough, he reluctantly let her go. He’d been holding her down, in fact, and the moment he released her, she stretched out flat, the luscious curves of her body, wrapped in black, tantalizingly close. He marveled a moment at the small of her back and how it gracefully gave way to the perfect round globes of her ass.

His cock appreciated it, too.

Now, that wouldn’t do… If she turned her head, she’d have an excellent view of his growing erection. He stretched out, his hand patting her shoulder, then traveling down her arm.

She quickly grabbed at him, clasped his hand desperately in hers. He laughed, huge bubbles of air escaping from his mouth.

“Stop that,” Sosie said. “You’re ruining the shot.”

When he felt that Monroe was ready, he gently steered her toward the coral reef. If she were more comfortable, he would have dived with her, would have taken her to a hidden world. He longed to share it with someone. But most of the shark shifters he knew were much older, the age of his parents.
 

Shifters around his age made him consider moving to another ocean entirely. But everywhere, shifters were dying out. He knew there were some places in the States where lupines flourished, but that didn’t help marine shifters. And humans… better they never know that shifters existed. The ridiculous myths about Tureygua were bad enough, but at least no one believed them. He’d had human girlfriends, but he’d never been able to reveal who and what he was.

And because of his considerable duties, he’d been unable to sustain the relationships for long. Women tended not to appreciate the late night calls he got from the Council, and they liked it even less when he was forced out of bed and into the water to take care of a marine problem. In the end, he’d always needed to break things off.

He’d wondered if things might have been different if they’d known his reasons for leaving. But it was better to let them assume he was uninvested in the relationship than to tell the truth: he patrolled this island, keeping away the most dangerous animals, maintaining the respect for shifter laws, and keeping the humans who came into their world safe from both shifters and wild animals alike. Darius had thoroughly ensnared him, but Koenraad had to admit that it had been a kindness, giving him problems that he could fix.

He knew that Sosie was going to jump in moments before she did it; he felt the small shift in the water as she backed up a few steps, then raced over the swim platform and cannonballed, laughing. In some ways, the entire ocean was an extension of his body.
 

A Nassau grouper appeared in his peripheral vision. He waited a moment until it was closer, then squeezed Monroe’s hand and pointed out the large, striped fish.
 

He felt the flash of excitement pass through her as her attention shifted to the fish. She began to follow it, and her grip on his hand eased from strangling to merely clutching.
 

Behind him, Sosie dove down, taking photos. He liked Sosie, but she should have known she was bringing someone terrified of the ocean out for snorkeling. With only one passenger, there was no excuse for not having taken a full history.

When they reached the reef, Monroe let go of his hand. He swam beside her, pointing at things he thought she’d enjoy. He was attuned to her, to the tensing in her body when a slightly bigger wave passed, to the way her heartbeat picked up when his shoulders brushed hers.

He wasn’t an egomaniac. There were a million reasons that a woman might react to the nearness of a large, mostly naked man. But he knew the truth because he could smell her. In fact, it was difficult to concentrate on anything else. It was like when he hunted… when he was close to surprising his prey and the rest of the world fell away.

She was attracted to him, her body ready to mate. He didn’t often think of it in those terms, but now he did, with this woman who intrigued him with her dark humor and bravery. She blithely swam next to him, stirring long-repressed urges that he knew that she, as a human, could never wholly fulfill.

After an hour, he sensed she was getting hungry, and Sosie, too, so he suggested they head back to the boat for lunch.

Until Monroe unzipped her wetsuit, he hadn’t really realized just how sexy her body was. The bikini was an explosion of color, accentuating her wide hips and full breasts. His fingers burned to touch her skin, especially her lower stomach. It looked soft, barely dusted in downy hair. He wanted to kiss her there, to lay his head on her as her skin warmed in the sun.

“I’ll get us bottles of water,” he said hoarsely. He almost stopped to grab his linen pants on the way into the cabin but didn’t—getting dressed would draw attention. Better to find a way to control his reactions to Monroe. If such a thing were even possible.

Sosie had brought an assortment of food to munch on, and they sunned themselves on the front of the yacht as they ate.

“What do you do?” Monroe asked him. “When you’re not boating?”

“He’s
always
boating,” Sosie interrupted. “What do you do?”

Monroe sighed. “I’m regional manager for Pet Palace. It’s a pet supply company.”

Such a short answer. Pity. He found her voice sexy. “You like animals?” Koenraad asked, hoping to spur her into a longer discussion.

“Sure. But I work such crazy hours that I can’t have one. Don’t even ask how much unused vacation time I have. I sometimes pet the dogs and cats in the Salon when I visit the stores. Does that count?”

“What about a fish?”

She shrugged. “You pour your heart and soul into them, then one day you come home and they’re working on their backstroke. Too much guilt for me.”

He repressed a laugh, and she flicked her gaze toward him. He liked her eyes very much. They were brown, slightly striated. He supposed some might liken them to milk chocolate, but the color reminded him of banded miter shells.
 

“Maybe you had the wrong fish,” he said.

“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
 

“Do you get to dress up in heels?” Sosie wanted to know.

“Get to? Do I
have
to is more like it. And yes, unfortunately. It’s an ok job,” she said. “Not what I dreamed of when I was a little girl, but no one gets what they want, right? Probably the same with leading scuba tours.”

Intrigued, Koenraad quickly swallowed the hunk of cheese he’d just popped into his mouth, not bothering to chew it. “What did you dream of—”
 

Sosie jumped up. “Ralph is here.”

Koenraad reluctantly acknowledged what he’d been ignoring: a boat was approaching. Now he knew it was Ralph, come to take Monroe away from him. It was too soon. He couldn’t let her go, not yet.

Sosie had gone toward the back of the boat, and Monroe was brushing crumbs off her hands.
 

“Monroe?”
 

She looked up at him, her brow furrowing cutely. He imagined her doing that as he brought her to orgasmic bliss—
 

“What?” she asked, clearly confused.
 

“Do you think you’d like to spend a few more hours with me? I can take you to the other sites if you like, or to another island.”

Her cheeks, already lightly sun-kissed from her time in the fresh air, turned pink. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I’m enjoying spending time with you.”

She smiled then, her lashes lowering shyly as she pretended to focus on wrapping up the crusts from her sandwich. But Koenraad wasn’t fooled. He felt her attraction in tempo with his own.
 

She wanted him.

He wanted her, too.

Chapter 7

Monroe waved again at Ralph and Sosie. She’d given them a generous tip, and Sosie had snapped a few more photos and promised to deliver them to the hotel before Monroe’s airport shuttle left the following afternoon.

It saddened her to realize the short vacation was already half over. When she’d booked her ticket, she’d considered staying longer for all of two seconds, then had decided she’d rather take extra pay instead of her vacation.

Thomas really was right. She was boring.
 

Thinking of Thomas made her feel a little sick. What if he’d sent a reply, begging her to reconsider? Not that she would, but things would feel unfinished until he said something back. Yet here she was, flirting openly with Koenraad all afternoon.
 

And they were flirting, weren’t they? She wasn’t a clueless schoolgirl. Koenraad liked her. Or, rather, he liked the idea of fucking her. How could he
not
be thinking about it? She was sitting there in a socially acceptable bra and underwear. And his swimsuit was…

She felt herself blushing, and when she looked up, she realized that Koenraad was watching her, those peculiar eyes unreadable.
 

“Your name is unusual,” she said.

“It’s Dutch.”

She studied him. “Where are you from?”

“Here. Though I was born in Florida. My father’s from here and he attended college in the States. After he got his doctorate, he joined his university’s marine biology department. He met my mother during a conference in Europe and was surprised to meet another… to meet someone he had so much in common with. Dad says it was love at first sight.”

“That’s romantic.”

“You’re getting the short and clean version,” he said. “My mother was pregnant.”

That made her laugh, and she covered her mouth, embarrassed. Koenraad flashed a smile.
 

“Mom is from South Africa—that’s where my parents spend most of their time now—but she’d been working in Florida. Dad decided to join her, and when his parents got sick, he took early retirement from teaching, and we moved here.”

Monroe fought a smile. A hot, rich guy who clearly got along with his parents. He was a unicorn. “So you grew up in paradise.”

He nodded and gestured for her to walk ahead of him toward the front of the boat, where the remainder of their lunch awaited.

Things had been different when Sosie was there, even though she’d been more in the background, taking photos, talking about some of the crazy things she’d seen since she started working at Dive Happy Caribbean, and asking questions that kept the conversation moving easily. Now, Monroe’s tongue felt clumsy and thick, like she’d had a shot of Novocain hours earlier that hadn’t quite worn off yet.

When she was nervous, she had a tendency to run her mouth, but with Koenraad, it was different. He intimidated her into silence. Which made no sense because he seemed like a genuinely kind man, though she supposed anyone could pretend to be nice for a few hours.

“I saw a shark earlier,” she blurted out, grateful to have something to say. Koenraad was looking off into the distance, almost like he was concentrating on something else.
 

He swung his head back toward her. His hair had dried to a light blond, and while it was still pushed away from his face by the sunglasses atop his head, a few disobedient locks now brushed his cheekbones, highlighting how angular they were. “Did you?” he asked, sounding amused. “Are you sure it wasn’t an angelfish?”

“Yes, I’m sure, smartypants,” she said. “It was huge.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’d be surprised how often people tell me they’ve seen huge fish or sharks. Are you sure it wasn’t a whale?”

She smacked his arm playfully. His muscles were so solid, and she remembered how it had felt to hold onto him in the water. Suddenly, she wanted that again.
 

Maybe she was doing all sorts of things outside of her admittedly narrow zone of comfort, but straddling this hunky sailor and forcing her tongue into his mouth wasn’t going to happen, at least not unless she downed a few drinks first, and it was still too early for that. So she aimed for the next best thing. “Think I’m ready for more snorkeling,” she said.

Koenraad reclined, resting on his elbows, stretching out his long body. “I’m not going to insist you wait an hour, but how about thirty minutes?”

“Why?”

He smiled. “Because it’ll take twenty to get to the next place I want to show you.”

She flicked at some crumbs, then pulled her legs in. Immediately she stretched them out again, not wanting Koenraad to see her legs all bunched up and looking stubby. She should have put her coverup back on, but she’d wanted to dry off first.
 

She lay on her back next to him and cradled her head in her laced fingers. The boat underneath her was so deliciously warm on her shoulders and the backs of her calves and thighs, and the sun’s heat felt wonderfully sensual on the front of her body. So
this
was why people went on vacation. What a change of pace from cold New York.
 

The slight rocking of the boat lulled her into a half-sleep where thoughts darted through her mind in no particular order. She drifted off completely, then woke, filled with an unfamiliar but welcome calmness.