Forbidden Stranger

  He pulled his personal comm from his pocket and tapped it to pull up a familiar screen. It wasn’t exactly the same as the one she’d seen him using to track her, but close enough. A chilly formality went through her as she stepped back. She hadn’t forgotten that he’d been monitoring her, but she had pushed aside how it had made her feel when she found out. Now, that sense of betrayal came back. At least that would make it easier for her to stop drooling over him.

  Another boom of thunder was followed by a moment of darkness as the lights went out before coming back on at once.

  “Backup generators,” Ewan said, as though Nina had looked worried.

  “I’m not afraid of the dark,” she said.

  Ewan smiled. “It might be kind of fun if the lights go out.”

  “Would make it hard to see the board games if it gets dark,” she replied lightly, uncertain if he meant to be flirtatious and not daring to react in case he wasn’t. Or hell, she thought miserably, even if he was, because she didn’t want to try to sort out the mixed messages.

  “Right.”

  “That roast should be almost done. I’ll go take care of it,” she said, just as the lights went out again.

  The hallway wasn’t pitch black, but the light outside was gray enough that both of them were immediately cast into deep shadows. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. The lights didn’t come back on immediately.

  Nina could hear Ewan’s breathing, slightly faster than normal. Beneath that, the steady thump of his heart was also rising. She shook her head a little. She couldn’t hear his heart beating. Could not sense a change in his temperature, getting warmer. It was insane to think there was any way she’d be able to feel any of that, yet she did. The tension crackled like the lightning still prickling the skies outside. Another bolt lit them both, and in that instant, Nina saw something on Ewan’s face.

  Fear.

  “What’s wrong?” Instinctively, she moved closer as her own pulse quickened.

  “Probably nothing. But the generator should have kicked in already.” Ewan moved toward the front door to look out at the sky. “Lightning might have struck it.”

  “Or?” Nina asked, because it seemed clear there was something else on his mind.

  Ewan shook his head without looking at her, but another wave of sensations rushed over her. She could smell him, she realized. A bitter tang of fear.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Nina moved closer to him. “You think it’s something else. I can tell. What are you afraid of?”

  “It’s nothing, Nina. I’m going out to the shed to check. You stay here.”

  Nina frowned, feeling dismissed. Still sensing there was more than he was saying. Not liking any of it.

  “Don’t be silly, I’ll go with you. You might need help.”

  Ewan shook his head and grabbed a slicker from the hook near the front door. “No. Stay here.”

  He moved past her, heading for the kitchen and the door into the garden. Nina grabbed a coat for herself and followed. She wasn’t going to let him go out into the cold and wet alone to check on anything.

  “I said stay here!” Ewan whirled so hard the gravel gritted beneath the heel of his shoe.

  A gust of wind whipped up and spattered hard rain into Nina’s face. “What’s the matter with you? What is going on?”

  “Stay!” Ewan pointed at the house and headed off to the shed.

  Seething, Nina took a few long strides to catch up to him. “I’m not a dog, Ewan! Or a child!”

  He twisted on his heel again, this time to grab her by the upper arms. More rain pelted them, harsh and stinging. It got in her eyes, burning like tears, and it had to be the rain, because surely she wasn’t crying about this stupid thing. The way he was acting, treating her as though she were useless. Helpless.

  “I need you to go inside the house and stay there!” he shouted. His fingers pinched, hurting.

  In that moment, an understanding grew within her. Nothing she could have determined if she’d thought hard on it, but something that happened from deep inside, a knowledge that ought to have surprised her but did not. She could take him down. Here and now.

  Assess.

  Protect.

  Eliminate.

  * * *

  He’d gone too far. Ewan saw that at once. He’d been too loud, too mean. He’d gripped her too hard.

  In the last few seconds before Nina inevitably laid him out on his back, he made sure to keep his eyes open. He wanted to see the angle of her fist coming in to sock his jaw. He wanted to see himself going down, toppling under her assault.

  Nina did not hit him.

  She stepped back with a few quick strides. Her eyes were wide and angry, her mouth a thin, grim line. Her fists clenched. But she tempered whatever impulse she might have felt to attack him. Hope, that nasty emotion, sifted through him again. She had control of herself, and that meant she was regaining control over the tech.

  Nina did not toss off a “fuck you” over her shoulder as she headed for the house, but she didn’t have to speak the words aloud for him to see them in every line of her body. She was pissed off, and he didn’t blame her, but damn it, the first thought he’d had when the genny didn’t kick on was that someone had managed to make it to the island and find their way into the shed to disable both the generators and the security systems.

  The last update from his security team had confirmed there was not so much as a whisper of threat against him or Nina. Ewan had successfully removed himself so thoroughly from the public eye that he wasn’t even being gossiped about. Despite this, the fact that Aggie and Jerome had left under what might be considered suspicious circumstances had made Ewan wary. What if someone had lied about their son? Or worse, deliberately run him down so that Nina’s protection would need to leave the island? There was no reason for the generators to fail, and that they’d done so within literal minutes of the airtranspo’s departure seemed too coincidental.

  Even as he watched Nina storm toward the house, the lights inside came back on. She threw a furious and triumphant glare over her shoulder at him, but kept going. Ewan didn’t take the return of the power for granted, though, and went into the shed. He ran a quick report on all the security. Nothing wrong. The generators, which ran on solar, had suffered a temporary overload that had been solved automatically by the system doing something complicated with switchovers and fuses that had all been documented in the report he pulled up on the monitor.

  No attack. Nothing to worry about. Nothing wrong but a system that had surprisingly not yet been tested in this kind of weather, but which had performed as it was meant to. Relieved but feeling sheepish, Ewan let himself out of the shed and back into the rain. What had been a pattern of needlelike raindrops had turned into sheets of water, thick as curtains. The sky had gone twilight-dark, although it was still only the middle of the afternoon. When lightning forked close enough to rise the hairs on the back of his neck, Ewan booked it into the house.

  Nina was in the kitchen, but she steadfastly ignored him when he came through the back door. He stamped the water off his boots and shook it from his hair. His slicker had kept his clothes mostly dry, but from the knees down, he was soaked. He tugged at the water-swollen laces of his boots to kick them off so he didn’t track mud and water all over Aggie’s spotless kitchen. He made a lot of noise doing all of this, but Nina didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

  Shoes off, socks wet, Ewan stood. He watched Nina slicing up the roast she’d pulled from the oven. He loved the way she tucked a slice into her mouth and licked the juice from her fingertips. Nina’s every move was slowly sensual, without any sense of self-consciousness. She had to be aware that he was watching, but she was refusing to show it.

  He loved her.

  Oh, by all the stars in the universe, he loved her so much, and all he could do was stand in the doorway, silent like some kind of creep, because if he so much as uttered a single syllable of her name, she would turn and kn
ow exactly how he felt. It would be all over him like a wine stain on a bridal gown. And then what? What good could any of it do, allowing her to see all of that love? He knew everything about what had happened between them, and she still did not.

  He wanted to tell her everything, to risk it the way he’d done when helping her face her terror of the stone staircase. Yet his last conversation with Zulik wouldn’t leave him. The doc had insisted that if Ewan were to so much as hint at there being a past relationship between them, it could trigger an entire mental breakdown, one from which she was unlikely to recover. The doc had not given Ewan any advice about what he should do in the event that it seemed as though they were each falling into a new relationship with each other.

  Nina had been the one to kiss him. She’d been the one to say she wanted to do it again. He could berate and beat himself up as much as he wanted to, but there was no denying that she’d come to him on her own. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That her body remembered him, if her mind did not? Or was he just so onedamned desperate that he was willing to risk her mind for his own satisfaction?

  A kiss, he thought. Only that. And then another. He had tasted her and felt her against him; he had fought the rising arousal and desire because he loved her.

  “Everything’s shiny fine in the shed. The system had a little stutter. We shouldn’t have any more trouble.” His voice sounded uncertain and tentative even to his own ears.

  Nina didn’t look up from the platter of roast she was arranging. She slipped another slice into her mouth and chewed, speaking around the food. “Good.”

  He should apologize for sounding like such a sphincter, and definitely for putting his hands on her the way he had. To her it must seem inexcusable, not to mention confusing. But how could he explain why he’d reacted so strongly without telling her why he’d been so worried in the first place? They’d never spoken of the island as being surrounded by security, or why it should be. Nina didn’t know there was any reason to suspect danger.

  Cursing himself, Ewan ducked out of the kitchen and headed upstairs. He’d taken up the habit of cold showers over the past few months, but now he was already shivering from the chill the rain had left in his bones. He shucked out of his soaked jeans and briefs, struggling with the heavy, sodden denim. His wool sweater got tossed onto the chair, and then he stripped out of the T-shirt beneath it. His skin prickled into gooseflesh, but there was a heat inside him that did nothing to warm him.

  He and Nina were here alone in this house, on this island.

  Again, the memory of the kisses sent a fresh surge of desire through him, still tinged with guilt. He’d taken advantage of his position. That Nina had been the one to kiss him didn’t matter. Ewan was the one who knew the truth, all of it, and he was the one who needed to make sure he kept himself under control.

  The Nina he’d known and fallen in love with had not been much of a flirt. He’d loved her blunt honesty about who she was and what she wanted, both for herself and from him. She’d made it clear from the start that she wasn’t a woman who needed declarations of love, or even a romantic commitment, to take a lover. He’d admired and hated that about her, when it made him jealous that any other person had been given the gift of her attentions.

  A trickle of still frigid water dripped from his hair, down his neck and spine. Ewan shivered at the icy touch, like skeletal fingers. He grabbed the towel he’d hung on the back of a chair and scrubbed at his head, eyes closed, and at the sound of creaking floorboards behind him, he tensed and turned with the towel held protectively in front of his nakedness.

  “Nina.” He breathed at the sight of her.

  She crossed the room to him. Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, her grip as hard and unyielding as his had been earlier when he’d been trying to make her go back in the house. She jerked him toward her, a single step, but it was enough to bring him close enough that she could push up to capture his mouth with hers.

  The brutal kiss left him breathless but immediately aching. Her other hand took his wrist and pulled his arm up. Her fingers closed over his until he cupped her breast. Their bodies pressed together, the towel an inadequate shield between them. His cock thickened as his mouth opened beneath the onslaught of her lips, teeth, the stroke of her tongue. When her nails dug into the flesh at the back of his neck, he moaned, the sound swallowed inside the sweet cavern of her mouth.

  “If you’re going to put your hands on me,” Nina said, every word pressing a bruise into his lips that sent more surging arousal through him, “this is how you do it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Nina.” He repeated her name in that same yearning, greedy voice.

  She shut him up with another kiss, harder even than the first. She wanted it to hurt, like somehow that would make it easier. It didn’t. When she took his tongue between her teeth and bit, Ewan didn’t try to pull away. He gave her more of himself. His breath, his body, his palpable need.

  Nina had gone upstairs to confront him, but the moment she’d walked into the room to see Ewan naked from behind, the only thing she’d wanted to do was . . . him. His hand on her breast tightened before his thumb passed over her nipple, already erect and sensitive even through her shirt. She moved him toward the bed, and he went without protest, until she pushed him back onto it and she climbed his body to straddle his hips.

  She’d changed into a pair of soft leggings and a matching shirt while he’d been outside. He’d lost the towel on the journey to the bed, so now there was only the thinnest layer of material between his straining erection and her own body. Nina broke the kiss to slide her teeth along Ewan’s jaw to his neck, smiling to herself when he groaned and thrust upward. She rubbed herself along his thickness, delighting in the blunted sensations that teased them both.

  “Tell me you don’t want me, that you don’t want this,” she muttered against his throat as she licked the red spots her teeth had left behind. “I’ll go.”

  Ewan’s hands went to her hips, then slid around to cup her ass cheeks. He pulled her closer to him as he thrust against her. He didn’t say no, and when her bite dug deeper into his flesh, he barked out a plea.

  “Yes, more.”

  His assent and obvious desire sent a shudder through her. For a moment she almost pulled away and got off of him. She’d been rough because of anger and from instinct, but his reactions felt so good and so right that she couldn’t make herself stop. Again, she dragged her teeth along his skin, down his shoulder, and to the sensitive flesh along the inside of his bicep. She took a scant mouthful, no more than a nip, but a series of the fierce caresses had Ewan bucking and squirming beneath her.

  “Tell me you want this.”

  “I want this,” he said without a second’s hesitation. “I want you, Nina.”

  She’d started this for the wrong reasons and began to pull away, but Ewan gave a low, strangled mutter and rolled them both so he was on top of her. He kissed her mouth, softer than she had done to him. His tongue flicked over her lips until she parted them.

  “You,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me you want me.”

  “I want you.” She could not have stopped herself from saying it even if she’d sewn her own lips closed.

  Ewan pushed up to tug at the hem of her shirt. Nina pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. She wore no bra beneath, and the look on his face at the sight of her bare breasts and tight, hard nipples chased away any doubts she might have had about this. It took only a moment or so to get her leggings down and off, and then they were naked together.

  When Ewan moved over her body, she was already so slick and ready for him that he slipped inside her without either of them needing to shift or move. She cried out when he filled her, but Ewan seemed unable to make so much as a gasp. Heat rolled over them both. He didn’t move at first, although his body trembled.

  Nina was the one who tipped her hips first. Her body drew him in even deeper. Ewan buried his face in the side of her neck and began to thr
ust, too slow, too sweet, she wanted it harder and deeper and faster. Her nails raked his back, dug into the meat of his ass, urged him to move.

  Arousal flooded her. The sensation of his body pressing hers with every thrust teased and tantalized her. She needed more direct pressure. With a small grind of his pelvis, Ewan gave it to her as though she’d asked him aloud.

  She was going to tip over into orgasm. A few more thrusts. She could not wait, she could not bear the tension. She rode it, moving beneath him. Urging him deeper.

  She bit his shoulder when she came. The taste of his salty flesh pushed her climax higher. The series of rippling convulsions sent pleasure all through her, tearing her apart and sewing her back together over and over.

  At the sting of her teeth, Ewan shouted her name. His entire body tensed and shuddered. She actually felt the pulse of his climax inside her, the sensations so strong it triggered another rush of her own pleasure. She lost count of how long and how many times she was sent over. Everything had become the taste of him, the scent, the sound of his voice and his heartbeat, the throb of his cock inside her. Her whole world had become Ewan Donahue, and Nina didn’t care if she ever felt anything else again for the rest of her life.

  At least until a minute or so had passed with Ewan collapsed on top of her. When her senses returned, she nudged him until he rolled onto his back with an arm flung above his head. A peek at him showed the places her teeth had ravaged. He would bruise there, she thought. She had marked him, but she could claim no ownership of the naked man beside her.

  She waited for regret, and felt none. Only a calm relief she tried to blame on the simple physical relief left behind by the powerful series of orgasms. Her desire had been pent up too long, that was all. Their bodies had moved together the way they’d done because both of them had needed sex. No more than that.

  Why, then, did tears prick at the backs of her eyes, and not from grief or embarrassment? How could there be joy in what they’d done? Pleasure, satisfaction, maybe even smugness, yes, at how gloriously amazing it had been. But there was no reason for this joy and the sense of belonging.