“Yes.”
She met his gaze for the first time. “Thank you.”
“Not sure what you’re thanking me for, but you’re welcome.”
“I’m thanking you for keeping me from going through the rest of my life not knowing there could be more than just—you know.”
“More than just wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”
“Yes,” she responded with a quiet chuckle in her voice.
“Glad you enjoyed yourself.”
She had, but Anita was unsure what to make of it. She was the only child of high-powered parents; she’d grown up privileged, been a debutante, graduated from Stanford Law and saw the world as her oyster. She was smart and considered herself quite worldly. All her life, she’d viewed the physical act of being with a man as something to be tolerated; a view encouraged by her mother during the few talks they’d had while Anita was growing up. Men were men, and women were supposed to accommodate them. Good girls certainly never enjoyed themselves. Of course, Anita had seen movies and read books where that wasn’t the case, but she’d chalked it up to them being themselves, which had nothing to do with her. Lovemaking with Greg certainly hadn’t altered her thinking. However, Steve Blair turned her world upside down. Every inch of her body was primed. Just looking at him made her nipples tighten with the memory of his licks and sucking. Her mouth felt swollen and ripe. The spot between her thighs was thick and wet and she didn’t know if her hips would ever let go of the feel of him moving hard and fast within. If she thought she was out of her element after the copter crash, she was in another galaxy this time around. “I’m really out of my element here, Blair.”
He appeared amused. “Why?”
The magical touch of his finger whispering a slow circle around the circumference of her nipple made her mind go blank and her lids slid closed. Whatever she was going to say vanished. His tongue replaced the finger, mimicking the lazy arousal, and her hips rejoiced.
“You were saying?” he murmured while treating her other nipple to the same splendid torture. His hand strayed down between her thighs. “You’re very wet, Counselor.”
As if responding to a secret command, her legs opened farther. He raised his lips to her ear. “Ever had a man want you again and again?” Two long-boned fingers eased into her heat and her whole body caught fire like a flare.
“No,” she breathed. In the past, it was always one and done.
“Do you want more?” He treated her to a languid erotic rhythm that soon had her moving in tandem with the scandalous ins and outs of his fingers.
“Yes.” Arching, she fed sensually. For a woman who’d always been conscious of how she had presented herself, Anita didn’t care how she looked. He could make her walk naked on the L.A. freeways as long as he continued his delicious seductiveness. Another orgasm rose, gaining strength in response to the sheer bliss. From the nipples he was now pleasuring to the fingers she was riding so greedily, she’d become formless sensation. That he planned to love her again sent her soaring higher.
He left her for a breathless moment to put on another condom, then entered her again, hard and hot. Her orgasm exploded and she cried out once more from the force and magnitude. Aftershocks rocked her while he stroked and filled his hands with her hips to raise her to his liking. It was primal, raw and oh so glorious. She came again, this time on the heels of his own yelled completion, then they melted bonelessly onto the tangled sheets of the bed.
When they were able to breathe again, he kissed her deeply. “Come shower with me.”
He must’ve seen the surprise in her eyes. “No?”
Anita had no idea how to explain, to this larger-than-life man, that showering with a guy was yet another thing out of her realm. In the past, Greg took his shower and she took hers.
“Something else new, Counselor?”
“Yes.”
“For such a high-powered lady, you have led a very sheltered life.”
Her embarrassment showed.
“Tell you what,” he said, stroking her cheek softly. “When you head back to L.A., you can resume your regularly scheduled programming but, while we’re together, I’m going to treat you to every hedonistic joy I can come up with.”
“You’re a mess. You know that, right?”
“Lady, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
And with that, he scooped her off the bed and carried her laughing out of the room.
For the second time that day, Anita found herself in the black-tiled shower but this time she wasn’t washing off the dirt and grime of the crash, nor was she alone. To her delight, Captain Steve Blair wasn’t done with her. It began with his warm soapy hands traveling over her water-slick skin. Any misgivings she might have had about the appropriateness of this activity soon fled as her senses awakened once more.
Steve couldn’t believe he wanted this woman again, but he did. The feel of her skin beneath his hands, the way she purred under his touch were arousing as hell. In spite of her high-profile, twenty-first-century ways, she was as green as a seventeenth century virgin bride when it came to lovemaking. Just thinking about all the passion he wanted to introduce her to made him hard as a steel beam.
Once they were both clean, he eased up behind her until their bodies were flush so he could reacquaint himself to the soft weight of her breasts, the tightened tips of her nipples and the dampness between her thighs. “Put your hands on the wall, baby,” he whispered, lips against her ear. She braced herself and he slid his shaft in from behind. She groaned sensually, and as she took him in, the tight seal of their joining made him swear he’d died and gone to heaven.
“Oh, my,” she moaned softly.
He sensed that this, too, was new to her. “Just hold on and let me do the work.”
And work her he did; slowly at first in order for her to learn the rhythm. Moments later, she began responding, enticing him with the controlled movements of her sassy behind against his thighs. Pleased, he increased the pace until he was rocking her hard and she was gasping and crooning and twisting. Orgasm shattered her and then him, and together they fell silently against the shower wall under the now-tepid spray.
Anita’s legs were rubber by the time he wrapped her in a clean towel and carried her back into the bedroom. She had no idea what he had in store next but she was sure it was going to take her some time to find the pieces of herself to put back together again.
“Still enjoying yourself?” he asked.
“Immensely.”
He set her on the edge of the bed. “How about I cook us something to eat?”
She’d totally forgotten that the subject of food was how this whole passion-filled interlude had begun.
“First though, I need you to put on some clothes.”
She looked down at the towel wrapped around herself then up into his still-burning gaze. Fueled by all they’d been doing and how female she felt, she slowly undid the towel and let it drop. “I thought this was supposed to be a hedonistic adventure.”
He grinned. “It is, but if I tip your sexy little butt back onto that bed, it’ll be midnight before we come up for air, and we’ll starve to death, so get dressed.”
“Party pooper,” she pouted.
Next she knew he was kissing her and slowly running heat-inducing hands over her clean damp skin. Her body began responding to his call. His mouth found her nipples. His fingers the tiny citadel at the apex of her thighs. He didn’t turn her loose until she saw stars. How kisses could be so overpowering she had no idea.
“Will that hold you for a while, Counselor?”
Reeling, she whispered, “Yes.”
“Good.” Giving her a long parting kiss and then a grin, he left the room.
* * *
Wearing an oversize white tee and a pair of black shorts held up by a bright red tie, the thor
oughly loved and barefoot Anita sat at the kitchen table watching him as he fried up bacon and cracked eggs into a bowl for omelets. As he chopped veggies and went back to the fridge for cheese, it was pretty obvious that he was as familiar with cooking as he was with a woman’s body, which was good because she couldn’t boil water. What other secrets did he hold? she wondered, and why did the thought of leaving him and this paradise in a few days suddenly feel so wrong.
A potential partnership with Sheridan Law awaited her return to L.A., a partnership she’d craved with every beat of her heart for three years. But now, her heart seemed to be beating to a new and different drum and, no matter how much she wanted to ignore it, the cadence kept gaining force. His lovemaking was responsible for much of the beat. He’d turned her inside out, and all she could think about was more. In less than the time it took to sign a merger agreement, she’d gone from the staid and conservative Anita Hunt to a woman whose well-ordered life path had been sensually hijacked by a man she’d met—what?—two days ago.
He was so outside of what she’d imagined a man in her life would be that she was having trouble distinguishing up from down. She didn’t even know how much money he made, who his parents were or where he’d gone to school. Parts of her wondered if she’d gone crazy but, when he glanced her way, his smile warmed her so much, she willingly embraced crazy because it felt so good. “You know your way around this kitchen pretty well.”
“Up here a lot. Ferg likes to cook, too. During football season we make these huge meals then take my dog out for a run to work it all off.”
“You have a dog?”
“Yep. Rottweiler named Dog.”
She laughed. “The dog’s name is Dog?”
“You have a problem with that?” he asked with humor in his voice.
He folded the omelet in the skillet with an expertise she also found impressive. “How long have you had him?”
“Four years. He originally belonged to a friend of mine who died over in Baghdad.”
Although he masked it well, she got the sense that the story was a sad one. “Didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“You’re good.” He told her about the promise he’d made to David Tanaka about taking the then pup to Mrs. T if anything happened. “When I escorted the puppy and David’s casket home, I fell in love with the island so much that, at the end of my tour, instead of going home to Texas, I came here and stayed. I live in a little house behind his mom’s.”
She wondered what his home looked like and if it was as laid-back, as easygoing, as him. “Your parents were okay with you not coming home?”
He shrugged while bringing the plates to the table. “I was grown. My life. My choice. They knew it had nothing to do with not loving them. I needed time to put myself back together again after Iraq. Mentally.”
He was probably the first combat soldier she’d ever spoken with and it came to her that there were a lot more levels to Steve Blair than she’d realized. “How many tours did you do?”
“Two. Had planned to be a lifer, but I found out I didn’t like death—not causing it, seeing it—or burying friends as a result of it.”
“Did you lose many?”
“Yeah.”
She saw the pain and weariness show itself in his eyes.
“Let’s eat,” he said softly.
CHAPTER 9
They ate their omelets outside at a small picnic table positioned to enjoy the view of the canyon’s magnificent waterfall. Steve watched her surreptitiously and wondered what she might be thinking. He didn’t usually allow people past his barriers, especially those he didn’t know, but he had with her. He wasn’t naive enough to believe her interlude here with him would be anything more than a fond memory for her down the road, but parts of him wanted it to be more.
For the first time since Yvette’s Dear John letter, he found himself with a woman he honestly wanted to get to know. He’d already admitted being attracted to the steel hiding beneath the silken exterior, but he also found himself wanting to explore her complexities. On one hand she was the frosty, big-money lawyer: confident, smart, blunt and on the way to the partnership she’d told him about. But as he’d noted before, in bed, she was virgin green and that drew him, too. Helping her realize just how sensual she was underneath all the frost was a job he wouldn’t mind having.
But her life was in L.A. and his was in Kauai. Steve’s brother, Kyle, often jokingly referred to Steve as his slacker big brother, but Kyle had spent his twenties on Wall Street wearing five-hundred-dollar suits and imported Italian shoes. Steve, on the other hand, had spent his in military fatigues dodging weapons fire while dropping soldiers into war zones, and ferrying some of those same soldiers back to base in body bags. He’d been blessed to come home whole and because he’d seen so much death, he viewed life as a gift and far too precious to spend it cooped up inside a building doing a nine-to-five while the years slipped by like sand in an hour glass.
He chose to spend his life enjoying it and because of that, it was understood he’d not be Anita’s choice of a life partner; he didn’t fit the mold and he was okay with that, but he wanted more time with her than the present circumstances would probably allow.
“So, what’s next?” she asked pushing aside her clean plate. “Great omelet by the way.”
“Thanks. My mom taught my brother and me to cook when were probably nine or ten. Said she didn’t want her sons growing up not knowing how to feed themselves.”
“Go, Mom,” she said. “I never learned to cook.”
“Why not?”
“My mother’s a judge. She didn’t have time to make dinner so, we always had help.”
“A judge. And your daddy’s in entertainment. So you’re a spoiled little rich girl.”
“Yes and proud to be,” she tossed back smiling.
They were enjoying the camaraderie they’d forged. Reality would step in soon and send them back to their separate worlds but, for the moment, they were content to be in their secluded world and fill whatever time remained with each other’s company.
“How about we take these plates back inside, clean up the kitchen, maybe go for a walk?”
“I’d love that, but—” she showed him her bare feet “—no shoes. The spoiled little rich girl’s pricey sandals are over there drying in the sun. Word’s still out on whether they’ll survive or not.”
“Then how about after we clean up we do popcorn and a movie?”
“What’re we watching?”
“A favorite of mine. It’s called the Heavens.”
Her confusion must’ve shown on her face.
“You’ll love it. I promise.” He then asked, eyebrow raised, “You do know how to wash dishes, don’t you?”
She stuck out her tongue.
“I’ll wash, you dry.”
The work didn’t take much time and they spent most of it directing quiet smiles at each other. Anita noted how relaxed she felt being with him and reflected on the sadness he’d let her see. She got the impression that it wasn’t something he revealed often. Because such things hadn’t mattered to her before, she didn’t know the length of a military tour of duty, nor could she imagine spending even an hour in a war zone, let alone months or years at a time. The servicemen and women putting their lives on the line so that freedom could ring never held a personal connection for her until Steve Blair. Now, a part of her wanted to heal the pain she’d witnessed in his eyes and soothe the sorrow he was carrying in his heart but she had no idea how to go about it. Once again, she was out of her element.
He made the popcorn in a standard air popper, and after pouring the fat white kernels into a large green plastic bowl, he added melted butter and shook in a little salt. He held out the bowl for her to grab some then he did the same.
“Perfect,” she declared.
/> “Then follow me.”
Outside the sun was setting in a ball of fire. The sheer beauty of it was so mesmerizing it took her breath away.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Steve asked. He thought she was pretty gorgeous, too, but kept that to himself. “You should see it setting over the ocean.”
“It can’t be more beautiful than this.”
“Believe it or not, it is.”
She shook her head as if finding that hard to believe. “And it sets this way every night?”
“Most of the time.”
“We can’t see the sun like this in L.A.”
“No kidding,” he teased.
“Hater.”
He chuckled. “Here, hold the popcorn. I need to grab some seating.”
He returned with two large sleeping bags and spread them out on the ground, one on top of the other. He sat. “Join me, Counselor.”
She did and set the bowl between them. “So where’s the screen, and what did you say the movie was again?”
He reached out and urged her closer. Once she was against his side, he gave her a kiss on her forehead. “The Heavens. Be on soon as it gets dark enough.”
She assessed him. “Are we watching the stars? Is that what you mean by Heavens?”
“I can tell you have a trained deductive mind.”
She punched him playfully and said skeptically, “We’re going to sit out here, in the dark and look at the sky?”
He reached into the bowl. “And eat popcorn. Don’t forget that part.”
“I need to get you a Game Boy, Mr. Sky Pilot.”
“You obviously need distracting if all you’re going to do is talk through the opening credits. Come here…”
He pulled her onto his lap and her laugh was cut short by the slow infectious kisses he distracted her with. “I got your Game Boy,” he whispered.
Anita didn’t know how she wound up lying on her back with him leaning over her because she was too distracted by the lips moving gently over hers, the fiery tip of his tongue tasting hers and the hand moving possessively over her breasts in the thin white tee. She kissed him back, tempting him with her tongue, trying to brand him the way he’d branded her, and then his lips were gone, her T-shirt pulled aside momentarily so his mouth replaced the hand on her breast. She groaned, her hips rose and her back bowed. “You are so damn good at this,” she whispered.