LITMIR.BIZ

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Impossible. He hated her.

      Nevertheless, she could feel an unmistakable male reaction against her abdomen. An answering trickle of desire made her wriggle her hips in embarrassed curiosity.

      His arms hardened, holding her still for his penetrating gaze as their mutual reaction became undeniable. He knew she was getting turned on. He was turned on and was forcing her to acknowledge it.

      Her mind blanked as her unsteady heart kicked into overdrive. She’d been drunk the last time, and insulated against what had really been happening. The moon behind him had kept his face in shadow. He’d kissed her, angrily, and then had pushed her away as fast as he’d yanked her close.

      This hadn’t happened. Rowan was a skilled flirt, ever conscious of the power of her sex appeal, but real sexual need had never ignited in her properly. She’d never felt another man’s arousal and been intrigued and excited. She’d always kept a clear head and been able to put on the brakes.

      Not now. She longed to let Nic support her as she melted in abject surrender.

      Panicked by her dwindling willpower, she pushed against his chest. “What are you doing?” she sputtered. The power of his spell glinted like fairy dust around her, disorienting her. Perhaps she’d fantasized from afar too long. She was seeing things that weren’t there. Nic had never shown any kind of desire for her. Where had his arousal come from? Why now?

      Nic’s half-step back was by his choice, not her forceful shove, and now his grim expression held none of the heat she had thought she’d seen. If anything, he seemed vaguely disgusted. A cloak of reserve fell around him, turning him into the distant, condescending man she’d always known.

      “I’m saving your life. What were you thinking, climbing out there when the water is this high?”

      “Everyone climbs out there,” she excused, wondering if she’d imagined that brief press of hard male flesh. Wishful thinking? Hardly. Getting into bed with this man would be like climbing into a cage with a tiger. When she finally slept with someone she’d choose a domesticated housecat. “How was I supposed to know the waves would come up like that? It’s never happened before.” She crossed her arms, feeling her soaked clothes and wet hair as the wind cut through her. Her chin rattled and she shivered.

      “It’s called a tide table and a weather report, Rowan.” He kept his gaze locked onto the horizon, his jaw like iron.

      “Anyone reading tide tables in their leisure time is in danger of drowning in boredom. Who does that?”

      “I checked both before bringing the yacht over yesterday,” he said stiffly, barely glancing at her as he added derisively, “Anyone who ignores basic precautions deserves the natural selection that results.”

      “Then why didn’t you let nature take its course with me today?” she groused. The bottom of the Med sounded infinitely more comfortable than suffering a lecture while turning into an ice pop.

      A barely discernible flinch was gone before she was sure she’d really seen it.

      His face hardened into an inscrutable mask as he glared out to sea. “You disappearing along with the others would look suspicious. I have to keep you alive long enough to sign the documents I brought. Since I just did you a very solid favor, you’ll comply.” His blue eyes came back to her with freezing resolve.

      “Dream on,” she retorted, but he was already turning away, everything in him dismissive of her and sure of his success.

      Annoyed beyond measure, she stayed where she was, longing to be stubborn. But it was cold out here. Other sensations were penetrating as well. Her hands and feet burned along with her knee. The denim was torn out of her jeans on her bad leg, exposing bloody, scraped skin. Her palms were rashed raw and cuts on her fingers welled with blood. The bottoms of her feet felt as if they’d been branded.

      Sickened, she lifted her head to call Nic, but he was without sympathy, striding away without a backward glance, his wet clothes clinging to his form as he rounded the hedge and disappeared. He didn’t care if she was hurt. He had his own agenda.

      Grimly aware she had no one else to call for help, she gritted her teeth and limped her way back to the house.

       CHAPTER THREE

      “WHY didn’t you let nature take its course with me?” Nic was still sizzling when he left the shower, deeply angered by Rowan’s remark. She was internally programmed to make flippant, provocative comments, so he shouldn’t give her the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, but today she was under his skin more than ever—and he’d been fighting his attraction toward her since before it had even been sexual.

      He paused in hitching a towel around his wet hips, thinking back to those early years when she’d been a nubile sprite, too young for any man let alone one sowing the wild oats of his early twenties. Even so, she’d flitted in and out of his awareness with irritating persistence. He’d been alternately fascinated and annoyed, drawn by her quick wit even while baffled at the way she took it for granted that everyone loved her—especially Olief.

      He’d been perversely determined not to fall under her spell, too irritated by how easily everything came to her. At a similar age, Nic had spent his holidays haunting the empty rooms of his boarding school. Olief hadn’t wanted his wife to know about his indiscretion, so Nic hadn’t entered the man’s world until the woman had died and Cassandra had come on the scene. Her indiscretion had had an open invitation to spend school breaks in Olief’s house. As an afterthought Nic had been asked to join them, but he’d been traveling by then, shedding light on the world’s darkest injustices, inexplicably drawn into following Olief’s footsteps into hard-hitting news journalism.

      When Nic had come to Rosedale after those stints abroad it hadn’t been for happy family time. In one way, at least, Olief had understood Nic. Olief had recognized Nic’s need to retreat somewhere remote and quiet because Olief had experienced a similar need himself when he’d done that sort of work. The island’s tranquility had kept Nic coming here, but the visits hadn’t been comfortable—not when Olief showered affection on Rowan and she dominated everyone’s attention.

      Nic had done everything in his power to ignore and resist her, but she’d still managed to penetrate his shield. He was standing here because of her, wasn’t he? Veering from deep insult that she’d actually thought he would leave her to die to stark fear at how close a call she’d had. That near miss unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He told himself it was its similarity to the other deaths that made his blood run cold, but on the heels of that thought came the recollection that his blood hadn’t stayed cold. He’d nearly let nature take its course in the form of raw, debaucherous lust.

      His groin tightened in remembrance of the feel of her, the press of her hips.

      Idiot. Revealing his weakness had been a mistake. He hadn’t meant to, but the cork had popped under the pressure of saving her from danger and finally, after two years of reimagining it, holding her.

      Bloody hell—why did she have to feel tailor-made for his form? The perfect height. A slender yet curvaceous shape that could wrap around him without smothering his need for space and autonomy. Her breasts, as natural as God had made them, had crushed against his chest with nipples so hardened by the cold he’d felt them like pebbles through both their shirts. He clenched his fists, still longing to warm those tight peaks with his tongue until they were both hot all through.

      Naked, and burningly aroused, he tilted back his head and struggled against the foe that had been stalking him for too long. He didn’t recall when the switch had happened. Sometime between hearing she’d been caught with a boy at school and seeing her climb from the pool at eighteen. Suddenly he’d been unable to ignore her, or the singe in his blood whenever he was around her.

      Then she had turned twenty, drunk her way to the bottom of a champagne bottle and, with no other

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