stand up on the board, finding her feet beneath her.
“Good job,” he said. “Now you catch a wave.”
“‘Catch a wave,’” she muttered, as if he’d said catch a star, or something. “Right. I’ll just catch one, shall I?”
But he knew she would, because for all the muttering and the scowling, she kept trying. She never flipped out. She simply fell down and got up again. Over and over and over.
It was impossible not to admire her.
Or want to get his hands on her again, with more desperation than he was comfortable admitting, even out here where there no witnesses to his foolishness but the waves and the sky.
“You’re going to start paddling,” he told her. And realized when he heard the intensity in his own voice that he was entirely too invested in this woman doing the very thing he’d wanted her to fail at before. He wanted her to get up. He wanted her to ride the wave. He wanted her, and he didn’t know how to handle that. So he ignored it. “When you feel the wave pick you up, you get up and you ride. Got it?”
“It’s that simple, is it?”
Though her voice was skeptical, they had been out in the water too long. No matter how grumpy she sounded, she obeyed him.
Jason liked that a whole lot more than he should have.
“It’s that simple,” he promised her. Gruffly.
And when the next wave came, he put his hand on the back of her board and threw her into it.
Then watched with an intoxicating mix of pride and greed as his tight-assed little redhead pulled herself up, balanced herself beautifully and rode her first wave all the way into shore.
LUCINDA HAD EXPECTED surfing to be a grim, brutal exercise.
Like anything else she had done to claw her way and her current position, she’d assumed it would be unpleasant and if she was lucky, she could look back on it with a certain smugness born of having survived it. There was always some or other feat to perform, so she could prove herself to whoever it was who held the thing she wanted and thereby convince them to give it to her.
There was always a test. Always a series of hoops to leap through.
She’d expected surfing, of all things, and in a micro-bikini, to be no different.
It had never even crossed her mind that she might enjoy doing something she’d always viewed as remarkably, even laughably, pointless.
But the truth was, it felt like flying.
Better.
And at some point, she would have to think about Jason’s laughter, or the way he touched her. The way he pulled her against his body and the unmistakable proof of his arousal that he’d neither thrust against her nor hidden. Nor, for that matter, apologized for.
As if all that sexual awareness that wound around the two of them was as matter-of-fact as the water. The sky. Just nature, doing its thing.
She would have to think about all of that, certainly. And she’d been firing off speeches in her head, one after the next, each more haughty and self-possessed than the last—
But then she caught that wave.
And everything changed.
Because it felt better than flying.
It felt like joy.
Something in her chest expanded, bigger and brighter than anything she’d ever felt before, until she was sure her ribs had to crack wide open to let it out.
It was that mad hurtle, blue below and blue above, in a rush of exhilaration.
When she made it to shore that first time, she turned right around and headed back out.
And did it again and again.
The truth was, she never wanted it to end.
There were too many things to think about once she came out of the water. Her position at her company. Her ambition. What she had riding on convincing an impossible man to do something he very clearly didn’t want to do. The fact she hadn’t slept or ate in a very, very long time.
Too many things, none of which seemed to matter or stick to her as she let the waves lift her and hurl her toward the sand as if she was one of them.
It wasn’t until Jason caught her by the arm, after her last marvelous ride that was still humming in her and making her giddy, that she came back down to earth with a thud. Or maybe it wasn’t earth, exactly, with that big hand wrapped around her upper arm and his dark gaze on hers.
And in her, too.
Reminding her of what had almost happened earlier with an electric jolt.
She’d lost track of how much time she’d spent out on the water. How many times she’d let the waves pick her up and take her on that amazing rush of a journey. But she knew it was enough that she’d completely forgotten to grumble to herself about what a chore it was to have to prove herself to yet another man with power over her.
That should have scared her, but she’d forgotten to let that happen, too.
She’d been aware of Jason, of course. She’d been simply riding the waves as she caught them and proud of herself that she stayed standing, but he was...art.
As if he and that board and the sea were all one, working together to create a kind of magic. Art and skill and raw beauty blended into one—
But it didn’t pay to think too closely about Jason Kaoki, Lucinda reminded herself sharply. It made her aware of the way the sun felt heavy on her eyelids, as if all that shine had weight. Of the greedy thing between her legs that pulsed and hummed, hot and ready, still.
This close, if she would just...
The fist of lust that punched deep into her gut, and didn’t let go, seemed heavier than before. But she refused—again—to let it take her down.
“Enough.” And his voice was another problem, heavy like the sun and with as much potential to scar her. “The tide’s changing. And even if it wasn’t, sunscreen doesn’t last forever.”
She might have argued with him—and she opened her mouth to do just that—but he didn’t stick around to debate the matter. He scooped up her board under one arm, his under the other, and sauntered up onto the beach again as if neither one of them weighed more than a twig.
She followed him onto the sand, scowling and annoyed that she had no other option unless she wanted to float about like a hapless jellyfish. It wasn’t until her feet sunk into the white sand again that she realized how deeply tired she was. But this time, in a different way than she’d been before, fresh off the plane.
This time it felt wilder. She was exhausted, yes, but she still felt connected to the ocean all around them. Humming with it, somehow.
For some reason, that made her even more furious.
Jason walked up to the edge of the beach to put his surfboards onto a rack there, beneath a canopy stretched between two palm trees. And Lucinda followed because that was why she was here.
But suddenly, she was outraged by that fact. There was something scooped out and hollow beneath her ribs and it was making it hard to breathe.
“Did I pass your test?” she demanded, moving from the sand onto the grass, as he wrestled the boards into their proper places.
Well. He didn’t wrestle. He was so strong the boards looked like they were made of Styrofoam.
Lucinda had been gearing up to unleash a little of her temper, but she couldn’t seem