knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that his monastic retreat from the world was over.
And temptation had won.
Hallelujah.
THE ONLY WAY out was through, Lucinda told herself stoutly.
She would brazen it out no matter what, she’d decided when she’d stepped into the office. She’d never yet backed down from a challenge and there was no way she’d come this far to allow this to be the first time.
She might have found the bikini distressingly skimpy, but that was all it was: a bathing costume.
It was only as awkward as she allowed it to be.
Sheer force of will kept her moving with her head high. She pretended she couldn’t feel the sleek caress of the cool tiles beneath her feet. Or all that thick tropical air, like an intimate caress.
All over her body.
Lucinda’s practical, survival-focused swimming lessons had taken place under controlled circumstances, in secure one-piece bathing costumes appropriate to the task at hand. That being learning how not to drown, not showing off her body.
She might as well have been naked in the ridiculous bikini Jason had given her. He’d clearly expected her to refuse to wear it on those grounds, but what the hell. She’d never been ashamed of her body and there was no reason to change that now.
Especially not with the way Jason was staring at her, looking nothing short of gobsmacked.
That would do quite nicely, thank you. A quick strut out of a dusty back office in a questionable string bikini shifted the power balance between them—Lucinda could feel it as easily as she could see it—and that felt a lot like a welcome victory.
If Jason wanted to stare, she was happy to give him something to stare at. It was nothing to her but another bargaining chip.
Though if she thought about it too much, she would feel foolish nonetheless—because her research had showed her the sorts of women this man preferred and none of them had skin the color of a dead fish’s underbelly, fetchingly covered in freckles and topped with flaming ginger hair—so she didn’t let herself.
She swayed toward him, letting one hand drift to the counter beside her, one hip jutting out.
And watched Jason Kaoki’s famously sultry eyes go black with heat.
If the price of this kind of power involved flinging herself into the waves and letting the surf dash her to pieces on the beach, Lucinda decided it was well worth it.
Because the more he stared back at her, fire all over him like a different kind of storm entirely, all she could think to do was burn.
“I need protection,” she said, and it wasn’t until that gaze of his burned hotter and his expression shifted to something far more male and knowing that it occurred to her that her words could be misinterpreted.
Or maybe she did know. Maybe, after all these years of practical, dependable choices and considered forward momentum, it turned out that really, all Lucinda wanted to do was light matches and play with fire.
It cost her to keep her voice cool, but she did it. “For the sun, Mr. Kaoki. I need SPF 50, at the very least. Don’t you think?”
He looked as if it took him a minute to rouse himself from whatever daydream he had drifted off into. And it didn’t take a lot on her part to figure out exactly what that daydream entailed, since she could feel the kick of it in her own blood.
And between her legs like a sweet, insistent fire.
She told herself it was the fact that she was nearly naked, with her ass hanging out and all of her bits on display. It was the fact that the breeze could wash over her, touching parts of her body she wasn’t sure she’d ever bared outside the privacy of her own shower. That was why she felt so animated. So intensely alive.
Outside herself, she told herself, the way anyone might feel after such a long trip.
But she knew that wasn’t true.
What was true was that she felt more inside her own body than she ever had before.
Lucinda shoved that odd notion aside. Because Jason was moving again. For a brief, terrified instant she thought he was reaching for her—
And she knew, even as she categorized it that way, that what she felt certainly wasn’t terror—
But he didn’t put his hands on her, and Lucinda had to swallow back a protest. He pulled open a drawer an inch or so away from her. Then another one, rummaging around until he found a bright orange and blue tube it took her entirely too long to understand was the sunscreen she’d requested.
Their eyes met. Held.
“Come on,” he said, his voice gruffer than before. “Let’s go.”
She wanted to demand that he put the lotion on her here and now, but she didn’t. Maybe because, for all her bravado, she thought that if they stayed here in this dim, deserted lobby—just the two of them—she would find herself in a whole lot more trouble than she’d bargained for.
She tried to ignore all those clamoring parts of herself that wanted exactly that. And when he started walking out from behind the desk, she followed him. After losing a pitched battle with herself, she stopped pretending she was more high-minded and let herself gaze at the stunning expanse of his muscled, tattooed back as he stalked across the lobby in front of her.
He was beautiful, full stop.
And as they walked out from the lobby area onto what once had been a 1950s version of the sort of flowing, open-space lanai that Lucinda wanted to build, he became only more beautiful. As if he was meant to be outdoors on an island just like this one, a part of the sun, the inviting ocean before him and the gleaming white sand that beckoned. He stopped at the edge of the terrace near an old iron railing, his eyes shadowed as the sun beat down on him. He didn’t say a word as he gazed down at Lucinda. He only lifted one of his big hands and motioned for her to turn around with one lazy finger.
Which is not a sexual act, she snapped at herself.
She ordered herself to brazen it out, already, and made herself turn her back to him as if she had all the confidence in the world and he was the one finding it hard to keep his tongue in his mouth.
And as if she wasn’t casually exposing the whole of her backside to him, with nothing but one fragile string across her back and another around her hips to break up his view of...all of her.
She was facing the sea. Her eyes hurt, from all that glare and deep blue, but she didn’t shut them. She didn’t dare.
That felt too much like surrender.
Her heart kicked at her, anticipation and something else she wasn’t sure she could name clattering around inside her and leaving chinks wherever it hit. She heard a click when he opened the tube of lotion. The squeaking sound of the tube as he squeezed it.
Then there was nothing but the breeze dancing up from the sea, smelling of salt and green. The fragrance of all those brightly colored flowers she couldn’t name because they didn’t bloom in cold, wet Glasgow or gray London. The rattling sounds of the coconuts in the trees, the restless rattling of the palms. She could hear raucous birds in the distance, and the tumble of the surf, but there was nothing else beyond it or beneath it.
No traffic. No sirens. No people.
She felt as if she was standing on the edge of the world, and worse still, a steep and dangerous cliff as beguiling as it was deadly. The devil behind her, the blue sea before her, and her own treacherous body smack in the middle.
This time, when she broke