THE GETAWAY PLANE was gassed up and waiting on the runway at Burbank. Shaking hands with its owner, billionaire playboy Adam LeCroix, Chris realized that he was everything the press made him out to be—tall, dark, and impossibly handsome, with a presence that made men do his bidding and women do anything.
But in Kota, he’d met his equal. Watching them clasp hands, Chris decided they were two sides of the same coin, cast in bronze by a beneficent god. A female god. Who liked tall men with extremely awesome arms.
Adam’s fiancée, Maddie, a bite-sized blonde with a killer sense of humor, knew exactly how to play both of them. Elbow-bumping Chris, she murmured, “Watch this.”
As Kota turned to greet her with his thousand-watt smile, Maddie’s eyes glazed. Her body went limp as a noodle. “Hi, Dakota.” A breathy whisper.
“Maddie darlin’.” He kissed one cheek. Then the other. Held her tiny hands in both of his.
And Adam busted in. “That’s enough of that, unless you’ve got someone else willing to fly a thousand miles out of his way to drop you on your island.”
Kota released Maddie’s hands with a show of reluctance. She let out a tremulous sigh.
“Christ Jesus,” Adam muttered, his European accent making blasphemy sound sexy.
Maddie dropped a wink at Chris, who bit back a grin.
The pilot’s voice piped through the speaker, advising them to buckle up for takeoff. Adam guided Maddie to a pair of cushy leather seats, while Kota steered Chris into the facing pair. Sasha and Tana buckled in on the sofa, where they could canoodle in relative privacy.
Kota murmured in Chris’s ear. “Maddie’s not a great flier. She’d probably feel better if you held my hand.”
“How do you figure?”
“See how she’s clinging to Adam? She gets embarrassed about that. So if you were holding my hand, snuggling into my shoulder like you were scared too, she wouldn’t feel like such an oddball.”
Tempting. Even more tempting when he traced a pattern on her wrist with one fingertip.
“If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d think you were trying to seduce me.”
“If I was, would it be working?”
She let out a soft snort. “Forget it. You promised me solitude. I’ll see you next Sunday when we’re back on the plane.”
The fingertip moved up her arm, a slow, slippery slide to the inside of her elbow.
How did he know that was her second-most erogenous zone?
He lingered there, his touch feather light, raising goose bumps that shivered up her arm and down her spine, all the way to her first-most erogenous zone.
She steeled herself. “There are those among us who can resist you,” she said. “Women who can say no to Dakota Rain.”
He leaned in so his hair brushed her shoulder. His voice was a whisper. “Name one.”
“Me,” she whispered back.
“We’ll see.” His breath was warm on her neck. “Try again.”
“Maddie.”
He pulled back enough to give her a get-real stare.
She put on a pitying look. “You realize she’s not really into you, right? She goes googly-eyed just to annoy Adam.”
“Pfft. I could have her like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“I wouldn’t mention that to Adam. Twenty thousand feet is a long way to fall.”
“Hell, I can take him.”
She gave Adam a slow study. “Hmm, I don’t think so.”
“You’re kidding. Feel this.” He picked up her hand and wrapped it around his arm.
Biceps built to make women weep.
His lips brushed her ear. “Still think he can beat me?”
“I think—” Well, that was a lie. She couldn’t think. Her brain had melted.
She brought her other hand up, a vain attempt to circle his arm.
“Ooooh,” she breathed.
He flexed, and her mouth went bone dry.
“Big,” she got out, reduced to one syllable. “Hard.”
KOTA MET CHRISTY’S eloquence with silence, not trusting himself to speak.
Big and hard was right. And he didn’t mean his arm.
Then she lifted her hot gaze to his face, and the hunger in her eyes pushed his control to the limit. He had two choices: get it on with her, or get away from her.
Now.
Plane sex was out, so he hit his seat belt release, managed a muttered “Excuse me,” and made tracks for the bathroom, holing up in there for as long as he decently could.
As it was, when he came out Tana quirked a brow at him. “Feeling okay? You ran for the can like you ate some bad clams.”
“I’m fine,” Kota said. Soaking his head in cold water had driven some desperately needed blood back up north to his brain. “I just needed a minute. Long day.”
“Tell me about it.” Tana was sitting on the couch, one hand stroking Sasha’s shoulder as she slept with her head on his lap.
Kota climbed over Cy and Adam’s dog, John Doe, both of them flaked out on the floor and snoring like chain saws.
Taking the captain’s chair across from his brother, Kota swung it side to side with one foot. “So. How’s it feel?”
“Scary. Like, I’m scared something’ll happen to Sasha. She’ll get hurt, or . . . you know.”
Yeah, he knew. Their mother disappeared thirty years ago this month, when they weren’t much more than toddlers. Then their dad went looking for her, and they lost him too.
Scary shit for a kid.
Scary shit for a husband.
Kota leaned over and patted Tana’s knee. “Nothing’s gonna happen to your wife. That’s a promise.” Sasha was family now.
Tana looked grim. “Nobody can control everything, man. Not even you.”
“Doesn’t stop me from trying.” As Em loved to point out.
They brooded in silence for a while, but gloom wasn’t their natural state. Tana shook it off first, poking his chin in Christy’s direction. “How’d you pull that off?”
Kota scratched his head. “I don’t really know. One minute she didn’t want any part of the island, and the next she was raring to go.”
“Playing hard to get?”
“She doesn’t have to play. She is hard to get.” Christy might be hot for him, but she wouldn’t be jumping in the sack without a lot of persuasion. The movie star thing that made other women’s clothes fall off actually seemed to be a negative to her. Besides, “I’m not sure, but I don’t think she likes me.”
Tana laughed, and laughed.
Kota gave him the finger.
Heading back to his seat, he found Christy chatting with Adam and Maddie like they were old cronies, blabbing about the Riviera and St. Tropez and some restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
“We’re getting married on my yacht next month,” Adam mentioned. “Then we’ll cruise the Greek islands. Maddie’s never been.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Yachts and cruises and weddings. I don’t remember signing on for any of it.”
“You will, darling.” Adam brought her hand to his lips and trailed kisses over her knuckles.
Maddie went starry-eyed.
Kota stroked Christy’s arm, stealing her attention for himself. “We’re still a couple hours out,” he said. “That seat reclines if you want a nap.”
“No thanks.” She rolled her shoulders.
“I can rub those for you. Get out the kinks.” He flexed his hands. Women liked his big hands. And who didn’t like a shoulder massage?
“No thanks.”
The woman was work. “A drink? Some food? There must be something I can do for you.” He laid on the double meaning.
She raised an eyebrow. “No. Thanks.”
Okay then, back to conversation. “What’re you writing about?”
That got her attention. She went bright pink. “What do you mean? I’m not writing anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Didn’t you say you’re writing a book?”
“Oh.” She breathed out. “Right. The book. It’s a biography.”
“Of?”
“A journalist.”
His back went up. “A reporter?”
“A war correspondent. She covered Vietnam. Bosnia. Somalia. The first Gulf War. She’s a hero.”
“Okay.” He tried to compartmentalize heroic war correspondents on one side of his brain, the rest of the media on the other. But it wouldn’t compute, so he changed the subject instead. “So you’re a writer? That’s your job?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why’d you stop touring with Zach?”
“Life on the road.” She shrugged. “You know how it is.”
Finally, something in common.
“Zach seems to like it,” he said.
“It’s all he knows. He’s got a house in the canyon not far from mine, but he’s hardly ever there.”
He liked watching her talk, the way her lips moved, the line of her jaw. And her voice mesmerized him. Throaty, like she’d shot whiskey. Sexy, like she’d just come.
A foot tapped his leg—Tri looking for a lift. Kota one-handed him onto his lap. The pervert propped his front foot on the armrest, eyeballing Christy.
She put a hand on her chest.
Tri gave up and rolled over on Kota’s thigh, all three feet in the air. Kota scratched him an inch from his junk, and Tri wriggled in glee.
Christy snorted. “Men.”
“We’re easy, just rub us in the right spot.” He grinned. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She laughed her husky laugh. He hadn’t heard it since they boarded the plane, and now he wanted nothing but to hear it again, against his throat, ruffling his hair.
Everything about Christy—everything—called out to him on an atomic level. She was gorgeous and smart and funny, and totally bullshit-proof.
And she wanted him. Or she wanted his body, anyway. He didn’t care that it was purely physical at this point. Once he got her clothes off, they’d burn up the island.
After that, who knew where things would go? All he knew for sure was that they had a whole week to find out.
CHRIS RUBBED HER temple. Why, oh why, hadn’t she stowed away in a catering truck? She’d be halfway to Cabo by now instead of an hour into the flight of the damned.
This whole situation could only be cosmic justice, meted out by the patron saint of journalists to punish her fall from grace.
And it couldn’t have been more torturously crafted. A week on a tropical island with the hottest guy on the planet. A guy who was coming on to her with every breath, who her whole body was begging to bang.
A guy she was deceiving just by sitting beside him.
Already she was in agony. How would she endure seven days? It might as well be an eternity.
She shifted in her seat, wishing for a continent between them instead of an armrest. “I think I’ll take a nap after all.”
“Good idea.” Kota folded the armrest up. “Want to put your head on my shoulder?”
Oh boy, did she want to.
“No, I’m good,” she said.
“Then how ’bout I put my head on yours?”
She gave him a get-over-yourself look. “Maybe I’ll forget about the nap.” She put the armrest down.
He put it up again. “Seriously, you should sleep. I won’t pester you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He made an X on his heart, and she smiled in spite of herself.
When she woke up hours later, he was holding her hand. Or more like cupping it in his upturned palm, as if he’d worked his hand under hers where it rested on the seat.
She couldn’t fairly call it pestering, but it was its own brand of torment. Because Kota was proving to be disarmingly sweet. Hot and sweet was a deadly combination.
At the moment, though, he was harmless, sleeping like a baby. For the first time she could study him unobserved, seeking out the inevitable imperfections that would prove he was mortal.
And there were many, as her scrutiny revealed. She worked her way down from the top.
For starters, his widow’s peak was off center, his hair was too thick for a normal comb, and his lashes were too long and too lush for anyone but a mascara model.
His nose was a half centimeter too wide, his lips too full for a man who got paid millions to snarl, and his arms . . .
Okay, so he had one perfect feature.
But his chest was so broad that he’d need custom-made shirts, his waist was narrower than hers, and his package—
Whoa, his package. Hello, morning wood. Morning redwood. Like, two-thousand-year-old Sequoia—
“Hey, gorgeous. Like what you see?”
Of course he’d caught her ogling.
She covered by stretching and blinking as if she’d just opened her eyes. Like she’d coincidentally woken up staring at his bulge but hadn’t really noticed it.
His smirk said he was on to her.
Damn it, why did she feel so outclassed? Hadn’t she just finished logging his imperfections? The man was a troll.
Then he caught her in his bluer-than-blue gaze and scooped back his sleep-tousled hair, and she had to call bullshit on herself.
The truth was that the gods, in their wisdom, had plucked one of their own from his throne and sent him to Hollywood. And she was as bedazzled as the rest of womankind.
Thor, or Zeus, or whoever he was, reached over and hooked his pinky under a lock of her hair. Gently, he unstuck it from her cheek, then pulled it slowly through his fingers to the end.
“How can you look so good after sleeping in a chair?” he said.
She could ask him the same question, but that way lay madness.
“Are we there yet?” she asked instead.
He slid his hand out from under hers to look at his watch. “Twenty minutes, give or take.”
She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. The plane was purgatory, but the island would be hell.
Heading for the bathroom, she noticed that everyone else was still asleep. Maddie and Adam snuggled together like puppies. Sasha’s new husband spooned her on the sofa. Everyone looked snug and content and utterly peaceful. And why wouldn’t they? They’d each found the other half of their own happy couple.
Locking herself in, Chris leaned against the door, and for the first time in weeks, she thought about Jason.
After a year together, they’d broken up last April, when the Dodgers traded him to Boston. Now she wondered what would have happened if she’d gone with him, or if he’d stayed in L.A.
Would they be married? Happy?
She’d never know, because when push came to shove, neither of them was willing to sacrifice their career for the other.
Still, they’d had fun together. She missed him sometimes. And she definitely missed having a man in her life.
A six-month dry spell wasn’t helping her resist Kota’s charms.
Back in the cabin, she found everyone waking up, rubbing their eyes, raising the shades to look out. She took her seat, and a few minutes later the plane banked to the left. Dawn broke across her lap, glinting off the choppy sea.
Kota leaned across her to point at the archipelago curled in a comma to the east. Most of the islands were overspread with dense foliage from sea to sea.
But the largest had a house on either side, a landing strip at one end, and a wide swath of meadow dotted with . . .
“Sheep?”
“Mmm-hmm. And horses.” He pointed out a small herd. “Goats. Chickens. You name it.”
The window was small, their heads close together. His bristles grazed her ear. His hair tickled her shoulder.
She drew a deep, secret breath through her nose, taking in his scent. Not cologne but the man himself, spicy and exotic. She licked her lips. Would he taste as delicious?
Tri hopped from Kota’s lap to hers and propped his foot on the windowsill. The three of them couldn’t get closer unless they all went down her shirt again.
Then the pilot said to buckle up. Kota sat back in his seat. Tri tucked himself between their hips. It was all so cozy.
Too cozy. Too tempting.
A great big mistake waiting to happen.
Unless . . .
Chris smiled over at Maddie and Adam. “So, where are you two heading from here?”