CAT’S EYES WIDENED, and Javi resisted a sudden strong urge to kiss her. Thoroughly. As if that would help anything.
Although it might make them both feel better.
“No, I hadn’t figured that out,” she said, holding his gaze.
He’d intended to tell her the hike would satisfy his own curiosity about Spree’s location. Instead, some weird truth came out.
He would do anything within his power to make her feel better.
And why was that? Because he was the captain and this whole situation was his fault?
Or something more because they’d been intimate?
No, it wasn’t just the sex. His feelings about Irish were complicated. Too complicated to figure out under the present circumstances, that’s for damn sure. And once he’d regained control of Spree, he’d likely never see her again. So what did it matter?
Her beautiful mouth—the lips he still wanted to kiss—curved into a slow smile.
She took his hand, linked their fingers and squeezed. “Thank you for that.”
Javi swallowed. Maybe she was reading more into his statement than he’d intended.
It wasn’t like him to say things before he’d thought them out.
“But I can wait until the rain stops,” she said.
“Good enough,” he said. Perhaps the stress was getting to him, making his thinking fuzzy. He needed rest, but agreed it’d be difficult to find sleep.
Still smiling, she refocused on the fire. “Debbie would never believe our strict Captain Bligh could be so sweet.”
Irish’s smile faded. Her friend’s name hung in the air between them, altering her mood.
“So you three considered me Captain Bligh?” he asked, hoping to distract her for a moment.
She nodded. “It was the shoes.”
“What shoes?”
“You wouldn’t let her on deck with her stilettoes. Remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
“That seems like a long time ago,” she said.
“Yeah.” But it was only three days. It didn’t seem possible that he had known this woman for only three days.
“A decade at least,” she said.
Another blast of wind blew an object against the wall right behind them. Irish tensed, darting a look that direction, then relaxed, shaking her head. The rain continued to beat against the roof. The wind keened around the corners of the building. But its direction had changed so that gusts no longer rushed inside their sanctuary. The worst had moved past them. What was left of the fire burned steadily.
“Lie down with me, Irish.”
She turned her head and met his gaze.
“I want to hold you for a while,” he said. “Maybe you can rest.”
She scooted away from him and extended her body along the ground, facing their fire. He lay behind her, spooning her against his groin, briefly considering the wisdom of that position. But he placed his arm protectively around her and closed his eyes, finding the rhythm of her breath, the too-rapid tattoo of her heart.
With each inhalation, he became more aware of the mysterious fragrance he associated with her skin, wondering how it survived a swim in salt water, and decided the gentle scent was somehow part of her. He liked how she felt next to him.
Until she started fidgeting.
“What?” he asked.
“We didn’t clear the rocks in this location,” she said, pushing herself to her hands and knees. “Several are poking my ribs.”
He hadn’t noticed.
They cleared away the debris and she lay down again, snuggling in tight to his body.
“Better?” he asked.
“A little.”
He listened to the rain pound against the roof. It was still coming down hard.
“This is nice,” she said, her voice shy.
He squeezed her gently. Yeah, this was nice. As they lay together, their body heat merged, warming them both. She took a deep breath, causing her firm ass to press against his growing erection.
He wanted Irish. Actually, he couldn’t look at her without wanting to rip off that bathing suit and make love to her amazing body. How crazy was that considering their circumstances? Was that what he’d subconsciously had in mind when he’d suggested they stretch out next to each other?
But intimacy wasn’t on her radar, and he wasn’t that much of a jerk. Besides, he also wanted her to sleep. He couldn’t decide which one he needed more.
“Javi,” she said, her voice tentative.
“Yeah, babe?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I could actually do with a laugh about now.”
She sat up and gazed down at him, her upper body supported on her arms. “This bathing suit is so tight it’s cutting into my skin at the seams. Plus, I’ve got sand in places where it really doesn’t belong.”
He swallowed.
“Sounds uncomfortable,” he said.
“I’m miserable,” she stated.
“How can I help?”
“You can’t, but I’m going to remove my bathing suit until it’s time to go back to Spree. I can’t stand it anymore.”
He grinned up at her. “Don’t let me stop you.”
She made a face, then jerked off her T-shirt and threw it at him.
He grabbed it midair and sat up. “Do you expect me to cover my eyes?”
She hesitated, then turned away from him and lowered the straps off her shoulders, peeling the fabric away from her chest.
Flames highlighted the gentle curve of her back. In the flickering light, he could see the rise of a breast. He couldn’t look away, didn’t want to look away.
She raised an arm, and his gaze followed hers to an angry red mark left where the straps of the bathing suit had bitten into her flesh.
He swore harshly. “That must hurt,” he said.
“The suit tightened as it dried,” she said, carefully brushing away dried sand. The grains left behind a pattern imprinted on her skin.
She swiveled her neck to meet his gaze again. “Now comes the hard part.” She lay down on the floor beside him and bent her knees. “This won’t be pretty. Go ahead and laugh, if you must.”
She pulled the bathing suit down around her waist, elevated her hips and proceeded to wiggle her way out of the clingy fabric.
“Argh,” she said in obvious relief when the swimsuit finally came off her hips. He caught a tantalizing, shadowy view of her lower body as she kicked the material free of her feet.
She collapsed back to the ground, breathing heavily from her efforts, totally naked and exposed to him. Light pulsated over the perfection of her skin.
She was beautiful. And for God’s sake, he was only human.
He swallowed again. Was he really not supposed to touch her?
She looked over her shoulder at him, one arm over her breasts. The other shielded the most intimate parts of her anatomy.
“Um, would you mind terribly returning my T-shirt, Captain Bligh?”
He looked to his hands and realized he’d unconsciously wadded her shirt into a ball. He raised his gaze to her and smiled.
He wanted to strip his own clothing and pull that gorgeous body close to him and forget all this craziness.
He wanted to lavish attention on her body. In a bed.
He tossed the T-shirt to her.
* * *
UNSURE IF SHE was relieved or sorry, Cat dropped the garment over her head, hiding her body from his probing gaze, confused by how liberating stripping in front of him had made her feel. She’d wanted him to join her in her nakedness. She’d desperately needed to forget what was happening on board Spree, if only for a short time.
Why hadn’t she taken the initiative? She could have encouraged him.
Because she was always too timid, too damned afraid.
They’d stepped back from some sort of a precipice, deciding to behave responsibly. And rightly so. They had too much going on without complicating their situation further with more sex. Javi likely never had inappropriate thoughts while on a “mission.”
She moved beside him, pulling the T-shirt long so her bare buttocks sat on fabric rather than the sandy ground, extending her legs before her. Her shoulder brushed against Javi’s as she leaned against the wall. By unspoken agreement, they didn’t lie down again.
Even if she’d looked awkward and ridiculous while shedding her uncomfortable swimsuit, being rid of it improved her mood a hundred percent.
She shot him a glance. He hadn’t said anything since she’d re-covered her body.
“I can’t believe I just did that in front of you.”
“I didn’t mind,” he said.
She looked away, hiding a pleased smile. “I’d wanted to strip off that suit for hours.”
“So why didn’t you?”
She shrugged, unable to admit her shyness. Besides, he knew why.
“Now you know what women go through when they pull tight jeans on and off,” she said.
“Crazy,” he said with a laugh.
“Definitely,” she agreed.
“What I don’t understand is how you ladies can walk in those stiletto heels.”
“What? Don’t men think high heels are sexy?”
“I don’t,” he said. “They look too much like a weapon.”
“A weapon? Right.” Were they really having this conversation about women’s fashion? She sighed. “Too bad I don’t have a pair with me. We’d be armed and dangerous.”
“Do you usually snorkel in stilettos?”
“I don’t usually snorkel.”
“What do you usually do, Irish?” he asked softly.
“Hide in my orchid houses,” she said, realizing with a jolt how true that was. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“You should get out more.”
“Yeah, and look where that got me.” Aware of how naked and vulnerable she was beneath her T-shirt, she stared at the fire. “All I wanted was to learn how to sail.”
“Do you enjoy your orchid business?” he asked after a moment.
“Very much.”
“Why?”
She swiveled her head to look at him. He appeared mesmerized by the flames.
“Why do you like going after bad guys?” she asked.
His jaw tightened. Again she was treading into a forbidden area. She suspected something bad had happened on board Ganesh when he’d been a young man. She wondered what it was. And if he would ever tell her about it.
“I asked first,” he said with a grin, once more her brash, sexy buccaneer.
She examined the hem of her T-shirt, searching for a way to explain her fascination with orchids, the satisfaction it gave her to be connected to the beauty of Mother Earth, the rhythm of the seasons.
“I love starting with a tiny seedling, nurturing it, watching it grow—sometimes for years—into a healthy plant that creates a beautiful living flower.”
She realized she was cupping her hands as if holding a bloom and that Javi was staring. Maybe she’d gotten a little carried away.
“Sounds like orchids require patience,” he said.
“Definitely. All kinds of things can go wrong along the way. Fungus, snails, disease, hurricanes, mites, insects. The worst is thrip, a tiny bug that eats the bud just before it opens, which, believe me, is especially painful to the grower.”
“I’d for sure suck at your profession.”
“Not exciting enough for the FBI guy?” she asked.
He grinned again. “Oh. Well, it all sounds incredibly thrilling, Irish, but I’ve been told by a certain head doctor that I have a pathological need to control my environment.”
She blinked. “What?”
“After the shooting, the Bureau made me check in with their shrink, one Dr. Moonshine, the eminent psychiatrist.”
“That’s really his name? Moonshine?”
“Her. Dr. Julia Moon, but I have my special names for her. The esteemed Dr. Moonbeam informed me I’m a control freak, so I suspect cultivating orchids would drive me loco. There’s too much to spoil the final product.”
“Come on, Javi. You can’t control what criminals do any more than I can control the weather.”
“But we do profiling, figure out what the bad guys will do, how they might act.”
“And I can apply pesticide and fungicide to my plants. So it’s the same. We all do our best to manage what can happen.”
He nodded, eyes narrowed. “Risk management. But no matter what you do, you can’t always control life.”
“Look where we are now,” she said. “What could we have done to prevent those men from boarding Spree? Keep an armed guard on the foredeck?”
“We shouldn’t have come to these waters,” he said. “And that’s on me.”
“Why? The Bahamas aren’t a known danger zone for pirates.”
“No,” he said. “So this is a lesson in humility. A better learning opportunity than anything my shrink might counsel.”
“It’s a lesson in something,” Cat said.
“I hope this experience doesn’t turn you off future adventures,” Javi said.
“We’ll see,” she said. If I have a future beyond tonight.
“Do you agree with Dr. Moonpie?” Javi asked. “Am I a control freak?”
“I think you know you are.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to believe it at first.”
“Do you still see your shrink?”
“I have to make one final visit before I go back on duty.”
“Just think of all you’ll have to tell her.” And you won’t pay a bit of attention to what she says. If you survive.
They lapsed into silence. The smell of burning wood filled the room, and Cat was hyperaware of the touch of Javi’s shoulder to hers where he leaned against the wall, apparently deep in thought. About what? They’d certainly gotten oddly philosophical about life, but maybe that’s what people did while waiting to die.
Was this her last night on earth? She’d never felt more alive than she had on this vacation, trying new things, seeing new places, meeting new people—well, Javi, anyway.
And yet after all that, the next few hours could be the last remaining ones of her existence.
She didn’t want to believe that, but so many things could go wrong with each step of his plan. No matter how quiet, how careful they were, there was really no way to effectively manage the risk.
Because there was too much risk.
She bit back a sob. She could give in to her fears, do nothing and let Joan and Debbie die. No, she couldn’t do that.
But if they went through with his plan, they wouldn’t survive. They couldn’t. They’d either be shot in the water while attempting to disable Spree or if the pirates came ashore. When they came ashore.
So they’d die. She didn’t want to die. Not when she’d realized how beautiful life was.
But she didn’t want to be a coward, either. How could she live the rest of her life knowing she’d done nothing to help her friends?
That option—doing nothing—had never once occurred to Javi. He’d begun formulating his rescue plan even before he left Spree. Maybe because he was such a control freak he couldn’t imagine not being able to alter the outcome of a situation.
She stared at the dying fire. The embers glowed beneath the flames, but she could do nothing to keep it burning. They were out of dry wood.
Tired of her confused thoughts, she gazed at Javi. The movement of the flames cast some of his face into shadow. His earring glinted in the shimmering firelight. She allowed her gaze to trace his forehead, the sweep of cheek, his firm jaw, finally focusing on his mouth.
She wanted him. Desperately. Or maybe she wanted the clarity, the single-mindedness that would take over her mind and body while they were intimate. She knew she wouldn’t be able think about anything else.
She inhaled deeply.
“Did you mean what you said earlier?” she asked, her breathy voice breaking into the quiet between them.
A ghost of a smile curved his sensuous mouth, but he continued gazing at the flames.
“I said a lot of things, Irish. Can you be specific?”
“Something about how there wasn’t much you wouldn’t do for me.”
He met her gaze, his dark eyes intent on hers. A shiver traced her spine.
“What do you need?”
“I need you to make love to me.”