Chapter Eight
Arden sat across from Rafe at a table in the lounge, devouring eggs Benedict—because the best motherfucking sunrise in Maui left a girl ravenous—and thanking God her date for this morning’s outing hadn’t walked her into the hotel. She didn’t want real life complicating this temporary escape she had with him, and her brother’s unexpected presence would have done it. Rafe would have insisted on introductions, not to mention fingerprints and a full background check after what had happened with the last guy she’d dated.
Bullet dodged, mercifully, because what would she have said? Hey, meet my brother, Rafe. Rafe, meet the man helping me get my groove back. I wish I could tell you more but I don’t know his real name.
The offhand thought gave her pause. Do you wish you knew his name? You’re thinking like a woman who wants to stay in touch. That’s not part of the plan. Remember?
She did remember. She absolutely did. They had their rules for good reasons. Reinforcing her resolve, she turned her attention to Rafe. “What are you doing here?”
“Technically, I work here.”
“You know what I mean. I thought you were headed to Sydney this week.”
He nodded. “I am. I’m here for a few hours on a personal errand, and then I’ll continue on to Sydney.”
“A personal errand like checking up on me?”
“Why would I need to check up on you, Arden?”
“I have no idea,” she countered, unwilling to acknowledge anything. “But there’s no other reason I can think of for you to be here.”
“There are seven million reasons, all wrapped up in a property I’m considering buying as a surprise for Chelsea. I have a meeting this afternoon with the seller’s rep to look it over. You’re welcome to come see it with me.”
His explanation sounded plausible. He and his fiancée, Chelsea, loved the island, and Rafe wanted to find the perfect wedding gift. “How is your bride-to-be?”
“Good. She sends her love.” He drank his coffee and eyed her over the rim. “How was the sunrise on Mount Haleakala?”
“Breathtaking.” Not just because of the view, but her brother didn’t need to know the details.
“Whose idea was it?”
Uh-oh. What did he know? “Mine. Whose idea did you think it was?”
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t have pegged you for that particular activity.”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “The four a.m. wake-up call, for starters. Besides, didn’t you get dragged up there at some point during one of those summer adventures Mom booked because she didn’t want us underfoot, and Dad paid for because he didn’t want to argue with her?”
“Yes. But I was, like, twelve. I got more out of it this time.” Way more. She scooped a bite of eggs into her mouth.
“Like a skinned knee?”
She waved that off and swallowed. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Are you?” He pushed his empty breakfast plate aside and rested his forearms on the table. “You look tired.”
“Hey, thanks. Did I mention I got up at four a.m.?”
“Dad says you’re stressed.”
Poof. Appetite gone. “He’s making me stressed.” She scooted her chair away from the table, crossed her arms—which probably made her look all the more stressed. “The man didn’t retire. He simply switched jobs. You know how he spends his time now? Poking his nose into my business. I get half a dozen messages a day along the lines of, ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Why?’ And you know what? I could probably learn to deal with that, but I can’t deal with the way he challenges every decision I make professionally. Worse, he’s trying to take over my personal life.”
Rafe scrubbed a hand over his face and then cast her a sympathetic look. “Why didn’t you say something to me sooner?”
“Because it’s not your problem to solve.” Frustration at her own inability to manage the situation made her reply terser than she intended.
“Arden, I’ve been on the receiving end of all that second-guessing most of my life. I’m pretty good at solving this particular problem.”
Rafe was right, to a point. She might bear the burden of serving as the unofficial go-between for their parents, but Rafe had born the brunt of their father’s scrutiny when it came to work.
Then again, he’d always had ambitions to run the company, and their father had groomed him to do so. “First off, you wanted the big chair at the head of the table, and you knew getting it would involve proving to Dad that you knew what you were doing. Second, he never attempted to pimp you out to someone’s nephew as part of a business deal.”
“Ha. Don’t be so sure.”
“I’m not joking. That shit is happening.”
Her brother didn’t quite succeed in hiding a smirk behind his coffee cup. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve got a solution to part of your problem.”
“Which part?”
“The part where he doesn’t have enough to keep him busy. I asked Luc to take over as general manager of this property, and he agreed. Once you’re done making this place look like a St. Sebastian resort, you’ll be out of his line of fire. He’ll have a hard time micromanaging you when he has his hands full running the resort.”
A small measure of anxiety lifted. “You’re a genius. Supervising something—something other than me—is exactly what he needs.”
He sat back and shrugged modestly. “You still have to get through the renovations, but ultimately, it’s a win-win.” Then his expression sobered. “I can’t guarantee this will prevent him from meddling in your personal life. You have to understand some of that stems from concern.”
“I know.” She did. And the burden of that knowledge pushed a sigh out of her. “But he doesn’t need to worry.”
A steady gaze pinned her from across the table. “Convince me.”
Dammit. She knew where this was going, but hoped to evade by playing dumb. “How?”
“Tell me what happened with the sociopath from Seattle, and why am I only hearing about it now?”
Hope died. She ran a hand through her hair, tugging the strands until her scalp protested. “Nothing I couldn’t handle, and I didn’t tell you about it because I handled it.”
“Define ‘handled.’”
Of course he’d question her. Nature had woven the control-freak gene into his DNA, and he had a hard time accepting anything as properly handled unless he handled it himself, or at least personally approved the plan. While she understood real concern lurked beneath his arrogance, this wasn’t a St. Sebastian business venture. This was her life, and when it came to her life, she didn’t answer to him. A familiar pressure started to build above her eye. She pressed her fingers to the spot. “You’ll have to check with the Montenido Sheriff’s Department if you want the official disposition.”
Amazingly, her brother relented. He propped his forearms on the table and leaned closer, his face serious. “Just tell me you’re okay.”
Standing up for herself was one thing. Stonewalling a brother who cared about her, another. “I’m okay. Honestly.” But the concern on Rafe’s face didn’t clear. Apparently Luc wasn’t the only one worried. Her embarrassment would have to take a backseat to reassuring her family. “I got targeted by a con artist. A not very good one, as it turned out, but I contacted the authorities and dealt with it.”
“So no sociopath from Seattle?”
She shook her head. “A vineyard owner in Washington. I met him at my friend Isabelle’s wedding and we hit it off. We saw each other several times over the next couple months. It was easy because I was constantly bouncing up there to oversee the spa remodel for the St. Sebastian, Seattle, but” —she shrugged—“you know how it is. Once I didn’t have another reason pulling me up there, the whole thing lost momentum—for me, anyway. I was flattered by the effort he put into keeping things going, but he started talking long-term, and ultimately…” She fiddled with her napkin. “I didn’t feel the same. He was moving way too fast, and it didn’t make sense because we’d had a very limited relationship. I passed on the next couple invitations, but when that didn’t discourage him, I told him the truth. Distance. Work. Priorities. Blah, blah, blah. We parted friends, I thought.”
In truth, she hadn’t thought about it much at all, at the time, because her heart had never been in it. Not with him, or anyone else. She wasn’t proud of the fact, but there it was.
Are you sure? Even as the question whispered through her mind, the thought of Rider standing at the bar, giving her shivers from just the shape of his hands. Rafe peeled her busy fingers off the knot she’d made of her napkin. “But?”
“But he wasn’t interested in friendship—or me—I eventually found out. He wanted an infusion of funds for his cash-strapped winery, and figured a close, personal affiliation with the St. Sebastian family was an easy way to secure it. After I kissed him good-bye, he got some guy to cyber-stalk me while he played the role of my helpful, protective friend. When fear and gratitude didn’t drive me back into his arms, he decided to focus strictly on scoring some cash. He had his guy threaten to post a…um”—heat seeped into her cheeks as she struggled for the right words, because this was her brother—“revealing video unless I forked over fifty grand.”
Rafe cursed under his breath. “Arden, you can’t just—”
“No lectures, okay? Give me some credit. I didn’t just anything, and that’s where he made his mistake. With the Montenido Sheriff’s Department monitoring everything, I demanded to see the video before I agreed to discuss payment because, you know, I hadn’t knowingly participated in anything. I received a blurry snippet that could have originated from only one person. The sheriff’s department secured a warrant for his electronics and found the evidence. Local authorities questioned him. He confessed. I pressed charges, learned a valuable lesson, and moved on.”
Her brother’s hand tightened on hers briefly, and then he eased back. “For the record, I was going to say you can’t just keep things like this to yourself. You have family, and we love you. If someone threatens you, I need to know.”
She held her reply while the waitress dropped off the check and cleared their plates. “I didn’t feel threatened. Not much,” she qualified when her brother raised an eyebrow at her. “The whole thing was annoying, for the most part.” Annoying, and then humiliating, to discover a man she’d taken pains to let down easy hadn’t actually been into her at all. “Nothing tipped toward creepy until just before we celebrated the grand reopening of the Las Ventanas resort, and by that time I’d already gotten Sheriff Booker involved.”
“I’m glad you did, and I’m happy he ran it down quickly, but you should have also gotten me involved.”
Bossy men ran in her family. She responded with an eye roll. “Yeah, well, I didn’t. What are you going to do about it now?”
He picked up the check. “Buy you breakfast, and ask you what lesson you learned.”
“Sorry?”
“You said you learned a valuable lesson.”
“Oh.” She scooted her chair closer to the table, rested her elbows on the surface, and drew her shoulders up. “I guess I should say the incident reinforced something I’ve always known, but lost sight of.”
“Namely?” He slid his credit card into the leather folder containing their bill.
“As much as I like to think people are attracted to my razor-sharp wit and sparkling personality, the truth is my last name almost always plays a part.” She held up a hand when Rafe would have spoken. “I am who I am, and I’m proud of my family. I don’t mean to sound like a poor little rich girl.” She let her attention wander the lounge, with its soaring ceiling and five-star view. “But I need to keep in mind that when someone meets me, they see more than just the girl in front of them. They see a lifestyle, and a brand, and in some cases, an opportunity.”
She broke off as the waitress approached to take the check, but her thoughts kept busy.
Rider doesn’t see a lifestyle, a brand, or an opportunity. All he sees is the girl in front of him.
Because that’s all you’ve let him see, and all he wants to see. The only opportunity in play for either of you is a week of fun.
When the server retreated, she shushed her inner voices and vowed, “I won’t be so gullible again. As much as I hate to admit this, Dad probably has the right idea with his unsentimental approach to relationships.”
“Shit, Arden. Did you bang your head as well as your knee?”
She’d anticipated some form of validation from her brother, but his reaction told a different story. Their father’s scowl carved a notch between his brows.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I expect that kind of cynicism from Luc. Not from you.”
“Hey, I’m not saying everyone’s a criminal, but almost everyone’s got an agenda. At some point during the years you paraded around the globe with a different woman on your arm every ten seconds, you never thought any of them wanted something from you besides just…you?”
The question earned her another frown. “Maybe. Okay, yes,” he corrected when she dipped her chin and hit him with a skeptical stare, “but frankly, that’s because I was more comfortable thinking of relationships in terms of two people working their respective angles. I wouldn’t have known what to do with something sincere. That’s not how we were raised. I didn’t trust it, and I sure as hell wasn’t open to it. But I want you to be.”
Surprise momentarily tangled her tongue. “W-why?”
He simply smiled. “Because it’s real.”
God, she’d momentarily forgotten her brother was newly engaged. He’d fallen hard for a sincere, unguarded-heart kind of woman. “Chelsea’s special.”
They both got an extra moment to reflect on that because the waitress returned with the receipts.
“Undeniably,” Rafe agreed when they had the table to themselves again. “But so are you. Dad’s approach to relationships isn’t right. Neither is Mom’s, for that matter. The truth is they should have demanded better of each other, but they took the path of least resistance. Don’t use them as role models. Demand better for yourself. And don’t let one bullshitter shake your faith in your judgment or your ability to trust.”
“Rafe St. Sebastian, you’re a hopeless romantic.” She couldn’t resist the tease, but hearing his words and, more importantly, knowing he truly believed them thanks to what he’d found with Chelsea reassured her on a different level. He wasn’t the only protective sibling. She wanted her brother to be happy, and clearly, he was.
He signed off on the bill and shot her a smug smile. “There’s noting hopeless about it. Soul mates exist. Someone who calls you on your shit but accepts you for exactly who you are. Someone who always has your back.”
For whatever reason, Rafe’s definition sent Rider’s cocky words floating through her mind. For the next little while, Czarina, your ass is mine. You don’t have to worry about covering it.
Thankfully, her brother couldn’t read her deviant mind. He leaned back in his chair and drew his brows down low. “Someday, some guy is going to step up and prove my point, but you’re going to have to trust him enough to let him do it.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll try to stay open to the possibility.” Did Rider believe in soul mates?
Does it matter? Sex, Arden. S-E-X. Just because the man possesses an uncanny ability to make you come doesn’t mean he’s your soul mate.
“Heck”—she sat back and watched Rafe finish his coffee—“maybe Dad has found him for me. I should go into this date he arranged with an open mind, because who knows. When I meet Dr. Nicholas Bancroft, I might be meeting my soul mate.”
Rafe swallowed a mouthful of coffee so fast it went down the wrong pipe. In between coughs, he managed a strangled, “Who?”
“Here. Have some water.” She offered her full glass to him. “Are you okay?”
He rejected the water with a shake of his head. “Who did Dad set you up with?”
“Nicholas Bancroft. Apparently he’s the nephew of the former owners of—”
“I know exactly who he is, and he is definitely not your soul mate.”
Jesus. Her brother knew everyone. “What makes you say that?”
“He’s a player.”
“Um. Which are you in this scenario? The pot or the kettle?”
“Someone who knows a player when I see one. The guy hit on Chelsea practically in front of my face, right after I’d told him she was mine.”
The exasperation in his voice, along with the sheer male possessiveness, had her fighting a smile. “Wow. The nerve. What was wrong with her voice that she couldn’t speak for herself?”
“Nothing was wrong with her voice. It just happens that, at the time, I was flat on my back with the flu. I hadn’t quite gotten around to closing the deal with her, so she didn’t exactly back me up when Bancroft took his best shot.”
“Yeah, well. She found her soul mate in the end.”
“Damn right she did. And so will you, but it’s not him. I trust Dr. Bancroft with a bad case of the flu, but I don’t trust him with my sister.”
…
“Trust me.”
“I do. It’s gravity I’m worried about.” The czarina stepped back from the edge of the pinnacle of rock carved by time and water through the green gulch of rain forest surrounding them. His body stopped her retreat. He circled her waist with his arm to steady her as she leaned forward to take in the thirty-foot drop. The view culminated in a natural pool clear enough to reveal a sandy bottom rimmed by darker rocks at the base of the outcrop. A twist of her head, and eyes as blue-green as the water focused on him. “How about I just watch you?”
“No way.” He tightened his hold on her waist and inched them closer to the edge. From this vantage point he not only got a view of the drop, but a look down the front of her bikini top—red, this time, thin enough to show off the tight points of her nipples. “The idea is for us to do this together. Feel the rush together.” With his other hand, he played with the bow at the back of her neck.
She let out a less-than-certain sound, but he held firm. She needed this. Free-falling generated a surge of adrenaline, followed by a wave of euphoria that washed away worries like work pressure or family drama. Afterward, with her heart still racing, her pulse pounding, and every nerve in her body electrified from the fall, he’d push her over another cliff, and straight into a longer, harder, even more satisfying fall.
A breeze freed a few strands of hair from the knot she’d secured at the back of her head. She shivered, but whether it was a reaction to the breeze, him fiddling with the bikini, or the prospect of hurtling through the air, he couldn’t say.
Her chest expanded as she took a deep breath, lifting those perfect, perky tits until they tested the limits of the bikini. His tongue itched to flick across one stiff tip. Hot blood settled heavily in his dick. “Do you need more incentive?”
“Maybe. What do I get if I do this?”
“What do you want?”
She rested her hand on his forearm and leaned back against him. “What you promised me yesterday.”
“You want to suck my cock, Czarina?” He said the words directly into her ear, even though there was no one else around. The locals-only spot offered solitude on a midweek afternoon. This time when she shivered, he didn’t have to guess why. “You want to run your tongue from my balls to my tip just to watch my agony? Swallow, so you taste me in the back of your throat, and try to prepare for the moment I stop letting you toy with me and thrust deep?”
“How deep are we talking?”
His cock throbbed like a second heart at the question. “I’m going to put it in deep. Deep enough to make your eyes water and your breath rush out in a quick burst through your nose. Deep enough to send you into a little bit of a spin, so you understand exactly what you’ve done to me.”
Her “Y-Yes” came out on a shaky exhale.
“That’s how I’m going to reward you today, Czarina. I’m going to fill your soft, wet mouth so well you feel full in every other soft, wet place. Tell me”—he ran his thumb over her lips—“when I groan your name and tell you I’m about to lose control, are you going to give me one last kiss and then wrap your fingers around my cock and finish me, or are you going to take it in that pretty mouth?”
“Mouth.” She murmured the word against his thumb. “My mouth. I’m going to take it in my mouth.”
He eased his thumb between her lips. “Swear?”
She drew his thumb into her mouth and sealed her lips around the base before nodding.
He nudged his hips forward, rubbing his hard-on against her ass to try to ease the pain. “Good.” Then he popped his thumb free. “All you have to do to claim your reward is take this plunge with me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them and looked at the drop again. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to pick something a little less terrifying?”
A nice guy would do as she asked. Or a guy who didn’t give a shit. Either of them would settle for whatever she wanted to give. But he was neither. At least not when it came to her, for reasons he had a hard time articulating.
You want her to take down her guard with you and trust you to take care of her.
A simple “Trust me” sounded better, and he’d already said that, so he stuck with a logistics-focused reply. “I’ll be with you the entire time. Just do me a favor and try to aim for the middle of the pool when you jump.”
“Why?” She craned her neck to see the water below. “What happens if we fall straight down?”
“Extreme exfoliation. Those dark patches are rocks.”
“Oh God.” She sagged against him. “I’m really not sure about this.”
“Relax, Czarina.” He wrapped his arms around her and took her weight. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t think.” He tightened his hold on her and stepped to the edge. “Jump.”
And then they were airborne. The wind competed with her shriek of surprise, but didn’t quite mask how it changed to exhilaration in the next instant. He spared a second to check their trajectory as the water rushed toward them. Satisfied they’d clear the rocks, he extended his arm so they were side by side, but didn’t let go of her hand. Not quite yet. He would, because his greater bulk insured he’d sink faster and deeper once they hit the water, and he didn’t want to weigh her down, but he held on until the last possible instant. A cry of something closer to joy than terror reached his ears—his dick pounded proudly in response, as if it had elicited the uncensored sound—and then the water swallowed him and muffled all noise.
They in no way ripped the entry, and bubbles swept over him, obscuring his view even as he opened his eyes and searched for her. He kicked and surfaced in time to hear her shout, “Holy shit. That was amaaaazing!” Her voice bounced off the walls of rock around them.
“How do you feel?”
“Alive. Invincible.” She swam over to him, her face glowing with excitement, and maybe a little from being in the sun all day. He’d get her out of the sun soon, but he planned to keep the glow going.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but thank you for throwing me off a cliff.”
He caught her up in his arms and treaded water to keep them both afloat. “Anytime.”
“So…” She tipped her head to the side and smiled. Her hair had slipped free of its knot, and her wet skin glistened in the light. She looked sleek and seductive as a mermaid. “When can I claim my reward?”
Coy as her delivery was, the question managed to drop like a stone squarely in his gut, a heavy reminder that she wasn’t looking to form a bond of friendship here. For her, he had a singular purpose. Sex. A week of training her body to release stress and accept pleasure. He couldn’t even fault her for such narrow expectations, because that’s exactly what he’d offered. Six days, a soul-crushing orgasm the likes of which she’d never experienced, and no complications.
“You want your reward?”
She nodded, but her smile slipped a little, which told him he was doing a piss-poor job of keeping a lock on whatever the hell was eating at him. Fuck disappointment. He was hard as a rock, holding a woman who wanted nothing from him except the rock-hard cock.
What more do you want?
Nothing. The situation suited him perfectly. He just had to keep reminding himself about the no-complications part, because although he wasn’t even on a first-name basis with her, Arden St. Sebastian made it too easy to forget his limits.
Just like you “forgot” to call Aunt Evelyn yesterday and cancel the date?
He still had two days to do that, and he would, because this thing had limits for both of them. The trick was to do what he did best. Enjoy the here and now. He lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile he knew from experience sent a crystal-clear message, and congratulated himself when the uncertainty disappeared from hers. “The timing depends on you, Czarina. How fast can you swim?”