nothing but the black pitch and roll of the Atlantic. “How could anyone with legal vision miss seeing those flares?”
“It’s late and everyone is probably inside. Unless someone is standing on the deck looking up, they would miss it quite easily.”
She strained her eyes looking for anything. A dim light, a shadow on the water.
“Lola, they’re gone now.”
“Maybe we just can’t see them turning around.” She heard Max and Baby move into the galley and return a few moments later. Her arms began to tire, but she refused to give up. She refused to think that she’d been so close to a rescue, only to have it slip away.
Max peeled one of her hands off the side of the binoculars and wrapped her fingers around a cool glass.
“Take a drink of water, Lola. You’re about to hyperventilate again.”
She wasn’t, but she finally lowered the binoculars and took a drink anyway. The cool liquid wet her dry tongue and throat and she downed it all at once.
“There will be other vessels,” he told her as he took the glass from her.
Lola looked into his face and burst into tears. Appalled, she pressed her hand to her mouth, but she could not stop the pent-up emotion and crushing disappointment from escaping. The more she tried, the harder it became to control until she was caught somewhere between uncontrolled sobs and hiccups. “I want that one, Max.”
He reached for her and pulled her into his broad chest. “Shhh, now. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t,” she cried into the denim material covering his shoulder, finally giving in. “I want to go home. My family must be crazy with worry.” She shook her head and looked up into his dark face. “My daddy has high blood pressure and this will kill him for su-sure.” She curled her fists into the front of his shirt. “I want to go home, Max.”
He stared down into her face and brushed his warm palm up her spine. “I’ll make sure you get home,” he said. Then, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he lowered his mouth to hers.
“How?” she asked against the soft brush of his lips.
“I’ll think of something.” Then he kissed her.
This time there was no question of his intent. The firm press of his lips to hers made his intentions perfectly clear. He wasn’t helping her breathe, and he wasn’t asking permission. His finger plowed through the sides of her hair, brushing it back from her face and lifting it from her shoulders. He held her face in his palms, tilted her head back, and took advantage of her parted lips. His tongue swept into her mouth, warm and slick, instantly possessive and consuming. Lola wanted to be consumed. She wanted to forget about the rescue vessel slipping farther away, her family, her career, the humiliation of Sam’s porno site, and whether she would die out here. She wanted Max to take away the disappointment and fear that were so real they griped her throat. Within his embrace, she wanted him to make her believe everything would be okay.
The binoculars fell from Lola’s grasp, and she ran her hands down his shirt, then back up again, feeling beneath her palms the sold wall of his chest, the bunch and flex of his ripped muscles responding to her touch, the overwhelming strength of him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and raised onto the balls of her bare feet. One of his hands slid to the small of her back and brought her closer. The ridge of his erection pressed into the crease of her thigh and pelvis, and the kiss immediately turned hotter, wetter. With their mouths and tongues, both of them fed the desire running through their veins and threatening to consume them.
Like the flare Max had shot into the night sky, the kiss burned hot and intense and raised the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. It spread to the places her body touched his, her belly, breasts, and hands. To the places untouched, her behind, down the backs of her legs, her toes.
The yacht rode the waves of the ocean, pitching the deck starboard before righting once again. Max spread his feet wide and let the natural rise and fall of the yacht grind his hard penis against her. The erotic rhythm drew a deep groan from his chest and left her aching for more.
He slid his moist mouth to the side of her throat, and Lola leaned her head to one side to give him better access. The tip of his tongue touched her ear, then he whispered her name, a warm caress filled with rough longing. He worked his way to the base of her throat and paused to suck the sensitive flesh in the hollow as one of his hands unbuttoned her shirt. Before Lola could decide if she wanted her blouse removed, he peeled her shirt from her shoulders, down her arms, to her elbows.
A fleeting thought about quick hands flitted through her head as he kissed a warm path across her collarbone. Then one of those fast hands found her breast through her bra. She sucked in her breath as her nipple instantly hardened in his hot palm, and she knew she’d better stop him before they went too far.
“Lola,” he whispered against her neck, and instead of stopping him, she raised his head and brought his mouth back to hers. His hand tightened possessively on her breast, then relaxed. Through the lace of her bra, he brushed his palm across her nipple. Perhaps she did not want to stop. Maybe she wanted to go wherever Max would take her. There was something about him. Some elusive thing she chased with her tongue. Something hot and vibrant and bigger than she. Something that turned the pit of her stomach hot and hungry. Something dangerous that made her want to shed her morals along with her clothes. She moved her hands to the front of his shirt and pushed the denim apart. In the grip of a wild hunger she hadn’t felt in a very long time, she combed her fingers through the short fine hair on his chest, her other palm skimming the hard muscles of his stomach. Max Zamora was intriguing and frightening. Brute strength and supreme confidence. He was physical perfection.
Max stepped back from the kiss and looked into her eyes as he took her hand in his. “Come inside,” he said, and turned toward the door.
The thought of getting naked in front of Max gave her just enough pause to stop her from eagerly following him. She was no longer the thin perfect model who posed in magazines and on bulletin boards. Her hips were rounder. Her butt bigger. Would he compare her to her former self? Everyone did. Would he be disappointed that she was no longer fashion’s image of perfection?
While a part of Lola urged her to follow Max wherever he wanted to take her, her sanity and reason returned just enough to allow her to pull her hand from his. “We can’t do this, Max,” she said on a deep shuddering breath, and pulled her shirt back up her arms. No matter how much she might want to, no matter that her body ached for him to run his hand all over her, she couldn’t make love with Max.
His chest rose and fell as he drew air into his lungs. “We can do anything we want, Lola,” he said, his voice raw with desire. “There is no one around to stop us.” He reached for her again, but she stepped back and he only grasped air.
“Making love right now is a very bad idea.” She couldn’t look at him as she buttoned her blouse, afraid she’d see the hunger in his eyes. Afraid she’d give in to the hungry throb low in her belly.
“There are things we can do besides making love, Lola. We can start off by rolling around and getting sweaty, see where that takes us.”
“No, I’m not going to the stateroom with you.”
“Great, we’ll do it here. On the deck, against the gunwale, in the fishing chair. At this point, I am not choosy.”
“Max, that’s not funny.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts.
“Damn right it’s not.” Frustration seeped into his voice and cut through the darkness. “Until two seconds ago, you acted like we were interested in the same thing.”
He was right. She had been interested, but then sanity had intervened at the last minute. “We don’t know each other, and sex would be a mistake.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
She finally looked up, into his dark face, and saw the clench of his jaw and the grim line of his mouth. “Until I cooked you lunch, you didn’t even like me.”
“I liked you.”
“You didn’t act as if you did.”
“I liked you just fine.” He let out a breath then added, “You’ve grown on me.”
She didn’t think she could take such high praise. “You make me sound like mold.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Not now, Lola.”
She wasn’t a child, to be dismissed so easily. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not up for one of those irrational conversations women insist on having before, during, and after sex, where everything gets turned around and I become the bastard.”
