Out of This World

I grabbed his sleeve and tugged until he turned from the water to face me. “I’m thinking plenty clearly.”

He was quiet. All around us was the sound of rushing water, the buzz of insects, the dry warmth of the sun. Thankfully no kamikaze squirrels though.

“I’m glad it’s you with me,” I whispered.

That got a ghost of a smile. “Don’t tell Dot.”

I managed a smile, too, but suddenly my throat felt tight as I stared into his beautiful eyes. “We’ve never really spent a lot of time alone.”

He slowly shook his head.

“It’s nice.”

“Rach.” He took the rod from me and recast, his movements easy and graceful, the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing as the line flew in an arch to the water. When he handed the rod back to me, our fingers touched, but he pulled back. “Don’t mistake the adrenaline from all the fear and excitement for something more.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that up until about twenty-four hours ago, you weren’t interested in me this way.”

“Things change,” I said.

He was shaking his head. “Not that fast.”

I thought of the lightning. “It can happen in a second. In a blink.”

“We’ve had a lot of seconds, a lot of blinks, and it’s never happened before,” he said stubbornly.

“You’ve never kissed me before.”

Or sent me skittering into a mindless orgasm…

He stared at me. Then, as if he couldn’t help it, his gaze dropped to my mouth. I could almost see him remembering last night, how amazing it’d been, how it had escalated out of control with one touch of our tongues, how he’d pressed me into the floor, his hands…God, his hands.

Seeing it all in my eyes now, Kel closed his, and swallowed hard. “Okay,” he murmured, “we’re going to have to agree to disagree here, or I won’t be able to think rationally.”

I ran my gaze down his body and saw his reaction to where his thoughts had taken him. “Thinking rationally is overrated.”

He was shaking his head. “I’m not going to have an affair with you.”

“Well, don’t look now, because it’s too late,” I pointed out. “Besides, you were long past due.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you keeping track of my sex life?”

“You went nearly a year without sex before you started seeing your last girlfriend. I don’t think that even qualifies as a sex life, Kel.”

He flushed. “So, I’m not a smooth operator. I work with dolphins all damn day long. What do you expect?”

I put my hand on his chest. Beneath my fingers, his muscles leaped, and so did my belly. “Maybe you’re smoother than you think.”

He met my gaze, his own dark but getting a little hotter by the second, which in turn heated me up.

“Don’t.” His voice was hoarse now, barely audible over the water. “I’m not going to play with you. Not like this. Not now.”

“Because it would be bad?”

Those eyes positively flamed as he pressed his lower body hard against mine, letting me feel the hard bulge between his thighs. “First of all,” he said, sliding a hand up my torso to find the soft mound of my breast, “it would be great.”

I had to let out a breathless laugh, even as I arched up into his touch, my nipple begging for more attention. “Yeah. Um, Kel? I think you’re far smoother than you give yourself credit for.”

“Shit.” Voice hoarse, he stepped clear of me, reeling in his line, recasting like a pro. An extremely frustrated one.

“Forgot for a minute you don’t want me there, huh?”

“Damn it, I do want you, and you know it. What I don’t want is a casual thing. Not with you.” His motions were uncharacteristically jerky. “I’m not going to risk the best relationship in my life for one night of…” He searched for a word, and apparently, given the sound that escaped him, failed to find it.

“Greatness?” I whispered in jest, even though what he’d just confessed had hit me with the impact of…a lightning bolt.

A shadow of a smile crossed his mouth. “Yeah. But I mean it, Rach. We’re not doing this.”

“Not, as in never?”

He didn’t answer, and I stared down at the rod in my hands. “Never’s a long time. That’s all I’m saying.”

I didn’t get a response to that either. “What if I was the only woman on an island with you?” I tried. “Then would you still say never?”

His jaw jumped. “Jesus, Rach.”

“I mean, there’s just some things you can’t put a time limit on, you know?”

“Where’s Axel?” he asked, clearly needing to be saved.

“He said he’d be right back.”

“No, he didn’t. He said to wait here-Shit.” Kellan glanced up the path. “He’s not coming back. This was all a stalling technique to keep us busy so he wouldn’t have to come up with answers.”

“And it worked.”

“Shit,” he said again.

We both looked at the trail and knew we had to go back up it. Again. We walked mostly in silence. Well, Kel was silent; I kept asking questions, because I couldn’t help myself. “What do you think Dot is doing right now?”

“Not asking me a million questions.”

I decided not to take that personally. “I bet she’s eating cookies,” I said.

Kel just sighed.

When we got back to the inn, we went straight to the kitchen, where Axel was sitting on the counter doing his “ohhhmmm” thing again.

“You always ditch your guests on a fishing expedition?” Kel asked him.

“I thought you two wanted to be alone.”

“What we want is answers. You know that.”

“Huh. Sorry.”

Kel put the fishing gear down on the table. “What the hell is with you?”

“Like I said, just trying to give you two some privacy.”

“We don’t need privacy!”

“Don’t mean to contradict you, man, but if anyone ever needed privacy, it’s you two.” Axel waggled a brow. “I mean, you look at each other with such heat that trees spontaneously combust when you two walk by. You might want to do something about that.”

Kellan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me what happened to us yesterday.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when that storm hit, something weird happened, and you know it. Marilee knows it, too.”

I’ve never seen Kellan demanding like this. But slacker dude didn’t seem to respond well to demanding, and remained in his yoga pose on the counter, his smile fading.

Marilee walked in, took in the unusually tense expression on Axel’s face and did an about-face, ready to walk right out again.

“Oh hell no.” Kellan slapped a hand on the kitchen door above her head, holding it closed so she couldn’t escape. “Someone’s going to start talking. Now.”

Marilee bit her lower lip and looked at Axel, who shrugged, sending the tassels on his hat sailing. “Maybe we should-”

“No, Ax. We promised we wouldn’t. You know we did. It’s not up to us.”

“Whom did you promise?” Kellan broke in.

Marilee and Axel stared at each other, silent.

“I’m sorry,” Marilee finally, said. “but there’s nothing we can say.”

Axel, gaze locked on Marilee, nodded slowly.