small curved inlet was deserted and once he hit the shallow water he jumped down and swung Lexi up into his arms. He ran through the breakwater and dropped to his knees and gently laid her onto the sand. She was shaking with reaction, her clothes clinging to her like a second skin, but other than that she didn’t appear injured.
‘Did the ski hit you anywhere?’ he asked hoarsely.
She shook her head and winced a little. ‘No.’ She raised a shaky hand to push her hair out of her eyes and he leaned forward and did it for her. ‘I think I just got winded when I hit the water.’
She tried to sit up but Leo held her down with an unsteady hand on her shoulder. ‘Lie back. Shepherd’s getting the doctor.’
‘I’m okay.’ She moved her arms and legs carefully to make sure. Leo’s heart was still lodged in his throat and adrenalin coursed through his blood.
‘Just keep still,’ he growled, the wealth of emotion in his voice raising her eyes to his. He couldn’t look away and nor, it seemed, could she. The world receded; even the relentless heat from the sun in a cloudless blue sky faded into the background as Leo felt emotions he didn’t want to name roll through him, searching for purchase.
Without conscious thought, he raised an unsteady hand to the side of her face. ‘You could have been killed.’ His voice was rough and heat arced between them as he gazed into golden eyes framed by long, wet, spiky lashes. His fingers stroked into her hair and she nestled her cheek into the curve of his palm.
Fascinated, Leo watched the gold of her eyes become eaten up by black, leaving only a ring of emerald-green, and his body caught fire at the implicit message her dilated pupils transmitted to him. Green. Her eyes turned green with passion.
As if somehow driven by the need to affirm that she was okay, Leo’s eyes dropped to her parted lips seconds before his head followed.
He didn’t know if she too was driven by the scare of her accident but her mouth flowered beneath his and her hands speared into his hair as she answered the urgent demand of his lips.
One of his arms banded around her lower back as he raised her to him and he felt the tips of her breasts nestle against his chest as she strained closer, the heat of her body burning through her flimsy vest top and his shirt as she caught fire in his arms.
Her urgency more than matched his and he revelled in the way she tried to take charge of the kiss, her thumbs gliding over his cheekbones as she held his face steady while she sipped and nipped at his mouth. He let her play for maybe a second before crushing her mouth beneath his. She moaned and he answered that sound of pleasure with a low groan of his own, pressing her back into the sand and taking control of the kiss.
This was total insanity but he couldn’t deny how much his body ached to take her. His tongue curled around hers and his mouth turned hard as the same primitive hunger he’d felt with her the other night took hold and threatened to consume him, all sense of reason and caution flying into the air to be fried by the midafternoon sun.
He didn’t know how it was possible for the sound of the approaching jet ski to be heard over the loud beating of his heart but fortunately it brought him to his senses and he wrenched his mouth from hers, his body throbbing with unslaked desire.
Her mouth was kiss-swollen and he knew the good doctor would know what had happened even if he hadn’t seen them and Leo cursed his own stupidity. The woman had nearly died in an accident and he’d what—tried to ravish her?
Emotions exploded through him and landed with unerring accuracy on Tom Shepherd as he barrelled up the sand towards them. Rage the like he couldn’t remember took over from lust and circuited his body. His muscles tensed and for a split second he contemplated meeting him halfway and putting his fist through his face.
Lexi must have sensed his intent because she placed her warm palm on his forearm. ‘Don’t.’ That softly spoken plea brought him back to his senses and stopped him in his tracks. A bar room full of men hadn’t been able to stop him after he’d located the man responsible for the death of his uncle in a work-related accident but this woman could contain him with the slightest touch. Of course he’d been irrational with pain at the time his uncle had died, but somehow the emotions he’d felt today when he’d watched Lexi go under hadn’t been that much different. Which was absurd. He’d loved his uncle and didn’t care a whit about Lexi Somers.
‘Lexi, are you okay?’ Tom’s concern was palpable and Leo shook off his disconcerting thoughts and pierced him with a look. If he but knew it, Tom Shepherd was only standing because of the woman he’d nearly killed. He hadn’t put a life jacket on Lexi and Leo knew why. And he knew why Tom had gone extra fast to make her cling to his back. Had she enjoyed it, pressed up against Tom’s back as she’d held tight? Had she been thinking of Tom when she’d responded to his kisses moments ago? Leo inwardly cursed the direction of his thoughts. This sense of jealousy—because he recognised that was what it was even though he had never experienced it before—was so unlike him. Women were always easy to come by and easy to let go.
Unused to feeling so out of balance, Leo turned his anger on her. ‘Why the hell didn’t you insist on wearing a life jacket?’ he snarled.
He could see his sudden attack had startled her and that she was floundering over how to answer him.
‘That was my fault, Leo,’ Tom answered like a protective beau. ‘I said she wouldn’t need one.’
‘Excuse me. If I could just see the patient.’ The doctor pushed the two men aside and crouched beside Lexi and Leo paced away from them before he did hit Tom. He hadn’t been in a fist fight for seventeen years and he was disgusted with his loss of control that nearly saw him in one now. He didn’t understand this possessive urge he felt towards Lexi Somers but it had to stop. She wasn’t his and she never would be. He would never want her to be, despite his continued desire to take her to bed. That was just lust. Unusual in its intensity, yes, but still something he could control.
The doctor finished examining her and sat back on his haunches. ‘You’re fine. You’ve taken in a bit of water but your lungs sound clear enough. It doesn’t appear you were hit and I expect you’ll make a full recovery by this evening, but get some rest when you get back all the same.’
‘I feel fine now,’ Lexi said, hugging her knees close to her chest.
‘Thanks, Gerard,’ Leo murmured. ‘Tom can return you to the yacht.’
Tom hesitated. ‘I’m really sorry, Lexi.’
‘That’s okay, Tom. Accidents happen.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Leo cut in. ‘That was a stupid thing to do, Shepherd, and if I see you on one of my skis again without a life jacket I’ll find someone else to do the East India project.’
Lexi’s eyes flew to Leo as he squared off against Tom. The East India project was his idea? Lexi was shocked. The man worked tirelessly to save men he had probably never met after a building accident, knew the name of a staff member who ranked low down on the yacht’s employment hierarchy, and now funded documentaries to bring the plight of children in the Third World to the attention of others—and these were just things she knew about. It didn’t make sense that a man like that would not want to have a relationship with his son.
Unless he was still pining for the mother of that child?
Lexi’s throat constricted at the unexpected thought that
