all entertaining. “Do you, now?”
“I come from a long line of ornery Scottish Highlanders, as a matter of fact. What that means is that I can drink wee drams of whiskey all night long and still walk a straight line.” She lifted one milky white shoulder, then dropped it. “Balancing on a bit of water should be nothing.”
He laughed at her. Loud and long, and he wasn’t even performing his laugh the way he often did around people who were interested less in him and more in the things he had—his celebrity, his money, his island. It was genuine this time, and like the hard-on that wouldn’t go away, it told him things about this woman and her effect on him that should have scared the crap out of him.
But he was too busy laughing. “I like your confidence.”
She smiled at that, which didn’t do anything for his self-control. “I would have thought it was pretty clear that any woman willing to travel forty hours to meet a man who was as likely to kick her off his island as say hello didn’t lack for confidence.”
There was some kind of foreboding kick in him at that, like an alarm. It went off, and there was no pretending otherwise, but Jason didn’t heed it.
He heeded a different urge entirely and reached over to smooth his hand over her sleek red hair, hot in the sunshine and still tied back so tightly to the back of her head, like the world would end if it ever tumbled down.
And he knew. One way or another, he was going to get his hands in all that hair and bring it down out of that tight-assed bun. He could picture it so clearly. Lucinda riding him, those perfect breasts right there to get his mouth on, that hair around him like a curtain, and his cock so deep inside her that he was half-blind with it.
He felt half-blind now. And he knew.
It was only a matter of time.
But that time wasn’t now. And he was going to have to find a way to cut down on all those complications he didn’t want to feel, but did, before they wrecked him. Because he had no intention of letting this woman—or any woman—wreck him.
That line of thought should have been sobering, but he was in it now. He wanted his hands all over her, and the truth was that Jason had grown accustomed to getting what he wanted.
Go big or go home, motherfucker, he told himself.
“Enough talking,” he drawled at her.
He nodded at the surfboard at her feet. Then stood there, making no particular attempt to hide his smirk as Lucinda eyed the board as if she expected it to rise from its slumber and turn into some kind of alligator. Jaws and all.
But, of course, she didn’t ask for any help. She didn’t argue with him. She set her jaw at a mutinous angle and then she awkwardly dragged the board into the water, hurling herself through the breakers with more ruthless determination than any kind of skill.
He was impressed despite himself, because hardheaded women hit him straight in his sweet spot. Whether he liked it or not.
Jason followed, throwing himself on his board and paddling out into the lagoon, keeping an eye on his redhead as she splashed around, making more noise than headway.
“Do you need me to tow you out?” he asked after watching her flail, his voice just silky enough to make her glare at him.
“Well, I don’t know how to answer that, do I?” she retorted, and he was delighted to hear more Scotland in her voice than before.
That told him two things about her, and fast. One, she had the exact simmering, redheaded temper he’d imagined she did, which made him that much more motivated to experiment with all that fire and fury in bed. And two, that just as he had been forced to ease up on his Hawaiian pidgin and so-called “surfer” accent when he’d headed to the mainland—because all those haole fuckers interpreted his way of talking as evidence of stupidity—Lucinda had clearly done something similar with her accent. He didn’t have to know the history of the United Kingdom to figure that anyone who could sound like that redheaded Disney princess in the cartoon one minute, then cover it up like she belonged on the BBC the next, had a lot of the same issues he did.
Of course, imagining that their issues matched—or should, if he looked hard enough—told him any number of things about himself he had zero interest in analyzing just then.
“Are you asking me for help, Scotland?” he asked lazily, ignoring the tightening sensation in his chest as he sat up on his board and relaxed into the roll of the waves beneath him. “Or are you just complaining?”
“It’s evidently quite important to you that I make a fool out of myself according to your preferred method. I wouldn’t wish to let you down.”
“I’m out in the water with a nearly naked woman. What letdown are you worried about? The worst thing that’s going to happen to you is that you fall off, and if there’s a God, lose that bikini. I’m here for it.”
She raised two fingers at him, but he somehow didn’t believe that she was making that particular V for victory.
And then he sat back and laughed himself silly as his angry, no longer dour or businesslike redhead tried to hurl herself up onto her surfboard.
He lost track of how many times she scrabbled up, then tried to get to her feet, only to lose her balance and have the board shoot out from under her.
She fell over and over, splashing into the waves and then paddling furiously to the surface, but she always tried again. She kept muttering out filthy curses in that increasingly more obvious accent of hers, one after the next. Sounding more and more Scottish as she went.
Jason sat back on his own surfboard, busting a gut laughing and watching the show. When she fell for approximately the nine millionth time, he reached out and caught the tip of her board with one hand as it shot away from her. And he studied her when she bobbed up to the surface, rising and falling with the swell of the water.
“You about ready to admit defeat?”
She bared her teeth at him. “Death first.”
But when she swam over to climb up onto her board again, he reached down and hooked her under one arm. Then hauled her out of the water, up and onto his board. He settled her between his legs, then he reached over and clipped her surfboard to his, countering the jerky little movements she made with his thighs.
“Are you trying to dump us both in the water?” he asked lazily enough, and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her back against him. “I don’t think you understand balance. Maybe in a global sense.”
“Let me guess. You’re going to teach me. It’s my lucky day.”
Jason figured it was his lucky day, anyway. She was sleek and wet. The breeze had dried him off, which meant she was cool against his chest, and fit there between his thighs a little too perfectly. He wanted to settle his mouth in that place where her neck joined her shoulder. He wanted to push her forward onto her hands, lift that fine ass of hers and settle into her from behind—and who cared if they drifted all the way out to sea?
But he did none of those things, because he was a goddamn saint.
“Settle down, Scotland.” She wiggled a little, then stopped when he pressed his thighs tighter against her, and he
