Dreaming Of... Bali. Fiona McArthur
the loud peal of her own pulse. Every other sensation fled except for the insistent and answering thrum of her skin at the hunger in his eyes.
The brush of his lips against hers was at once cool and hot, testing and assured, bold and yet inviting. His beard rasped against her tender skin, wreaking havoc on her. The contrast of his soft lips and the roughness of his beard...her entire world came crashing around her.
It was her own response to the press of his soft mouth that blew her apart, the strength of the deep longing that jolted to life inside her. Her fingers crinkled against his shirt as he increased the pressure and the back of her head hit the leather.
Heat, unlike any she had ever known, slithered and pooled in every molten muscle as he licked her lower lip. His body teased against her own, a soft invitation to press herself against the hardness.
She purred, like a stroked cat, and gasped at the curl of pleasure and instantly, he pushed on. Only when it vibrated through her did she realize that it was a groan that fell from her mouth. Pleading for more, demanding more.
And it wasn’t just their mouths that were touching anymore. His fingers inched into her hair and held her slanted for him; his lean body enveloped her; he was everywhere.
He felt alien, yet familiar. Her thighs trembled, locked against the tensile strength of his; her belly dipped and she groaned.
The tenor of the kiss went from slow, soft appraisal, a testing of fit and sensation to pure, exploding, ravenous heat.
He bit and stroked, nibbled and licked. He kissed her as if they would both drown if he stopped, and that’s how it felt. So she let him. Stayed passive and panting under his caresses, let him steal her breath and infuse her with his own.
A freeing desperation joined the molten warmth inside her.
When he stopped, when he sucked in a shuddering breath, everything inside Riya protested that he did. She flushed as he pulled back and locked eyes with her. His gaze was the darkest she had seen yet, his breath coming in and out a little out of sync. The pad of his thumb moved over her lower lip, and she shivered again.
“Did you enjoy that kiss, butterfly?”
Riya fell back against the couch, her fingers on her still-trembling mouth.
That kiss had been beyond perfect. But the mockery in his eyes grated; the laid-back arrogance in it stung. It was nothing but a challenge to him. Whereas the entire foundation of her life had shaken.
“I would have been surprised if I hadn’t,” she said, dredging up the cool tone from somewhere. Her fingers still on his chest, she glared at him. Her heart still hadn’t resumed its normal pace. “Very altruistic of you,” she said, a little hollow in her chest, waiting for him to deny.
He grinned instead. “I haven’t been called one of this generation’s greatest philanthropists for no reason.”
“Forgive me if being your charity case doesn’t fill me with excitement.”
Turning away from him, Riya sought silence. Fortunately for her, she felt them coming down again. They had just stepped out of the enclosure when they saw Sonia waiting there, her gaze stricken, her features pinched with pain.
Mortification came hard at Riya. Had the entire crew seen them kissing? If Nathan hadn’t been satisfied with proving his point and stopped, how far would she have let him go?
Next to her, Nathan turned into a block of ice, and Riya fled fast, wondering what she had stepped into. Reaching the villa, she couldn’t help casting a quick look at Nathan and Sonia.
The way they stood close but not touching, the tension that emanated from them, their body language so familiar with each other—it was clear they were or had been lovers. And the pain in Sonia’s eyes had been real enough.
Here was one clue to his past, an answer to the unrelenting curiosity that had been eating through her. A streak of jealousy and self-doubt held her still.
Shaking, Riya wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. If only his taste would come off so easily. But her mind rallied quickly enough.
He had stopped so easily when he was done. She was nothing but a naive, curious entertainment to a man who built castles in the sky, to the man who made billions by selling an experience.
* * *
Riya avoided Nathan over the next few days. With enough workload to challenge her and the very real threat of losing Travelogue, it was easy. Not that she had been able to get that toe-curling kiss or Sonia and her stricken expression out of her mind.
Determined to assure Sonia, and herself, that there was nothing between her and Nathan, she had gone looking for her the next evening. Only to find that Sonia had left the island that morning.
The fact that Nathan had so neatly, and quietly, dispatched her infuriated Riya. How dare he comment on her conduct when he possessed no better standards? Was this the true Nathan, flitting from woman to woman and walking away when he was done? Why did she even care?
But she kept her thoughts to herself, the very absence of his easy humor over the next few days enough of a deterrent.
He was her employer, and Robert’s son.
She spent the rest of her days between work, fixing any defects for Travelogue’s software, and her nights, soaking up the sultry beauty of the island. One afternoon the day before they were set to leave, she was working in one of the bedrooms in the villa she was sharing with four other female members of the crew.
The bedroom had open walls, with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of the island, bringing cool breezes in. Riya smiled, having finally hit on a solution to a design problem she had been trying to solve for two days.
She stood up and took a long sip of her fruity drink with a straw umbrella when Nathan appeared at the entrance. The cold drink did nothing to fan the flames that the sight of him dressed in a white cotton T-shirt that showcased his lean chest and hard midriff and tight blue jeans ignited.
Wraparound shades hid his expression, but Riya couldn’t care. Her gaze glued itself to his freshly shaved angular jaw, traveled over his chin. The beard was gone, although there was already stubble again.
And the mouth it revealed sparked an instant hunger in her.
Men didn’t have, shouldn’t have mouths like his. Lush and sensual with the upper lip shaped like a perfect bow. A cushion of softness that contrasted against the roughness and hardness of the rest of him.
She had the most insane, overwhelming urge to walk up to him and press her lips to his again, to see how it would feel without the beard. She pointed her finger at him and heard the words fall from her mouth. “You shaved it.”
Instant heat flared in his gaze, and Riya gasped, only then realizing she had said it out loud.
“What did you say?” he said, coming farther into the room, and she wished she could disappear.
“Nothing,” she managed, lifting her gaze to his. “Were we supposed to meet?”
He looked behind her and saw the papers she had been scribbling on and her laptop. “Riya, why didn’t you go with the rest of them for the submarine tour? The marine life you get to see here is unparalleled. With your record, it’ll be another decade before you leave California again.”
His remark grated even as she was aware that it was true. “I was stuck on a tricky design problem and I wanted to resolve it. And I did. I have an initial model ready.”
The surprise flashing through his gaze went eons toward restoring her balance. “Already?” he said.
“You did put my life’s work under scrutiny and up for assessment,” she said sweetly, handing him her laptop.
More than once, her work had come to her rescue. From a young age, she had been comfortable around numbers and equations and then code. Because you could be sure y would come out when you put in