Moriah's Mutiny
“Moriah, I just told you, I have to work in the morning.”
“But tonight you introduced Dorian as your business partner, so I assumed you have your own business. Don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“So if you’re the boss, can’t you go in late for once?”
“No, it’s not like that. I can’t—”
“Please, Austen?”
She looked at him with such pure and childlike hopefulness that Austen had to smile at her and give in. What was wrong with him, thinking about work when he only had a few more short hours to spend with Moriah? “All right,” he surrendered, laughing at the look of naked relief and joy that spread across her beautiful features. “We’ll go and find out where the music is coming from.”
Moriah had never stayed out all night long before, but tonight had been full of firsts, she decided, so why not add one more? They wandered up the beach until they came to an open-air pavilion surrounded by dancing, laughing people. As they pushed their way through the crowd, they too became infected with the high spirits of the others. When they finally broke into the front of the group, they saw a tiny stage encircled by blue-tipped flaming torches, where four islanders wearing bright red shirts and white pants danced and shouted as they pounded out on their green-and-yellow steel drums the most wonderful music Moriah had ever heard. She laughed out loud at the feeling of fun and life that went rippling through her body while she watched them, and she scarcely paid attention when her feet and hands took up the rhythm of the drums. Someone pressed a tall tropical drink into her hands, and she consumed it thirstily, only to discover it replaced by another, then another when she was through.
For what seemed like hours she and Austen danced and sang and laughed, so caught up in their revels that they barely noted the passing time. When the musician reluctantly announced that their set was over, Moriah and Austen voiced their playful disappointment with the others and then made their way slowly back down the beach. Reaching absently for each other’s hand, they strolled in comfortable silence back to Moriah’s hotel. But when they arrived at her room and Moriah opened the door to the expansive pale-peach-and-white suite, she discovered to her annoyance that it was spinning and pitching precariously and that all she could do to make it stop was cling to Austen like there was no tomorrow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her when she spun quickly and clumsily around to grab him.
“Room’s jumping around,” she mumbled into his broad, muscular chest.
“The room’s fine, Moriah,” he assured her with an affectionate chuckle, tugging at the arms that were circled possessively around his neck. “But I think you might be just a little bit tipsy.”
Instead of letting him go, she buried her face against his chest and clung more tightly. “No, no, no,” she said as she shook her head fiercely. “I told you I never, never, never, never, never…” Her words trailed off as she lost track of what she was going to say.
“You never get drunk,” Austen reminded her.
“Right.” This time she nodded her head eagerly up and down. “I never do.”
“Well, maybe you’re just a little bit tired then,” he corrected himself magnanimously.
“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. Then realizing somewhat foggily that if she was tired she wouldn’t be able to talk Austen into doing what she wanted so desperately to do, Moriah quickly changed her mind. “I mean no!” she exclaimed frantically, lifting her head enough to gaze groggily into his eyes. “I’m not tired! I’m not! I swear!”
Austen couldn’t help grinning. God, she was sexy. Her hair, that wonderfully thick mass of spun gold that he had delighted in touching all night, cascaded wildly about her face and shoulders like a crooked halo. Her huge, dark eyes danced dizzily with excitement, and her warm, curvaceous body was soft and pliant as she pressed it against him in an effort to remain standing. The scooped neckline of her black T-shirt had slipped over one shoulder to reveal sun-pinkened skin and the top of one lush, creamy breast. When Moriah rubbed herself against him unknowingly, Austen felt himself growing hard with need, felt all his good intentions about keeping his distance dissolving into a warm mist.
“Austen?” she whispered thickly against the tanned, salty skin of his neck. Her warm breath stirred him even more, and unconsciously he dropped his hands to her hips to steady her, pulling her even more intimately against him, getting little relief from the desire that was fast ripping through him.
“What, Moriah?” he rasped out raggedly. He had to get her into bed this instant. Alone. The longer he had to hold her up, the closer she’d pull herself next to him. And the closer Moriah got to him, the more dangerous their predicament became.
“Don’t go home tonight,” she murmured softly against his chin, following her words with feathery little kisses to his jaw. “Stay here with me.”
The hands that had been wrapped tightly around his neck now loosened, and Austen relaxed somewhat until he felt Moriah’s fingernails go scoring down his chest. He sucked in his breath as she spread her palms open across his flat belly and continued to kiss the warm flesh of his neck and collarbone. But when she came up on tiptoe to flick his lower lip with her tongue, reaching for the button of his jeans as she did so, Austen’s breath caught in a strangled gasp in his throat. “Moriah, don’t,” he warned her as he felt the first button slip through its hole.
“Austen,” she whispered on a seductive sigh. “I want you.”
The next button popped open at the same moment her lips fastened intently over his. Austen made a halfhearted effort to pull his mouth away from hers until he felt her fingers dip gently inside his waistband, then out again to stroke the hard fullness in his jeans.
“Oh, damn,” he muttered brokenly. “Moriah—” But his words were cut off as she cupped him fully in her palm and pressed her hand urgently against him.
That was the last straw. If she wanted to make whoopee, Austen thought, then damn it all, they were going to make whoopee. With the swiftness and grace of a pouncing jaguar, he swept Moriah into his arms and tossed her into the center of the flowered coverlet on the king-size bed. While she gazed at him with hungry intent, he reached back over his shoulder to bunch his T-shirt in one hand, then pulled it over his head and let it fall to the floor.
For a long moment he stood towering over her, his bronzed, naked chest sprinkled with coils of gold-tipped hair rising and falling rapidly with the passion she had raised in him, looking to Moriah like a glorious island king. Feeling more excited and reckless by the moment, she opened her arms to him in invitation, and with a deep and ragged groan, Austen threw himself onto the bed beside her.
For a moment he was too overcome with desire to know where to begin. He’d never, ever, wanted a woman the way he craved Moriah now. His arousal strained painfully against the heavy denim of his jeans, begging to be set free and buried deep inside her welcoming warmth. But Austen wanted this to go slowly, wanted to take his time savoring the gifts she had to offer, wanted her in turn to hit new heights with him she’d never known before. As she lay flat on her back feasting her eyes hungrily upon him, he felt as thought they had all the time in the world to satisfy each other, felt as though this night would be one that continued forever.
Wordlessly, his eyes never leaving hers, Austen dropped his fingers to the hem of Moriah’s denim skirt, spreading his hand open beneath her warm thigh before rubbing his palm urgently under her skirt to cup her hip tightly. Her pupils widened with wanting when he kneaded her flesh with determination, and she moaned out loud when his fingertips dipped quickly and firmly under the lacy fabric of her panties. He wedged his thigh between hers then, pressing it up feverishly to settle against the heated feminine core of her, pulling her body adamantly toward him to rub even more intimately against her. As Moriah arched her back and cried out loud, Austen’s other hand gripped the neckline of her shirt and urged it farther down her shoulder until he exposed one soft, supple breast. With a muffled growl he lowered his head to the swollen mound and took the rosy peak into his mouth. Moriah tangled her hands insistently in his hair and pulled him closer, crying his name out on a gasp, begging him please to never, ever, stop.
With one quick move, he pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it to join his on the floor, then bunched up her skirt around her waist and settled himself once again between her thighs. Grasping both of her slender wrists in one hand, he pulled her arms above her head until she was helpless to do anything but surrender to him. Her eyes grew stormy when she understood his intentions, and a wicked gleam joined the fire in Austen’s eyes. Bending his head once again over her breasts, he slowly circled the dusky peaks of one with the tip of his greedy tongue while thumbing the other to life with his rough, callused hand.
He’d never known a woman to be as sweet as Moriah, had never known a woman’s skin could be so soft, so warm, so incredibly responsive. As he touched and tasted her with quiet reverence, letting his fingers and his kisses blaze trails across her flat belly, Austen felt his own body coming alive for the first time. It was suddenly as if any other sexual experience he’d enjoyed in his life had only been a preliminary to this one, as if this time with Moriah were his first. All the anxiety and excitement of his first time paled in comparison to the feelings that burned and bothered him now.
When a new thought invaded his muddled mind, Austen raised himself up on his elbows and gazed down anxiously into Moriah’s drugged, delirious eyes. “Moriah,” he asked her urgently, “are you protected?”
She gazed at him blankly, clearly confused by his statement. “What do you mean?”
Austen dipped his head down with a defeated sigh. “No, for some reason, I didn’t think so.”
“What are you talking about?” Moriah demanded, feeling her blood start to cool rapidly at his seeming disappointment in her, suddenly feeling very tired.
“I mean, are you using any kind of birth control?” he clarified for her.
Her eyes widened in shock. “Birth control?” she repeated, aghast. “Why on earth would I be using birth control?”
He lifted an eyebrow suggestively and looked down meaningfully at their half-naked, intimately entwined bodies.
“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.
“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I never leave home without one.”
Moriah was confused again, and Austen’s strange desire to have a conversation right now was really making her sleepy. “Without one what?” she wanted to know, successfully stifling the yawn she felt threatening.
But Austen had already started looking for the essential square, foil-covered packet that he always had tucked away in his wallet. As he pushed aside an assortment of business and credit cards, dumping a collection of bar receipts and hastily scribbled phone numbers onto the bedspread, he began to panic. He knew he had one in there, but where had it gone? Yanking out the contents of one of the wallet’s many compartments, he discovered an old photograph that he thought he’d lost, one of his father standing proudly beside the old man’s fishing boat. He smiled warmly and briefly at the picture, then remembered the task at hand. Dammit, where had he put it?
“Aha!” he cried triumphantly when he finally uncovered the small packet beside a torn, yellowed clipping from the Miami Herald that his mother had sent him some time ago, one about his ex-fiancée. “It’s all right, Moriah, I—” he turned quickly to Moriah, brandishing his find like a trophy “—I found it.” His shoulders drooped in comical defeat.
The woman who had lain so eagerly and anxiously at his side, the woman who had made him feel giddier and more aroused than he’d ever been in his life, the woman whose dangerous curves had promised the most enervating, exquisite, enlightening road to heaven, was now snuggled up against him like a child, fast asleep.
Chapter Three
When Moriah awoke the following morning, it was because a boisterous wrecking crew was slamming a big concrete ball with aching and annoying regularity against the tender membrane beneath her already-shattered skull. In addition to that, something furry and poisonous and foul had found its way into her mouth and died there, rotting away into some sort of linty gelatinous goo that had oozed all over her teeth and tongue. She opened her eyes slowly and painfully, wincing at the stabbing white light of early dawn that pierced her pupils, recoiling at the lurching, nauseating swells that washed up and down in her stomach. This was not a good sign, Moriah thought glumly, wondering where in the hell she was and how she had managed to sleep through the night while all of these terrible things had been happening to her.
It took her all of five minutes to finally inch onto her back so that she could gaze up curiously at the ceiling. Little by little she took in her surroundings and realized she was in a hotel room, and quite a nice one at that. From the sound of the quiet surf that met her ears through the open French doors to her left, Moriah brilliantly deduced that she must be at the shore. But she hated going to the Jersey shore, she remembered with a puzzled frown. Especially in the summer when it was so crowded. It was summer, wasn’t it? Yes, she was certain that it was. Hadn’t she been planning a vacation a short time ago? she wondered, her muddled brain beginning to function a little more clearly now. She vaguely recalled buying some sunscreen at the cosmetic counter in Wanamaker’s. Heavy sunscreen. Because she was going to be vacationing in…the Caribbean! Yes, that’s it! The Caribbean, that must be where she was. She was supposed to be meeting her sisters on St. Thomas at her hotel on Bolongo Bay Beach. That’s where she was all right. She remembered everything now. Sort of.
The prospect of seeing her sisters again in the very near future filled Moriah with a new kind of nausea and dread, and as her stomach revolted once more, she realized she had better haul herself up and out and get herself pulled together before they arrived and did it for her.
With a muffled groan she wrenched her stiff, aching body out of bed, then covered her burning eyes with both hands and stumbled into the bathroom. She leaned her forehead against the cool white tiles of the wall while waiting for the sink to fill with cold water, begging whatever was sloshing and spinning around in her stomach to stay there. When the water reached almost to the rim of the sink, Moriah took a deep breath and then dunked her head into its icy depths, trying to ignore the overflow that swept onto her bare feet. After that, with the assistance of a big glob of blue toothpaste she squeezed weakly onto her toothbrush, she scrubbed away the last remnants of death from her mouth and swallowed three aspirins with a very large glass of water.
The hot sting of the shower’s spray chased away a good deal of what was left of her hangover, and by the time she had towel-dried her hair, knotted the sash of her pale yellow terry bathrobe around her waist and called room service, Moriah felt almost human again. Of course her sisters were going to be highly perturbed when she wasn’t at the airport to meet them, but they were perfectly capable of finding their way to her hotel. As any civilized woman knew, when one awoke with a severely debilitating hangover, one simply had to get one’s priorities in order. And one’s first and foremost priority was to bring oneself back among the living.
A knock at the door alerted Moriah to the arrival of priority number two: a very large carafe of extremely black coffee. As she slowly sipped the dark, pungent brew, hoping to absorb even more caffeine by inhaling the fragrant steam, she finally began to relax, feeling for the first time that morning as if there was probably a chance for her, after all. She strode lightly and cautiously across the room to open wide the French doors so that nothing stood between her and the fresh Caribbean morning. Clutching the white china mug of coffee to her heart, Moriah breathed deeply the warm air and let her eyes rove appreciatively over the pearly beach and clear, sapphire ocean. It was going to be a gorgeous day. The sun hung in the sky like a beacon, children frolicked outside her room in the twinkling surf, her coffee tasted rich and smooth and delicious, and—
And she had picked up a strange man in a bar last night and brought him back to her hotel room so they could have sex.
The sudden, shocking realization hit Moriah squarely and blindly in the brain like a great big bag of wet sand. Oh, my God, she thought silently, gasping as hot coffee spilled onto her fingers when they trembled on the handle of the mug. Had she really done that? Had she actually been sitting in a bar last night and met a man with whom she’d spent the entire evening and at least part of the night? Moriah shook her head slowly as if trying to clear away the fog that had settled over her memories. She tried to retrace her steps of the previous evening, tried to remember exactly what her actions had been.
She recalled feeling restless after returning to her hotel from Magen’s Bay yesterday, so she went to The Green House to have a beer, one of her students having told her it was the place to go on St. Thomas. She remembered having had some problems with a group of obnoxious divers there, then being rescued by a very gallant and handsome man, leaving to go to another bar with him, dancing, walking along the beach, and then something about a steel band…
Austen. That had been the man’s name, and he had been very funny and pleasant to talk to and, she recalled with a warm feeling in her midsection, incredibly sexy. He’d brought her back to her room last night, and then… Moriah felt her flesh grow hot when memories of what followed came rushing over her like a boiling river.
“Oh, dear,” she said quietly. She also remembered that she had agreed to meet up with him on St. Vincent in two weeks before she was to fly back to Philadelphia. Well, that was certainly one appointment Moriah had absolutely no intention of keeping—even if Austen had been charming and wonderful, and even if she had enjoyed herself more with him than any man she’d ever known. There simply wasn’t any future in taking up with a beach bum who didn’t know the first thing about responsibility and probably couldn’t even hold down a decent job.
For a moment Moriah stared wistfully out to sea, thinking about warm, brandy-colored eyes and laughter that rumbled up freely and easily from a brawny, sun-browned chest. She thought about his reckless, confident masculinity and the urgency of his need to claim her, so much more exciting and tumultuous than the tentative fumblings she’d known from other men. Then reluctantly she forced herself to push thoughts of Austen away. She didn’t even know his last name, she realized sadly. And now she would never see him again.
She drained her coffee mug of its quickly cooling contents, then refilled it from the carafe on the table. The clothes she had been wearing the previous evening were folded and stacked neatly on a chair beside the bed, Moriah noted, and she smiled a little regretfully that even in her drunken state she had been her usual tidy self, having awakened in her regular sleepwear. But when she went to retrieve her clothes to pack them, she noticed for the first time a sheet of hotel stationery that was folded in quarters and tented on top of her shirt. In a bold, masculine script, her name was scrawled across the side that faced her, and her heart began to dance when she picked it up gingerly, cradling it in both hands. She opened the white vellum paper slowly and carefully, as if it were some ancient manuscript that might dissolve into timeless dust. Unwittingly she held her breath as she read the words contained within.
Don’t forget: St. Vincent on the fourteenth at 5:00 p.m. at the botanical gardens. Don’t stand me up, Moriah, please. If you can’t make it, CALL ME. My number on St. Thomas is 9653. Don’t disappoint me, lady. I have to see you again, and I don’t even know your last name. If you leave me without saying goodbye, I’ll never speak to you again.
Austen
Moriah was touched that he had taken the trouble to leave her a note, then remembered, of course, that Austen must have been as drunk as she was last night. She realized somewhat sadly that he had probably left it behind thanks to the same state of inebriation that had made her do things that she would normally never do. More than likely he was somewhere right now regretting the evening as much as she, worried that the troublesome woman he’d met at The Green House last night was going to be dialing his number this morning and putting him on the spot about his note.
Well, he needn’t worry, she told herself as she wadded up the scrap of paper in her hand. She was about to throw it into the wastebasket near the chair, but something stayed her hand. Carefully she opened the note once more and reread the wrinkled words, then chuckled a little nervously. Here she was at the ripe old age of thirty, and Moriah Mallory had just received her first mash note. Sort of. Refolding Austen’s letter carefully along its original creases, she tucked the paper into her weekender bag and smiled a secret little smile. Maybe she’d never see the man again, but he’d definitely given her something to remember.
The three elder Mallory sisters arrived in a flurry later that morning, creating a stir and a ruckus that Moriah sensed even before she heard it. Leaving the sanctuary of her room to view the commotion, she watched her sisters’ advent with eyebrows raised and lips curled in speculation. Amid a blur of tailored luggage and the very latest designer vacation wear, with the sun glinting blindly off perfectly coiffed silver-blond hair and excessively applied lip gloss, between demands for assistance and complaints about the service, Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa Mallory floated into the hotel lobby with all the splendor of a thousand doves released into the sun-drenched azure summer sky. At least that’s how Morgana would have described it, Moriah thought drily. To her it seemed as if they simply stumbled in from the street.
“Over here!” she called out to them.
As if the three of them shared one brain, they all turned at once with an identical expression of inquiry. Leaving their luggage where it lay—no one would dare have the audacity to steal Mallory luggage—they strolled carelessly to where their youngest sister awaited them. Each appraised Moriah with a critical eye, and none of them liked what she saw.
“Honestly, Mo, what are you trying to prove dressed that way?” Marissa asked in reference to Moriah’s attractive, pale blue sleeveless cotton dress. “You know you have Grandma Maxine’s fat calves! Why do you keep wearing those awful short skirts? Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve ever told you about fashion?”
“And my God, Mo, do something with your hair!” Mathilda instructed, her voice filled with horror at the rambling cascade of gold that fell over the shoulders of her youngest sister. “I’ll braid it for you before we get to the boat. You’ll thank me when we get out in that wind.”
“Mo, where are your glasses?” Morgana wanted to know. “I hope you haven’t left them somewhere again like that time in Fiji. We lost an entire day looking for them. I think it would be a good idea if you just wore them all the time on this trip. Now, where’s your room? We’d like to freshen up before you check out.”
Moriah took a deep breath and surrendered to her sisters. It was far easier than arguing with all three of them, she knew. The Mallory family history was long and vivid, filled with the bloody battles she had waged with her relatives and lost mightily. When they returned to her room, her sisters pounced on the mirror while Moriah changed into a pair of baggy khaki trousers and a white safari shirt. She fished her horn-rimmed glasses out of her purse and donned them obediently while Mathilda wove her thick, unruly tresses back into a long French braid. When she looked sufficiently anthropological, her sisters, as one, expelled a long sigh of relief, thankful that Mo was back and that the strange, vivacious-looking woman who had met them was now gone.