It Started With A Kiss

CHAPTER SEVEN

RAFE paced the front room, waiting for Isabel to arrive. She’d said she’d pick him up right on eight. But it was eight-ten and she hadn’t shown up yet.

Maybe she wasn’t going to. Maybe this had all been some kind of sick joke, revenge against the male sex.

This ghastly thought had just occurred to Rafe when he heard a car pulling up outside. Peeping out through the front window, he was relieved to see that it was her. Snatching up his luggage, he was out of the door before she could blow the horn. By the time he’d reached her car she’d alighted and was waiting beside the hatchback for him, looking gorgeous in pink pedal-pushers, a pink and white flowered top, and sexy white slip-on sandals. Her lipstick was bright pink, her hair was bouncing around her shoulders and her perfume smelt of freshly cut flowers.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ she apologised as she looked him up and down. Without contempt this time. ‘I had this sudden worry that you might have forgotten some essential items so I stopped off at a twenty-four hour chemist on the way.’

He grinned at her. ‘Not necessary. They were the first thing I packed. But no worry. We won’t run out now, will we? Which might have been a possibility if you’re going to look as delicious as you look this morning all the time. Love the pink. Love the hair. But I especially love that perfume.’

Isabel tried not to let her head be turned by his compliments. Men like Rafe were always good with the charm.

At the same time, she’d come here today determined to enjoy what he had to offer. Cancelling everything for the wedding had been infinitely depressing, as had Luke’s call telling her that he and Celia were now officially engaged. Isabel was in quite desperate need to be admired and desired, both of which she could see reflected in Rafe’s gorgeous brown eyes.

‘It’s new,’ she told him brightly. ‘So are the clothes. I splashed out.’

That had been the only positive thing to happen during the last fortnight—Luke coming good with his promise to set her up financially. To give him credit, he hadn’t let the grass grow under his feet in that regard. Guilt, no doubt.

Still, she was now the proud owner of a brilliant portfolio of blue-chip stock and shares, the deed to the Turramurra town house and a bonus wad of cash, some of which she’d recklessly spent on a wild new resort wardrobe. She’d given the more conservative clothes she’d bought to take on her honeymoon with Luke to Rachel, who was grateful, but wasn’t sure where she’d ever get to wear them.

‘You should splash out more often,’ Rafe told her. ‘I like the less formal you.’

‘And I’ve always liked the less formal you,’ she quipped back.

He was wearing fawn cargo slacks and a multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt, his bare feet housed in brown sandals. He must have shaved some time since she last saw him, but not that morning. Still, he looked and smelt shower-fresh, his silver phantom earring sparkling in the sunshine.

He smiled and rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. ‘You could have fooled me. So you like it rough, do you?’

‘No lady would ever answer such a question,’ she chided in mock reproof.

‘And no gentleman would ask it,’ he said, smiling cheekily. ‘Happily for you, I’m no gentleman.’

‘I’m sure you have your gentle side. Now, stop with the chit-chat and put your bag in here. If we don’t get going we’ll miss the plane.’

‘Nah. At this hour on a Sunday morning we’ll be at the airport in no time flat. The plane doesn’t go till ten, does it?’ he asked as he swung his one suitcase in beside her two.

‘No,’ she said, and slammed the hatchback down.

‘Then we have time for this.’

When he pulled her abruptly into his arms, Isabel stiffened for a second. But only for a second. What was the point in making some silly show of resisting? This was why she found him so attractive, wasn’t it? Because this was the kind of thing he would do.

Not like Luke. Luke always asked. He never took. Luke was a gentleman.

Not such a gentleman with Celia, however. He’d whisked her into bed before you could say Bob’s your uncle! A matter of chemistry, Isabel realised.

As Rafe’s lips covered hers, Isabel knew the chemistry between them was similarly explosive.

Sparks definitely flew and her head spun.

This was what she craved! Forceful lips and an even more forceful tongue. She leant into him, wanting more. She moaned before she could stop herself.

Rafe was startled by her response. The way she melted against him. The way she moaned. Wow, this was no ice princess. This was one hot babe he had in his arms!

When his head lifted, she made a small sound of protest.

He gave her one final peck on her wetly parted lips before putting her away from him. ‘I can see this is going to be one fantastic holiday, honey,’ he murmured throatily. ‘But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we should get going before we really do miss that plane.’

Isabel hoped she wasn’t blushing. She’d done enough blushing since meeting this man. Blushing was for female fools. And wishy-washy wimps. Not for a woman who’d decided to fashion her own destiny in every way.

So Rafe turned her on with effortless ease. Good. That was his job for the next fortnight.

But what about after that? she wondered, throwing him a hungry glance as she climbed back in behind the wheel. Mmm, she would see. Maybe she would keep his number in her little black book for the occasional night of carnal pleasure. Depending on how good he was at the real thing. If his kissing technique was anything to go by, she was in for some incredible sex.

Rafe didn’t know quite what to make of the smug little smile which crossed that pink mouth.

Frankly, he didn’t know what to make of Ms Isabel Hunt at all!

But he wasn’t going to worry about it. He’d lost enough sleep over her this last two weeks. The next fortnight was going to be a big improvement, particularly in the insomnia department. He always slept like a log after sex.

‘So, who did you tell your mother you were going away with?’ he asked as soon as they were on their way.

She slanted him a curious look. ‘What makes you sure I told her anything?’

‘I have a mother,’ he said drily. ‘I know what they’re like. They want to know the ins and outs of everything. Often, you have to resort to little white lies to keep them happy. I keep telling my mother that the only reason I haven’t married is because I haven’t met the right girl yet.’

‘And that works for you?’

‘I have to confess it’s losing its credibility. I think by the time I’m forty she’ll resort to taking out ads for me in the newspapers. You know the kind. “Attractive single male seeks companionship view matrimony from attractive single female. Must be able to cook well and like children.’”

‘If she does, I might answer. I cook very well and I adore children.’

‘Very funny, Isabel. Now answer the question. Who is supposed to be going with you?’

‘Rachel.’

‘Who’s Rachel?’

‘My best friend. The one who was going to wear my wine-red bridesmaid gown.’

‘And your mother believed you were taking a woman to Dream Island with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow. My mother would never have believed that.’

‘That you were taking a woman to Dream Island?’

‘My, aren’t we witty today?’

She smiled. ‘Amongst other things.’

‘What other things?’

‘Excited. Are you excited, Rafe?’

He stared over at her. What was he getting himself into here? Whatever it was, it was communicating itself to that part of himself which he’d been trying to control for fourteen interminable days and nights.

‘That’s putting it mildly,’ he confessed.

Her head turned and their eyes locked for a moment. He’d never felt a buzz like it. He could hardly wait.

But wait he had to. For two hours at the airport when the plane to Cairns was delayed. Then another short delay at Cairns for the connecting helicopter flight to Dream Island.

It was almost five in the afternoon by the time they landed on the heliport near the main reception area of the resort, then another hour before they were transported by luxury motor boat to—yes! Their own private bure on their own private beach!

Rafe was over the moon. Talk about fantasies coming true!

As he helped Isabel from the boat onto the small jetty, he glanced up at where the bure was set, on the lushly covered hillside on a natural terrace overlooking the water. Hexagon-shaped, it looked quite large, with what looked like an outdoor sitting area, a fact confirmed as they came closer. There was even a hammock strung between two nearby palm trees. Rafe eyed it speculatively when they walked past, wondering what it would be like to make love in a hammock.

The young chap named Tom who’d brought them there in the boat took them through the place, explaining all the mod cons which were state of the art, especially in the bathroom. The spa was huge. There was no expense spared with the white cane furniture and linen furnishings either, all in bright citrus colours with leafy tropical patterns.

No air-conditioning, Tom pointed out. Apparently that didn’t work well in the humidity. But the bure had a high-domed ceiling and quite a few fans. Rafe wasn’t sure how comfortable visitors would be in the height of summer, but at this time of year the climate was very pleasant, especially with the evening sea breeze which was at that moment wafting through the open doors and windows.

The bed, Rafe noted, had a huge mosquito net above it on a frame which they were warned should be used every night. If they wanted to sit outside in the evenings, they were to spray themselves with the insect repellent provided and light the citronella-scented candle lamps dotted around.

Holidaying in the tropics, it seemed, did have some hazards.

‘Because of all your travelling today,’ Tom told them, ‘the manager thought you’d be too tired to return to the main resort for dinner, so he had the chef pack you that special picnic dinner.’ And he nodded towards the large basket he’d placed on the table in the eating nook.

‘The refrigerator and cupboards are well stocked with more food and wine. The bar in the corner over there has every drink on its shelves you could possibly imagine. As I’m sure you are aware, all drink and food is included in the tariff here, so please don’t stint yourself. Each day, you can either eat in the various restaurants in the hotel on the main beach or have something sent over. You only have to ring for service. Cigarettes are included also, if you smoke.’

‘We don’t smoke,’ Isabel said for both of them, before frowning up at Rafe. ‘You don’t, do you?’ she whispered and he shook his head.

‘I’ll be going, then,’ Tom said crisply. ‘There are brochures on the coffee-table explaining all the resort’s facilities. You have your own little runabout attached to the jetty which I will show you how to operate before I leave. You must understand, however, that you can’t walk to anywhere from here, except up to the top of the hill we’re on. The path is quite steep from this point, but the view’s pretty spectacular, especially at sunrise. Worth the effort at least once. I think that’s all, but if you have any questions you only have to pick up the phone and ring Reception. Now, if you’d like to come with me, sir, I’ll show you how to start the runabout’s motor and how to steer.’

Isabel watched them leave, then walked over and sat down on the side of the bed, testing it for comfort. It was firm. Luke’s bed had been firm, she recalled.

Luke…

He’d rung her yesterday and told her he and Celia were getting married in a couple of months. For a honeymoon, he was going to take her around the world. For a whole year. After that, they were going to start trying for a baby.

Isabel didn’t envy Celia the trip. She’d travelled a lot herself. Saved up during her twenties and gone to those places she’d always thought exotic and romantic. Paris. Rome. Hawaii.

But she envied her that baby. And Luke as its father. He was going to make a truly wonderful father.

Suddenly, all her earlier excitement faded and she wanted to cry. Before she knew it she was crying, tears flooding her eyes and overflowing down her cheeks.

Isabel dashed them away with the back of her hands, angry with herself. If only she hadn’t let Luke go racing off to Lake Macquarie that Friday. If only she hadn’t been so darned reasonable she would have been here tonight, with him. They would have been married, and she would have been making a baby in this bed. Or at least trying to.

Instead, she was here with Rafe!

Throwing herself onto the bed, Isabel buried her face in the mountain of pillows and wept.

Rafe was taken aback when he walked back in and found Isabel crying on the bed. He hated hearing women cry. His mother had cried for a long time after his Dad had been killed. It had upset Rafe terribly, listening to her sob into her pillows every night.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, and touched Isabel’s trembling shoulder.

With a sob, she turned her back to him and curled up into a ball on the green-printed quilt. ‘Go away,’ she cried piteously. ‘Just go away.’

Rafe didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t a clue what was wrong. She’d said she hadn’t loved her fiancé. Had she lied? Had she taken one look at this place and this bed and wanted not him, but Luke?

Dismayed, Rafe went to leave, but then decided against it. She shouldn’t be left alone like this. She needed him, if only to comfort her for now.

He lay down on the bed and wrapped his arms around her from behind. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ he soothed, holding her tightly against him. ‘I understand. Honest, I do. I’ll bet you’ve been holding your hurt in this last fortnight, and now that you’re here, where you should have been with Luke, his dumping you for that Celia girl has hit you hard. Look, I know what it’s like to be chucked over for someone else. And it’s hell. So cry all you want to. I did.’

Talking to her and touching her seemed to do the trick. Her weeping subsided to a sniffle and she turned over in his arms to stare up at him. ‘You did?’

‘Yep. Maybe it’s not the done thing for a bloke to blubber, but I was like Niagara Falls for a day or two. Heck, no, longer than that. I was a mess on and off for a week. I didn’t dare go out anywhere. It was most embarrassing. I drank like a fish too, but that didn’t help at all. Made me even more maudlin.’

‘Why did she dump you?’

‘Ambition. And money. And influence. Be assured it wasn’t because the other chap was better in bed,’ Rafe added with a grin, and she laughed. It was a lovely sound.

He took advantage of the moment and kissed her. Not the way he’d kissed her back in Sydney this morning, but slowly, softly, sipping at her lips, showing her with his mouth that he did have a gentle side. He kept on kissing her, nothing more, and gradually he felt her defences lower till finally she began to moan, and move against him. Only then did he start to undress her—and himself—still taking his time, touching and talking to her as he went, reassuring her of how much he admired and desired her.

It wasn’t easy, keeping his head, especially when he uncovered her perfect breasts and sucked on their perfect and very pert nipples, but he managed, till they were both totally naked and she was trembling for him.

It almost killed him to leave her and go get a condom. But a man had to do what a man had to do.

He was quick. Real quick. After all, he’d been slipping on condoms for years. Though rarely when he’d been as excited as this. Had he ever been as excited as this, even with Liz?

Maybe his memory was defective but he didn’t think so. This was a one-off experience, perhaps because Isabel had made him wait two weeks to consummate what she’d evoked in him the first time he’d looked at her. This was lust at its most tortuous. And frustration at its most fierce.

He was thankful she felt the same way.

Or so he’d thought, till he hurried back to the bed and saw her looking at him with something like fear.

But why would she be afraid of him?

‘What is it?’ he asked as he joined her on the bed once more and drew her back into his arms. ‘What’s worrying you?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Is it still Luke?’

‘No. No!’

‘Is it me, then? You’re worried I might hurt you.’

She blinked her surprise at his intuition.

‘Oh, honey, honey,’ he murmured. ‘I would never hurt you. I just want to make you happy, to see you smile and hear you laugh again. I want to give you pleasure. Like this,’ he said as he stroked her legs apart, his fingers knowing exactly where to go and what to do.

She gasped while he groaned. How wet she was. It was going to feel fantastic, being buried to the hilt in that.

Waiting any longer was simply not on. And possibly counter-productive. He would feel safer inside her. Less tense. He might even relax a bit.

As though reading his mind, she shifted her thighs apart and bent her knees, inviting him in, murmuring yes in his ear over and over. His fingers fumbled a fraction as he sought to push his suddenly desperate flesh into hers.

Rafe sighed with relief, then just wallowed in blissful stillness for a few seconds. But any respite was short-lived.

As soon as he began to move, her legs were around him like a vine. Or was it a vice? She was squeezing him with her heels and with her insides, rocking backward and forward.

Rafe felt a wild rush of blood along his veins, swelling him further, compelling him to pump harder as he sought release from his agony.

And he’d thought he’d be more relaxed inside her.

Foolish Rafe!

‘Rafe,’ she cried out, her arms tightening around his neck, her lips breathing hot fire against his throat. ‘Rafe…’

Her first spasm sent him into orbit, to a place he hadn’t known existed. Was it pleasure or pain as his seed was wrenched from his body? Agony or ecstasy as her almost violent contractions kept milking him dry, making him moan as he’d never moaned before.

Rafe didn’t know if he was experiencing happiness, or humiliation. All he knew was that no sooner did he feel himself falling away from that place she’d rocketed him to, than he wanted to be there again.

‘You’re right,’ she murmured, kissing his throat and stroking his back, his shoulders, his chest. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’

His eyes opened to stare down at her.

‘You looked so big,’ she explained breathily. ‘I haven’t been with a man that big before.’

Rafe was startled. He’d always thought of himself as pretty average. What she’d been seeing was mostly her doing. Still, he was secretly flattered.

‘I’d thought you were worried I might hurt you emotionally,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, that won’t happen. I won’t ever let that happen.’

Now Rafe felt piqued. Which was crazy. She’d spelled out what she wanted when she’d propositioned him and he’d agreed. Sex on tap for a fortnight without any strings and without any follow-up.

He’d thought such a set-up was every man’s fantasy come true. Now, for some reason that he hadn’t anticipated, Rafe wasn’t so sure.

Oh, for pity’s sake, stepped in the voice of cold reason. What’s got into you? This is every man’s fantasy come true. Stop playing the sensitive New Age guy and start being exactly what she thinks you are. Rafe the rake!

The trouble was Rafe wasn’t really a rake. Never had been. Still, it might be fun. He could do every outrageous thing he’d ever wanted to do and get away with it. Make the most wicked suggestions. Play Casanova to the hilt, with a bit of the Marquis de Sade thrown in.

He had to smile at that. Him, into bondage and stuff? Wasn’t his usual cup of tea, but that hammock had possibilities…

‘Why are you smiling like that?’ she asked.

‘Like what?’

‘Like the cat who got the cream.’

‘Perhaps because I just did. You are the best in bed, sweetheart. Simply the best.’

She looked slightly uncomfortable with his compliment, as though she didn’t like her performance being rated. Yet she must know she was good at sex.

She was a complex creature, and a maze of contradictions. Cool and ladylike on the surface whilst all this white-hot heat was simmering away underneath.

Rafe aimed to keep her furnace well stoked for the next fortnight. She wasn’t going to be allowed to retreat into that ridiculous touch-me-not façade, not for a moment. She might think she’d hired him as her private toy boy, but in fact she was the one going to be the toy, to be played in whatever way he fancied.

Rafe might have been shocked by the wickedness of his thoughts under normal circumstances. But these were hardly normal circumstances, and it was what she wanted, after all.

‘Hey, but I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘A little. But I could do with a shower first. We’ve been travelling all day.’

‘Mmm. Me, too. But why have a shower when there’s that lovely big spa? We could pop in together. What say we take that picnic basket with us as well, kill two birds with one stone?’

‘But…’

‘But, nothing, honey. You just do what good old Rafe tells you and you’ll have the time of your life.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

RAFE was right, Isabel thought two days later. She was having the time of her life. He was exactly what she needed just now.

Oversexed, of course. He never left her alone.

But she wasn’t complaining. If she was brutally honest, she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He was wonderfully flirtatious and fun, with just the right amount of bad boy wickedness to his lovemaking which she’d always found exciting.

‘So what do you think?’ she said as she modelled her new red bikini for him.

Rafe was still sitting on the terrace in the morning sunshine, partaking in the slowest, longest breakfast. He was naked to the waist, a pair of colourful board shorts slung low around his hips. He was all male.

His eyes lifted and he stared at her. She hadn’t worn this particular swimming costume for him as yet and it was scandalously brief. All the swimwear she’d bought with Luke’s money was scandalous in some way, selected in a mood of rebellion and defiance.

And with Rafe in mind.

The white one-piece she’d worn yesterday went totally transparent when wet. Swimming had come to a swift end on that occasion, which was perhaps just as well, since her fair skin couldn’t take too much sun. As it was, she was slightly pink. All over.

‘Turn round,’ he ordered.

She did, knowing full well what the sight of her bottom in nothing but a thong would do to him. Still, that was the general idea. She’d been like a cat on a hot tin roof since he’d come up behind her as she’d been setting out breakfast on the terrace an hour ago, and proceeded to have her right then and there, out in the open. No foreplay whatsoever. Just him, whispering hot words in her ear as he lifted the hem of the sarong she was wearing, then commanding her to stand perfectly still whilst he quite selfishly took his pleasure.

She’d nearly spilled the jug of orange juice she’d been holding at the time. She hadn’t come, of course. He’d been much too fast and she’d been much too tense. It had left her terribly turned on, though. She was still turned on an hour later. Hence the red bikini.