‘It’s just very sparse.’
‘It doesn’t bother me.’
‘What do you eat?’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘There is plenty of food.’
‘Tuna?’
He simply held her gaze, without answering, then said, ‘I’m going to get undressed, Genevieve. If my nakedness offends you, please look away.’
Sheknewshe should look away. Turn her back, give him some privacy, or suggest he use the bathroom. But instead, she stayed right where she was, incapable of doing anything but stare as his big hands pushed into the waistband of his shorts and slowly nudged them lower. She wasn’t surprised by his masculinity now—it was burned into her brain—but it overheated her in all the same ways it had before. She just hadn’t realised it then—too many feelings were jamming against her waterlogged mind.
His legs were so broad and muscled, as though he ran, every day. She stared at him, completely overwhelmed by the attraction that was flooding her veins.
‘Would you like to touch me, Genevieve?’ As he asked the question, he took a step towards her, so her eyes lifted to his face, drugged by the silver-grey of his eyes. ‘Would you like to feel my body?’
Yes,every cell in her body screamed. She wanted that. She wanted that badly. No, sheneededit.
She gasped at the realisation that this was so completely out of her control.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he suggested, voice blanked of emotion, even when she could see the intensity in his features and knew that he was not unfazed by this at all. ‘I will stand here for one full minute. You can touch me, or you can walk away. The choice is yours.’
And he came to stand so close their toes brushed, and her body surged with white-hot need at his proximity.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said, tremulously, catching the way his lips pulled in an almost ghoulish smile, revealing his straight white teeth.
‘Does that mean you cannot want me?’
She bit into her lip, not sure how to answer that. She’d always presumed romance and connection were prerequisites for good sex, but that had been far from the case in her marriage.
And that was what finally convinced her to act. It was almost as though she’d been handed this opportunity on a silver platter: to explore a side of herself she’d always felt wanting. That she’d been ashamed of, in her marriage, because she couldn’t rouse even a hint of sexual interest.
And here was a stranger, offering himself to her, with no strings, and no need for any personal information to be exchanged. God knew her heart was far too battered, her trust too often betrayed, for Genevieve to ever seek out another relationship. The little girl who’d once dreamed of white picket fences and a brood of happy little children at her feet had died a long, slow, tortured death in the face of her husband’s cruelty—Genevieve would never want those things again, and certainly never trust another person to deliver them to her.
‘What does it mean if I do want you?’ she asked, needing him to spell it out though.
‘It means nothing,’ he answered. Words that were music to her ears.
Slowly, she let her hand shift outwards, to his hip, first, curving around the firm, muscled flesh there, warm despite the fact he was wet from the storm. His breath hissed from beneath his teeth.
‘Not like that,’ he ground out, and she jumped back, the criticism evoking every single atom of failure that had thrived during her marriage. But he stepped after her, taking her hand, and pressing it more firmly to his side. ‘Do not be shy, Genevieve. I am yours to touch and take, as much as you want tonight. For as long as the storm rages, we can indulge this fantasy. After that, we need never see one another again. Yes?’
With her heart pounding in her ears, she nodded, and this time, when her spare hand reached for his other hip, it was like the creaking open of a gate, the pushing open of a door—on the other side, she didn’t know what she’d find. Only she knew she couldn’t wait to find out…
Chapter Three
IT WASN’T FAIRto make comparisons, but how could she not? He was so different from James. Where James had slid into his late thirties with a definite paunch and softness around his middle, he was also around Genevieve’s height, and his skin had that ‘Washington tan’, all waxy and pale, courtesy of too long spent indoors.
There was nothing virile about him, at all. Nothing that made her feel as though she’d wandered into Tarzan’s lair and was ready to be his Jane. Unlike this man, who simply screamed ‘man mountain’ with every breath he took.
I am yours to touch.
Well, she didn’t need to be told twice. Even if she wanted to stop, she wasn’t sure she could. Not when he stood so perfectly still, except for the rise and fall of his rugged chest, with each breath, that showed how her exploration was affecting him. As if she needed further proof of that, with his erection huge and hard between their bodies. Her cheeks flamed as she imagined reaching down and grabbing him there, curving her fingers around his length and feeling that warm hardness in the palm of her hands. The intimacy of that! It took her breath away.
Instead, she let her fingers stay where they were, at his hips, for a long time, as she steadied her breath and tried not to pass out from the delirium of being able to do this, and knowing it meant nothing. That it changed nothing!
When the storm cleared and she got off this island, she’d still be herself—divorced, alone, but at least free of her manipulative ex-husband and all men everywhere. This was a slice out of time, a bubble they’d allowed to envelop them, a moment of shared insanity that Genevieve had no intention of resisting.
