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  “I know.” She infused it with the warmth of comprehension. When she’d first seen them on the beach, they’d been after each other like bears. Now, she recognized the brawl for what it was. Rush had been trying to beat some sense into his friend—literally.

  “Yeah.” A bleak laugh tumbled from him. “You do, don’t you?” He shook his head. “He’s been an idiot, but I’ve been one too. I just didn’t get it. I told him he was a fool to have sunk so much of himself into something that never could be, even if Luna had lived. She was on loan to the FBI from the Washington state penal system. Yeah, the history I mentioned even landed her a prison term for a few years.

  “I thought they’d have something fleeting at best and that nothing like that was worth throwing himself off a goddamn emotional bridge. But T wouldn’t listen. He said he’d found something real. I was a prick to him about that too. Told him there was no fucking way he could’ve found ‘something real’ after being with the woman for a total of a few hours, that connection didn’t simply happen that way.” He closed his eyes as if condemning himself for all of that. Clouds slipped across the moon, turning the night’s silver glow into shadows that matched his compunction—and made him even more beautiful. Lani’s throat constricted. As he even spoke the word “connection,” she longed for more of it with him, if only for tonight. She was seconds away from tugging him into a hug when he slid a hand up to cover hers and raised his dark gaze to capture hers. “Hell. I was really wrong, wasn’t I?”

  She surrendered to a tight gulp. His touch tightened on her. His stare enveloped her. His body was so close and powerful and strong…and his presence permeated her spirit in all the same ways. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself anything like this. With anyone like this. Feeling her heart stop…in all the right ways. Letting her control go…in all the best ways.

  A flare in the darkness. Magic for just a moment.

  It wouldn’t be forever. But that was the most perfect part. In a few days, Kellan would be gone, called to his duty across the world, and she’d be committed to nothing except some amazing memories to make the minutes with her vibrator much more interesting.

  Stolen beats. Borrowed time. If only for now…

  “Wrong…about what?” The words left her in tentative spurts, but somehow, he managed to hear.

  Kellan dipped closer. He delved a hand into her hair and spread his fingers across the back of her head. Damn, he felt good. Huge, commanding, a warm refuge in the gathering storm.

  “About this,” he told her, mingling his breath with hers. “About exactly this.”

  His lips fitted over hers, taking her hunger and turning it to fire. He kissed her deeper, parting her wide so he could invade her mouth with his tongue. And he took again, transforming her high sigh into pure, sensual surrender.

  With a groan, Lani readily gave it to him. And prayed he’d take so much more.

  Chapter Five

  Kellan’s head spun. His senses careened. If the island’s tsunami sirens suddenly blared, he wouldn’t be surprised. Surely the earthquake that started the wave would have its epicenter here, in the strata of this cliff where a single kiss rocked the axis of his being.

  He didn’t do shit like this. He didn’t feel shit like this. Miracles were for hipsters who believed in wheatgrass for breakfast. Life-changing kisses were for saps who didn’t know better. That made him, here and now, the butt of the universe’s biggest joke. Enthralled with how readily she opened for him. Moved by how beautifully she moaned. And harder than the rocks beneath them as he lay back and pulled her with him, savoring how she curved her thigh around his waist.

  When he wrested his lips away from hers, his breathing came in harsh bursts. His fingers trembled. Holy fuck. He hadn’t been a wobbling colt like this since Stacy Weebler pulled out a box of condoms after the ninth-grade dance with a shy smile. But Stacy had been a girl. Lani was a woman, aware of what she wanted, alive with what she needed, and telling him both with every magical silver light in her gaze.

  She smiled and teethed a piece of her bottom lip. At the same time, she arched her leg to run her toes beneath his shirt and up his spine. The contact sent bolts of heat through his body. He groaned deep and then raked a hand along the gorgeous, generous curve of her thigh. When she hitched out a sigh in response, the sound was a pure beguilement.

  As the woman herself would say, dear gods. What the hell was she doing to him? He’d always been the guy rooted in reality. Ruthless with the facts, steadiest with the trigger finger. But as he breathed her in, filling his senses with her ocean-and-jasmine scent, he barely remembered that man. His skin burned. His muscles clenched. And his cock was well on its way to being a swollen rod of torture. He hadn’t lusted for a woman like this in a very long time.

  Which was why his next words, as well as the conviction behind them, surprised him as much as they did her.

  “I think we need to stop, sweetheart.”

  She swallowed like he’d just killed her puppy. “You just not feeling it, huh?”

  A laugh shot out of him. “Are you kidding?” Knowing he tempted fate with the move, he shifted so she was completely beneath him, his crotch lodged against hers. “This is me not feeling it.” Using the excuse of “clarification,” he thrust a little, pushing his length against the sweet warmth of her cleft.

  “Oh…mmmm…okay.” Her high-pitched rasp was beyond adorable. “So…why are you stopping?” Suddenly, her muscles tensed. “Crap. You’re seeing someone, aren’t—”

  “No.” He stopped her from surging up by grabbing both her thighs. “No. There’s nobody, I swear it. Nobody who’s done this to me.”

  Her muscles went lax. The feeling of her acquiescence was…amazing. The woman’s physical strength matched the conviction of her character. To feel her giving that up for him, softening for him, sent a sluice of raw arousal to his cock.

  Kell grimaced. Fuck. Years of fighting and training with T-Bomb had caused his friend’s kinky tendencies to start rubbing off on him. Not good. He didn’t get major wood on the domination thing like Tait and a lot of the other guys did. At least not until now. As he envisioned lashing Lani’s naked body down to these rocks and then watching the ocean mist drench her spread limbs and pleading mouth, his cock went as solid as a Sequoia.

  Goddamn. The woman was turning him into someone he barely recognized. He should be horrified. Afraid. The trouble was, he liked that someone.

  As if Lani had a window into his mind, she lifted a hand to his jaw and murmured, “I like it, Sergeant. I like feeling what I do to you…and how you look when I do it.”

  He glided his hands from her hips to her waist. As he pushed them up under her jacket, a surge of energy, primal and powerful, slammed him. “Kellan,” he growled, stopping short of making it a full command.

  “What?”

  Screw it. Maybe a little of that domination shit could be fun. “Kellan,” he repeated. “That’s my name, not ‘Sergeant.’” He leaned over her, matching the angle of his face to hers so he could see every curve and angle of her features. “Say it,” he ordered. “I want to hear it on your lips, your beautiful voice wrapped around it.”

  Her lips opened. But for a long moment, nothing came out. She held the expression, mouth parted and eyes longing, giving him her veneration in this exquisite visual form first. Her beauty impacted him just like the storm that approached: bold, magnificent, cleansing.

  As he blinked from the blast, she smiled and whispered, “Kellan.”

  He gripped her tighter and returned her smile with the stunned force of his own. “Thank you, Lani.”

  “Hokulani.” Her hand, lifted to his face with sweet emphasis, relayed how she offered it as another symbol of her trust in him. He remembered how she’d stiffened when Benson used it and realized it wasn’t a privilege she allowed from everyone. “It’s my real name. Dad used to tell me it was a sacred gift. Right before Mom went into labor, they were on the beach and watched a star fall over the ocea
n. They saw it as the gods sending me down to be with them. Hokulani means heavenly star.” She let out an adorably awkward laugh. “Kind of corny, I know, but…”

  Kellan didn’t want her to finish. With a rush of inexplicable feelings, he lowered his lips to hers again. He resolved to savor her slowly this time, trying to put important brakes on their passion, but as her mouth responded to him, her tongue tempting him in tender little sweeps, he abandoned the cause. After tasting her for a long, moist tangle, he pulled back for the privilege of uttering the single, meaningful word.

  “Hokulani.”

  Her grateful hum welcomed him back to her lips, gaining resonance as he demanded deeper entrance. The weight of her second leg settled against his back, coaxing his resistance toward a valley of no return.

  “Hokulani.” He repeated it between heavy breaths as he finally dragged away, hoping it would invoke a spell of angel-strength composure. No such luck. “Damn…Hokulani.” It became an invocation of need, drawing him into a heated trance that began and ended with the curves of her body, the desire in her eyes, the wet bliss of her kiss.

  “Kellan.” She extended his name with husky inflection, driving him as crazy as her fingers on his skin, flicking over his nipples before she reached for his head and scored his scalp with her nails. “Kellan. Kellan.”

  The shower of her reverence crashed harder over him just as real raindrops descended around them, smacking the ground at a quickening pace. Damn it. Like he needed yet another reason to kick his self-control over the cliff. His fantasies of her nudity had definitely involved moisture…lots and lots of moisture. Now he had plenty of it to help him out in reality. The rain intensified, soaking them both inside a minute.

  With an eager sigh, she shifted her hands from his head to pull at his shirt in feverish tugs, fighting the rain that glued it to his back. When she reacted to his bared torso like a starving woman given a slab of chocolate cake, his restraint waned further. When she pulled at the back of his neck and slammed their mouths together again, he didn’t raise an inch of resistance.

  Their groans mingled and reverberated through his body. She undulated beneath him in all the very right ways. The damn minx knew he was sporting commando status under his shorts too. She had to realize what her little lifts and grinds were doing to him. His dick pounded so hard for release, he was certain the horses below could stage a dance party to its rhythm.

  “Hokulani.” He issued it as half a plea this time. Okay, she was giving him all the high signs on this, and they were both grown adults, but two hours ago, she’d had a Bowie knife at his balls. Just because they’d changed altitude and body positions didn’t mean she had alternative plans for his nuts. He pulled an important page from the battalion playbook. Crazy times call for clarity and communication. “Sweetheart, if we don’t stop…”

  His aroused snarl drowned the end of that as she ran both hands down his back and then beneath his shorts.

  “Tell me.” She rose a little, going for his neck with her strawberry-dark lips. The second she made contact, he shook from the power of her warm caress on his soaked skin. He had to consciously focus on gently forcing her back down.

  “Listen to me.” He growled it, which only seemed to spur her arousal, pumping his in a classic domino effect. “If we don’t stop now, I won’t stop. There’s a condom in my wallet. I’ll get it out before taking off my shorts for you again. Then I’m going to get you naked, and I’m going to spread you wide—yeah, right here in the rain—and I’m going to fulfill the fantasy I’ve had since first laying eyes on you. I’m going to ram my cock into your wet pussy and hit every spot in your sweet body that’ll make you scream until you can’t anymore. That’ll be the moment that you come for me, sweetheart. You’ll fall apart for me in a thousand different pieces, and I’ll love it as I watch every second.”

  Mentally, it felt damn good to say it. Physically, he was a throbbing mess. He took a long moment before drawing back from her, steeling himself for any number of reactions. His blunt pillow talk had driven away more than a few fine women even after three dates, let alone two hours. But nothing less than his truth would do with this creature, so bold and fierce and passionate, who’d upended his senses from the moment she’d flipped over his body on the beach. Lying to her would be an insult to her, and that was not okay.

  The rain fell harder as he swept his gaze up.

  “Up” being a subjective term at the moment.

  Like a man—or many women, for that matter—would condemn him for halting his eyes once they beheld her chest.

  Her fully nude, damn spectacular chest, now exposed past the jacket she unzipped and the bathing suit she unlatched.

  When he ripped his stare away to find her face again, he found a smile waiting for him there. She’d become half mischievous elf, half knowing goddess…and a hundred percent breathtaking woman.

  “You may have beat me up those stairs, mister, but I’ve been three steps ahead of you ever since.” Her eyes, brilliant as diamonds, fell to the front of his shorts. “Where did you say that condom was?”

  Chapter Six

  Lani couldn’t help but laugh as she watched Kellan’s reaction. Though his gaze was heavy from desire, his mouth quavered like a kid who’d just scored his first Little League home run and couldn’t believe it. But that was the only “little” thing about the man. She had trouble holding back an eager lip lick herself, trailing her stare over his rain-slicked chest, arms, and abdomen. Even his muscles seemed piled on top of muscles. In comparison, her ample curves felt soft and light.

  And free.

  Gods, how good it felt to be free. For this moment, life was joyously far away, tucked below. Benson and his schemes, Leo and his struggles, and the property with its bills were cares that belonged to tomorrow, worries for a woman who wasn’t her right now. In the morning, she could return to responsibility. Kellan would too. But in this stolen sliver of the night, they only belonged to the wind, the rain…and the wild, wonderful force of their passion.

  “Fuck.” His serrated growl added to his illicit allure. Without lowering his head, he pulled out his wallet. She caught a glance of his military ID, his photo revealing him with a cute scowl beneath his regulation high-and-tight, before retrieving the foil packet that gleamed with wicked promise. “Next time, I may let you win that climb, sweetheart.”

  Knowing there would be no “next time” allowed her to delight in his humor. As she giggled, she started to wiggle off her bikini bottoms, but Kellan stopped her with another rough sound.

  “I’m doing those honors.” He already had his fingers hooked around the sides of the suit. Lani didn’t argue. His fingers grazed her skin with steady purpose. His touch was like hot oil slicked over the cool rain as he pulled down the fabric. But once done, he didn’t let go. His hands traveled back to her hips, hoisting her sex high, spreading her pussy open so the rain began to seep into sensitive crevices.

  “Oh!” she cried. The sky’s tiny kisses tapped on her flesh, coaxing her deeper desires from their warm folds. The contrast of the cool rain and her hot desire made her gasp, stunned and captivated. Her legs shook as she went up on tiptoe, needing more…more…

  “Relax.” Kellan gave the direction as he hoisted her legs off their moorings, hooking her knees over his shoulders. “Relax. I’ve got you, my sweet Starshine.”

  “Ohhhhh!”

  He had her, all right. But how the hell did he expect her to “relax” when he slid his hot tongue over the tender tissues at her core? Lani cried out again as he nibbled his way deeper, seeking the knot of nerves that ached the most for his touch. When he found that special spot, she screamed and arched back, grabbing for solid purchase. How had she justified for so long that her vibrator was just as good as this?

  Kellan moaned in satisfaction as he taunted her clit. When he ceased the torment, it was only to kiss her mound with slow reverence. “I think I’ve found my island ambrosia…”

  With that wicked intent darken
ing his tone, he dipped his head to suck at her pussy once more. The rain fell even harder, a metronome for the thrumming need in her body. He pulled and licked at her engorged clit, turning her into a writhing ball of need, the rocks at her back be damned. The pressure swirled higher in her thighs, her ass, her sex. Deep inside her body, her womb pulsed in readiness. She whimpered in a mix of agony and ecstasy. He trailed his tongue through her pussy like he had a damn map to the most illicit parts of it, but every notch of arousal made her realize how empty her body really was…how she needed a completing flame inside it.

  Finally, through the haze of her excitement, she heard the zipper slide on his shorts. She pried her gaze open to witness him tear open the condom with violent speed. Similar ferocity defined his face as he looked down at her, gritting his teeth as he palmed his steely erection.

  “Aiwaiwa.” She swallowed hard. And stared harder. “Kellan, you’re…”

  Huge. Glorious. Perfectly made.

  “Ready to be inside you, sweetheart.” He hissed as he rolled the condom over his penis, which didn’t relent a fraction of its stiffness. “Ready to fuck you deep.”

  The soldier kept his word. He lowered her legs to an angle where they wrapped around his waist before leaning forward so he could kiss her again. As he plunged his tongue into her mouth, he worked his shaft into the first inch of her body. When he shoved in a little deeper, Lani gasped into his mouth.

  “Sorry,” she explained, trying to smile past her pain. “It’s…it’s been a while for me.”

  His gaze darkened. “Yeah. For me too.”

  His confession made every inch of her vagina cream. She clung to his shoulders, feeling the strain of his muscles as he tried to slow the pace. “No,” she protested. “God, Kellan. Deeper. Please!”