Kitabı oku: «Untamed», sayfa 2
CHAPTER TWO
JASON KAOKI STARED at the woman who’d appeared before him dressed in head-to-toe black like the goddamned Grim Reaper, right here on his island like the ghost of lives he didn’t want.
Lives he had outright rejected. Repeatedly.
“Are you going to stare at me all day?” he asked her, with the kind of lazy grin he liked to use on people who came at him in suits. “It’s an interesting sales pitch, I’ll give you that. Though I’m not sure it’s effective.”
His grin usually sent them running, alarm stamped all over their faces. Especially when he combined it with that tone.
Because Jason never tried too hard to hide his rougher edges.
But if he expected this newest suit to look stricken, or apologetic, or even faintly nervous like all the rest, he was disappointed. She left her little wheeling bag—also black—near the lobby doors and marched across the tile floor to settle herself against the low-slung couch opposite him. She sat as if she owned the place and him, too, which was definitely a bold approach. Then she crossed one decidedly well-formed leg over the other in that ridiculously tight skirt that belonged in an anonymous corporate office somewhere far to the north of here. She even folded her pale, slender hands in her lap, pious and prissy, and regarded him as if she was the one doing him a favor.
It should have put his teeth on edge, like all the teachers and social workers and coaches who’d tried and failed to civilize him always had. But this one was different from the parade of doughy accountant-types, each more arrogant than the last, who had traipsed out here and thought they could talk down to him.
For one thing, he had the feeling that if he could peel away all those laughably inappropriate black layers and see the woman beneath, she’d be hot. Sweet. A perfect snack for a man with a voracious appetite. She had hair the color of fire, and Jason was an elemental kind of guy. He wanted to take her pretty hair out of that agonizing-looking bun she’d slicked it into and get his hands in it. He wanted to see how all that fire smelled now that the sun and the sea had gotten in there and tugged a few strands free. He wanted to bury his face in its thickness and see how hard that got him.
Just to pull up a few urges at random.
What he couldn’t tell from looking at her was if she knew she was hot or not. And if she did, was she hiding herself in the funeral garb on purpose? Did she think that would work?
It didn’t. Her breasts were plump and round and begged for a man’s palms through the almost-sheer fabric of the fussy blouse she wore. She was tall for a regular woman—meaning, she was tall, but not one of the models he usually gravitated toward because they had legs that went on forever and that looked good draped over his shoulders while they fucked. And despite the tight-assed expression on her face, there was no disguising the flush on her high, ivory cheeks—currently from the sun, he figured, but he knew he could do better—and the full, soft lips he’d greatly enjoy seeing wrapped around his dick.
Jason was entertained.
And he couldn’t recall the last time that had happened in the presence of a suit.
He admired whoever had thought to stop sending all those boring tools and uptight douche bags here to talk at him until he scared them away. He wanted to applaud whoever had finally figured they were better off sending a hot little package like this one instead. Because the only thing better than an obviously hot woman who appeared ready to go and easy to get was one a man got the pleasure of unwrapping himself.
The quiet had stretched out between them, with nothing but the sound of the waves on the beach outside to divert attention from the way they were staring at each other.
Jason grinned. A little social discomfort didn’t bother him at all. But he couldn’t say the same for all the mainlanders.
This one broke the way they all did, but she kept her cool, businessy smile in place.
“It’s nice to meet you at last, Mr. Kaoki,” she said, in an English accent with something richer beneath it. Like an extra kick. He liked the way it moved over him, then settled in his cock. He wished she’d follow suit. “I appreciate you seeing me without any kind of appointment. For the record, I did try to make one.”
Her voice was, if possible, even more prim and proper than she looked, if he overlooked that burr beneath.
Jason had always liked the wild ones. The feral creatures who could keep up with him. But the more he stared at this defiantly pale woman with her gorgeous hair ruthlessly wrestled into submission, the more he wondered if it was the ones who pretended to be civilized who were the wildest underneath.
Something in him—and not just his dick—wanted to rise to that challenge.
“‘Mr. Kaoki?’ Jesus Christ. Who the hell is that? Sounds like someone who needs his ass kicked. I’m Jason.”
Her polite smile didn’t dim, and against his will, he was impressed. Each and every one of the wussy little men who’d sweated at him in this very same lobby had looked nauseated and ill at ease by this point. Because douche bags always imagined they could manipulate a big, loud, dumb jock—and they were always surprised and disconcerted to discover that this particular dumb jock was a whole lot more difficult to handle in person.
Not his prissy little redhead, sitting rigid and sure on the old sofa like that painful-looking bun of hers was pulling her spine straight. “I’m Lucinda Graves.”
“Why am I not surprised your name is Graves?” When she frowned, Jason shrugged. Expansively. And noted, with interest, the way her gaze followed the play of muscles in his shoulders. “Maybe you’re too jet-lagged to notice you’re in the South Pacific. Here we dress in pretty flowers and aloha and not a whole lot else. But you came dressed for a funeral.”
She rustled up that smile again, twice as polite this time. He figured she considered it a weapon.
He thought that was cute.
“I’m sorry if my professionalism offends you,” she said coolly. “I’m only trying to treat you with the courtesy due your position.”
“You mean my money, not my position. I don’t think you’d give a rat’s ass about my position if it wasn’t directly in your way. Much less any courtesy.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Kaoki. Manners never go amiss. Especially in trying situations.”
Was she scolding him? Jason thought she was. And even stranger, he found it just as hot.
Which probably said some shit about him, but he had no intention of analyzing it.
He shifted where he lounged there across from her before his unruly cock announced itself. He rubbed absently at his side, and once again her gaze dropped to follow the movement. All over the tattoo he’d gotten when his football scholarship had come through, so he’d never forget where he came from.
And Jason didn’t think she was the type to find ink quite that fascinating.
“I have to be honest, Lucinda.” He made her name a meal and discovered that he was actually good and hungry. Bordering on straight-up starving. “I don’t really think you know how trying this situation could get. Let me know if you want that to change.”
She blinked, but didn’t touch that. Smart girl.
“I represent an international hotel concern,” she started again, but he thought that smile of hers was more strained than before. He interpreted that as progress. “We specialize in extraordinary properties aimed toward top-tier clientele who expect—and can afford—the best. I’m sure you already know the development potential of this island is astronomical. And I say that as someone not given to exaggeration.”
“The development potential of anything is astronomical if the person who owns it keeps saying hell no to slick offers and obsequious dickheads in ugly suits.” He studied her for a moment, lingering on the flush across her high cheekbones and the freckles that were coming out over her nose. “I’m pretty sure you already know I don’t want to develop shit. You look like the type who would know that kind of thing before you stepped on an airplane to force a meeting. What makes you think you can show up here and convince me when no one else could?”
She blinked again, and her eyes—entirely too blue for his peace of mind—got canny. And Jason might look like a barbarian. He’d cultivated that image, in fact. Wild and loud and nothing but noise, because it suited him to be underestimated. The truth was, he’d always liked women with brains. It made life a hell of a lot more complicated, sure. But complicated was often a whole lot more interesting.
“I’m hoping that I can change your mind.” Her gaze was steady on his. “Why don’t you tell me what you think that would take.”
Jason laughed. It was a big laugh, just like him, and it filled the lobby. One of his more poetic exes had once told him it was like a volcano. As an island boy, born and bred to be respectful of Madame Pele and her works, Jason was more than okay with that comparison.
Especially when it seemed to bother the shit out of the tight-assed corporate creature perched across from him, who stiffened at the sound.
“I’m not going to talk contracts and deals, sweetheart,” he said when his laughter died away. “Fun fact. People don’t move to private islands without names in the middle of the Pacific Ocean if they want to be tracked down. And yet you people are like ants, one after the next, rolling up to ruin my picnic.”
“I don’t want to ruin your picnic,” she said, and he was almost impressed that she managed to get that out through her pursed lips and that attempt at the same polite smile. “I just want to make you a rich man.”
“I’m already a rich man.”
“You can always be richer.”
He laughed at that, too. Because she had hair like fire and skin so pale and resolutely sunless she glowed. And she was dressed in those stiff, dark clothes that looked as sad and dreary as whatever dark, rainy place she came from.
“White people always want to get richer,” he observed. “It’s just money, Lucinda.”
“Spoken like someone who has too much of it, Jason,” she fired back.
And he saw her, then. The real woman tucked away behind the prim and the proper, and she was bright. Sharp and wild. All teeth and snarl, and Jason wanted to tangle himself up in her and see if she left marks.
Something in him uncurled, then heated.
“If you don’t want money,” Lucinda said after a moment, her tone too precise, as if she was wrestling herself into submission—which Jason wanted to do himself, “what do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. And if I did, I’d go get it. I don’t need help from corporate assholes.”
She looked impatient for a second, but wiped it away in the next. “Everybody wants something, Mr. Kaoki. All you have to do is admit it.”
He let the things he wanted settle into him, hot and greedy, and made no particular attempt to hide the burn of it as he regarded her. His reward was a splash of deeper color in her telltale cheeks.
“I don’t need to see your tedious fucking blueprints or pay attention while you yammer at me about secluded coves, lanais for days and forests of tiki torches,” he drawled, aware he was landing hits every time her flush deepened. She was an open book and he was almost positive she didn’t know it. That only made this more fun. “Building some snooty resort here isn’t going to make me happier. So what’s the point? Why would I bother? Hawaii is already occupied. Your fancy clients can go ruin it some more whenever they get the hankering to play colonizer.”
She didn’t miss a beat. Her eyes were a cool, fathomless blue, like the ocean he loved on a tempestuous day—and there was something about that comparison that rubbed him the wrong way. Like it was settling into him. He tried to shake it off, concentrating on what she was saying instead.
“Maybe it’s not your happiness we should be concerned with. Think about all the good you could do if you brought jobs and investment to the area.”
“Baby, I don’t know what you read about me, but my happiness is the only thing I’m concerned with.”
“You give away more money to local charities than most people in the Pacific Islands will ever make.”
“That’s a rumor,” Jason replied lightly. “An unproven rumor because people like to think the best about other people. The truth makes them itchy.”
“People think the best of others? When?” Her laugh made him restless. “I think you’ll find they really don’t.”
“Whatever. I’m a selfish man, darlin’. I amuse myself and that’s about it. And nothing about ruining this island with another bullshit resort that pollutes the place strikes me as all that amusing.”
“I had no idea you were such an environmentalist.”
“I’m not. I’m selfish. I like my beach empty, my jungle wild and my roads clear. The point of a private island is that no one else is on it.”
“Right.” She seemed to take that on board. Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over, like she was trying to find his weaknesses. He gazed back at her, boneless and unconcerned. “But even selfish men want something.”
“There’s nothing I want I can’t get, Lucinda. I don’t need to make bargains with strange women. I don’t even need to have this conversation, but that’s the kind of guy I am. Nice to a fucking fault.”
He grinned at her, letting his edges show again, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when she didn’t look away. She was a lot tougher than the men who’d come here. Or more determined, anyway.
One more thing that shouldn’t have appealed to him. But Jason had always been a sucker for a little grit.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “You’re very nice. That’s the word I’d choose to describe you.”
“Feel free to pick a better one.”
But she didn’t take him up on his invitation. Instead, her body language changed, right there in front of him.
Jason watched, fascinated, because she didn’t melt. She didn’t go boneless and seductive, or start fiddling with the buttons on that shirt of hers to start flashing him those perfect breasts. The straight edge of her spine didn’t curve in the slightest.
And yet there was no doubt that something changed.
He could feel it between them, a thick, humming kind of tension. He told himself he was amused by this latest attempt to get at him, but his cock wasn’t laughing. It was fascinated, too.
More than fascinated.
And he was getting hungrier by the moment.
“Are you offering me something?” he asked.
Her gaze had turned speculative. And she was tilting her head to one side in a manner designed to make him rock hard and ready. “My understanding is that in the past, you’ve kicked everyone who came here off this island within hours.”
“Now my buddy just waits at the dock,” Jason agreed, genially enough. “So he can take you right back to Fiji. You can go now, if you want.”
Her smile was a thing to behold. It wasn’t that polite one she’d been bludgeoning him with since she’d walked in, professional and distant. This one took over her whole face. It was like the sun coming out from behind clouds, the sudden shock of heat and brightness making his chest feel tight.
All he could think about was tasting that fire. Drowning himself in it. Making her burn hot until she screamed.
But she thought she was playing him, so Jason didn’t move. He waited.
“What I want is for you to let me stay,” she told him.
So very prettily.
Jason grinned. He’d been hit on by so many beautiful women he’d lost count before he left for college. And he was Hawaiian—technically half-Hawaiian, but he’d never bothered to recognize the haole douche bag tourist who had seduced his mother and left her high and dry—which meant his standards for beauty were pretty damn high. He rarely bothered with corporate types. Sticks up the ass didn’t get him off.
But everything in him was encouraging him to make an exception in Lucinda’s case.
“Now, why would I do something like that?” he asked. He let his grin hint at his greed. “What’s in it for me?”
And then surprised himself by settling back and waiting for her to convince him.
CHAPTER THREE
LUCINDA DIDN’T KNOW what the hell she was doing.
She had always been about a plan. Making a plan, following a plan and sticking to a plan come hell or high water. She researched, she got herself ready and then she executed said plan without ever straying into too much dangerous spontaneity. That strategy had served her well her whole life—but something about this island made her feel outside herself. Inside out, stretched thin, too hot and too exposed, all at once.
It’s the jet lag, she told herself. But there was the distinct possibility it had more to do with the man lounging there across from her, watching her with lethal intent, than the island or what it had taken to get here.
The truth was that while she wasn’t averse to using whatever inducements she could throw at Jason Kaoki, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be the one getting what she wanted out of the bargain if she did.
He wasn’t like other men.
He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met.
He was too big, in every sense of the term. He was built on a grand scale, sure, but there was also his laugh. His wicked, challenging grin. That steady dark gaze of his that told her in no uncertain terms that he truly didn’t need or want a damned thing from anyone...
But that he might take it anyway, if it was offered.
There’s no reason you can’t make him an offer—that offer—right here and now, she told herself stoutly, still holding that simmering gaze of his. The notion made a deep shiver wind its way through her, making her hold herself even more still for fear he’d see exactly what she wanted to give him. What she was willing to trade.
She didn’t know what she was doing, but she needed to figure it out. And fast.
Because she needed this. She needed to win. She needed to prove herself, once and for all, in a way that no one could claim was theirs or take away from her or dismiss. Lucinda was so tired of fighting for every last scrap. She didn’t like to admit it to herself, but she knew it was true. After a lifetime of hustling, she was tired. She wanted to be done with the dustups, once and for all. She’d been swinging and scrabbling all her life, and she wanted the big prize this time.
She wanted to rest on her laurels for a change. She wanted to see what the world looked like when she was sure of her place in it. At last.
And there was no doubt that landing Jason Kaoki and this jewel of an island would do the trick. It would be the making of her. She could leave her firm in a blaze of glory and go out on her own. Maybe stay in one of the exclusive properties she worked so hard to build, for a start.
No one back in London thought she could do it.
“You’re wasting your time,” her direct superior had told her, sighing loudly to make certain Lucinda knew she was bothering him when she’d dutifully told him her plans. He named the much-celebrated president of a rival boutique hotel corporate body, who had only the week before sneered at Lucinda in a trendy gastropub as he’d assured her the Kaoki property was lost to developers. “If he can’t make it happen, no one can.”
“I can do it,” Lucinda had said with tremendous certainty and confidence.
It had only been partially feigned.
Because she’d studied Jason Kaoki. And she hadn’t concentrated only on his investment portfolio like everyone else, all those cold numbers and figures. Lucinda had immersed herself in all his social media accounts. She’d watched old interviews and read articles on his early prowess on the football field.
She’d convinced herself she knew him.
“If you can, you’ll be a legend,” her boss had replied, with a laugh. Indicating how unlikely a prospect he thought that was. Because he might like how hard Lucinda worked, but he certainly didn’t think she had it in her to become a legend.
And it turned out that the scrappy little nobody from that grotty flat in one of Glasgow’s most notorious tower blocks wanted to be a legend. Very badly, in fact. She didn’t want to work for anyone else. She didn’t want to report to her boss, who was decent enough as these things went, but still liked to take credit for her best and brightest ideas like they were owed to him.
Then laughed at her when she showed her belly by clearly indicating she wanted more.
Goddamn it, but she wanted this win.
That was why she’d taken her annual leave and spent her own money to haul herself here to make her own legend, her own way.
Only to discover that not only was Jason Kaoki as difficult as advertised, he was difficult in a completely different way than she’d anticipated. And more worryingly, she seemed to be someone else when she was in his presence.
She told herself, once again, that it was the heat. The tropics, bearing down on her relentlessly. The lobby was open to the weather and the breeze that wound its way in one side and out the other did very little to cool her off. Instead, it danced over her, making her feel electric and strange. And aware of too many things she’d prefer to ignore altogether.
The press of her thighs against each other. The heat her own body generated. The touch of the breeze itself, soft and warm all over her, like a caress.
“Tell me what it would take,” she said now. Again. She focused on Jason. On the task at hand. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
He looked...sinful and dangerous. Deeply, inarguably dangerous. Alarms went off inside her, one after the next, and she had to fight to repress a shiver of unease. Or whatever that feeling was that nipped at her and made her wonder if a person could spontaneously combust, after all. Right here and now in an ugly, forgotten hotel.
“I appreciate the offer,” Jason said, in that drawling, suggestive voice of his that danced all over her like a terrible fire. Far worse than any tropical breeze. “But I don’t think you can.”
She told herself the sun and the heat were getting to her, that was all. She was Scottish and she lived in London. She was built for gray skies and buckets of rain, not white-sand beaches and glaringly blue skies without a stray cloud in sight. There had been entirely too much sunshine on her walk from the dock to this sad old hotel, and she was much too pale to handle it. She was experiencing some kind of prickly heat reaction to the weather, nothing more.
He happened to be here, but he wasn’t the cause of it.
It was crazy to imagine otherwise.
“I don’t do business meetings,” Jason told her, and that same insanity swept through her again when his mouth curved, prickly and too hot and clearly not the weather at all. “I’m not into presentations in boardrooms. I hate bankers and proposals and sober contract negotiations. Ad men make me want to break things. I don’t like suits—” and he nodded at her, indicating that he didn’t like hers either “—and I don’t trust anyone who would wear one or sign up to sell snake oil in that kind of place in the first place.”
There was absolutely no reason Lucinda should feel the sting of that as if he’d slapped her. Who cared what he thought about her outfit or her job? What did overly rich men know about anything besides themselves and their net worth?
She forced a smile, though she was afraid it wasn’t nearly as bland as it ought to have been. “This kind of input is helpful. Tell me what kind of meeting you like, where you’d like it to take place and how you’d like everyone involved to dress, and I’ll make it happen. No snake oil allowed.”
Jason’s dark gaze gleamed with a molten gold that was much more dangerous than the breeze or the relentless sun outside. And his grin reminded her of a pirate’s, wide and filled with entirely too much dark intent.
She couldn’t quite breathe.
“You might not like my suggestions,” he pointed out in that lazy way of his, layered with sex and sin.
“I don’t have to like your suggestions,” Lucinda replied tartly. “This is about you. What I like or don’t like is immaterial.”
“If you say so.”
And Lucinda had always prided herself on being able to read people. It had been a necessary component of her climb out of the hole of her poverty-stricken childhood. She could read people like a book, and she’d always read them at lightning speed, because that was the only way to avoid her drunken father’s fist or her perpetually bitter mother’s tongue. She’d learned how to avoid the unsavory characters who lurked in the tower blocks, and how to tell the difference between a bored kid and a dangerous criminal when they often looked alike. She’d honed these kinds of skills when she was young and they’d served her well ever after.
The more she could read her superiors and her clients, the better she could anticipate their needs. The more she did that, the more indispensable she made herself, and that was how a girl from nothing made herself a vice president at a multinational corporation when most of the people she’d grown up with had never made it out of the same housing estate where they’d been raised.
Lucinda considered her street smarts an essential tool in her kit.
But she understood it was useless here. With him.
Jason Kaoki was a mystery. A deliberate one, if she didn’t miss her guess, but a mystery all the same. Because he was lounging around wearing nothing but those low-slung water shorts of his, showing off acres and acres of brown skin and a selection of artistic tattoos. His dark hair was much too long for conventional sensibilities, he grinned far too wide and often, he laughed uproariously at the slightest provocation, and everything about him gave off the impression that he was wide open. Easy and amiable and approachable.
But the five men he’d already ejected from this island proved that none of that was true. He might laugh loud and long, but it would be a very great fool indeed who imagined he was easy. In any way.
Against her will, Lucinda found herself wondering why a man who had everything—who had been blessed with all that undeniable athleticism to win himself a place outside his own humble beginnings, instead of having to fight for a way out with a mix of cleverness and desperation as she had—needed to hide in plain sight.
But that wasn’t her business. The resort she wanted to build here was.
And this wasn’t the first time in her life Lucinda had been forced to sit with a smile on her face, fighting to remain calm while other people decided her future at their whim.
As God was her witness, if she could make this work, this would be the last.
“Okay,” he said, after a lifetime or two. With that same dark gaze heavy on her, like a foot on her neck.
That was hardly a helpful image, she chided herself. Especially when her body responded to it as if it was something sexual.
And worse, delicious.
Lucinda eyed him. “Okay?” she echoed.
“Okay,” Jason said again. That impossible mouth of his curved and the gleam in his gaze turned considering. Or challenging. “Get changed. We’re going surfing.”
“Surfing?”
“I don’t think I stuttered, darlin’.”
Lucinda battled to keep her feelings off her face. Her palms ached, and she had to glance down to see that she was digging her own nails into her palms. She uncurled her hands. Painfully.
“You didn’t stutter. But I don’t surf.”
“Then it’s time to learn,” he told her, all drawl, heat and challenge and something she was very much afraid was anticipation all over him. “Because I don’t trust anyone who can’t ride a wave. And I certainly won’t negotiate with them.”
Obviously, the last thing Lucinda wanted to do was get in the water.
She hardly swam at all. She’d learned as a matter of course when she was a teenager, because she’d been born on an island and thought it was ridiculous not to know how to swim if the opportunity presented itself. It had been a practical decision. A matter of survival, like most things involving her childhood and her path out.
Surfing was something else entirely. The word itself made her bristle at the image of lanky blond men drooping over California beaches, all abs and lazy accents.
“I didn’t come here to swim,” she told Jason as crisply as possible. “I’m afraid I brought a very limited wardrobe with me, none of it appropriate for water sports.”
Jason was still lounging there on that couch, like some kind of deity surveying his universe in comfort. Lucinda scolded herself for the thought—but scolding herself didn’t change the fact that was how he looked.
“No worries.” His easy drawl made her think of heat. Light. The thick, sweet seduction of the tropical air—
Settle yourself, madam, she ordered herself, aware the voice in her head sounded a great deal like her mother’s.
“I certainly hope you’re not suggesting I simply toss off all my clothes and leap into the surf like some kind of demented mermaid,” she said tartly.
And instantly regretted the impulse. It was...not wise to talk about taking off clothes in the presence of a man like this. She understood the magnitude of her mistake instantly. She thought the air was already seductive, but suddenly it seemed to burn. As if there was a clenched hand around the both of them and it started to squeeze tight.
Lucinda couldn’t breathe. Her eyes felt wet, as if the tension was making her tear up. She felt much too hot to keep lying to herself about prickly heat or sun when she was sitting inside and the only source of heat anywhere around her was Jason.
Something changed on his face, making him look even more wicked and wild than before. And it didn’t help that there was so much of him. Naked and gleaming and right there—
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