CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
Harris could feel his pulse jerking in his throat. It was a clumsy kiss, urgent and inexpert, but it was all the more arousing for that.
She tasted so sweet, so hungry, and he was almost out of his mind with his need for her.
He pressed a kiss against her cheekbone, then her throat, then he opened her mouth with his tongue, deepening the kiss, tasting her, savouring her flavour—
His breath hitched as he thought about all the places he was going to kiss her. And lick her. He was going to lick that soft, pale skin until it gleamed like freshly poured cream and then he would lick inside her too.
He shuddered inside.
But first he needed to strip her, and, with his mouth still fused to hers, he reached for the hem of her T-shirt.
Eden moaned against his mouth, pulling away enough to make him growl an objection until he realised that she was tugging her top over her head.
He watched, his blood throbbing heavily through his limbs as she slid the straps of her bra down over her shoulders and he leaned in to lick her nipples.
Her hand fluttered against his arm, and he widened his mouth, sucking the swollen tip. She was gripping his arm now, fingers tightening as he licked and nipped and tongued first one then the other nipple.
A trembling warmth was creeping over his skin. He was so hard already—
Pulling back, he stared down at her, his heart raging in his chest, and then he found her mouth and parted her lips, kissing her hard, nudging her back towards the bed until she had no option but to teeter backwards and he had no option but to follow because their mouths were still fused.
They kissed hungrily and then he jerked backwards and pulled off her shorts and then dropped to his knees and pushed his face between her thighs, breathing in her scent, sensing the wetness beneath, stretching the cotton panties with his thumbs so that he could see the outline of her damp curls.
It felt indecent. Exquisite.
For a moment, he just stayed there, his hand gripping the bedspread, trying to steady himself, wanting to live in that moment, on the cusp for ever—
She arched then, pushing forward impatiently, and he hooked his thumbs under the waistband and slid her panties over her legs.
Now she was bare to him.
Soft. Wet. Warm. His.
He placed open-mouthed kisses up either thigh, feeling her tremble against his tongue, and then he parted her thighs gently with his hands, sliding the palms beneath the curves of her bottom, lifting her fractionally like an artist arranging a model, and then he lowered his mouth and licked.
She was slick, and blood-hot and so soft except her clitoris, which was as taut and swollen as her nipples, and he wanted to keep tasting her for ever.
Her fingers were tight in his hair now, biting into the roots, the pain overlapping the pleasure he was feeling vicariously through her moans as she lifted herself against his mouth, rolling back and forth chasing the tip of his tongue.
He moved then, placing one hand on her hip bone just as he had done in the hotel all those weeks ago, anchoring her to him as he found her clitoris, grazing it with his incisors, sucking it fiercely into his mouth, then nipping it gently, then a little harder—
She swore then, breathing out the one-syllable word as if it had five syllables, and then she thrust forwards, body flexing against his mouth—
‘Harris, Harris…’ Her fingers twisted his hair as she pulled him onto the bed beside her.
Her fingers groped for his groin, clutching the front of his jeans as she felt the size of his erection.
‘I want you inside me,’ she breathed.
‘Are you sure that—’
‘Dr Krantz said it would be okay.’ She was panting, pushing him back against the bed, reaching for his zip.
‘Eden—’ His voice was ragged, her name becoming a groan as she managed to free him, her fingers moving lightly, almost reverentially to trace the veins beneath the velvet-smooth skin. Exhaling sharply, he snatched her wrist as she straddled him.
‘I can control the depth this way…’
Good , he thought, because he couldn’t control anything.
She was lowering herself down onto the tip of his erection, and it was her turn to set the pace, dipping back and forth, curving herself in a way that he felt everywhere.
‘Like that, like that,’ he chanted, swearing under his breath as she dipped again because this time she stayed low, then pushed lower still and stopped. The feel of her stretching around him was almost enough to tip him over the edge and now he was panting too, his breath scraping up through his throat in time to the rocking motion of her hips.
His hands moved to clamp her waist and he rocked against where she was so warm and pliant, lifting her slightly so that he could withdraw and brush the blunt head against her clitoris, and he could hardly breathe through what was undoubtedly the most potent pleasure he’d ever experienced.
She made a choking sound as she slid down onto him again and he came, quicker than expected, hotter and harder than he’d ever come before, his body spilling inside her, his mind wiped clean of everything except the rightness of it all.
She was shaking, he was too, or at least his arms were and, gently, he lifted her up and instantly had to stifle the yelp that rose in his throat because it felt as though he’d been cut adrift like an astronaut floating off into space. He tipped her gently to one side and she slithered onto the mattress, her warm breath shuddering on his chest as he scooped her against him.
‘Eden…’
He pulled her closer, sliding his leg between her thighs so that he could feel her wetness and his combined.
She was his, he thought, pulling her closer, his mouth seeking hers, then dropping to the pulse raging in her throat and licking a line back to her mouth, his hand sliding over to where their sweat was pooling on her still-flat belly.
Always his.
Eden woke with a jerk to darkness. Every day since that first time with Harris she had woken abruptly, feeling lost, displaced, confused. Not today. Today she knew exactly where she was even though this was a strange bed.
She knew because Harris was here too, lying beside her, breathing softly, his arm draped across her waist, tethering her to him. They could never be strangers. Had never been strangers, she thought, remembering how she had felt the morning after in the hotel. It had been so hard to leave him because it was like trying to separate herself from her shadow.
Or her soul.
Unnerved by the unfamiliar poetry of her thinking, she shifted position, turning away from the beautiful man who had dominated her thoughts ever since that night in the bar and now felt like a fixed presence in her life.
Like the moon.
She stared up at where it sat in the inky night sky, pale and serene and unchanged from when she had stared up at it as a little girl who dreamed of finding, not a prince, but a man with integrity and stamina and strength of character.
Liam had acted like that man. But he was a charlatan. A snake oil salesman.
Harris was everything that Liam was not.
Her cheeks stung suddenly.
What must the villa staff have thought? They had spent the rest of the day in bed. Although Harris must have got up at one point and gone downstairs because when she’d woken up in the early afternoon, there had been a tray of food waiting for her.
He had brought cutlery and napkins too, but they had been like survivors of a storm. She hadn’t even bothered to thank him. She had just started to eat, picking up pieces of fried chicken with her fingers. And he’d watched her, making sure she had some of everything before he’d started to eat. Looking out for her. Taking care of her.
She felt blissfully relaxed, as if every piece of tension had been smoothed flat by a hot iron. Unsurprisingly, given that the first time she’d ridden him to a shuddering climax had been just the beginning. And after each subsequent time, he would pull her close, and she would collapse against him, her body spent and limp and her muscles inside fluttering like a kaleidoscope of butterflies.
That was a good description, she thought, her hand moving lightly over the muscles of his chest. She had read about people who experienced life in colours—synaesthesia, that was what it was called. It was when two senses merged into one. Sex with Harris was like being at the centre of an opal. It was not just a physical act but a metaphysical one.
An act of love.
She stiffened against the mattress, panic stealing the breath from her lungs.
No, she wasn’t looking for love. In fact, she was actively avoiding it. Avoiding anything that might lead her down that self-destructive path. Liam had cured her of thinking that was ever an option for her and, even if a part of her dreaded becoming yet another Fennell woman raising a baby on her own, it would be different with Harris.
They might not be together, but she wouldn’t be on her own. He was already more involved than her father had been at this stage. Look at how quickly he had arranged the scan, and earlier he had made sure she ate.
She felt a pang of guilt, remembering his expression of relief when he’d seen the baby alive and well on the screen. Had he known for sure it was his, then he would have been able to fully express his excitement. They could have been excited together.
If only she hadn’t panicked when he’d turned up at her apartment. But if she had told him that he was the father, would he have taken her word for it? It seemed unlikely. The paternity test would give him the certainty he needed, and, for the first time since she had found out she was pregnant, she wished she could bring the date forward.
‘Eden—’
She blinked as Harris’s voice cut across her thoughts. Moments earlier, his eyes had been closed, but now he was rolling onto his elbow and looking down at her, his grey eyes silver in the moonlight.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I was looking at the moon.’ But it was forgotten now; its gravitational pull had nothing on Harris, and, clutching blindly at his muscled arm, she leaned into him, feeling her body soften and open for him once more.
‘I thought we might go down to the beach this morning. We can take a swim and then I could show you the rock pools.’
Eden glanced over at Harris. They had spent almost every minute of the last few days together, so it was easy for her to press her hands to her mouth and mime shock. ‘I thought the sea and the rocks were off-limits. Aren’t you breaking your own rules, Mr Carver?’
He caught her ankle and tugged her towards him gently beneath the table so that her chair scraped against the decking. ‘I prefer to see it as unmaking them.’
She raised an eyebrow, her green eyes dancing in the sunlight. ‘In other words, there’s one rule for you and one rule for everyone else.’
‘I’m the boss, remember? There are no rules for me.’
‘But you haven’t always been the boss,’ she said after a moment, still teasing him.
Not as a child, no. Then he’d been powerless to change anything in his life. He’d been as small and irrelevant as a pawn on a chessboard. And that feeling had got worse after the divorce, because both his mother and his father had been so eager to pursue the life they’d each wanted without the other that he had been forgotten in the rush to move on.
Which was probably why becoming wealthy and powerful had felt so good, feeling stronger and more authoritative than everyone around him. He hadn’t misused his power. He wasn’t a bully but for the first time in his life he was in control. He felt safe being the boss, and staying safe meant keeping his life free of anything random or spontaneous.
His thumb twitched against the skin of Eden’s ankle.
Like picking up a beautiful stranger in a bar and renting a hotel room for a night.
And yet he couldn’t regret that night. He didn’t regret it.
He couldn’t even completely regret turning up at her apartment because it had brought them both to this island. Brought Eden into his bed.
If he had a regret, it was that he’d not woken first that morning at the hotel. Had he done so, he would have made it clear to her that he wanted it to be exclusive between them.
The idea of another man being with Eden, doing what he had done, touching her, caressing her, opening her body to his, made him want to smash things. He had never felt that way about any woman before. So possessive, so proprietorial. So jealous. Not even with Franny, his ex, the woman he’d got into a physical fight over with Tiger.
But then, despite what he’d said at the time, that fight had been as much about Tiger’s betrayal as hers.
More, in fact, because he hadn’t loved Franny.
And yet when he thought about it now, it all seemed so long ago, and it was hard to see why it had felt so important.
Why did it matter if Tiger had hooked up with one of his exes a decade ago? As for Franny, maybe she had sensed that his heart wasn’t in it. Which, he could see now, was a betrayal of a different kind.
He glanced across the table. Eden had been hurt a lot, and betrayed too in the most devastating way, but she hadn’t gone after Liam with the sole, precise purpose of ruining his life. Nor had she risked everything she’d worked so hard to build simply to prove to the world once and for all that she was the bigger and better person.
Even though she was.
She was certainly a far better person than him. He thought back to the moment when she’d thanked him for taking her to the scan. How would she feel about him if she knew he had a daughter living on the other side of the world? A daughter whose scan he hadn’t attended. He hadn’t been there for her birth. Or her first steps. Or her first day at school.
‘I haven’t always been the boss, no. And I’m not your boss, Eden,’ he said softly. He gave her ankle one last caress, then released her. ‘In fact, I’m in awe of you.’
Her eyes found his. ‘I thought you wanted me to be subservient to you.’
His body tensed, and it took a second, several actually, before he could speak. ‘Two things can be true at once.’
‘Schrodinger’s cat, you mean.’ She held his gaze and then abruptly got to her feet. ‘I think they can. But maybe we should test that theory. And keep testing it until we know for sure.’
They made it down to the beach after lunch for the promised expedition to the rock pools. From a distance they looked empty but up close they were home to a surprising amount of sea creatures.
‘It’s even more crowded than New York,’ she said, leaning over to peer at the underside of a rock that was covered in spiny sea urchins. ‘Although it’s a lot quieter.’
‘Do you mind the quiet?’ he asked curiously.
‘Of course not. Quiet is how I measure my success, remember?’
His heart stumbled as she smiled. ‘Or perhaps you were too busy gunning for me to listen to what I was saying.’
‘Gunning for you?’
‘That first interview. With Avery. You were so furious with me—’
‘It was more the situation.’ He stopped as she rolled her eyes. ‘Okay, yes, I was furious with you. And with myself for not reading up on who I was meeting.’ Because I was too busy thinking about you , he thought. Busy and bereft too. As if he had misplaced something precious. ‘For a moment I thought I was dreaming and that any moment I was going to start falling out of an airplane—’
She laughed. ‘In my dreams I feel like my teeth have fallen out. Or that I’m naked.’
‘I wish I was in your dreams,’ he said softly and as her eyes met his, he thought he had never felt more rooted in the reality of his body, and his need for her.
Ducking her chin, she lowered her gaze back to the water. ‘Why do you think they’re called urchins? It seems such an odd name. I thought it meant some scruffy child.’
‘It comes from an old Latin word that means hedgehog, which was what they used to be called, I believe.’
‘Sea hedgehogs.’
‘Exactly.’ He nodded. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ She was staring at him, curious and a little confused and perhaps also with something that bizarrely felt like delight. ‘I thought you were an engineer, not a biologist.’
He pulled her closer. ‘I’m very interested in biology.’
It was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was cloudless and there was a light breeze that made the water dance and shimmer. Not that he cared. Frankly he could have been standing in the middle of a desert. He only had eyes for Eden. The sight of her in a bikini made it almost impossible to keep his hands off her. So, he didn’t.
And she was as eager to touch him.
‘I think it must be my hormones.’
‘Are you saying I could be any man?’ Sweeping aside the swathe of dark, glossy hair, he leaned in and kissed her throat, licking the salt of her skin, his body hardening as he felt shivers of anticipation ripple through her body.
‘Well, any billionaire with a villa on a Caribbean island and a private jet and a helicopter— Ouch!’
She twisted out of his arms as he nipped the apple tattoo on her shoulder, but then leaned back into him almost immediately, pressing the curve of her bottom against his already hardening erection.
‘He doesn’t exist. I’m the only one.’
‘My one and only.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him, biting into the smile curving her mouth.
Yes , he thought, gazing down at her mutely, except looking wasn’t enough. It rarely was, he found, and he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist. Fitting his mouth to hers, he kissed her fiercely.
He’d never been one for love bites or tattoos, but he wished there were some way he could mark Eden as his.
‘If you keep touching me like that we’re going to have to go back to the villa,’ she said, her voice husky, her hand curling over his to flatten it against her body in a way that knocked the air out of his lungs.
‘Why? It’s a private beach.’
‘Not that private.’ Shielding her eyes, she tilted her head back and he followed her gaze across the water to where a yacht had dropped anchor. She cut a glance in his direction. ‘Do you have one of those too?’
‘Yes. Mine’s a lot bigger.’
‘Is that what you say to all the women you bring here?’
She was teasing him, but he shook his head. ‘I’ve never brought anyone here,’ he said, surprising them both because he could never be accused of oversharing. But Eden had told him so much about herself and her life and all he had given her in return were some half-truths about his relationship with Tiger.
‘This place is just for me. And you,’ he added softly.
For a split second, her eyes were naked to him, and he watched a series of emotions flicker in the green irises.
‘As for the yacht, I mostly use it for business meetings.’ He grimaced. ‘I know that must sound crazy, but it makes a lot of sense for people like me who work in sensitive industries. It means we can talk freely away from prying eyes.’
‘I can understand that. At least they’re not photographers.’ She turned to him, biting her lip. ‘Or could they be?’
He shook his head. ‘No, they’d be snapping away by now. They don’t hold back. Particularly if there’s a beautiful woman in a bikini on show.’
A flush of pink seeped into her cheeks. ‘I think they prefer their women in bikinis to be more glossy and less unkempt.’
‘Glossy is fake. Your beauty is natural. Untouched. Except by me,’ he said, leaning in to brush his cheek against hers. He meant every word. Without make-up and with her hair loose and grains of sand sticking to her skin, Eden looked like some Girl Friday and her beauty was all the purer for it.
He had kept his hand around her waist, but his thumb was stroking the smooth skin there as if she were a piece of fruit he was testing for ripeness.
He could think of other, better tests only they would involve nudity and more privacy than the beach was currently offering, and he glared at the yacht, tamping down his irritation at not being able to take Eden in his arms again. ‘I suppose you’re right. Al fresco sex on a beach in front of a bunch of day trippers might not be the most sensible course of action for someone with a reputation crisis.’
She frowned at him. ‘Former reputation crisis, you mean—which reminds me… I might just have a quick browse online. Can I borrow your phone? What? It’ll take two minutes and it will help me relax.’
‘Fine. Two minutes and then we go back to the villa.’
Rolling over, he grabbed his phone. He felt weirdly jealous and annoyed that he was having to compete with himself for Eden’s attention.
‘Here.’
He watched her type in his name.
‘What the—’
She was staring at the phone as if it had turned into a snake.
‘What is it?’ His hand stiffened against the sand. ‘What are they saying?’
‘It’s not about you. It’s Tiger McIntyre. He’s engaged!’
He waited for anger to swell against his ribs, but he felt nothing, except curiosity.
‘Really? I never had him down as the marrying type. Who is she? I hope she’s smart enough to keep him interested—’
‘She’s a white hat hacker, whatever that is, so I guess she’ll keep him on his toes.’
There was a knot in his throat that made it hard to breathe.
‘A hacker?’
Eden nodded. ‘Her name’s Sydney Truitt— What is it? What’s the matter?’
She was looking at him, her face still, frozen with something that was on the way to confusion, and he knew why, knew that the shock, the utter disbelief, maybe even the panic he was feeling must be completely visible on his face. But he didn’t know how to hide it, because she had made him soften, made him open a crack, and he was angry with her for doing that to him, and angry with himself for letting her, and so when he replied, his voice was taut and defensive.
‘Nothing.’ The lie stung. He didn’t want to lie, and he couldn’t look at her while he did so he glanced away, fixing his gaze on the yacht. ‘I’m just surprised Tiger’s settling down.’
Eden was still staring at him, and, slowly, she shook her head. ‘But you weren’t.’ Her green eyes roamed over his face. ‘Not really. Not when I first told you. You were just interested—’
‘So, I had a delayed reaction.’
‘But that’s my point. You didn’t react. Not until I told you about Sydney.’
This time he managed to keep his voice level when he heard the name. ‘You don’t need to monitor my responses any more, Eden. Your contract ended days ago.’
‘Do you know her?’ The bluntness of her question made him blink. But the answer would be too exposing.
‘No.’ He shook his head, the lie vibrating inside him and there was nowhere to look where it wouldn’t still be a lie. ‘I’ve never met her.’
At the shoreline, tiny waves were rippling over the sand, then withdrawing to leave it spotless. If only he could rewrite his past as easily. Beside him, Eden shifted position, and his palms itched to touch her again but there was something brittle about her posture, as if touching her might cause her to break apart.
‘That’s a little baffling,’ she said flatly. ‘You see, this article has a quote from Sydney Truitt saying that it was you who introduced her to Tiger.’
‘Eden—’
‘How do you know her?’ She cut him off. ‘And don’t tell me she’s lying.’
‘She’s not lying. But she’s certainly twisting things.’
‘Why would she do that?’ She breathed in sharply as if he’d upended a bucket of cold water over her. ‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘No.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘She worked for me, okay? Just briefly. I only met her once—’
‘Then why is she saying you introduced her to Tiger McIntyre? Why would you even do that? You hate him. You told me you hadn’t spoken to him for years.’
‘I haven’t and I didn’t introduce them.’ He hesitated, because in a way he had. ‘Not directly—’
‘Then why…why would she—’
Her voice faltered and he saw it first in her beautiful green eyes, her brain stumbling over the truth, the dawning realisation of what she was looking at, of what he had done.
‘She’s the hacker, isn’t she? She’s the one you paid to hack McIntyre’s server.’
He stared down at her, watching an overlapping slideshow of emotions cross her face it, and the incongruity of their swimsuits seemed to highlight the cruelty of his simple, ‘Yes.’
But he couldn’t lie to her when she was looking at him like that. As though she was struggling to breathe.
She flinched, her green eyes widening, and abruptly the slideshow stopped, settling on anguish. His heart felt as if it were splitting in two. He had never felt so wretched or so alone.
‘Eden—’
‘Don’t.’ She was getting jerkily to her feet. ‘Whatever it is you’re going to say, don’t bother.’
‘I can explain—’ He was standing now, moving closer, holding up his hands because he needed her to stay, to listen, to understand.
‘I’m sure you can.’ She was inching back from him as if he were a rattlesnake. ‘Men like you always have an explanation for everything, and it’s always so believable, so eloquent. But I don’t need to hear any more lies.’
‘I’m not going to lie to you.’
She was moving now, her stride clumsy and uneven as she walked.
‘You know, funnily enough, that doesn’t carry much weight right now, Harris. Because you are a liar. A compulsive liar. You don’t even know you’re doing it, or maybe you do, and you just don’t care—’
‘I do care. But you have to understand, he stole from me, and I was trying to prove that.’
‘What about Avery? Does she know?’
‘No, she doesn’t know anything about it. None of the C suite do. I met Sydney on my own. I know, it was stupid, but when I heard about the prototype of the drill that was exactly like ours, I was so furious with him.’
‘So, you lied to Avery too.’
‘I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell her about it because—’
‘Because you knew it was wrong. And they would have stopped you.’
‘Yes. But they didn’t need to find out.’ He hated how she was looking at him. As if she was seeing him for who he really was. ‘Look, Tiger plays dirty. If he wanted to shaft me, he wouldn’t do it obliquely. He’s warning me off, but that’s all it is, a warning. It doesn’t matter.’
He reached for her wrist, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘It does matter. It matters to me.’ Her green eyes slammed into him. ‘You know, weeks ago I asked you if there was anything I should know, anything that might come out, and you never said a word. Not then, not afterwards. And I stood beside you. But what if this comes out?’
They were back at the villa and now she seemed to notice his hand on her wrist, and she began to tug at it. ‘I’ll look like a fool. My career will be over.’
He tried to pull her closer.
‘That’s not going to happen. I would never let that happen to you.’
Eden hadn’t felt nauseous for days but now she felt sick again. He made everything sound so plausible. Made her believe in him. Because, just like the last time, she had wanted to believe.
‘Forgive me if I don’t take your word at face value, Mr Carver.’ She glanced up the beach. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t be here. With you. With someone who lies and thinks that it doesn’t matter.’ Her hand moved protectively over her stomach. ‘I thought you were a good person. I thought you were different, but you’re not. You’re a liar. But guess what?’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘So am I. I didn’t sleep with anyone else. I said that because I was angry with you, and scared. But I wish I had.’
‘Don’t say that—’
‘Why not? It’s true. You don’t deserve to be a father.’
His face stilled. She had wanted to hurt him like he was hurting her, but she had assumed he would react, deny her words or tell her that she was a hypocrite as well as a liar. But he said nothing. He just stared at her, an expression on his face that she didn’t understand because it didn’t make sense. He looked stricken.
Haunted.
‘Yes, you’re right. I don’t. I’m just grateful it took you this long to work that out,’ he said slowly. ‘If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. Use the jet.’ There was a strange brightness to his eyes now and, for a moment, he hesitated as if he was going to say something else, but then he sidestepped past her and walked back down the beach.