Lola Carlyle Reveals All

Chapter 6

Lola set white rice on the back burner to boil, then mixed oregano, thyme, cayenne pepper, a dose of paprika, and a dash of salt into a bowl.

Anytime, Lolita, Max had practically whispered into her ear. Well, maybe not whispered, and not into her ear, he’d been standing too far away for that. But it had felt as if he’d whispered into her ear. He’d lowered his voice like an intimate caress that lifted the hair on the back of her neck. A not-altogether-unpleasant experience. Which was bad. Really bad. And dangerous.

The first night she’d seen Max, she’d known he was dangerous, she just hadn’t known the danger was in seeing him as a man, not as a thief and a pirate. She didn’t want to look into his battered face and see the stunning contrasts beneath the bruises. The light blue of his eyes and his dark skin and hair. The hard set of his jaw and chin conflicting with the fullness of a mouth that might appear soft on any other man, but not Max. His blood was made up of ninety-nine percent pure testosterone, leaving no doubt that he was one hundred percent heterosexual male.

She did not want to see Max the man. A man to slay dragons. A man who rescued damsels and drowning dogs, then caught and gutted the biggest fish.

Only after he’d admired his catch from every angle and bragged about its size as if it were the biggest fish ever taken alive did he finally gut all three fish. He’d flayed them like a pro, and since they’d caught more than they could eat at one meal, they’d packed half the snapper filets and the grouper in baggies and placed them in the back of the freezer.

While Lola had searched the galley for spices, Max had left to start the engines and clean up. In the pantry, she’d found fresh olive oil, five lemons, and the rice. While the rice cooked, she coated four fillets with the spices and added a dash of black pepper. When the olive oil was heated to the right temperature, she placed the fillets in the pan and cooked them for about seven minutes on each side.

She didn’t consider herself a gourmet cook, but part of her recovery from bulimia had been learning how to have a healthy relationship with food. Learning how to eat again. And learning how to eat meant learning how to cook more than one microwavable Lean Cuisine a day. She’d taken a few classes, but mostly she’d learned by reading the many cookbooks she’d collected from all over the world.

She owned a hundred and twelve of them, and some she couldn’t even read because they were written in French, Italian, or Spanish. She’d purchased them all during the last few years of her modeling career when her sickness had been out of control. When every thought had been of how many grams of fat in a chicken breast. Of pocket calorie counters and calculating how many minutes on the treadmill and stair-stepper to burn off a cup of yogurt. And then, ultimately, her total loss of control and her insane binges that always resulted in self-disgust and a trip to the bathroom.

Not a very glamorous picture, but Lola had been one of the lucky ones. She’d never picked up a needle or downed amphetamines, the price many paid for the glamorous life. The price for an unrealistic body image that the industry and the weight-conscious public demanded. Now, three years later, Lola still watched what she ate, but she watched to make sure she didn’t lose weight. Her personal trigger that could potentially start another downward spiral.

The galley door opened and Max entered, bringing a slice of the afternoon sun at his back and Baby at his bare heels. The top of his head only cleared the cabin ceiling by two inches, and it seemed he filled the space with his wide shoulders. He’d cleaned up and changed into a jeans shirt he’d found in the stateroom. It didn’t fit him, of course, and he’d had to slice off the short sleeves to accommodate his biceps. He’d left the front unbuttoned across his big chest.

“Smells like my favorite little restaurant in New Orleans,” he said as he moved to the dinette and poured two glasses of white wine she’d raided from the Thatches’ wine rack.

Lola arranged the blackened snapper and rice on a celadon platter and wished she had some yellow zucchini and butternut squash to go with it. She’d set the table with matching celadon plates and stainless flatware and placed the platter in the center of the table.

For Baby, she cooked what was left of the pretty blue fish, which, after cleaning, was just the right amount for her dog. Then the three of them sat down to lunch, Baby eating off a little plate on the floor.

Max dug into his meal with the enthusiasm of a man who clearly enjoyed food. He didn’t place his elbow on the table, chew with his mouth open, or lunge at his fork, but he was definitely a hearty eater. “This beats granola bars and crackers all to hell,” he said between bites.

Lola raised her glass and took a big swallow. His compliment pleased her more than it should have, and she had to remind herself to keep her guard up. This wasn’t some sort of social occasion, and he wasn’t her boyfriend or even her friend. She’d cooked lunch for him because she’d had to cook lunch for herself. It was survival. Nothing more.

As Lola took a bite of her fish, she looked into Max’s face. He still wore the white strips on his forehead and his left eye was badly bruised, but most of the swelling was gone. Sunlight from the windows lit up the table and shone on the chrome and wood of the appliances. The natural light cast an ethereal glow from the outside in, and none of it seemed real. Not him. Not her. Not the Dora Mae.

He glanced up, and beneath his dark brows and spiky black lashes his blue eyes stared directly into hers. Then he smiled and she had to force herself to swallow. She needed to go home. Not only did she have to find a private detective and get her life back, the longer she was around Max, the more she had to fight not to see him as a man. A man who, beneath the bruises, made a woman want to check her mirror and pop an Altoid. A man who could easily fold her to his big chest and make her believe everything would be okay. That he could take care of all of her problems. Only he was the person responsible for her problems.

She believed that he hadn’t meant to drag her into his life and into his flight from Nassau, that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he’d needed to get off the island in a hurry, and he hadn’t known she was on the yacht. Knowing and believing him shouldn’t have changed anything, but somehow it did. Since he’d saved Baby, she couldn’t make herself hate him anymore. On the contrary. The more he held back, the more he intrigued her.

Lola had never been accused of being patient or subtle and was dying to know more about him. “So,” she began, “if you aren’t CIA, are you one of those black operations guys?”

“Are we back to that?”

“Yes. If you’re retired from the Navy like you say, what sort of work do you do for the government?” She took several bites of rice and fish, then washed it down with her wine.

He polished off his snapper. “I could tell you,” he said as he reached across the table and stabbed another piece, the smooth play of his muscles drawing Lola’s attention. “But then I’d have to kill you.”

“Funny.” She set her glass on the table. “Why don’t you tell me the stuff that won’t get me killed?”

He laughed, and she was surprised when he actually told her. “Let’s just say that, hypothetically, some of the things the government might want done, can’t be done through regular channels. In those cases, they might want to contract out.”

“For example, what?”

“Maybe breaking into key installations or disrupting a convoy of illegal arms in Afghanistan.” He took a few more bites and chewed thoughtfully, as if he were weighing exactly what to tell her. “It’s no secret that the U.S. government has rules and guidelines for everything, and those rules deem certain things unacceptable as national policy. Hostile targets like chemical war plants can only be hit during bona fide military strikes. But by the time the military plans a strike and the President signs the order, the bad guys know about it and have moved their chemicals, or nuclear warheads, or whatever. One way for the U.S. to strike back and still retain deniability might be to subcontract one or two or even five people for covert hits.”

“And one of those people is you.”

“Maybe.”

“So, you are sort of a James Bond meets Jean-Claude Van Damme?”

He just smiled and continued to eat.

Lola ate also, but she was by no means through with her questions. “What’s the development group stuff you mentioned yesterday?”

“Naval Special Warfare Development Group.”

“Yeah, is that like a SEAL team?”

“Somewhat,” he informed her between bites. “Most of what DEVGRU does is classified and is a component of JSOC.”

“What’s a J-sock?”

“Joint Special Operations Command.”

She shook her head and raised her brows. “So, what did you do?”

He took a bite of rice and washed it down with his wine. “DEVGRU is a counterterrorist unit.”

“And?”

“And does exactly as the name implies, although the government will deny it. We also spent a lot of time and taxpayer money creating, testing, and evaluating tactics, weapons, and equipment. Which is how the government was able to make its bogus case against me.”

“Wait.” She held up one hand. “You tested equipment? Electrical equipment?”

“All kinds.”

A tiny burst of hope made her sit up straight. “Then you can make a new radio, right?”

He raised his gaze from his plate, and his brows were pulled together. “Lola, you melted the radio, the navigational system, and even the depth finder.”

She’d had help, but she didn’t bother pointing out his part in the destruction of the bridge. “Isn’t there something else you can use to make a new one?”

“What, my shoe?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about electronics.”

He leaned back in his seat. “Then take my word for it, there is no way to make radio contact with anything out there.”

Her burst of hope doused, she drained her wine and reached for the bottle to refill her glass. When she moved to refill his also, he placed his hand over the top.

“There is a bottle of red if you’d prefer it.” As Lola set the bottle back on the table, she felt the wine kick into her bloodstream, warming her from the inside out. Usually she wasn’t such a lightweight, but she figured because she’d lived off nothing more substantial than hors d’oeuvres, she was feeling it more than normal.

“No, thanks. Like your daddy’s cousins, I prefer beer from the bottle.”

He’d remembered what she’d said about her family. He’d been paying attention. In her experience, that was rare. More often than not, men paid more attention to how she looked than what she said. “And do you prefer to breed like a sailor on a weekend pass?” she asked before she thought better of it.

His fork stopped and he glanced up at her. “That’s a subject we definitely shouldn’t get into.”

Probably he was right. “Why not?”

“Because you don’t want to hear about horny sailors.”

No, she didn’t want to hear about sailors. Sitting in the sunlit galley where nothing seemed real anyway, she wanted to hear about Max Zamora. The guy who ate cobra for breakfast. “Did you have a girlfriend in every port?”

“Girlfriend?”

Baby jumped up onto the seat and curled up beside Lola. “Was there more than one?”

“You really want to know?”

Did she? Lola had traveled to just about every country in the world, and she’d seen a lot. Experienced some of it, too, but she’d bet she hadn’t seen or experienced anything like what Max had seen and experienced. “Why not?”

“Okay, but just remember you asked.” He leaned forward and placed his forearms on the table. “If you’re a young guy and are deprived of pu-” he stopped, seemed to reform his thoughts, then continued, “deprived of ass for months on end, pretty soon that’s all you think about. Once you reach port, you tend to go a bit crazy and hump anything with a pair of tits.” Once again he paused before he said, “Sorry about that, I meant breasts.”

Lola bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. She had to give him credit for at least trying to clean up his language for her, but if he thought he’d shocked her, he hadn’t. She’d been around too many bad-mouthed photographers, sleazy agents, and groping playboys to be shocked by what he’d said. Just because she didn’t use that sort of language herself didn’t mean she hadn’t heard it all before. Or that she hadn’t heard worse from men who thought that because they’d seen her in an underwear ad, she’d enjoy nasty bedroom talk whispered in her ear. “What about old guys?” she asked. “Do old guys tend to go crazy?”

He sat back. “Yes, but we know how to pace ourselves.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Do you want the juicy details?”

Her lips parted on a breath, and a vision of him popped into her head. A vision of his wide muscular chest, the short black hair that grew across his defined pecs and abdomen, and the dark treasure trove trailing down his flat belly and disappearing beneath the waistband of his wet boxer briefs. The gray cotton clinging to him and outlining his impressive goods. I could prove you wrong, he’d assured her earlier when they’d been discussing size. At the moment, she believed him.

He raised his gaze to hers, and sexual awareness charged the humid air, hot and vibrant and zipping through her bloodstream along with the wine. Vibrant and totally her fault. She’d been playing with fire.

One brow rose up his forehead, silently asking if she’d like to continue to play. She knew without a doubt that with a guy like Max, she’d definitely lose. He’d burn her alive. He was a win-at-all-costs kind of guy. All or nothing. And while Lola was by no means a prude, neither did she have sex with men she’d just met.

At the age of seventeen, she’d lost her virginity to a guy named Rusty, and she’d never been sorry. Unlike other women she knew, she’d never had a truly bad sexual experience, just different degrees of fair to fabulous. She had a feeling Max would fall in the latter category, but she’d only laid eyes on him two nights ago, and for most of the time, she hadn’t even liked him. She really didn’t want to like him now, although she couldn’t seem to help herself.

It was time to pull back. Time to change the subject. “So, where did you say you live?” she asked.

A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Alexandria, Virginia,” he answered, and the subject changed to the two-hundred-year-old town-house he was in the process of renovating.

She told him about starting her business, and about how she’d decided to base it in North Carolina because it was her home. He told her about his security company and how he’d started it because he needed a real job. The awareness between them cooled, fought back to a proper distance. But not completely gone. Once let out, it was there. Hanging between them, and like the humidity, she could almost touch it.

The air in the engine room was thick as tar and just as black. Max shone his flashlight on the four-hundred-and-forty-horsepower engine, then cut the power. Sweat trickled down his chest, and he grabbed a fistful of the front of the denim shirt and wiped his face. He swung the beam of light past the generators and freshwater tank, to the rudder and steering cylinder.

Maybe there was something he’d missed. Some way to navigate from the engine room. Another bead of sweat ran down his nose, and he moved to the hatch door. The sound of Baby’s yipping and Lola’s smooth reply to her dog reached his ears as he climbed from the belly of the yacht.

After lunch, she’d informed Max that she was going to bathe, and it was understood without her saying a word that he should busy himself elsewhere. She’d gathered up shampoo and soap and had taken her toothbrush from the glass of rum he’d placed it in earlier to soak. She hadn’t asked how it had gotten there, and he hadn’t enlightened her.

Max shut the hatch after him and couldn’t help but notice Lola’s red shawl and white shirt thrown in the fishing chair on deck. The ocean had calmed within the past hour, and Lola and her dog sat on the swimming platform below. Her bare legs dangled over the side. She’d washed her hair and it lay down her back in four big hunks. A pair of silky pink panties covered her butt, and she wore a pink lacy bra. With her back to him, he could just see the side of one of her breasts, but he didn’t need to see all of her to feel the impact like a kick to the groin. He’d tried to ignore the insistent ache since he’d almost kissed her that morning, but it had gotten much worse over the course of the day. Especially during lunch.

Turning on his heels, Max walked into the yacht. He pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. He was trapped. Yesterday he’d been content to ride the current for a few days and slowly drift toward Bimini. Now he wasn’t so sure he shouldn’t send up a signal and take his chances with the Cosellas. Lola was driving him crazy. He almost wished she’d go back to calling him names and looking at him as if he were going to assault her, not looking at him through her big brown eyes and asking about his sex life. Making him think about how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. Making him wonder what she’d do if he tossed up the red shawl she wore as a skirt and got busy, right there on top of the dinette. Just looking at her had him thinking about running his hands up her long legs and wrapping them around his waist.

Lola Carlyle was a threat to his sanity. A relentless attack on his senses, and there was no where he could go to get away from her. Nowhere to get away from the sight of her looking at him over the top of her sunglasses, or bathing in the ocean. Nowhere that the breeze didn’t carry the sound of her voice or the scent of her hair. And with each passing hour, it was getting more difficult to keep his hands to himself. More difficult to remember exactly why he should try.

Grabbing the binoculars, Max left the cabin and headed for the bridge, dragging the fishing chair with him. Lola had yet to return from the swimming platform, but Baby joined him. The little dog sat by Max’s foot as he looked through the binoculars, out at the vast rolling Atlantic, and saw nothing. Baby leaned into Max’s ankle and he lowered the binoculars and looked down at the little dog.

“What do you need?” he asked, but Baby seemed content just to sit beside him. To the left of the dog’s stubby tail lay the partially melted flare gun that had started the whole mess. Max picked it up and turned it over in his hands.

No, he wouldn’t use it to signal another vessel, no matter how insane Lola was making him. But it might come in handy when they drifted close to Bimini.

Stockholm syndrome. Baby had Stockholm syndrome, Lola decided. Ever since Max had pulled the dog from the ocean, he’d developed some sort of hero worship. He’d bonded with Max whether Max wanted to be bonded or not. And from where Lola sat on the sofa in the salon, it didn’t appear to be totally one-sided.

She peeked over the top of the Saltwater Fishing magazine she was trying to read without success, and into the galley. Max had spread maps out across the table, and he had to constantly scoot Baby out of his way.

“Get off that, B. D.,” he said as he drew a line on the map. He fiddled with the sextant a bit, then drew another line. The sun had set about an hour ago, and he’d once again started the engines. Overhead light poured over him and Baby, catching in his hair and the tips of Baby’s ears.

Lola didn’t know what to feel about Baby’s new attachment to Max. She’d never had to share him before, and she admitted feeling a bit jealous. But at the same time, she was glad her dog had finally found male companionship, no matter how temporary. Baby needed male influence in his life, and she was glad Max wasn’t threatening to throw him overboard or eat him any longer.

Lola rose and moved to the galley. “Have you figured out where we are?” she asked as she came to stand by the table.

He glanced up briefly. “Here,” was all he said, and pointed to the map.

She couldn’t believe she was back to pulling simple information out of him. “Where’s here?”

“About sixty miles southeast of Bimini.”

“How long before we reach it?”

“Can’t say. We didn’t make much progress today.” He picked up the melted flare gun, a fingernail file, and a tube of Super Glue.

“Now what are you doing?”

This time he didn’t even bother glancing up. “Making a radio, like you asked.” Then, without a word, he picked up a new pair of binoculars he’d found somewhere and shoved them toward her. “Do something useful.”

Okay, something had made him very cranky, and Lola thought it best to just leave the area. She grabbed the binoculars, moved outside away from the patches of light falling across the aft deck, and was swallowed by the darkness. Millions of stars crammed the skies, and she turned in a circle until she found the Big Dipper. Strong wind blew her hair across her face, and she tucked several strands beneath the collar of her blouse.

She raised the binoculars to her eyes and gazed out at the black Atlantic Ocean. Not only was Max cranky, but she was fairly certain he was avoiding her. Which was ironic. Yesterday she’d tried to avoid him, and today he was avoiding her.

It seemed to her that if she were at one end of the yacht, he stayed at the opposite end. At first she thought it was because he knew she was bathing and he wanted to give her privacy, but even after she’d dressed and found him on the bow of the boat, he’d simply handed her the binoculars and walked away without a word.

With the sun pouring though his black hair, he’d moved to the swimming platform, stripped to his underwear, and dove into the Atlantic. She’d sat at the bow with her legs dangling over the side. Binoculars in one hand, she’d watched him swim laps around the Dora Mae. Occasionally he would look up at her, but he never broke form and didn’t stop until he’d been at it for about an hour. No doubt about it, Max had been trying to avoid her since lunch.

The breeze ruffled the edge of her pashmina against her knees and gooseflesh rose on her bare legs. She gazed through the binoculars over the port side, out at the white tips of the waves several miles away. The yacht dipped and rose, and for a split second she thought she saw the blink of a light. Her heart leaped to her throat and pounded in her ears as she waited for it again. Long seconds passed and then she saw it once more.

“Max! Max, come out here. I think I see something,” she hollered. She didn’t want to go in and get him, fearing that if she lowered the binoculars, she’d lose sight of the light. When he didn’t appear, she screamed even louder. “Max, come out here now!”

“Jesus,” he swore as he walked from the galley. “What do you want?”

The light blinked again. “I see something. I see a light.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Max came up behind her, and his chest brushed her back. He reached for the binoculars and raised them to his eyes. “Where?”

No longer able to see it, Lola pointed. “Right out there. Do you see it?”

“No.”

“Look harder. It’s there.”

The sound of the waves hitting the sides of the yacht filled the air, and then, “Oh, yeah. There it is.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure. It’s too far away. It could be a vessel, or it could be a buoy.” He was silent for so long, Lola felt like screaming. Finally, he said, “It’s moving, so it’s not a buoy.”

“What should we do?”

“Nothing.”

“You can’t mean that. We have to do something!”

He lowered the binoculars, and through the darkness he looked into her eyes, but he remained silent.

“Please Max. Please do something.”

He continued to stare at her, and she was just about to plead again, when he finally said, “Get the remaining flares in the emergency kit. The gun is sitting on the table,” he continued, his deep voice cool and calm. “And turn on every light you find.”

If Max was calm and cool, Lola was the opposite. She rushed to the closet and grabbed the three remaining flares. She flipped on the light switches in the stateroom and both bathrooms. On her way back out, she snatched the gun off the table. “Is it still there?” she asked, out of breath as if she’d just done an hour on a treadmill.

“Yes, but it needs to move closer.”

“How close?”

“As close as possible.”

Her mouth was dry and she licked her lips.

“Lola?”

“Yes.”

“Take deep even breaths.”

Yeah right. “Okay.”

“If you hyperventilate again, you’re on your own.”

She placed a hand on her chest and pulled air deep into her lungs. She did not want to hyperventilate, pass out, and miss being rescued. “Is it moving closer?”

“Yes.” It seemed to Lola as if five minutes passed before he handed her the binoculars and she gave him the flare gun. “Stand back. I don’t know if this thing will work.”

Lola moved to the starboard side and watched through the darkness as Max loaded the gun.

“Call your dog,” he said, and once she held Baby close, Max raised his arm and fired. Nothing happened. “Fuck.” He pulled the hammer back once more and fired. This time a red ball shot from the barrel, the blast of the twelve-gauge shell louder than she remembered. The flare traveled at a ninety-degree angle for thirteen hundred feet before erupting like the Fourth of July. It lasted for six brilliant seconds, then burned itself out.

“It worked!” Too excited to stand still, Lola crossed the deck and looked out at where she knew the other vessel to be. “How long before they get here?”

“Not long, if they saw the flare.”

“How can they miss it?”

He took the binoculars from her, and she looked up into his face. Light from the interior spilled out onto the deck, and she noticed the grim line of his mouth. For a man who was about to be rescued he didn’t appear excited. “If they’re not looking for it, quite easily.” He raised the binoculars to his face and stared out at the Atlantic.

“Are they coming this way?” she asked, although she refused to believe that the other vessel hadn’t spotted the flare.

Without a word, he moved to the starboard side.

“Are they coming this way, Max?” she repeated as Baby jumped from her arms.

“It doesn’t look like it.” He lowered the binoculars and loaded the gun. The second flare fired on the first try and lit up the sky.

Lola took the binoculars and raised them to her eyes, but no matter how hard she looked, she saw no distant light hiding among the waves. “Where is it?”

“It’s traveling east, probably to Andros or Nassau.”

“I don’t see it.”

“That’s because it’s moving away from us now.”

“Fire another flare.”

“We should save the last one for when we drift closer to an island.”

“No!” She reached for the gun. Max wouldn’t release it. “They’ll see it this time and come back,” she protested. “Please, Max.”

Within the deep shadows and slices of light, Max looked down at her. Then, without a word, he loaded the gun and raised his arm. Like the other two, the third flare traveled at a ninety-degree angle and exploded in a red ball of fire.

“They had to see that one.” Lola closed her eyes and said a quick prayer. She promised God a lot of different things. She promised to pray more often- even when she didn’t need anything-and she ended by promising to attend Uncle Jed’s new church, a real Pentecostal bible-banger, complete with tent and miraculous healings.

When she looked through the binoculars again, she half expected to see the distant light once more. She saw nothing but the black pitch and roll of the Atlantic. “How could anyone with legal vision miss seeing those flares?”

“It’s late and everyone is probably inside. Unless someone is standing on the deck looking up, they would miss it quite easily.”

She strained her eyes looking for anything. A dim light, a shadow on the water.

“Lola, they’re gone now.”

“Maybe we just can’t see them turning around.” She heard Max and Baby move into the galley and return a few moments later. Her arms began to tire, but she refused to give up. She refused to think that she’d been so close to a rescue, only to have it slip away.

Max peeled one of her hands off the side of the binoculars and wrapped her fingers around a cool glass.

“Take a drink of water, Lola. You’re about to hyperventilate again.”

She wasn’t, but she finally lowered the binoculars and took a drink anyway. The cool liquid wet her dry tongue and throat and she downed it all at once.

“There will be other vessels,” he told her as he took the glass from her.

Lola looked into his face and burst into tears. Appalled, she pressed her hand to her mouth, but she could not stop the pent-up emotion and crushing disappointment from escaping. The more she tried, the harder it became to control until she was caught somewhere between uncontrolled sobs and hiccups. “I want that one, Max.”

He reached for her and pulled her into his broad chest. “Shhh, now. It’ll be okay.”

“No, it won’t,” she cried into the denim material covering his shoulder, finally giving in. “I want to go home. My family must be crazy with worry.” She shook her head and looked up into his dark face. “My daddy has high blood pressure and this will kill him for su-sure.” She curled her fists into the front of his shirt. “I want to go home, Max.”

He stared down into her face and brushed his warm palm up her spine. “I’ll make sure you get home,” he said. Then, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he lowered his mouth to hers.

“How?” she asked against the soft brush of his lips.

“I’ll think of something.” Then he kissed her.

This time there was no question of his intent. The firm press of his lips to hers made his intentions perfectly clear. He wasn’t helping her breathe, and he wasn’t asking permission. His finger plowed through the sides of her hair, brushing it back from her face and lifting it from her shoulders. He held her face in his palms, tilted her head back, and took advantage of her parted lips. His tongue swept into her mouth, warm and slick, instantly possessive and consuming. Lola wanted to be consumed. She wanted to forget about the rescue vessel slipping farther away, her family, her career, the humiliation of Sam’s porno site, and whether she would die out here. She wanted Max to take away the disappointment and fear that were so real they griped her throat. Within his embrace, she wanted him to make her believe everything would be okay.

The binoculars fell from Lola’s grasp, and she ran her hands down his shirt, then back up again, feeling beneath her palms the sold wall of his chest, the bunch and flex of his ripped muscles responding to her touch, the overwhelming strength of him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and raised onto the balls of her bare feet. One of his hands slid to the small of her back and brought her closer. The ridge of his erection pressed into the crease of her thigh and pelvis, and the kiss immediately turned hotter, wetter. With their mouths and tongues, both of them fed the desire running through their veins and threatening to consume them.

Like the flare Max had shot into the night sky, the kiss burned hot and intense and raised the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. It spread to the places her body touched his, her belly, breasts, and hands. To the places untouched, her behind, down the backs of her legs, her toes.

The yacht rode the waves of the ocean, pitching the deck starboard before righting once again. Max spread his feet wide and let the natural rise and fall of the yacht grind his hard penis against her. The erotic rhythm drew a deep groan from his chest and left her aching for more.

He slid his moist mouth to the side of her throat, and Lola leaned her head to one side to give him better access. The tip of his tongue touched her ear, then he whispered her name, a warm caress filled with rough longing. He worked his way to the base of her throat and paused to suck the sensitive flesh in the hollow as one of his hands unbuttoned her shirt. Before Lola could decide if she wanted her blouse removed, he peeled her shirt from her shoulders, down her arms, to her elbows.

A fleeting thought about quick hands flitted through her head as he kissed a warm path across her collarbone. Then one of those fast hands found her breast through her bra. She sucked in her breath as her nipple instantly hardened in his hot palm, and she knew she’d better stop him before they went too far.

“Lola,” he whispered against her neck, and instead of stopping him, she raised his head and brought his mouth back to hers. His hand tightened possessively on her breast, then relaxed. Through the lace of her bra, he brushed his palm across her nipple. Perhaps she did not want to stop. Maybe she wanted to go wherever Max would take her. There was something about him. Some elusive thing she chased with her tongue. Something hot and vibrant and bigger than she. Something that turned the pit of her stomach hot and hungry. Something dangerous that made her want to shed her morals along with her clothes. She moved her hands to the front of his shirt and pushed the denim apart. In the grip of a wild hunger she hadn’t felt in a very long time, she combed her fingers through the short fine hair on his chest, her other palm skimming the hard muscles of his stomach. Max Zamora was intriguing and frightening. Brute strength and supreme confidence. He was physical perfection.

Max stepped back from the kiss and looked into her eyes as he took her hand in his. “Come inside,” he said, and turned toward the door.

The thought of getting naked in front of Max gave her just enough pause to stop her from eagerly following him. She was no longer the thin perfect model who posed in magazines and on bulletin boards. Her hips were rounder. Her butt bigger. Would he compare her to her former self? Everyone did. Would he be disappointed that she was no longer fashion’s image of perfection?

While a part of Lola urged her to follow Max wherever he wanted to take her, her sanity and reason returned just enough to allow her to pull her hand from his. “We can’t do this, Max,” she said on a deep shuddering breath, and pulled her shirt back up her arms. No matter how much she might want to, no matter that her body ached for him to run his hand all over her, she couldn’t make love with Max.

His chest rose and fell as he drew air into his lungs. “We can do anything we want, Lola,” he said, his voice raw with desire. “There is no one around to stop us.” He reached for her again, but she stepped back and he only grasped air.

“Making love right now is a very bad idea.” She couldn’t look at him as she buttoned her blouse, afraid she’d see the hunger in his eyes. Afraid she’d give in to the hungry throb low in her belly.

“There are things we can do besides making love, Lola. We can start off by rolling around and getting sweaty, see where that takes us.”

“No, I’m not going to the stateroom with you.”

“Great, we’ll do it here. On the deck, against the gunwale, in the fishing chair. At this point, I am not choosy.”

“Max, that’s not funny.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts.

“Damn right it’s not.” Frustration seeped into his voice and cut through the darkness. “Until two seconds ago, you acted like we were interested in the same thing.”

He was right. She had been interested, but then sanity had intervened at the last minute. “We don’t know each other, and sex would be a mistake.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

She finally looked up, into his dark face, and saw the clench of his jaw and the grim line of his mouth. “Until I cooked you lunch, you didn’t even like me.”

“I liked you.”

“You didn’t act as if you did.”

“I liked you just fine.” He let out a breath then added, “You’ve grown on me.”

She didn’t think she could take such high praise. “You make me sound like mold.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Not now, Lola.”

She wasn’t a child, to be dismissed so easily. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not up for one of those irrational conversations women insist on having before, during, and after sex, where everything gets turned around and I become the bastard.”

“Because I won’t have sex with you, that makes me irrational?”

“No, that makes you a-”

“Don’t say it Max,” she interrupted.

He did anyway. “Cock tease,” he finished.

Lola’s gaze narrowed. “That was crude.”

“Yeah, well, I’m in a crude mood. And if you stay out here, I’m liable to get a lot cruder.” He blew out a breath and dropped his hands. “So, do me a favor and go in the cabin. Unless, of course, you want to come over here, stick your hand down my pants, and finish what we started.”

Lola had been born blond, but she hadn’t been born stupid. She turned on her bare heels and walked into the galley.