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“Whore,” the voice gritted out. “Sinners.”
Blank incomprehension was all Tom’s mind could muster to the unexpected words. But as he regained his senses bit by bit, he became aware of evil radiating from the stranger. Malice rolled off the man in waves as every bit as powerful as the ocean’s fury beside them.
The guy leaped.
In sheer reflex, Tom exploded into motion, rolling away from the pouncing attack, carrying the girl with him, covering her protectively with his body, presenting his back to the attacker. Something slashed past him, burying itself in the sand where they’d been lying, not a second before. Agonizing pain sliced across his back. His skin melted like butter before a hot knife. A knife. The bastard had just cut him!
Tom surged up onto his hands and knees, driven by the pain, some primitive part of his brain taking over completely. On pure instinct, he leaped to his feet and whirled, dropping low into a fighting crouch, his hands outstretched before him. Killing rage roared through his brain. This wasn’t fight or flight. This was kill or be killed. Fury erupted from his throat in a feral snarl.
The attacker was already running, a dark shadow fleeing up the beach and melting into the jungle beyond. Tom lunged forward, intent on catching his prey and crushing him, when a mewl of distress from behind drew him up short.
The woman.
Reluctantly, he turned away from the trees and dropped to his knees beside her. Had the bastard hurt her with that deflected knife slash?
Quick concern sent his hands skimming over her baby-soft skin. No dark welling of blood marred her body anywhere. He squatted on his heels and pushed her wet, stringy hair away from her face.
His mind stumbled. Arielle? No, not Arielle. Not even asleep had she ever looked this sweet. This angelic. Who was this woman he’d apparently picked up and made love to on the beach, if her mostly unclothed state was any indication?
He plucked at the scrap of cloth clinging to her slender shoulder. The edge of it was black. Almost charred-looking. No accounting for fashion among the jet-set party girls who came to the South Pacific to play, far from the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
A remembered flash of something black blinked past his mind’s eye. Sprinkled with round shapes. He frowned. Reached for the vision again. Dials of some kind.
An airplane instrument panel. What did that have to do with anything?
The woman at his feet groaned. He ran his fingers across her forehead and down her cheek to the graceful, elegant line of her neck. She reminded him of an expensive Persian kitten. Even soaking wet and passed out cold, she was stylish. How in the hell had he landed a classy act like her? She was way out of his league these days. He had to give himself credit; he’d sure picked himself a looker. Man, the two of them must have painted the town red. He wished he remembered it.
He shrugged, and the movement sent glass-sharp daggers streaking across his back. The pain accomplished more to clear the cobwebs from his mind than anything else, so far. Tom glanced up at the jungle and then back down at the unconscious woman at his feet. They had to get out of here before that sicko came back to finish them off.
Who was that bastard, anyway? And why in the hell had he tried to stab this woman? Or maybe the guy’d been after him. Lord knew, he had plenty of enemies of his own who could account for the attack.
He reached down and scooped her up in his arms, startled at how light she was. What were the odds he could stretch their one-night stand into two? And this time he would stay stone-cold sober. He’d give his right arm to remember making love to a woman like this.
Chapter 2
A blinding flash of light, followed in a moment by a giant crack of thunder, finally roused Maddie to full consciousness. Groggily, she reminded herself that she was no longer Maddie Crummby, farm kid from central Illinois. She was Madeline C., world traveler and hotel connoisseur. At the moment, it didn’t seem to really matter, though. She felt…floppy. And the universe was moving rather oddly around her.
She blinked her gritty eyes open and was startled to see a solid wall of darkly tanned skin. And muscle. Acres of it. What the—She jerked upright, or at least tried to. Strong arms gripped her tightly, preventing her from actually moving more than her pinkie fingers.
“Easy, kitten. I’ve got you.”
She looked up at the deep, raspy voice. The hunky pilot who’d been flying her to Vanua Taru, who yelled at her to bail out of the airplane just before it blew up, whose life she’d saved in that interminable swim, on whose chest she’d collapsed when they finally reached shore. His name came back to her. Tom.
What a chest. Muscles rippled beautifully over it, not so thick as to be ungainly, but manly in no uncertain terms. She snuggled closer until it dawned on her what she was doing. She stiffened abruptly.
“You can put me down. I’m fine,” she said quickly.
He let her feet slide slowly to the ground, which had the startling effect of pressing her body against his from her neck to her toes for an unforgettable instant. Heat built between them like chain lightning, flashing back and forth, faster and faster until it painted a dizzying chaos of light and heat in her eyes.
She clung to his strength, steadying herself as his hot skin scalded her palms. His dark eyes glowed down at her, the only steady reference point in her spinning world.
“Maybe I should carry you,” he murmured. His arm tightened around her preparatory to picking her up once more, pulling her close against that magnificently naked chest of his again. She couldn’t help it. She melted into him like warm butter soaking into fresh bread. An urge to lick his chest, to see if it was as rich and delicious as she imagined, overcame her.
She drew her tongue delicately across his skin. Salty. Warm. Smooth. Mmm. She liked that. He jolted away from her mouth, swearing.
She’d just licked a total stranger. What was wrong with her?
But then he was back, one arm around her shoulders, the other hand splayed against her lower back, pulling her against him, sending her whirling thoughts tumbling once more. Up and down, left and right, they tangled together, the same way her limbs did with his. Where he stopped and she began, she had no idea.
His mouth closed on hers, sucking the life out of her and breathing his back into her all in one devouring, devastating kiss. Ho. Lee. Cow. Never, ever, had she been kissed like that. She hadn’t even known a kiss like that was possible. Stars exploded behind her eyes and unadulterated lust tore through her. She gasped at the sudden throbbing in places she’d never throbbed before. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy sex. It was just that she was…focused…when it came to sex. It was something she studied, even when she participated in it. She wanted to be good at it so when she landed the perfect husband she’d be able to please him. But this…this tore anything but wanting more clean out of her mind. She stretched up on her tiptoes hungrily.
“Do that again,” she breathed joyfully.
He lifted her clear off her feet this time, his mouth hot and wet, moving across hers as if he was devouring a feast. “What have you done to me?” he muttered, an almost desperate note in his voice.
“I was about to ask you the same.” She plunged her hands into his thick, dark hair and tugged. “Kiss me again. Please.”
His hand slid down to her buttocks, lifting her tighter against his unmistakable reaction to her. She groaned, crawling even closer to him if it was possible, all but purring her pleasure. Her hands crept around his ribs to his back, kneading his ridged muscles…and encountered something wet.
He hissed into her mouth and lurched upright, arching his back away from her touch.
“What did I do?” she asked quickly in distress.
“My back. I got cut,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.
“How?”
To her dismay, he released her and stepped back, frowning down at her. She felt terribly cold and alone without his arms around her.
He answered reluctantly, “Some nutcase tried to stab you a few minutes ago and sliced me instead.”
“Stab—me?” And then the rest of it hit her. “You’ve been stabbed?” she cried. Fear ran cold in her blood, chilling her all the way through. “Let me see.”
He turned to face her when she would’ve darted around behind him to see how badly he was hurt.
“It’s just a scratch,” he bit out, his gaze skimming down her body and back up again. A flash of something hot and forbidden glinted in his gaze. “Damn, you’re beautiful,” he murmured. “As much as I’d like to tear off the rest of your clothes and make love to you right here, we’ve got to get off this beach.”
She glanced down at the remnants of her clothes and gasped. Scraps of sodden cloth clung to her chest enough to provide a minimum of modesty, but not much more than that. Her silk Chanel blouse, no less. It had cost her a week’s pay and the neckline draped exactly perfectly. Drat. She’d loved that blouse.
The man in front of her shifted impatiently, peering suspiciously over her shoulder as if he expected the attacker to come back any second. Abruptly, the pieces fell together in her head. They’d been lying on a beach…it was nighttime… and he said that out of nowhere a stranger had tried to attack them…
She exclaimed, “I bet that was the Sex on the Beach Killer!”
“The who?” Tom responded blankly.
This guy hadn’t heard about the psychopath roaming the South Pacific killing pairs of lovers on beaches? He’d have to be a complete hermit to have missed that news flash. The killer had last struck on Fiji’s big island a couple of weeks back. He was due to strike again, according to Agent Griffin Malone, the FBI profiler who’d saved Alicia’s life.
“The Sex on the Beach Killer,” Maddie repeated. Cold chills that had nothing to do with being wet and nearly naked snaked down her spine. A psychopath had tried to kill them? A fine trembling erupted throughout her entire body.
“How—” Her voice broke. She tried again. “How did you scare him off?”
He shrugged.
“Did you get a good look at him? Police have been chasing him all over the place. No one knows what he looks like. Well, besides the fact that he’s Caucasian and around six feet tall. I know that because my friend found a pair of his victims, and she got involved in the investigation and met the FBI profiler and she told me a little about the case, you know, what to look out for and…” And she was babbling. She did that when she got really nervous.
He stared down at her as if she was jabbering a foreign language at him.
She huffed, “You have heard of him, right? The guy who’s been running around the South Pacific stabbing lovers on beaches while they…do the deed.”
His eyebrows lifted at that, but he made no comment. Not real talkative, her handsome pilot. But, hey, the guy kissed like a god. She swayed toward him once more.
“C’mon,” Tom growled. He took off striding down the beach, his long legs outdistancing her quickly.
“Wait up!” she called after him. She ran through the heavy sand, feeling as clumsy as a drunken chicken. Ugh. Style noteto self: never run on beaches.
He stalked onward without slowing down to wait for her. Not exactly the most social guy on the planet when he didn’t have his arms around her and his mouth on hers. Exasperated, she tagged along, wishing he’d slow down, but too unaccountably annoyed at her uncontrollable attraction to him to ask it of him.
Eventually, they came to a stretch of beach bordered by tall, rocky cliffs. Before long, he veered away from the water and headed for a pale shape zigzagging up the face of the black, wet rocks. Her gaze followed the jagged line upward. She spied a dark, rectangular hulk at the top of it, perched not far from the edge of the cliff.
They drew a little closer and she saw that the pale line was a set of stairs. It led to a bure, a traditional Fijian dwelling made of stucco, logs and thatch. The house nestled within a grove of banyans and palm trees.
“Who lives there?” she asked cautiously. The last thing they need to do was walk into the Sex on the Beach Killer’s hideout.
Tom tossed over his shoulder, “The weather’s about to get nasty. We need to seek shelter now.”
“But—”
“Ladies first,” he interrupted gently.
With a sigh, she set her feet to the long staircase. Something inside her was disappointed that they’d found civilization. For a minute there, she could’ve really enjoyed being stranded in a deserted paradise with a hunky pilot who made her knees weak when he kissed her.
Not that the fantasy ought to do a blessed thing for her, of course. Madeline C. didn’t go for sand, drinking out of coconuts and building palm-frond shelters. She was a city girl all the way. She liked her plug-in creature comforts and was never caught without a makeup kit or the perfect shoes. Of course, she had neither at the moment. Her hair was a sodden mess, and her clothes were destroyed. She’d have to extract a promise out of the pilot never to reveal to anyone that he’d seen Madeline C. without her chic armor polished and firmly in place. And no cameras! If he took a picture of her looking like this, the Sex on the Beach Killer wouldn’t be the worst of his worries!
The Plan. She had to stick with the Plan. Build a new life for herself firmly anchored in the bright lights and big city. Find herself the richest—and nicest, of course—guy she could find and marry him with all due haste. No way was she spending the rest of her life working her fingers to the bone through drought and freezing cold and searing heat to scrape a living out of the ground. She was absolutely not repeating her mother’s mistake. No, sir. She was Madeline C.
She took a deep breath and peered upward, trying to catch a glimpse of the dwelling above her. Even if Tom did kiss better than ought to be legal, there was no room in her life for heavy panting with some beach bum bush pilot. Focus. It was all about focus. It was how she’d dragged herself out of the ocean, and it was how she would drag herself off the farm and into a new life.
She tromped up the stairs, her already exhausted legs burning fiercely. Her personal trainer back at the gym would be appalled that a simple set of stairs was doing her in like this. But hey! She’d spent a couple hours fighting the Pacific Ocean in all its fury. That had to count for something.
Man. What a day. This trip had been jinxed from the moment she and her fellow Secret Traveler reviewers left Chicago. She just wanted to get home, go to her favorite spa, get a mani-pedi, a full body wrap and a facial and forget she’d ever been to this miserable corner of the world with its cyclones and serial killers and tempting strangers.
She glanced at the ocean pounding behind her. The waves were getting bigger by the minute, swallowing a few more inches of the beach with every crash of surf upon the shore. She didn’t know a whole lot about the South Seas, but common sense told her that spending the night down on the beach might not be the smartest thing in the world to try with a storm rolling in. Reluctantly, she continued up the long line of steps.
Finally, several stories above the ocean, she set foot on level ground once more. Tom took her elbow and escorted her firmly to the house’s front door. He fiddled with the doorknob for a few seconds, and then the door opened under his hand. Good grief, the guy’d just broken into the place! She stared, appalled.
“Are you coming or not?” he tossed at her.
“I don’t think we should just walk in there like this.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Well, the owner might be scared if we barge in. What if he’s got a gun?”
Tom snorted. “The owner has several guns.”
Her eyebrows shot up in alarm. “How do you know that?”
He bit out, “I’m the owner.”
She stared. “What?”
He glanced over at her and didn’t bother to repeat himself. A girl could get tired of listening to herself talk, trying to have a conversation with this taciturn guy. She followed him inside. If she thought it was dark outside, it was inky black in here. She banged into something about knee-high and yelped.
“Stand still,” he ordered.
She was more than happy to oblige. A light flared on the far side of the room as he lit a match. He held it to the wick of an old-fashioned oil lamp and put a glass globe down over the flame. A dim, but warm, glow suffused the open space. The hard thing that had attacked her knees turned out to be a beautifully carved wooden end table.
The bure’s interior was bigger than she’d expected. A vaulted ceiling high overhead added to the impression, giant logs forming an inverted V of cantilevered support beams. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was a thatched roof on top of the log frame. Lovely. Grass for shelter from an approaching hurricane.
Bamboo and mahogany furniture blended seamlessly with the white gauze curtains and crisp, ice-blue linen upholstery. A kitchen occupied one corner of the space, separated by a gorgeously carved mahogany breakfast bar with a pair of elegantly curved stools before it. It was a shockingly stylish room. And he lived here? Clearly, he’d bought the place furnished.
She glanced over and saw him standing in front of a mirror, peering over his shoulder at his reflection. Checking out his deltoids? She knew guys were vain, but sheesh!
And then she saw the dark slash across his back, about two inches below his shoulder blades. The Sex on the Beach Killer. He’d said the guy had scratched him, but the cut extended almost all the way across his back!
“Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “You call that gash a scratch? I’d hate to see your idea of a serious wound. Let me see that.” She rushed over to examine the cut, which still oozed blood. “You need to see a doctor. That thing needs stitches.”
“No doctor,” he replied sharply.
“Why not?”
“Only medic on Vanua Taru is also the sheriff.”
She didn’t know which question to ask first. Why he wanted to avoid the law, or if they really were on Vanua Taru, which had been her destination this evening in the first place. Caution won out and she asked the second question, for fear of the answer to the first. “We’re really on Vanua Taru?”
He nodded, his lips pressed together in a tight line.
“Are you in pain?”
He shrugged, a tense move of a single shoulder.
She knew that look. Her brothers and father used to get it when they’d been hurt but didn’t want to act like sissies in front of one another. Tom was having a bout of macho maleness.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least let me clean that cut out. It has sand in it.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You can barely see it, let alone reach it. Where’s your first-aid kit?”
