Melissa James - Can You Forget?

And this was totally the wrong time to be reacting, burning with the feel of her breasts pushing against his chest, the soft mound of her femininity pushing against him as she cried. Can it, O’Rierdan. She wants comfort from an old friend, that’s all.

But his rock-hard mate inside his jeans didn’t have a conscience, just one hell of a long-denied need for her—and an intense instinct that he’d finally find his way home in her soft warmth, so close beneath those flimsy layers of clothes.

A couple of tourists emerged from their huts. Turning the scarred side of his face away, he watched from under the protection of his hat. Did they recognize the famous trademark hair and statuesque beauty of Verity West? Was that the Iceberg, burrowed into the body of some island hick?

He could see the headline: The Iceberg Melts On The Cripple.

The reality of their situation cooled his libido in an instant. He’d be damned if she’d have to face another sleazy tabloid headline because of him. “Let’s get out of here.”

She nodded as he snatched up the bag beside her towel, grabbed the tape deck and towel with it. “We don’t want tourists grabbing free Verity West souvenirs,” he said dryly.

He took her along the path to his plane’s steel hangar and, once inside, slammed the roller door behind them. “So you’d do anything to help those people—even marry me?”

Had she flushed again, or was the color rising in her cheeks because of the heat of the day? “If that’s what it takes, yes.” The huskiness in her voice lingered. With the gentle flush in the valley of her cleavage, it made a lethal chemical catalyst for his libido, sending it right back into hyperdrive.

“We’d have to make the marriage look like a real one in case any paparazzi break in,” he said bluntly, struggling to keep focused on the mission. “We can’t use two beds.”

“I know.” It might have been a trick of the light, but the rose in her face and throat seemed to deepen as she looked anywhere but at him. “It doesn’t have to be awkward, does it? We…we’ve slept together before.”

He chuckled. “Slept being the operative word, Mary-Anne. We were kids. We haven’t slept together since that night we camped by the billabong when I was sixteen—and I never touched you.”

“I know that,” she said—too quiet—and he wondered what was going on beneath the surface. Gentle, smiling, cool and calm one minute—erupting with mini explosions of passionate emotion the next. It was like playing Blind Man’s Bluff or Murder in the Dark. “We didn’t touch then, we won’t now.”

He wheeled around to look at the half-dark hangar wall, watching shadows of waving palms chasing each other through the window’s early morning light. “You might be able to control your passion for me, sweetness, but you’d better ask before you assume the same for me. I’m a man now, even if I don’t look like much of one—and I’ve still got a man’s needs.”

“I heard about your needs.” He jerked his head around to look at her. A flash of ancient pain, the sense of a wound too deep and raw to touch, crossed the banked fire in her eyes. Yet she met his gaze without flinching or apology. “Ginny made sure I knew all about those needs of yours. She gave me every detail.”

A helpless curse ripped from his throat, strangled fury that had nowhere to release. “Mary-Anne—”

“There’s no need.” Another careless shrug: a flimsy defense against this too intense conversation in a hangar that was way too hot, humid with diesel fuel, morning mist and late summer sun. She was all rosy now, flushed and damp, as if they’d spent the past hour— Oh, man, was he trying to kill himself? Why keep fantasizing about what he’d never have?

“What matters is stopping Darren Burstall and his rogue from taking down the Nighthawks one by one.”

He went totally still. Something cold and slimy touched him, slithering into his soul like hideous poison. “Burstall?”

She licked her upper lip, taking the sweat beading it, he noted absently. “Yes.”

“You’re telling me he’s not dead?” he muttered through stiff lips. “Anson left Burstall alive—and he didn’t tell me?”

“They chased him, but they had to save you, then he shot some villagers. They couldn’t leave innocent people there to die. Then Burstall hooked up with the rebels in Tumah-ra,” she sighed. “It seems he’s made interesting connections, rendering him useful to people Interpol would like to take down—people with billions in offshore accounts and vested interests in the oil off Tumah-ra’s shore. Too many reasons to keep those dumb rebel kids on the island rigged with weapons and stop the UN taking control.”

He barely heard her. Burstall was alive. Anson didn’t get him! Burstall was alive—the insane bastard lived and breathed, killing and maiming innocent people to feed his mania—and Tal’s rage, cold and flippant for so long, boiled over.

“Anson’s a noble, interfering, self-righteous jerk!” His fists slammed into the hot steel wall so hard it buckled outward and his knuckles scraped raw and bleeding. “Why the hell didn’t Anson tell me all this? Didn’t he know I’d want to go after him myself—and not just for me, but for what he did to Skydancer, Countrygirl and all the poor villagers he shot in Tumah-ra?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.” With folded arms, she watched him destroy the hangar wall, her high-lipped rose mouth rimmed with a touch of fastidious distaste.

“So the Iceberg’s wondering what sort of husband she’s got after the sainted Gilbert?” he sneered, baiting her. “Well, look on the bright side, sweetness—it’s all a game of pretend. You can dump me at the end of the mission, guilt-free.”

She didn’t bother to answer his taunts. Instead her lips curved in a slow smile. “I’ve got something more constructive for you to do than breaking walls, Tal,” she breathed, “and I think you’ll agree that it’s a lot more fun.”

She moved a step closer, her eyes dark and slumberous, her body radiant, as if in the afterglow of hours of scorching-hot lovemaking. “It’s something I want—something I wanted so badly for years—but I never found the courage to go after.”

Rage took wings as he watched her move toward him, her eyes alight, her mouth curved in promise. His heart slammed against his ribs. His head spun with the hope his body wouldn’t let him ignore. What was she saying—that for all those years, she wanted him…that even now, looking like he did, she’d—

Uh-huh. He got real turned on looking at himself in the mirror every day. Why wouldn’t she?

But the cynicism wouldn’t take hold. His man’s need, hot and hard and urgent, kept hammering at him, Do it, do it, do it. Ask her. Touch her. Take her. So many years wanting her, needing her, and she’s so close…so damn beautiful it hurts. Do it!

It almost killed him to speak, but he managed to say, “Well?” in a strangled croak.

She moved to him, step by slow, sultry step. She lifted her mouth to his ear and whispered, in the gentlest, most seductive of tones, “Revenge…”

“I’m on. I’ll take Burstall down—for Linebacker’s sake, if nothing else.”

Mary-Anne—for though the rest of the world saw her as icy Verity West, she never had, could never think of herself as anything but plain old farm girl Mary-Anne—sighed in quiet relief at his words. She’d been pretty sure he was hooked even before she spoke Darren Burstall’s name—but it was hard, so hard, proposing this mission to Tal.

She couldn’t show him how she ached for him, that she had all the empathy in the world for his suffering. Growing up different, plain and overweight but with extraordinary talent, gave her some insight into how he must feel about his injuries. Golden-haired, olive-skinned Tal, handsome, athletic and brilliant, Cowinda’s pride and joy, must be chafing so hard against the physical restrictions he couldn’t change.