Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

He turned away and grabbed jeans and underwear from the duffel he had brought. “Well, you’re shit out of luck, buttercup. It’s Ellen or me.” He stripped out of the wet jockstrap and pulled on dry underwear. “No third choice.” He yanked on the jeans. “I don’t have time right now to arrange for baggage handlers to take you to Tahiti. Ellen’s boss is getting impatient. They could pull the plug on me, and then I would be shit out of luck right along with you.”
    “Jake, that’s not—”
    He kept on talking. “Once the elephants start to play, dumb pieces of grass like me get trampled in the mud. Kyle has the Donovan family to wash him off and coo over his wounds. I don’t have anyone but me. I have to find out the truth about that amber, because nobody else cares. That means you’re going to Ellen and I’m going to sea. If that throws a kink in your plans, then that’s too damned—”
    His tirade stopped abruptly. Two cold, gentle hands were stroking his bare back.
    Jake turned around so fast that he almost knocked Honor over. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
    “Reasoning with you.” She stroked his chest, tangling her fingers softly in the silk cord that held the amber medallion in place.
    “Reasoning?” he asked.
    “Uh huh. It’s working, too. See how much more reasonable your tone is?” Honor’s fingertips traced the intertwined dragons and the male warmth beneath. “Why weren’t you wearing this the first time we made love?”
    “You didn’t know who I was. The medallion would have raised too many questions. I didn’t want to answer them.”
    “Amber man,” she said sadly.
    He shrugged, but his breath broke when her fingers went from the medallion to his nipples. They turned to tiny stones beneath her curious fingertips.
    “Nice try, but you still only have two choices,” Jake said through clenched teeth. “Ellen or me.”
    “I’m thinking.”
    One of Honor’s hands trailed down his chest to his navel and then on to the finger-width of black hair that led down the center of his briefs. He rose to meet her with a speed and force that sent an answering flood of arousal through her.
    “What are you thinking?” he asked.
    “I was wondering how you would taste.”
    Jake’s breath locked in his throat. “You’re supposed to be thinking about your choice—Ellen or the boat. No matter how much I want you or how good you give it to me, you still only have two choices.”
    “Are you accusing me of trying to seduce you in order to muddle your mind?” Honor asked.
    Slim, caressing fingers slid inside his briefs. Her hands were no longer cold. Or if they were, he didn’t notice it.
    “Aren’t you?” he asked.
    “Would it work?”
    “No. Yes.” His breath hissed as she stroked the pulse beating so hotly beneath smooth skin. “Damn it, I can’t think when you do that.”
    “How about when I do this?”
    Her hands moved quickly and his briefs slid down to his knees, then his ankles. The heat of her mouth was every wet dream he had ever had rolled into one. Distantly he told himself that he was stronger, tougher, meaner, all he had to do was grab her by the arms and lift her to her feet and that would end her silly attempt to change his mind by offering sex.
    And he would do just that—when he was certain he couldn’t take it one more instant. Until then, he would take it like a man, silently, muscles clenched, sweating from head to heels, breathing like a racehorse coming down the home stretch.
    “That’s it,” he said hoarsely.
    “But I was just getting the hang of it,” she protested, tracing with her tongue the pulse that beat so violently.
    Jake kicked aside his briefs, lifted Honor, and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Get the hang of this.”
    Her pupils dilated with pleasure as he peeled off her pants and sank into her. Her response was a rhythmic contraction and a wave of heat that almost stripped away his control. Hotter than her mouth, deeper, sweeter, she was all around him, he was flying and falling at once, spinning.
    “I’m losing it,” he said raggedly.
    Honor didn’t hear him. She was already lost.

21
    W HEN JAKE CAME into the kitchen carrying his duffel, Honor was wrapping up salmon sandwiches to take on the boat. Other bags of food stood ready on the counter.
    “Did you find enough tie-downs for your Zodiac?” she asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “I can’t believe it fit beneath the radar arch.”
    “That was the easy