Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

look. ‘Stella?’

      Stella was in a quandary as the scene she’d written for Pleasure Hunt looked as if it too was about to play out. Well, the G-rated version of it anyway.

      She couldn’t imagine Rick sucking her fingers into his mouth. Well...she could. And she had. She’d even written it down.

      But that was Vasco.

      Rick could almost read the thoughts in her very expressive eyes. She was torn between medical necessity and curiosity. ‘You don’t want them to fester, do you?’ he asked innocently.

      Stella swallowed as she offered him her palm, hoping that she was submitting purely on medical grounds but knowing there were other less sensible, less pure reasons.

      She just prayed he never read her book.

      Her palm was warm in his as Rick took an antiseptic swab and cleaned up the site so he had a clearer field of vision. This close, like Vasco, he could see Stella’s mouth and the way her teeth dug into her bottom lip.

      He raised an eyebrow. ‘You ready for this?’ he asked.

      Stella doubted she’d ever be ready for Rick being this close, his sea-salt-and-ocean-spray aroma wrapping her in a hundred childhood memories that warred with the very adult visions of him naked beneath a shower.

      ‘I promise I’ll be gentle,’ he murmured.

      Stella rolled her eyes at the amused glitter in his tropical gaze. The only way she was going to survive being the sole focus of his stymied flirting reflex was to give as good as she got. ‘Maybe I don’t like it gentle.’

      Rick’s heart thunked hard in his chest as he pulled back a little in surprise. She had her eyebrow raised and a small smile playing on her lips.

      She was flirting back.

      He chuckled. It had been a long time since they’d traded banter like this. It made his plan that much more enticing.

      As Vasco had, he ducked his head and leaned over her hand. Given that his deck was much more polished than that of a pirate ship from the seventeen hundreds, the splinters were much smaller than the one Mary had embedded in her finger. Certainly they were not removable by his teeth and it took some time digging them out.

      She didn’t whimper or complain although Rick looked up at one stage and she had her eyes shut and face screwed up. Their legs brushed intermittently beneath the table, their upper bodies were almost touching, his head was level with her cleavage and he wondered what she’d do if he claimed that long-awaited kiss early.

      Find out if her mouth tasted as sweet as it looked. If it really did taste like coconuts.

      Stella opened her eyes and caught him looking at her. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘What?’ she asked.

      Rick took a moment or two to answer. Then he shook his head and said, ‘Nothing,’ and returned to his ministration, his hand not quite as steady.

      Another ten minutes saw the job done. ‘There now,’ he announced to her closed eyes. ‘Isn’t that better?’

      Stella looked down at her hand, the splinters gone from the pads of her fingers, his thumb lightly brushing her palm—just as Vasco’s had done. The instinct to shut her eyes and allow her body to feel the caress everywhere warred with her guilt about indulging another Vasco fantasy with an unsuspecting Rick.

      It made her crazy.

      And the pain made her bitchy.

      ‘No,’ she said testily. ‘It bloody hurts, actually.’

      Rick felt her trying to withdraw her hand from his but he resisted her attempt, knowing it was too good an opportunity to pass up. ‘Fine,’ he sighed, ‘I’ll just have to kiss them better.’

      It took a moment for his intention to register and another moment for Stella to open her mouth and lodge a protest. But by then it was too late. He was lifting her fingers to his mouth, holding her gaze as he did so. Her protest stuttered to an inarticulate gurgle as his lips briefly brushed over first one fingertip, then the next. When he got to the third her eyes widened as she felt his tongue press against the pad, laving the wound gently before his lips met then slowly withdrew.

      She made some noise at the back of her throat that sounded foreign in the charged atmosphere between them.

      It might have been a whimper.

      ‘There,’ he said huskily, her dilated pupils not only doing funny things to his groin, but deep inside his chest too. ‘Is that better?’

      She wanted to shake her head, tell him no. That they burned. That he’d set them on fire. But she was only capable of a nod. A very weak nod.

      ‘Good,’ Rick said with difficulty as her mouth hovered so very close and that line became even hazier.

      My pleasure.