Doc said something that Romeo didn’t catch because he purposefully tuned out everything and everyone that wasn’t Mia.
“Hey.” He reached over and rubbed a tiny speck of chocolate from the corner of her imminently kissable mouth. Without thinking, he placed the sweet sliver on his tongue and didn’t even attempt to hide his hungry growl when her eyes followed the chocolate between his lips. “Come walk with me. We’ll find a good spot to watch the sunset.” He hitched his chin toward the life raft. “And maybe you can read to me a little before the light is completely gone, eh?”
The Night Angels series was one of his favorites. And he dearly loved to hear Mia read aloud. But if he was being honest, he had an ulterior motive. They were nearly to a sex scene.
He’d been waiting weeks to hear her read aloud one of P.J. Warren’s sex scenes, because the author wrote wonderfully explicit ones. And Mia had a phone sex operator voice that was sure to turn the prose into pure porn for the ears.
Plus, you know, maybe a sex scene will lead to sex, which will lead to hotter sex, which will lead to dirtier sex.
See? Single-minded. Single. Fucking. Minded.
Emphasis on the fucking.
Mia didn’t say anything. Her answer was to push to a stand so she could retrieve the novel, and Romeo barely contained his grumble of satisfaction.
His eyes glued themselves to the sway of her hips and her perfect heart-shaped butt as she made her way to the watercraft. And when she bent over the side of the life raft? There was no way he could stop the growl of hot-blooded hunger. It came up from the very depths of his being.
“Yo, Casanova,” Doc called to him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Slinging wood like a damned lumberjack, he thought. Aloud he said, “What do you mean?”
Doc’s mouth flattened into a straight line. “You know what I mean. What the hell are you doing with Mia? Before, you did a pretty good job of hiding that you’d like to eat her whole. But the last couple of hours you’ve been staring at her like she’s a bottomless bowl of Bran’s pasta and you’ve been wandering in the desert for the past three years.”
Shit. After the way Doc had been coming on to their lawyer, and after Mia had assured him that she and Doc were only friends, Romeo had forgotten Doc’s words back at the airport. Maybe conveniently forgotten?
Now they came screaming back to him.
“What if I was serious about starting something real with her?”
Rubbing a hand through his hair, he winced. “You were just winding me up back at the airport, eh? You weren’t serious about starting something with—”
“Of course I wasn’t serious,” Doc scoffed, and Romeo let loose with a windy breath of relief. “But the fact remains, you haven’t suddenly become someone you’re not, right? And neither has she?”
“Don’t worry,” he assured Doc, unable to stop the grin that stretched his mouth wide now that there really, really wasn’t anything standing between him and the woman he craved more than his next breath. “I was wrong about her. She’s not looking for forever. She’s like me. So it’s all good.”
Doc leveled a look on him. “Famous last words.”
Before Romeo could answer, Mia returned and he forgot what he’d even wanted to say. One look at her pretty face, at the way she tentatively bit her lip and offered him a small, secretive smile, melted every single one of his brain cells.
“Fine,” he heard Doc mumble. “Go on and be a couple of fools. But leave the gun.”
That was enough to drag Romeo’s gaze from Mia’s mouth and get the ol’ synapses firing. “What?” He frowned at Doc. “Why?”
“Because we still don’t know if someone is out to kill us. And something tells me you’re going to be distracted from guard duty.”
“Actually,” he said, “the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced that if it was an explosion that took out the Otter’s tail section, it was likely planted back at the airport. Some sort of timed device or altitude trigger or something. Whoever tried to off us—”
“If, in fact, someone did try to off us,” Cami interrupted, ever the lawyer. “We still don’t know that for sure.”
“Point taken.” He canted his head. “If someone tried to off us, then the alleged assassins”—he looked to Cami and she gave him a thumbs-up—“probably assume their plan worked. LT has no doubt alerted the authorities. I bet our disappearance is all over the local news. If there was a bomb, whoever planted it is probably back on dry land congratulating themselves on a job well done. I’d say we’re safe out here.”
“Yeah.” Doc nodded. “Makes sense. Still, you better leave me the gun. Because you’re not going to need it, and I just might.”
Romeo cocked his head. “For what?”
“To shoot our lawyer if she keeps using her sharp tongue to take strips out of my hide. Obviously.”
“Oh, ha, ha.” Cami slapped Doc’s uninjured shoulder.
Before the two of them could dissolve into another round of flirting ill-disguised as insults, Romeo pulled the Glock from the back of his jeans and passed it to Doc without another word of protest. Arguing with Doc was always good for chucks and yucks, but the real fun was to be found elsewhere.
Elsewhere being anywhere that included Mia. Alone with him. And preferably naked.
Pushing to a stand, he offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
Her only response was a quick exhalation. And the moment her little fingers curled around his bicep, he felt two things in equal measure.
One was lust. A deep, all-encompassing, all-consuming hunger. And the other was pride that someone like her, someone so good and kind and smart and sexy, would want him.
He noticed the sand had turned cool beneath his bare feet as he led her toward the western tip of the island. For a long time, he stayed as silent as she did. Listening to the waves hiss against the shoreline. Enjoying the gentle warmth of the evening breeze as it teased across his skin. Sneaking glances at her pretty profile and fantasizing about running his finger from the slope of her smooth forehead down to her button nose and ending under her stubborn little chin.
Eventually, though, he couldn’t stand her silence any longer. “You’re being awfully quiet this evening.” He realized what he’d said, and rephrased. “I mean, quieter than usual. What’s on your mind?”