Free Swept Away by Toni Blake

Like he was going to just lie there and stare at her. Maybe he’d been a little too bold with his advances. “Believe it,” she said through the darkness.
    He was actually amazed by the whole bungalow—which was little more than a studio apartment plunked down in the sand. Sturdy enough, with a cinder-block foundation and solid construction above it, but it seemed way too modest a place for Clark Spencer, right down to the 1970s dcor, complete with paneled walls and a Formica table and countertop. The only element with any style or heart to it was the antique armoire on the other side of the bed. But then, Kat had explained that they simply hadn’t gotten around to making improvements yet. So he firmly expected the little dwelling would soon be bulldozed to the ground and replaced with something much more palatial, and was only sorry he’d landed here before it happened.
    “I also can’t believe you’re gonna make me sleep on a hard tile floor when you have a nice big bed up there you could be sharing with me.” The floor really was hard. But his work had led to sleeping in far worse places than this, and wanting to crawl into bed with Kat was admittedly about more than saving him a backache in the morning.
    “What part of engaged don’t you grasp?” she asked, her voice crisp and irritated, making him feel challenged. Because she sure liked shooting around that word, “engaged,” but her eyes kept saying something a lot closer to “tempted.” Or at least they had before she’d turned out the lights a few minutes ago. He wanted to find out what her body said in the dark.
    “Don’t worry, kitten, I grasp it all right. I just think that under the circumstances, the guy would understand.”
    He sensed her sitting up in the darkness to snap at him, “Then you’re out of your mind. Go to sleep.”
    He couldn’t resist a quiet chuckle. For a moment.
    But then he turned more somber, listening to the sounds of island insects chirping in the dense junglelike area surrounding the little house and thinking about Kat getting married. He hadn’t let it show, but he’d felt it in his gut when she’d told him. He wasn’t sure why—hell, he hadn’t seen the girl in ten years. Probably just that little niggling regret from not letting her have her way with him so long ago.
    He’d been with plenty of women, most of them hot, built, and skilled in bed. But the truth was —whenever he was deep undercover on a mission and the danger started getting closer, creeping in around him, and he needed to escape to someplace better in his head for a few minutes just to wash away the fear, he often thought of Kat. He could still see her in his mind, nearly naked and riding him. Except when he used that memory to push the danger aside, there weren’t any panties, and he wasn’t wearing anything, either. They were back in that black bucket seat that had come from his brother’s old Thunderbird, naked and moving together, him inside her.
    He’d never questioned until this moment why she was who he thought of when he needed a good fantasy to sweep him away from real life. He could only figure it was because she was the one he’d never quite had and that it had left a big question mark in his mind. And now she was getting married. And turning him down even though her eyes said yes. Unfortunately, eyes that said yes didn’t count for much given that she was about to belong to someone else, which meant the two of them would never have sex. It wasn’t exactly like he’d ever made a point of tracking her down once they’d gotten older, but he should have. He’d felt that in his gut, too—pretty much the moment he’d seen her nearly naked body again, stretched out so pretty over that lounge chair.
    Which reminded him... “Was I right about that sunburn?”
    She stayed quiet, but he didn’t think she was asleep. He had the feeling she was wide-awake, just like him, and the more arrogant side of him suspected she was lying