Free Hot Island Nights by Sarah Mayberry Page B

against the wall in her hotel room. She’d wanted passion. Desire. Animal lust. She’d wanted sweat and grabby hands and panting and undeniable need.
    She rolled onto her side and stared at the crack of light seeping beneath the blind on the window.
    A few days ago, she’d never had sex anywhere except in a bedroom. She’d never experienced any other position except missionary. She’d certainly never been slammed against a wall and had her lover so desperate to be inside her that he hadn’t even bothered to remove her underwear.
    It was just sex, of course. Bodies rubbing against each other because it stimulated nerve endings and satisfied some primal urge. But if she hadn’t seen her birth certificate, if she hadn’t confronted her grandfather, if she hadn’t acknowledged almost too late that there were fundamental problems in her relationship with Martin and that she was shoehorning herself into a future that suited everyone except herself, she might have married him. She might have made her vows and settled into a life half-lived. She might have gone on denying herself and her needs and never known the joy, the freedom of being able to express her desires. Better yet, to pursue them.
    So, yes, it was just sex, but at the same time it felt like much, much more than that. As though she was on an archeological dig, searching for herself, and her sexuality was the first truth that she’d uncovered.
    Memories from the night washed over her as she lay drowsing. Nathan’s body, so hard and strong beneath her hands. The firm, deeply satisfying thrust of him inside her. The way he’d barely let her catch her breath and come down to earth before he started kissing and touching and torturing her all over again. He was an insatiable lover. Driven. Intense. Almost desperate, it had seemed to her more than once during the night, like a drowning man clutching at passion and desire to keep him afloat. The look in his eyes, the fervor in his caresses…
    Elizabeth let out a huff of laughter at her own melodrama. Nathan Jones was a surf bum with a fabulous body and a talent for sex. There was no need to read anything else into his admittedly intense lovemaking. In fact, there was no need to overanalyze it at all. It was meaningless and pleasurable and wonderful, and she was content to leave it that way.
    A knock sounded at the door, drawing her out of her thoughts. Since she knew only a handful of people in all of Australia and only one of them knew where she was staying, she thought it was safe to assume it was Nate.
    A slow smile curled her mouth. She’d thought he’d gone home, but perhaps he’d simply ducked out to buy a bottle of water or make a call or buy a newspaper or something and now he was back to put in an encore performance.
    Remembering the morning sex they’d enjoyed yesterday, she hoped so. She got out of bed and wrapped a towel around her torso and opened the door.
    And promptly gaped.
    Because standing there in a very wrinkled three-piece suit, overnight bag in one hand, briefcase in the other, was Martin.
    “My God. What on earth are you doing here?” she said.
    Not the most welcoming of greetings, but he was supposed to be in London.
    “I came to talk to you. Since you didn’t seem to want to talk over the phone.”
    “But…this is Australia! ” she said, still not quite able to comprehend his presence.
    “Yes, after nearly twenty-four hours in the air, I’m well aware of that. Might I come in?”
    It was a perfectly reasonable request—if they were still engaged. But they weren’t. And she’d spent the night having sex with another man in the rumpled sheets just over her shoulder. It felt hugely, hugely wrong to invite Martin into the same space that she’d recently shared with Nathan. Especially when she was only wearing a towel.
    “Could you give me a moment to dress?”
    She closed the door before he could answer, feeling both guilty and ungenerous as well as angry and ambushed.
    There