Free Taken by the Pirate Tycoon by Daphne Clair Page A

first, then looked up at her as she peered at the rock face for places to put her feet.
    She made her decision and turned, feeling with her foot for a depression not far from the top. Then another. On the third one she slipped, lost her handhold and almost fell, then felt Jase’s strong arms about her waist.
    For an instant her back was pressed against his warm, hard chest, his lower body cradling hers, before her feet touched the sand and he loosened his hold. “Okay?”
    “Yes. Thanks.” She moved away quickly, and bent toremove her shoes again. For a moment she had wanted to stay in the circle of his arms, lean back against him and…wait for whatever might come next.
    She hadn’t been held close by a man for a very long time. Maybe it was a primordial reaction, female hormones responding to a male embrace, even an accidental one that had no sexual intention.
    Straightening, she sneaked a look at Jase. He was staring at the sea, thumbs thrust into the waistband of his jeans. His gaze swivelled to her and his eyes met hers with a dark, implicit question in them. Shaken, she realised she hadn’t been the only one affected. Donning a carefully blank expression, she turned away from him and began to walk back the way they’d come.
    Blind, instinctive attraction was no basis for an intimate relationship. The primitive sexual undertow below the surface was something neither of them really wanted. It was the unacknowledged source of the edginess that marked their every interaction, even when they stuck strictly to business. But whatever capricious mating instinct was produced between two people and their individual hormones, on every other level the unpredictable, abrasive, discomforting Jase Moore was simply not her type. Nor she his.
    She veered close to an incoming wave, letting it gush over her feet as she pulled up the legs of her jeans to wade in the cold, shallow water. Jase picked up another piece of driftwood and hurled it over the crest of the next wave, then sent a small piece of rock after it.
    The rock sank instantly, but the driftwood floated seaward until it was swallowed in a breaker, only to reappear farther out.
    The rock would remain hidden under the sea, eventuallyburied in sand, while the deceptively insubstantial driftwood might journey on the waves for years before reaching a foreign shore. Samantha was absently watching where it had disappeared when a rogue wave rushed across the receding ripples and caught her, soaking her jeans almost to her knees as, too late, she tried to escape, emitting a half-laughing squeal.
    Jase was laughing too and she ruefully hurried away from the waterline, tossed her shoes aside and began trying to wring out the sodden denim.
    He said, still smiling, “How about we find somewhere we can get a good meal?”
    Samantha gave up on getting rid of the water, and cast him a disgusted look. “I’m not going anywhere looking like this!” She picked up her shoes and tried to maintain her dignity while struggling across the sand.
    Her hair was tangled, her feet crusted with sand, and the legs of her jeans were rapidly acquiring more. Above the high tide mark she sank to the ankles on the dry, warm hillocks. The salty wind and spray had probably ruined her makeup too. She gave him a withering stare, and he laughed again. She wished he wouldn’t—it made her want to forget all the reasons she hadn’t given in to that silent invitation in his eyes at the rocks, hadn’t stepped back into his arms and let natural instinct fly free of its cage.
    When they reached his vehicle, Jase rummaged in the back for a towel. Samantha didn’t ask its provenance, but although ragged at the edges and so faded its original colours were indecipherable, it looked reasonably clean. She rubbed sand from her feet as best she could, and brushed rather futilely at her jeans. Then she combed her hair and turned her back to do a rapid, inadequate repair job on her makeup.
    When she settled herself