Chapter Two

      STARING into the wicked eyes of a beast, Nina kept still and swallowed hard.

      There she’d been, wondering if she could possibly get out of that fix alive, then pow! So broad through the chest, so capable and infuriatingly confident, this superhero type showed up out of nowhere.

      But she was confused. Where did he fit on her character chart? Was this man exceptionally good, or primarily perfectly bad?

      Anyone with half a brain and a pair of scales must see he couldn’t carry her all the way back to the resort. Nevertheless, he hadn’t merely dismissed her suggestions. He’d gone so far as to pin her body beneath his to get his point across.

      She was trapped. She should be fuming!

      Instead her nerve-endings simmered with indisputable awareness, and her fuzzy brain kept wondering how well his lips might fit closed over hers.

      “You’re quiet,” he noted, his mouth a hair’s breadth from hers.

      Wondering if he might manacle her wrists next—and not wholly against the idea—she squirmed. “I’m thinking.”

      “About behaving, I hope.”

      His voice was rough, dangerously deep, and the whisper of his breath against her lips felt far less invasive than it ought to.

      “Do I need to point out,” she said, “that I’m not the one behaving badly?”

      “Won’t make a difference. If I let you have your way, you could do yourself another injury.” Wet dark hair flopped over his brow when he cocked his head. “Or would you rather I ignore the fact you might have concussion?”

      “I’d rather you quit with the caveman mentality.”

      He growled and leaned a smidge closer. “You’re only alive because that caveman mentality got me to you before the sharks tucked in for dinner.”

      She held her breath while her heart thumped high in her chest.

      Oh, crap. She hated to admit it, but his brutish logic made sense. He would never convince her he could carry her all the way back to the resort, but her head did feel light. If she stood up now, tried to walk, she might very well fall over. Maybe even knock herself out a second time. Like it or not, in a roughish kind of way, he was still rescuing her—protecting her—this time from herself.

      She issued a reluctant nod and, fire fading from his eyes, he curled away.

      As he repositioned himself beside her, the sinking sun fell behind his head, bathing his splendid form in a golden-rose halo. Nina squeezed her eyes shut, then looked again. He wasn’t an angel. She was certain of that now. And yet his presence, this scene, everything about this time here with him seemed surreal. Make-believe.

      Maybe she was still unconscious? Maybe her lungs were filled with water and she’d hallucinated all this while succumbing to the final phase of drowning? Was she experiencing some incredible dream on her way to the hereafter? That wasn’t so unlikely. She’d heard stories before.

      Was any of this real?

      Determined to find out, she reached and touched his pec, an inch above that small flat nipple. Her fingertip sizzled like creamy butter on a hotplate, at the same time as her centre glowed and blood tingled with fresh life. As her fingers fanned over the black, crisp hair, bolts of crackling electricity ripped through her veins. His flesh was so firm, so masculine and—

      She stopped.

      Inched her gaze up.

      He was looking down his aquiline nose at her fingers—which were kneading the warm cushioned steel as if they belonged there.

      Tilting his cleft chin, he raised a dark brow and his entrancing eyes met hers.

      “Let me know when it’s my turn.”

      She snatched her hand away. Her breathing was all over the place again and her face was flaming. Simply put, she wanted to die.

      “I was just…er…just making sure they were—I mean, that you were—” Embarrassed beyond words, she spat out the rest. “I was making sure you were real.”

      “Oh, is that what you were doing?”

      His lopsided grin drew a crease down one side of that highly kissable mouth. And his eyes…

      They were so clear and bright and laughing.

      Laughing at her.

      She understood why. She was acting like a loon. A suspicious, ungrateful, concussed, groping loon.

      But then his gaze sharpened and his expression changed.

      “Are you cold?” he asked, edging close again.

      “I don’t think so.” But that noise…Were her teeth chattering? Checking out the clouds building to black overhead, she shivered and instinctively hugged herself. “I am kind of shaky.”

      A line cut between his brows and he cupped her chin, turned her head gently one way then the next. His gaze intensified, and for a giddy moment Nina imagined she’d fallen head-first into those amazing ice-blue eyes. When he checked her pulse against his platinum Omega, she relented and played compliant patient. After six weeks of serving other people’s every whim, there was part of her that needed this one-on-one attention, mandatory though the attention might be.

      “What’s the verdict, Doc?” Did he want her to open her mouth and say ah?

      Her answer came when he rolled his shoulders back and peeled off his shirt. Her eyes popped out of her head. Mamma mia. What a specimen.

      “You need to be kept warm,” he told her, stripping a sleeve off one dynamite arm and then the other.

      “Thanks,” she managed to wheeze, “but I don’t think a wet shirt will cut it.”

      “Body heat will.”

      “Y-you’re going to hold me?”

      He blindly tossed the shirt on a bush, then loomed over her, the chiselled planes of his face unforgivably close. “Any objection?”

      Her gaze zeroed in on his mouth, on the dusky pink of his full bottom lip, and her pelvic floor muscles squeezed.

      She’d tried to refuse him before and her opposition had got her nowhere. If anything, being obstinate had made matters worse. An air of entitlement, albeit tempered by GQ looks and bad-boy charm, was a quality that stuck in her craw. She’d kow-towed to similar sorts too often these past weeks…people who would once have classed her as their equal.

      All that aside, this guy was no idiot. If he said she needed to be held—hell, he was probably right. And if she must be gathered up against some unknown body…heck, it might as well be his.

      When she mustered a haughty look and shrugged one shoulder, he scooped an arm beneath her neck.

      “Tell me if I hurt you,” he said, careful of her bump and her foot as he lay beside her.

      He drew her close until her ear rested on the plateau of flesh and muscle below his collarbone. Despite her irritation, she almost sighed when one iron-warm palm splayed