Moriah's Mutiny. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ went a little crazy myself the first time I came down here, and when I went home, I had to do some pretty serious thinking before I decided to change the way I was living. It took me months to make the decision. You’ve only been here for one day.” He bunched a fistful of curls at her temple into his palm and gazed into her eyes with an expression Moriah didn’t understand. “You have no idea what you’re saying right now. Trust me. It’s your heart talking, not your head.”

      She lifted her chin a little defiantly. “And what’s so wrong with that?” she demanded. “Maybe if everyone thought with his heart instead of his head the world would be a better place.”

      He smiled at her, a smile that was sweet, serene and sad. “That’s never going to happen. Everyone would grow up to become a fireman or a ballerina, and we’d all do nothing but lie on the beach and eat out.”

      “But, Austen,” she protested, “I’ve never met a man like you before. You’re…” She paused for a moment, uncertain what it was exactly she wanted to say. Finally she just told him, “I don’t want anything to happen. I don’t want you to disappear and then never know what it’s like to…”

      When her voice trailed off, leaving her statement unfinished, he smiled at her again, but this time his smile was gentle, happy and warm. “You’re not going to lose me, Moriah,” he assured her.

      Her eyes searched his frantically. “You promise?”

      He nodded slowly and pushed back her hair with his hand. “I promise,” he vowed, leaning down to seal the bargain by placing a soft kiss on her forehead.

      “Well, could we stay out walking a little longer anyway?” she asked him hopefully.

      “What about your family tomorrow? Didn’t you want to get up early to meet them?”

      Moriah pushed the annoying thought of her sisters to the back of her brain. “Oh, who cares?” she muttered irritably. “Let them get a taxi to the hotel, they’re not helpless.” She circled her arms around Austen’s neck and arched her body closely toward him. “I don’t want this night ever to end,” she said quietly.

      Oh, God, he groaned inwardly, loving the way her body felt pressed so intimately against his, neither did he. He began to reconsider the wisdom of his previous statements to Moriah. Maybe he’d been a little rash in suggesting that she didn’t know what she was saying when she told him she wanted to make love. Hell, she was a grown woman; she knew what she was doing. What would be so wrong about the two of them spending the night together? When had he become so damned noble, for God’s sake? And when had he developed a conscience?

      “All right,” he ceded to her request. “Just a little farther up the beach. But then I have to leave. I’ve got to work in the morning.”

      Moriah was about to ask him what exactly it was that he did for a living, surprised that the question hadn’t come up before now, but at that moment, the steel-drum music started up again, a catchy mambo number that made her want to dance. “Let’s go find out where the music is coming from,” she said with an excited smile.

      “Moriah, I just told you, I have to work in the morning.”

      “But tonight you introduced Dorian as your business partner, so I assumed you have your own business. Don’t you?”

      “Yes, but—”

      “So if you’re the boss, can’t you go in late for once?”

      “No, it’s not like that. I can’t—”

      “Please, Austen?”

      She looked at him with such pure and childlike hopefulness that Austen had to smile at her and give in. What was wrong with him, thinking about work when he only had a few more short hours to spend with Moriah? “All right,” he surrendered, laughing at the look of naked relief and joy that spread across her beautiful features. “We’ll go and find out where the music is coming from.”

      Moriah had never stayed out all night long before, but tonight had been full of firsts, she decided, so why not add one more? They wandered up the beach until they came to an open-air pavilion surrounded by dancing, laughing people. As they pushed their way through the crowd, they too became infected with the high spirits of the others. When they finally broke into the front of the group, they saw a tiny stage encircled by blue-tipped flaming torches, where four islanders wearing bright red shirts and white pants danced and shouted as they pounded out on their green-and-yellow steel drums the most wonderful music Moriah had ever heard. She laughed out loud at the feeling of fun and life that went rippling through her body while she watched them, and she scarcely paid attention when her feet and hands took up the rhythm of the drums. Someone pressed a tall tropical drink into her hands, and she consumed it thirstily, only to discover it replaced by another, then another when she was through.

      For what seemed like hours she and Austen danced and sang and laughed, so caught up in their revels that they barely noted the passing time. When the musician reluctantly announced that their set was over, Moriah and Austen voiced their playful disappointment with the others and then made their way slowly back down the beach. Reaching absently for each other’s hand, they strolled in comfortable silence back to Moriah’s hotel. But when they arrived at her room and Moriah opened the door to the expansive pale-peach-and-white suite, she discovered to her annoyance that it was spinning and pitching precariously and that all she could do to make it stop was cling to Austen like there was no tomorrow.

      “What’s wrong?” he asked her when she spun quickly and clumsily around to grab him.

      “Room’s jumping around,” she mumbled into his broad, muscular chest.

      “The room’s fine, Moriah,” he assured her with an affectionate chuckle, tugging at the arms that were circled possessively around his neck. “But I think you might be just a little bit tipsy.”

      Instead of letting him go, she buried her face against his chest and clung more tightly. “No, no, no,” she said as she shook her head fiercely. “I told you I never, never, never, never, never…” Her words trailed off as she lost track of what she was going to say.

      “You never get drunk,” Austen reminded her.

      “Right.” This time she nodded her head eagerly up and down. “I never do.”

      “Well, maybe you’re just a little bit tired then,” he corrected himself magnanimously.

      “Yeah,” she said on a sigh. Then realizing somewhat foggily that if she was tired she wouldn’t be able to talk Austen into doing what she wanted so desperately to do, Moriah quickly changed her mind. “I mean no!” she exclaimed frantically, lifting her head enough to gaze groggily into his eyes. “I’m not tired! I’m not! I swear!”

      Austen couldn’t help grinning. God, she was sexy. Her hair, that wonderfully thick mass of spun gold that he had delighted in touching all night, cascaded wildly about her face and shoulders like a crooked halo. Her huge, dark eyes danced dizzily with excitement, and her warm, curvaceous body was soft and pliant as she pressed it against him in an effort to remain standing. The scooped neckline of her black T-shirt had slipped over one shoulder to reveal sun-pinkened skin and the top of one lush, creamy breast. When Moriah rubbed herself against him unknowingly, Austen felt himself growing hard with need, felt all his good intentions about keeping his distance dissolving into a warm mist.

      “Austen?” she whispered thickly against СКАЧАТЬ