Moriah's Mutiny. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ agreed that it was time to part ways. Gustav and Anna were going to head home, while Dorian and Maggie invited Austen and Moriah to an all-night party at the home of a mutual friend near Red Hook. With an expressive glance toward each other, both simultaneously declined. Instead Austen drove Moriah back to her hotel, taking a roundabout route to give her a casual tour of the island along the way. Even in the dark, the moonlit views were spectacular, and Moriah breathed deeply the balmy Caribbean night, so different from the stifling, stale heat that had pervaded Philadelphia all summer. What was it about the tropics that made the heat not only bearable but enjoyable? she wondered. Then gazing along the way at the silver moon and crystal stars that hung above the lush whispering palm trees and the long ribbon of surf that stretched around the U-shaped beach at Magen’s Bay, she realized the answer to her question. Who wouldn’t prefer this to the city?

      Probably anyone who couldn’t find a job down here, she told herself drily. Too bad the number-one business was tourism, she added silently. She hadn’t gone to school for seven years and suffered through her thesis and dissertation to become a hotel manager or bartender or diving instructor. And even if her studies focused on primitive Caribbean cultures right now, there weren’t too many universities down here that could offer her the funds, the staff or the resources she needed to facilitate her research.

      Moriah sighed heavily at the realization, and Austen glanced at her from the driver’s side of his Jeep. Every time he looked at her, she was more beautiful, he thought. And now, with the moon glinting off her curls like honeyed silver, her hair tossed about furiously by the wind, she nearly took his breath away. When they finally arrived at her hotel, he pulled into the parking lot and got out along with her, suggesting that they end the evening with a stroll along the beach.

      “But it’s after one o’clock in the morning,” she protested reluctantly, beginning to feel a significant buzz from her drinks at Sparky’s but still unwilling to end what had been an exceptionally pleasurable evening.

      “Just a short one, Moriah,” he entreated. “Please?”

      She smiled at him and capitulated easily. “Okay.”

      They found their way down to the beach through the nearly deserted hotel lobby and kicked off their shoes when they touched the warm, powdery white sand. They both reached automatically for the other’s hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and Moriah found herself gazing up toward Austen’s face expectantly, as if he might be able to reveal to her all the secrets of the universe. Instead she saw a man whose burnished skin made him ruggedly handsome, whose charmingly crooked smile displayed a row of even, white teeth and gave rise to deep slashes on his square jaws that she supposed were meant to be dimples. A funny little heat seeped into Moriah’s stomach, as if she’d consumed a flaming dessert before the fire was extinguished. It spread into her heart and her breasts, creeping up her neck to her face, and she knew her temperature must have risen ten degrees just looking at him. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps at one of the bars or other hotels or maybe just somewhere in the hidden darkness of her feverish imagination, Moriah heard steel drums picking up a lively, joyful tune, something that reminded her of endless oceans and long sea voyages, of hot passion-filled nights and tranquil summer days.

      Austen seemed to hear the magic, mystic music, too, because he stopped suddenly and turned to her, searching her face for something he didn’t voice. As the warm surf lapped playfully about their ankles and the cool breeze lifted their hair, Austen brought his hands up to gently cup Moriah’s face. For long moments he only looked at her, and gingerly, she covered his hands with her own and waited. Finally he dipped his head quickly and brushed her lips with his, so softly that Moriah thought at first she must have imagined it. But then he kissed her again, and again, this time gently urging her shy mouth with his, asking permission, petitioning, pleading.

      Eagerly she answered him with a need and desire to rival his own, running her fingers down the length of his bent arms to rest on his shoulders, coming up on tiptoe to press her mouth anxiously against his. With a groan, Austen wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, lifting her easily from the sand to bury his face in the thick, sea-scented tresses that fell over her shoulder. Hungrily he kissed her neck and collarbone, her jaw, her cheek, her forehead. Then once again his lips traveled down to capture hers, hot and insistent. He traced her mouth with the tip of his tongue, then nipped and tasted her lower lip as if he couldn’t get enough.

      “Moriah,” he rasped out softly, pulling her tightly into his arms, tucking her head snugly beneath his chin, “we have to stop this right now.”

      Moriah’s heart banged against her rib cage with the speed and force of a battering ram. What am I doing? she asked herself frantically, realizing with utter shock that her behavior tonight was so unlike her usual stern reserve and propriety. It was as if she had become another person since she had met Austen. As if her personality had just split down the middle and now she was acting like some wanton, hedonistic, mindless being. Good heavens! She was acting like one of her sisters! It simply was not like Professor Mallory to pick up a man in a bar and follow him all over town. Never in her life had she reacted so wildly and impulsively to a man the way she had to Austen. Not with professional and academic men she had known for months and years, and certainly not with some beach bum she had just picked up in a bar.

      Virtually all of her life she’d been building up sturdy walls and barriers to keep away the pain that came with continuous rejection, to protect herself from ever being thoughtlessly hurt again. But somehow, and in a very short span of time, Austen had managed to tear down those walls, break through those barriers and had experienced very little difficulty in doing so. Moriah had to admit with a good deal of surprise that she had been perfectly happy to let him do it. And standing here now on the beach of a tropical island, digging her toes into the sand, breathing in the fragrance of the summer night and the handsome, exciting man beside her, savoring the kiss of the breeze on her skin and watching the shimmery light of the wide silver moon dance across the tranquil water…it suddenly occurred to Moriah that this was exactly where she belonged. The scent of her stale, stark campus office was exactly where it belonged right now, too—a million miles away.

      Moriah told herself that it was precisely because she did feel like another woman that she made her next suggestion. Because she was free of the restrictive leashes that her job and her relatives choked around her, free of the academic and familial mores that dictated she be stark and stale, too. With Austen, she was no longer Mo Mallory, underachieving younger sibling of the spectacular Mallory sisters, nor did she have to perform to the high standards and intellectual level of Professor Moriah Mallory, Ph.D., cultural anthropologist. Here, with him, she could be anyone she wanted to be, and for tonight, she just wanted to be Moriah, a woman with wants and needs like any other, a woman whose feelings were fierce and whose desires ran deep. A woman who wanted and needed the man who held her close in his strong arms.

      “Austen,” she whispered quickly, breathlessly, fearful that the wind would whisk her words before he heard them, “I want you to spend the night with me. I want to make love with you.”

      She heard him catch his breath, felt his heart begin to fire rapidly in his chest. For long moments neither of them moved, and she began to worry that Austen wasn’t going to answer her. Finally his softly uttered words splintered open the dark, quiet night.

      “Moriah, you don’t know what you’re saying,” he told her softly.

      “Yes, I do,” she insisted.

      He pulled his head from above hers and looked affectionately down into her eyes, then shook his head slowly back and forth. “No, you don’t,” he repeated simply.

      “Austen—”

      “Moriah, you’re here temporarily on vacation,” he interrupted her. “And the Caribbean is a far cry from Philadelphia, believe me. It’s СКАЧАТЬ