Forbidden Stranger Read online

  “Yes. I do,” Ewan replied in a low voice, his gaze never leaving hers.

  Please remember me. Remember us.

  But her gaze showed him he was still almost a stranger to her. All of this was still forbidden and might always be. When Nina moved into his arms, Ewan turned his face away.

  “I want to kiss you again, Ewan.”

  The press of her body against his was sending rolling waves of desire through him. There was no way she couldn’t feel it. His cock had gone almost painfully erect in seconds.

  “Nina. You shouldn’t.”

  “Because you’re my boss?”

  His hands had fallen naturally to just above her hips in the black leggings. She was thinner than she’d been, but her curves were still familiar. He shook his head, aching to tell her. Not daring even to hint.

  “Because you don’t want me?”

  “No,” he gritted out through clenched jaws. “Absolutely not because of that.”

  This time when she kissed him, it was with a clashing of teeth and the stab of her fingernails into the back of his neck where she gripped him. Ah, the pain. The spark of it sent another surge of arousal straight to his already throbbing cock. She took his tongue between her teeth and bit until he cried out into her mouth, but he didn’t pull away, no, never, because that was how it was between them. She knew how to hurt him in the best way, and he craved more, more, more. She had been the only woman, ever, to elicit that response from him, in quite that way. She would be the only woman, ever.

  Breathing hard, Nina made as though to move away from him, but Ewan held her tight. She’d made him wild with longing. He needed to taste her again. He couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop the waves behind them from crashing onto the rocks; the water broke and spilled and so would they because of this kiss, but all he could do was plunder her mouth with his lips, his teeth, his tongue. All he could do was surrender to this desire. To give everything up to her in this moment.

  The sound of his name slipped out of her on a moan so low he almost missed it beneath the sound of the sea. She pushed out of his arms but didn’t take more than a single step back. He could pull her close again, if he chose, but then she put a hand on his chest, over his heart. Some sense returned to him. Not all of it, but enough to give him the smallest semblance of control.

  “You are not just my boss,” Nina whispered. “Who are you to me, Ewan?”

  “I wasn’t the one who hurt you. But I was the reason you got hurt,” he said, finally, praying to whatever gods existed that he wasn’t going to activate the destruction programming. If anything he told her now was going to drive her to die, he would die with her.

  Nina closed her eyes for a moment, turning her face from his. “What would you say to me if I told you I wanted to leave the island?”

  Ewan’s throat closed. She was so beautiful, even in her anguish. It slaughtered him that he was the cause of it. “I would encourage you to stay longer, to take some more time to heal. But I wouldn’t try to keep you here against your wishes. If you really wanted to go, I’d put you on the airtranspo myself, as soon as you asked me.”

  “I don’t want to leave.” Nina looked at him. “Something is keeping me here, something I don’t understand. I’m shiny fine with it, even if I don’t know what it is. More than anything else, I want to get well, Ewan. Will you help me?”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m trying. I swear to you, I am.”

  “Try harder,” Nina said. “Please.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She couldn’t say she hadn’t meant to kiss him. That would be like saying she hadn’t meant to eat the last piece of cake, or hadn’t meant to sleep past her alarm for that extra twenty minutes. Maybe she knew she shouldn’t, but that hadn’t stopped her from doing it. Nina couldn’t remember if she’d always been an impulsive person, but kissing Ewan had definitely been an impulse. At least the first time.

  The second had been pure, wanton need. Inescapable. Relentless. A compulsion she didn’t understand but had been unable to fight. It had left her both weakened and yet feeling strong—a contradiction in her emotions that she couldn’t get straight.

  Why did kissing Ewan Donahue make Nina feel as though she might fall to the ground, only so he could help her back up?

  “We should get back to the house,” she told him when he didn’t say anything more. “I’m hungry.”

  Something in the way his lips tipped up a little annoyed but also intrigued her.

  “Why does that make you smile?” she demanded.

  “Your appetite. It’s consistent, that’s all.”

  She put her hands on her stomach. She’d been bony thin when she first woke up from the accident, but had been working to get more fit. “Is that a polite way of saying I’m getting fat?”

  “There is no polite way to say something like that,” Ewan told her, “and I would never say that, anyway.”

  For a moment the tension between them eased into something more resembling the casual friendship they’d built over the past few months. She wanted to fight it, Nina thought as she studied his face. It had become so familiar to her, she could have numbered every line and every lash. She wanted to battle against the semblance that maybe they would both forget that he’d invaded her privacy. Kept important information from her. Been involved, somehow, in the reasons she’d been injured.

  It was too hard, that was all. Too difficult to keep fighting to hold onto her fury when that was so obviously the opposite of how she felt about him. She could keep stoking the fire of her anger, but she needed kindling and was running low.

  “I’ll meet you at the house,” she told him, pointing in the direction of the stairs, which she couldn’t use. It would take her a longer ten minutes or so to get back by going around to the path.

  Ewan shook his head. “You’re coming with me.”

  Nina tensed. “I can’t handle the stairs. You know that.”

  “I’ll be with you.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “I can’t do them. They make me feel . . . bad.”

  It was not the best way to describe it, but seemed the only word she could find. Her brain buzzed with alarm as Ewan took her firmly by the elbow and moved her a step or two toward the stairs. Nina balked. Ewan tugged.

  The next thing she knew, he was on the ground in front of her, and she was straddling him, her knees pressing into his sides and her hand around his throat while the other was raised above her head, poised to give him some kind of final blow. She stopped herself with a gasp, but didn’t move. Ewan had not struggled at all to stop her and was not moving, now.

  She ought to get off him. She knew that. Her fingers, curled around the warmth of his skin, twitched. His pulse beat beneath her palm. She lowered her other hand and released his throat. She still wanted to kiss him.

  Something grows in the space between them, real and palpable, an echo of the previous tensions but something more. Something bigger. It tightens the muscles in her belly and at the base of her throat; she swallows against it, but it doesn’t go away.

  Nina got to her feet. Physical reactions to sexual arousal and to threats were so similar—increased heart rate, blood pressure, sweating. The sensations rushed through her, and Nina took a step back. She could control this, she thought wildly. She could make this stop. She had to make it stop, right now.

  Breathe. Calm. Slow.

  Something that had been clenched and tight unfurled inside her. She tasted salt on her upper lip. Trickles of sweat crept down her spine. Her fingers twitched, but she kept them from curling into fists.

  “The stairs,” Ewan told her. “Unless you want to knock me unconscious to avoid them.”

  Nina shook her head. “I don’t want that. No.”

  “I’ll be there with you. All the way.” Ewan held out his hand.

  “When you’re . . . mine . . .” Nina muttered. It was not the voice in her head saying it, it was her own lips and tongue forming the words.

  “Y