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The water, when she plunged into it, felt wonderful, cool and silky against her heated skin, and she swam until her protesting muscles could no longer be ignored with safety and reluctantly waded out to face the rest of her life, a future without Luke, without love. Because love him she did. The knowledge came with shocking clarity.
She stood like a sleepwalker, disorientated. She loved Luke. She had found within herself a potential for deep, passionate, enduring love. And this was worse, far worse, than merely wanting him, because, for him, love didn't come into it.
Stunned, she recalled the vital immediacy of their attraction, how he'd only had to touch her to make her forget his manifold faults and respond as she'd never responded to a man before. She simply hadn't realised she was falling in love.
If, just once, he'd said he loved her, had spoken of marriage, of commitment, she would have accepted him gladly—she knew that now. She would have trusted her future to him because, days ago, her body had known what her mind had refused to accept. She had actively fought what she now knew was her growing love for him, but she had lost the battle.
And precisely what she was going to do about it, she didn't know.
And then she saw him and her heart stopped in its tracks. He was wearing narrow black denims belted low on lean hips, and a black sleeveless T-shirt which moulded his torso to aching perfection. His dark hair was ruffled by the offshore breeze, otherwise he might have been carved from rock, the incredible deep blue of his eyes steady, watching her.
Her stomach lurched over as her heart began to beat again, picking up speed, her pulses racing as she faced the unbelievable.
Had she conjured him out of her imagination? Was that still, silent figure there by some freak of yearning? A figment of a fevered imagination?
And then her heart turned over inside her, very slowly, with sweet, sweet painfulness, because he moved, he was real, and he was here. Standing motionless, too bemused by the sheer, blinding quality of her joy even to breathe, she watched him pace deliberately towards her.
His past didn't matter, nothing mattered but the glory of seeing him again, and she knew what people meant when they said that love was blind.
Sea-water was gently lapping her calves, gathering in glittering droplets on her skin, sticking her hair to her skull. And Luke walked through the water until he was standing over her and she smiled in simple ecstasy, her arms instinctively reaching for him and nothing had ever felt this right before.
'I ought to give you a beating. I never want to have to live through the past two days again,' he growled huskily, just before his arms gathered her nearly naked softness into the hard, impatient strength of his body.
The kiss seemed to last forever and yet it was nothing like long enough. It was as if soul spoke to soul through the fusing of lips, the erotic interplay of tongues, the desperate clinging of hands. And when he at last raised his head she stared at him breathlessly, her lips swollen and bruised, her eyes dark with love.
Sunlight glistened on bronzed skin covering hard muscles, was reflected from the depths of his eyes, making them glitter like precious gems. And his clean male breath feathered her skin as he muttered, 'When will I be able to get it through your skull? There's no point in running, Annie. I'll always follow you. Always.'
Emotionally overwrought, she felt her throat clog with tears and she said shakily, 'I can't run, Luke, not any more.'
She heard the sharp drag of his breath, saw the kiss-softened line of his lips part as he groaned, 'Oh, Annie, my love!' and then his hands were on either side of her head, his fingers splayed in her wet hair as his tongue explored the parted sweetness of her lips with a seductive promise that turned her blood to fire.
His body pressed urgently against her own, transmitting wildly clamouring messages. She received them open-heartedly, with joy. She loved him, she always would. Nothing mattered now but that. She could no longer fight the for
ce of their mutual and shattering attraction.
His hands were moving over her heated flesh now, moulding her, exciting her almost beyond endurance as the floodtide of desire relentlessly pressured her senses, insistently, urgently demanding a release from the burning, aching need that possessed her, a need only he could satisfy.
'I couldn't believe you'd gone,' he muttered hoarsely, moving his lips from hers, his mouth trailing erotically along her jawline, from the hollow behind her ear to the point of her chin, feathering down the length of her throat, leaving a trail of burning sensation that had her clinging weakly to the strength of his rock-solid body.
Convulsively, her hands clutched at his chest, her fingers uncurling against the warmth of his T-shirt, the heavy beat of his heart transmitting its rhythm to her own as she began a fevered exploration of the hard, well-defined musculature of his body, his wide shoulders, the warm, tanned skin of his throat.
She was melting all over, disintegrating with her love for him.
He demanded thickly, 'Why did you run?'
'Because I was afraid. Because you're not my type,' she whispered, a catch in her voice as her mouth moved against his sun-warmed throat, and his hands tightened around her hips, pulling her close into his body, making her shockingly aware of how very much he wanted her.
'And what is your type?' he questioned thickly, his lips finding hers again, touching and tasting.
'It's not—not—' She could hardly speak, her voice was so thick with the force of the desire he was arousing. 'Not the whizzkid, entrepreneurial inhabitant of Glitz City type!' she managed, stumbling over the unmanageable words.
Clearly exasperated, he roughly drew her even closer, and answered, 'Do you always prejudge people? I assure you, I'm not a kid, and I never whizz, and if Glitz City exists I've never been there!'
'But I don't really know you,' she murmured, drowning in sensation. Not knowing him didn't really matter at all, not now. She had changed out of recognition, was prepared, as never before, to base her whole existence on love, to trust her emotions.
'Then we'll have fun learning about each other, won't we?' he suggested, scooping her up in his arms as the incoming tide crept around their melded hips. Carrying her, held close to his body, he lovingly laid her down on the warm sand, drinking in every exposed inch of her body with heated eyes.
Annie stretched luxuriously, unashamedly, her movements sensual, languid, watching him watching her as, with a few economical movements he removed his own clothing and she was filled with a strange wild ecstasy as she drank in the pagan magnificence of his superb male body.
