Standing on the lanai of her Biscayne Island hotel room, Anna looked out over the palm trees, hibiscus, white oleander, and birds of paradise toward the warm surf of the Caribbean washing gently ashore. The balmy, scented air and the shushing of the waves should have been more than enough to lull her to sleep after the exhausting few days she'd just survived. She'd endured hired assassins, bomb disarmaments, rebel armies, and Robert's driving. But none of that was what kept her wakeful. The adrenaline that still coursed through her veins did so because of Duke.
She could not clear her mind of the memory of how she'd felt when he'd kissed her after they'd hog-tied the hit man in his hotel room. She could still feel his heart pounding through his chest as he'd held her against him; her scalp still prickled where his fingers had held her head as he'd pulled her face to his; she could taste his quickened breath in her mouth as his tongue had sought hers.
Worse had been that afternoon in the bank, with the tango music playing, the oppressive tropical heat stifling her, and the eyes of the bank manager and his wife on them. "El amor…, el amor," the older woman had said, able to see the heat that had wavered between Anna and Duke as they'd stood face to face with the music taunting them. Anna's body had ached to move against Duke's, and she had not dared to move-had barely dared to breathe-because she'd known that if she had let his hips lead her through the rhythms of the tango, the two of them would not have stopped with dancing.
The fact that he and Camellia were here, and that a hired gun had followed them, meant Anna could no longer deny that he'd been telling the truth about the danger inherent in the wretched secret of L'Orlean. It still hurt her that he'd kept that secret-stubbornly, hard-headedly-in spite of the many times she'd asked him to share it with her. But now she better understood why he'd done it. It was in his nature to try to protect anyone who'd been threatened, whether it was Camellia incurring the wrath of the Jerome family or herself being smeared with the ink of Marc Carlin's poison pen. This protective instinct was one it was hard for her to condemn.
Especially given how well it had served her on this mission. It would have been impossible for her to have defused the mountainside bombs and help rescue Monica Quartermaine and the others without Duke's selfless assistance. He had hauled the equipment, held the explosive device, and expressed complete confidence in her munitions skills-with none of the squabbling and competitiveness that would have characterized a similar undertaking between her and Robert. When she and Duke had made their retreat, with the fire and concussions of detonations going off all around them, she'd realized once again that he'd meant it literally when he'd said he would die for her. She now suspected he'd go farther than that: The circumstances of that escape suggested he would run into the burning, sulfurous maw of Hell for her. And if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she would do the same for him.
Just when she'd begun to daydream that she and Duke had blown off the scheduled rendezvous with Robert and Sean, and instead found a quiet cave in which to ride out the skirmish in solitude, she heard a rustling in the foliage at the edge of the beach. She looked toward the sound, expecting to see a bird or lizard or some other rainforest creature. Instead, she saw the silhouette of a man. Six feet tall and lanky, he sauntered onto the sand with a slow, self-contained ease, and even from behind, in the dark, from a distance, Anna recognized him: Duke. She stepped back, away from the edge of the lanai, into the shadows by the doorway, so that he would not see her staring should he sense himself being watched and turn toward her.
But he did not turn. He stood staring out to sea, looking at the moonlight reflecting off the water. The same silver light shone on his dark hair and gilded the lines of his body, and Anna's breath caught in her throat at the beauty of him. He slid his hands into the pockets of his loose pants, then pulled the right one out again and rubbed at the back of his neck. Anna saw his strong shoulders rise and fall in what must have been a sigh. Then his hand returned to his pocket, and he turned and began to walk along the beach, back in the same direction from which he'd emerged from the hotel's gardens.
In a moment he was out of sight, hidden by the dense vegetation to the right of the garden path. Anna stepped close to the lanai wall again, hoping to regain her view of him. But it was too late.
Before she could think any more about it, Anna had crept down the steps of the lanai to the hard-packed sand below. Then she padded silently along the garden path to the beach from which Duke had just disappeared.
She peeked around the edge of the leaves and looked down the beach, after him. He was quite a distance away already, and turning to his right again, back toward the jungle and the hotel. Once he was beyond her vision-putting her safely out of his as well-she followed.
She did not catch up with him, but soon found herself beneath another hotel lanai-outside Duke's room. She told herself she should turn around, and go back. But somehow, her feet refused to move. They seemed rooted to the ground, even though something was sticking painfully into their bare soles.
She bent down and lifted her heel, and from beneath it scraped up a handful of small white beach pebbles worn smooth and round by millennia of tides. She tossed them, underhand, over the lanai wall, and listened to them bounce off the glass door with a clattering of clicks.
Inside the room, Robert lifted his eyes from the book he was reading as he lay on the far bed. "Did you hear something?" he asked.
"What's that?" Duke asked, still distracted, as he packed clothing neatly into his suitcase. He had not heard anything other than the sound of Anna's voice in his own head, telling him, "I couldn't have done it without you."
"Outside," Robert said. "I thought I heard something."
"It's probably nothing. A bird, or something," Duke said, approaching the window to have a look. And saw Anna, standing there, looking up at him, her face as white as the moon above the pale pink satin of her dressing gown-the same dressing gown she'd worn their first night in the country cottage, he could not help remembering.
"Anything?" Robert asked.
"Nothing." Duke was silent a moment, just staring at Anna, who stared back, unmoving. "I've…lost my watch," he said suddenly, running his hand over his bare left wrist and glancing down, praying that when he looked back up again this heavenly apparition would not have disappeared. "When I was walking on the beach. I'm...gonna go look for it."
"Were you wearing one?" Robert asked skeptically, but Duke had already slid open the glass door and slipped out, closing it behind him all but a crack, without looking back.
The angel was still there, and he went to her, quickly. Stopping in front of her, he started to say her name: "An-"
She pressed her fingertips against his lips and hushed him. "Shhh. Don't."
She slowly retracted her hand, and then, as if in slow motion, their mouths moved toward each other and came together.
Duke was nearly trembling with gratitude and desire. He put his hands to her hips and pulled her against him, then ran them slowly up her sides. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck and curled her forearms around his head, pressing her body against his. They were drunk with the taste of each other, and unsteady on their feet as they clung together. Duke broke his mouth from hers for a gasp of air, then moved his lips along her jaw line and then down her neck, and she could not contain a moan.
The sound carried easily on the still night air, and in the hotel room, Robert grumbled, "Lost his watch, my eye…." He tossed his paperback to the floor and hunkered down on the bed, turning his back on the window. "You could get a room, you know. They've only got dozens of 'em," he muttered, burrowing his head beneath the pillow.
Back outside, Anna took Duke's face in her hands and pulled his mouth back to hers. She began to move backward along the path, blindly, toward the beach. They brushed against the forest overgrowth as they kissed, heedless of everything but their need for each other.
Once on the beach, Anna sank to her knees on the sand, pulling Duke with her. She slid her arms beneath his shoulders, and he stroked his hands over her hair as wisps stirred in the sea breeze. Their bodies strained toward each other, hot and alert through the thin fabric of their nightclothes.
Anna leaned against Duke, and he toppled sideways to the ground with her, clutching her to him. He rolled to his back, hauling her atop him, and their hands scrabbled together at the long, slippery skirts of her robe and shift. After what felt like an eternity but could not have been more than a handful of seconds, the flimsy obstacle was gathered above her hips, and her hands tore at Duke's waistband, wrenching it down as he plunged his hands beneath her skirts to grab her bottom.
With a quick alignment of their hips, their bodies were coming together, effortlessly but with an intensity that drew a gasp from Anna and prompted Duke to groan through gritted teeth. She lay still atop him and closed her straddling thighs, wanting to savor the sense of completion after weeks and weeks of feeling completely hollow inside.
For his part, Duke struggled to keep still-afraid that any sudden move on his part would break the spell and send her spiriting away like a will-o'-the-wisp. Even now, as she kissed him and constricted around him, he did not trust her to stay. For every tentative step they'd taken toward each other, she'd invariably made a half-skip back, always keeping maddeningly just beyond his reach. So now, whatever move she made would have to be enough, until she decided to make the next, one way or another.
He squeezed her bottom and grunted with the effort of doing nothing, and she sat up and looked down into his face. The devotion she saw there begged to be rewarded-it moved her heart and her hips, and Duke groaned yet again.
Anna gave in to the piercing pleasure of him, forgetting everything that had come before and whatever might happen after. There was nothing other than this present moment as she focused on Duke's hard, demanding desire for her, so undeniable on his face and within her body. "Please don't deny it," his body said now as clearly as he had after she'd rescued him from the hit man. "We've never stopped loving each other." And in this moment, she could no longer deny him or herself.
The tension that had wound tighter and tighter within her with every interaction between them was, finally, uncontainable, and Anna bit her bottom lip and moaned, again and again, as she rocked on top of Duke, riding out an exquisitely powerful orgasm. He watched her, looking up at her face against the starry night sky and thinking that she was the brightest and most beautiful of those celestial bodies. And then it was like looking at a starburst as his own pleasure exploded inside her throbbing body.
Anna hung her head, shuddering, and her hair fell in front of her face. Duke reached to brush it back, to look at her, and she started up and slid off of him. She was scrambling unsteadily to her feet before he had even managed rouse himself.
"Anna, wait," he said desperately, pulling at the waist of his pants and then quickly clambering to his feet.
He grabbed her arm to halt her, as she protested, "I can't... I didn't mean it."
Her words sparked anger within him, kindled by the conviction that she was lying. "You came to me," he said, his voice low and menacing. "You came."
"I know," she said, pulling away from him.
"Don't do this. Don't go."
"I have to." She clawed his hand from her arm, and the silk of her dressing gown slipped from his grasp, and then she was flying away from him, down the beach, her nightclothes flapping behind her.