She looked at him, not saying a word. But her eyes said it all.
Yeah, he’d been so right to come here. Why couldn’t he hunt something for himself for once?
“You don’t want the soft toys and the whispers of love?” he prompted.
“What’s with all the questions?” she needled. “Do you always turn everything back onto who you’re talking to?”
Of course. He never liked to admit anything. Keeping his cards close to his chest was the only way to keep them safe. This he knew. “Do you?”
She looked at him, frustrated for a second. Then laughed. “Please tell me you did that deliberately.”
He stayed silent and just watched her react to him.
Her slightly-too-wide mouth was already in the most gorgeous curve. Her whole body radiated vivacity. She had the most expressive face of anyone he’d ever met and she was often comic.
Chelsea had taken their friend Min’s advice and started a social media campaign for the pizzeria and the pictures of Luisa in her roller skates and crazy ensembles were the most popular. Of course they were when in every single photo her luminous vitality shone—it couldn’t be contained within her body—the light gleamed from her coal eyes.
She was an entertainer, which was why she worked in hospitality so often. And the fact those jobs were often readily available for short term. She could earn a mint in tips, he’d seen it happen. She had the most zest for life of anyone he’d met. Sure, he spent too much of his time with people who weren’t in the happiest of places and who needed serious help. Hurt people. The box of fluffy ducks that Luisa could be was poles apart from those. But she wasn’t like that all the time—he knew that too. Her energy was incredible, but nobody could be that up all the time. She had her down moments. Her loneliness. She was just a pro at masking it. And sometimes her tart-toned jokes were too close to the truth. There was something more to her that she hid. Something that he saw when she took those very occasional glances at him. The too-quick ones. It wasn’t fear and he was glad about that. But it looked a lot like pain—and that was something he knew too well.
So he couldn’t leave her alone.
In his work, if he had the chance to help just one person, he put himself on the line. That was his calling. But this time he was helping himself. Ridding himself of the ache had since setting eyes on her. He wanted her and he knew she wanted him. He just wanted her to stop running from the inevitable and finally admit it. Sometimes he attracted needy people because of his appearance—the muscles, the hardness, the lack of smiles. He looked like he could dole out pain. And he could. Just not in the bedroom. That facade he played up for his friends. In truth he liked getting his women off with the rich and velvety variety that was vanilla. So the irony was he scared off some of the women he’d truly wanted and attracted others who wanted hurt with their heat, wanted hurt more than they wanted him. It wasn’t his jam to hurt a woman that way. But Luisa didn’t want that hurt, she did just want him. And that scared her.
“Why couldn’t you let it go?” she asked softly.
“You think I haven’t tried?” He cocked his head and watched as she dragged in another uneven breath. “Have you let it go?”
Color flooded her cheeks.
“I hate unanswered questions.” He rested his hands on the wooden bar between them. “Why did you run away? Am I really that scary?”
“What makes you think you were what I ran from?” Luisa challenged him, desperately trying to hide how close to the truth he’d hit.
“If not me, what was it?”
“Did it have to be anything? Maybe my work visa ran out.”
“You never had a work visa.”
She smiled in amusement, yeah, he was too astute for comfort. “I just felt like moving on. I get itchy feet. I love to travel. A lot.”
“So you never spend more than a few weeks in any one town?”
“Pretty much.”
“And that’s not the definition running away?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s exploring. That’s being free.”
“Free from what? People? Expectations? Pressure?”
“What’s with the analysis?” she asked.
“What’s with the defensiveness?”
“Again with this, really?”
“So you have some bucket list you’re working your way through?” He guessed.
Luisa stiffened. “I don’t believe in bucket lists.”
“No?”
“I have an anti-list. For every item I tick off, I add at least two more.”
“An infinite list?”
“Exactly.” She fired up, pushing back on his damned questions. “It’s my fuck-it list. Because you only live once and what are you going to do once the bucket list is done? They’re limiting, don’t you think?” Her bucket list was infinite. Because she wasn’t dying. Nothing and no one would hold her back. She was free. “So I think, fuck-it, I’m gonna do it. Just the once.”
“So you do everything just the once?”
She nodded.
“Then why not me? Why don’t you fuck me just the once?”
She’d walked right into that and she’d known she was. She’d pushed it, just to see if he’d challenge her in that way. Now adrenalin shot along her veins and she tossed her hair. “It’s a really tempting offer when you put it like that,” she drawled.
“I’m not a smooth talker,” he half laughed. “I say it straight and to the point.”
“Is that how you have sex too? Straight and to the point?”
“Curious, aren’t you?” A slow, lazy smile curved his mouth. “There’s only one way you’re gonna find out.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” She bluffed. She had no idea how she was going to find out anything about this guy—other than the physically intimate details of the desire she’d been suppressing.
“You want me to talk to you? Tell you everything that’s in my heart and soul?” He shook his head. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why don’t you like talking?” she asked.
“I prefer to show more than tell. Understand?”
Oh she did.
“You can’t deny it, can you? This…”
“Thing between us?” She laughed and shook her head. “Hunter.”
“I l
ike hearing you say my name,” he muttered. “I know you feel it too. I see it in your eyes, I see it in your body.”
He was lethal. Silent most of the time—but now he’d opened up? He didn’t flirt, he was like a juggernaut. She shouldn’t have expected anything less from the man.
She shifted on her feet. “That doesn’t mean I plan to do anything about it.”
“You don’t do casual sex?” One eyebrow shot high.
Actually she didn’t. She couldn’t remember the last time she was intimate with a guy. When she’d first headed overseas she’d experimented, trying to find a way to ease the ache in her chest. But it hadn’t worked and in the end she no longer bothered. It brought more hassle than joy. She liked the total freedom of living a solitary life.
“That’s all this… that’s all you want.” She needed to clarify that he only wanted to have sex with her. Casual sex.
“Be honest, it’s all you want too.”
Yes of course. But even though she had those rules, she hadn’t done it in a really long time.
“You feel this too,” he added.
That was the trouble. She didn’t want to feel. And even though the only feeling she had for Hunter was purely physical desire, she felt it too much. It was too strong.
“Let me get this straight, you have followed me halfway round the world to this tiny island of Fiji, for a quick fuck,” she murmured with fake casualness.
“I’ve already told you it isn’t going to be quick.”
“You’re very confident.”
“It’ll be what it’ll be.” He shrugged philosophically as if he didn’t give a damn. But the intensity in his eyes gave him away. “I needed a vacation anyway. Been months since I had one. This is as nice a place as any.”
“Yet your options for a quick fuck are limited. If I say no, you’re unlikely to get any from someone else. All the women here are taken.”
She rebelled at the thought of him with someone else—a possessiveness that she had no right to feel poisoned her mood.
“I don’t want anyone other than you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m tired of wanting only you.”