Page 258 of Evil Hearts

Oriana sucked in a breath. It shouldn’t hurt so much, but it did. “I came down to Perth, three weeks before the wedding, when the school term finished, and the first thing Hunter said was that he wasn’t going on the honeymoon, because the cruise ship internet wasn’t fast enough. I thought he was joking, but then he said he’d been picked for some game’s beta testing team, and he couldn’t play the full version on the cruise ship because their internet speeds weren’t good enough, so he’d have to stay home.But he was happy for me to go, if I wanted, because he’d only be gaming anyway, and it wasn’t like I’d been selected as a beta tester.”

She swallowed. “I should have known then. I mean, who sends their wife alone on their honeymoon? But it’s his favourite game, and he’s been excited about this new release forever, so the chance to play it early and help the team debug it is totally his thing, so I figured I had enough to deal with, what with dress fittings and flowers and makeup and stuff, so I just left it. Until I popped over to his place to pick up my brother’s suit, because he was going to be one of the groomsmen and all the suits were delivered to Hunter’s place, and my brother’s only got a motorbike and you can’t really carry a suit bag while riding one of those, so…yeah. I arrived and his mum let me in, and said Hunter was upstairs in his room, gaming. So I walked right in, and he didn’t even hear me come in. He had his headphones on, and he’s staring at the screen where this naked girl was on her knees and he had his pants open and he was just…” Oriana gritted her teeth. “He was jerking off to whatever she was saying and doing on the screen. Stuff we’d never done, because he said it just wasn’t the same if we weren’t together. And there he was, having cybersex with some stranger, when we were weeks away from getting married.”

She swallowed. “I told him we were through, that the wedding was off. We managed to get a fair amount of money back from the wedding stuff, but it was too late to get a refund on the honeymoon. And I thought that seeing as I’d already paid for it and wouldn’t be getting the money back, and it wasn’t like Hunter would have gone anyway, that I should still go. So I did, but when I boarded the ship, everyone’s congratulating me on my marriage, and we got upgraded to the honeymoon suite, and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone about Hunter’s betrayal, and how what should be the happiest time of my life isjust me, here, alone. I mean, for ten years, since I met Hunter, we had this plan. We’d both work to save up the money for a house and a wedding, and then I’d take time off to have a family, then go back to work teaching when they were at school, so we could have all the school holidays off together. It was perfect, and I could see it so clearly I could taste it, making their morning Milo before driving the kids to school, then teaching my own class in the city, and picking them up after. Saturday morning sports, taking my turn bringing the orange slices for everyone…”

She hadn’t been able to eat an orange since. And she couldn’t even look at the Milo tin at home. Luckily, the cruise ship had a different brand of hot chocolate.

“But now it’s gone. Shattered, like a mirror into a million pieces. Doesn’t that mean seven years of bad luck? As if it’s not bad enough having my life shattered already. I’ve been telling everyone on the ship that my husband has really bad seasickness, which is why no one’s seen him. I mean, even if Hunter had come along, he still would have stayed in the cabin, playing games, if the internet was good enough, but at least he’d have been there. I wouldn’t have been alone.”

Once she’d started, Oriana just couldn’t stop. “People always say when one door closes, another one opens, right? But what they don’t say is how hard it is to shut that door behind you and move forward, and what do you do if the next door just won’t open yet? And what you’re leaving behind hurts so damn much, and what you thought the future held, that you could see clearly, is the door that’s closed, and you can’t see what’s next, and you need to. I need to…” She couldn’t stop the tears, either. Volcano god or not, Swaran definitely wouldn’t want to ravish her now, even if he ever did. No holiday romance for her.

“Perhaps the reason why these doors hurt so much is because you are quoting Don Quixote, a miserable tragedy of a book if ever there was one. Right after he says it, the fool of a knightpicks up a barber’s bowl and runs about, wearing it as a helmet as he prepares to go into battle.”

She stared at Swaran. “Seriously? That’s where it comes from? I’ve never read that book, but everyone always says…” Oriana swallowed. “So is that what I’m doing wrong? Instead of worrying about planning my whole future, I should do something silly? Sillier than going on a honeymoon solo, of course, because that’s already pretty crazy.”

“Perhaps. But if you mean to forge a new future as a new woman, it is a future for a woman who is not Hunter’s wife. So you must do things that Hunter’s wife would not do, even if they might seem silly to you, or to others. Like hunting for a dead pirate’s treasure.”

She stared at Swaran. He was so right. What would Hunter’s wife do? Or what would she do if she was Hunter’s wife?

“I don’t really like teaching, but I did it because Hunter said it was better than working in mining and geology, which is what I’d originally planned to do. We couldn’t have kids if I was never home, he said, so I should take a job that could work around school hours.” Without Hunter, and without the prospect of having kids in the near future, she could go back to using her geology degree. Actually apply to research volcanoes like this one. Or even go to Antarctica. The possibilities were endless. “I could do anything.”

So she threw her arms around Swaran’s neck and kissed him.

Ten

The moment hislips met hers, Oriana knew it was the best decision she’d made in years. A decade, maybe. Because what his voice could do to her was nothing compared to the power his lips had over her body with just a single kiss.

She forgot about Hunter and her honeymoon and the rest of the world. Hunter’s wife would never know the joy of kissing Swaran on a volcano, or the feel of his strong arms wrapping around her, holding her up when she threatened to swoon for real this time. She breathed a silent apology to every romance novel cover she’d ever dissed in the past, because she’d never be able to look at a man’s chest in a half unbuttoned white shirt again without her underwear melting as she remembered this moment.

Then came a second kiss, and a third, and she was utterly lost.

Along with her shirt, and her shorts, until Swaran laid her down naked and stared down hungrily between her parted thighs.

“I will not steal your virtue, Miss Oriana, though I wish to plunder you as lustily as any pirate. I will give you so much pleasure that you will forget about treasure of any kind, I promise you.” His fingers stroked her thighs, a tantalising tickle when she wanted so much more. His hot breath whisperedacross her most private parts. “And I will drink my fill of your pleasure.”

Holy hell, if this was what being plundered by a pirate felt like, Oriana didn’t want to even imagine getting naked with anyone else. His lips, his hands, every muscle in his body as he bared himself to her, and every stroke…

She moaned. She screamed. She begged. And she drank him in, every part of him, until she thought she’d had her fill, and still he had more to give. So she took everything he gave her and more, greedy for the sort of sexual satisfaction she’d thought only existed in books. The sort of books that had men like Swaran on the cover. Only no romance book could possibly do him justice.

Afterwards, when she lay enveloped in hot, hard muscle, so utterly sated she could barely move even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t believe half the things they’d done. Positions she hadn’t thought possible, and they’d even made use of the coconut oil, in ways that brought a hot blush to her cheeks, because of how much she’d enjoyed it.

As she drifted off to sleep, her last thought was that she’d experienced more orgasms in one night than the woman who’d almost been Hunter’s wife had gotten in the last decade. She could only hope that there would be even more in the morning.

Eleven

The air raidsiren woke Oriana again, but this time she didn’t fall out of the hammock. Swaran was nowhere to be seen, and for a moment, she wondered if it had all been a delicious dream. The dirtiest, most erotic dream she’d ever had. Then she stretched, which awoke all the little aches in places she didn’t know could ache, and knew she hadn’t imagined any of it. Now she looked around, she could even see the empty bottle of coconut oil that had definitely been full when she left the ship.

Come to think of it, she was seriously hungry after all that exercise. She hadn’t eaten since that sandwich at lunchtime yesterday, and the predawn light filtering into the cave told her that was a while ago now. Luckily, the cruise ship had packed plenty, so she grabbed another sandwich and surveyed the cave.

Swaran kept the place pretty neat, There was his hammock bed, of course, and small pool in the back of the cave that he used as his water supply, but she expected to see a backpack, or where he kept his food. A man had to eat, didn’t he? She was certain no man with as many hard muscles as he had could possibly be a ghost, and maintaining a body like that definitely took sustenance of some sort. Unless he truly was a volcano god…a volcano sex god.

Her cheeks burned, think about the things they’d done together last night. God, she wanted to do it all over again. If only he was here now.

She perched on the edge of the hammock to finish her sandwich, and realised the cave wasn’t the straight tunnel she’d thought it was. It had a sort of branch that turned it into more of a curly Y, and her feet led her around the curve to see where the passage went, for she knew the straight one went from the cave entrance to the pool.

Sure enough, as she rounded the bend, she found something: an old wooden chest, exactly the kind you thought of when someone mentioned pirate treasure.

Suspicion clenched her hands into fists. If he’d followed her all yesterday, warning her away from pirate treasure, then seduced her to distract her, when all this time, he’d had Dampier’s treasure hidden here in this cave…

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