Page 37 of Undoing His Innocent Enemy (Hot Winter Escapes)

‘F-f-freezing!’ she shouted over her shoulder, then clambered back up the ladder again so fast her bright pink skin was a blur of motion. Her breasts jiggled adorably as she danced around trying to grab her robe, her nipples ruched into hard peaks.

His mouth watered as he considered how best to warm her breasts up again.

He levered himself out behind her as she bundled herself into the robe, covering up all that delicious flesh, then stamped her feet back into the sliders and rushed down the deck towards the sauna cabin.

He was still laughing, the adrenaline making him even more euphoric than usual as the door of the cabin slammed shut behind her.

He tugged on his own robe, his skin brilliantly alive from the cold, but his groin pulsing hot with a very different kind of vitality. He entered the large wooden cabin he had built several summers ago, stoked the fire, added a few more logs so they could stay inside for a while, then ducked into the sauna.

She sat on the top bench, shivering, despite the dry heat—the robe still wrapped tightly around her naked body.

Well, now, that wouldn’t do.

He dropped his own robe, kicked off his sliders aware of the thick ridge in his wet shorts as the raw heat poured through his system now on the tails of the adrenaline overload.

‘How the...?’ Her brows rose in astonishment as her gaze snagged on the proof of his need. ‘How can you possibly be hard again? After that?’

‘Because I am always hard for you,’ he said, his chuckle roughened by the familiar desire, although his heart stuttered at the realisation it was only the truth.

He placed his foot on the bench below her to ease the robe off her shoulders. ‘Can you not feel it too? The rush?’

Her fingers released their death grip on the flannel and she let him cast the robe aside—to reveal the flushed flesh he adored. Her gaze met his, the depth of emotion making his heart stumble, when she nodded.

‘Yes, it’s...’ She breathed in, the motion making her breasts lift, drawing his gaze to the puckered nipples, so taut and ready it was as if they were begging for his mouth. ‘I’d forgotten how good it feels, to swim outside in cold water. The rush afterwards is incredible,’ she said, the wistful look in her eyes enchanting him.

‘You have been ice swimming before?’

‘Not exactly.’ She chuckled, the sound light with pleasure. Her full lips curled, making her whole face brighten. ‘There’s a beach near my family’s farm in Wexford called Curracloe. Miles of sand and dunes. I used to swim there as a girl with my brothers.’ She closed her eyes, let her head fall back, the memories lighting her face like sunshine.

‘We’d go all year round,’ she continued as he listened intently—riveted by this glimpse into her past, her childhood. ‘Sneak down after school before we had to do our chores. It was the perfect escape. The winter was the best time, even though the surf was brutal. The water was warm into November, and there’d be no tourists, you see. We’d have the whole beach to ourselves. But then...’ She paused, and something stark flashed across her features—taking the sunshine away. Her gaze had lost the golden glow of memory, her expression becoming bleak when she opened her eyes.

‘But then what?’ he probed, even though he knew it was dangerous to ask. Dangerous to care about what had put the sadness in her eyes. Dangerous to want to know where that bleak look had come from.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She shrugged and smiled. But the innocent joy was gone.

She pressed her palm to the thick ridge in his shorts. ‘Perhaps we should take care of this now you’ve revived me,’ she added provocatively.

His aching flesh leapt to her touch. But he knew a distraction technique when he saw one.

He clasped her wrist, dragged those tempting fingers away.

‘Tell me,’ he said as he sat beside her on the bench. He pushed the wet locks of her hair back so he could see her face. ‘Why did you stop swimming as a girl?’

She sighed. ‘The story is a passion killer.’

Nothing could kill his passion for her, he thought wryly. But he only said again, ‘Tell me.’

Her shoulders hitched, but for once he did not become fixated on the bounce of her bare breasts.

‘Da caught us one afternoon,’ she said. ‘And took a belt to my brothers and me. After that, there was no escape in it any more. Just the fear he would catch us again.’

‘Your father hit you with a belt?’ he asked, unable to hide his shock, not just at the revelation, but the lack of emotion in her tone when she revealed this ugly detail.

He knew enough about Cara Doyle to know she was not an unemotional woman.

She folded her arms across her breasts, the flush of shame in her cheeks making him want to punch a wall.

‘The man was a brute,’ she said, without any inflection at all. ‘And I hated him. But to be fair, it was the only time he ever hit me. My brothers all felt the end of his belt on a regular basis. But he preferred to spend his time calling me a dirty whore.’ She let out a half-laugh, but it had no humour. ‘If he could have seen me this past week, jumping you every chance I get and enjoying every second of it, I’ve no doubt he would have considered himself right about that.’

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