The Wrong Brother for Brooke (Hot Tide Book 3) Page 8

  But he pulled his hand away again and stepped back. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’re going to try something different tomorrow so get a good night’s rest.”

  And then he was walking her to the door and shutting it and she was alone and wondering what just happened.

  Back in her room she paced the small space, unsure what she was supposed to do with these…feelings… that were rushing around her. Was she crushing on Kainui? Was that what this was? He was good looking like his brother sure, but she’d already decided if she was going to be with someone, they needed to be as driven as she was. As strongly focused on the ocean and on the WSL circuit. That wasn’t Kai. So far, he seemed more about letting the world sit underneath you, doing a lot of feeling and looking for the answers all that thinking brought up. Last week if anyone had told her she’d be listening to anything like that she would have laughed at them. But all the stuff Kai had just told her, about following her curiosity, being more gentle with herself rather than pushing through whatever got in her way, it made sense. It made sense when he said it, and when he nudged her to look for it. It made sense and she could see his techniques were helping her shoulder heal.

  She sat on her bed, fell back into the pile of soft pillows and stared at the ceiling fan again. She’d taken his hand and he had pulled back. Why? When he’d been so clear about wanting her in his bed?

  “It doesn’t matter. Sleeping with him will only complicate matters. I’m here to get better and get back in the water. Nothing else matters.” Saying it out loud didn’t make it any easier to dismiss the surge of attraction that was still churning through her. Kai made her feel that she could do whatever she wanted, that if she got out of her own way she’d make it to the top. No man had ever made her feel like that before. And yet… “And yet he has no real ambition and no real drive, except to help whoever is in front of him.” Except that.

  She closed her eyes and tried to think about the ocean, but it didn’t work. All she saw was Kai, walking along the beach towards her.

  Pushing up on her good arm she made herself clamber off the bed and head to the shower. She just needed to wash off the oil and the sensation of having Kai’s hands on her, that was all. But under the steady stream of hot water the opposite was true. The water took her back to the easy way her body had fitted on Kai’s lap. How his hands had grasped her waist and pulled her towards him. How when she’d kissed him, her whole body had felt the contact. The heat from the water softened her muscles and she felt a strong stirring between her thighs. This was madness. It’s just left-over tension from all your lusting after Holo. Maybe that was it. She touched herself tentatively, and yes, she was wet, wet and ready and so distracted. If she gave in to it, moved this pent-up lusting out of her, maybe whatever she was feeling from Kai would dissipate and she could concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing: therapy, healing, getting back on the circuit.

  She stroked herself and shuddered at the powerful sensation of touch. Closing her eyes, Brooke let the hot water stream over her face and leaned back on the wall behind her. Moving into a steady rhythm, she probed her very center, relishing the way her muscles clenched. Adding another finger, she upped the tempo. An image of Kai appeared in her mind’s eye and she let it linger. Kai lifting his arms up in the waterfall pool. The water dripping from his ropey biceps, the water pearling down over his chest. The curling tail of an orgasm started to dance just out of reach and she thrusted deeper, desperate to try and catch it. Kai walked towards her in her imagination. His amber eyes held hers and they were full of lust and hunger and need. As if she could hear him, his voice filled her head. “Let go and everything else will fall into place. You don’t have to work so hard to find everything. It’s right here, ready for you to take it if you relax into it.” Brooke forced herself to take a breath and slowed her fingers. The promise of her orgasm didn’t diminish, if anything, the urge to try and push towards it increased, but she kept up a slow, steady, deep rhythm with her fingers instead. Then, there it was, the dancing sensation changed and became rich and ripe and “oh god!” She touched her clit with her thumb and her world shattered. The water from the shower poured over her as her body clenched and she had to still herself and press back against the wall so she didn’t stagger and hurt her shoulder.

  Then it was done. The sensations of her climax still thrilled through her and Brooke took a deep, staggering breath. “Holy crap.” She examined herself as her heart stilled. Was she clearer? More focused? Maybe.

  Shower off and wrapped in a fluffy towel, Brooke trailed back into her bedroom. Who was she kidding? She didn’t feel any clearer than before. If anything, she was more confused. What had Kai been doing in her thoughts when she was so close to climax? Heck, what had he been doing there at all? She exhaled, trying to rid herself of the sensation of him still being on her skin. Of his eyes watching her as she stroked herself to orgasm. But it didn’t work. Something about him had got deep under her skin and wasn’t letting go. She’d felt his eyes on her when she’d come. Felt him encouraging her onward. Heard him giving his combination of steady and focused advice that had taken her over the edge like she hadn’t been prepared for.

  “Damn it.” Kainui had got to her despite her best efforts to ignore him and push thoughts of him away. And the worst part? She had loved it. “Doesn’t mean shit,” she told herself firmly. He was her therapist. The brother of her ex-crush. And someone who was going to leave soon enough. All she needed to do was push the feelings she had for him down hard and focus on getting better. She was vulnerable, that’s all this was. She was open to hearing new ways of working through stuff. Kai was good at his job. He was making her question how she did things, how she thought about her practice. She just had to remind herself that that was what he was doing and she could let this lust go. Because that’s all it was. Lust. And she didn’t need lust in her life right now.

  Chapter Ten

  The next few days were a mixture of swimming sessions in the resort pool, more napkin folding and a grueling session of rice picking with the little girl and her grandmother. But all the while, Brooke felt her shoulder strengthening. In fact, she felt her body shifting in the way it used muscles for all sorts of actions.

  True to his word, Kai made no move to seduce her and every time he put his hands on her she made herself focus on the pain lessening in her shoulder. They usually ate lunch together, but Kai was always up earlier than her, leaving breakfast when she arrived, despite her years of training in dawn starts.

  Then one morning, Kai was waiting for her at breakfast. “It’s going to be a long day, you should focus on getting a good dose of protein in.” He stood there. Waiting, and Brooke felt his eyes on her as if they were drawing over her skin. “Are you just going to stand there and watch me?”

  “Fair enough.” He pulled out a chair and sat.

  “That’s not really what I meant,” she said and spooned a mouthful of steaming tofu into her mouth.

  “I know. But you really shouldn’t leave yourself so open to misinterpretation.”

  She sighed, but happily. There was never any malice with Kai and his good humor was infectious. “Okay, so I’ll bite. Where are we going?”

  “Closer to the coast.”

  She brightened. “To the ocean? Are you going to get me back in the water?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t mean to sound so disappointed, but even she heard the drop in her voice. “Sorry. You’re doing amazingly well though. That shoulder is doing great. Don’t think I don’t know how hard it is for you to just suck it up and do all this stuff I’m asking you to.”

  Brooke made herself smile and took a mouthful of spicy omelet but each time he said they wouldn’t be heading to the ocean, a part of her worried what all this time out from the ocean was doing to her. To her body, to her mind, to her career.

  Kai must have seen her disappointment in her face and put his hand over hers. “Not too much longer and we’ll have you back
out there.”

  Concentrating on the food in her mouth helped push aside the sensation that was flickering up her arm from her hand. “Good as new?” she asked brightly, pushing her disappointment back behind her heart where she’d started storing it.

  “Let’s just start with back in the water, shall we? You’ll be better than new if you can hold on long enough. But if you push it…”

  “I know, I know, you’ll give me the mother of all lectures about how I need to think about my whole body and not just charge through the pain yadayada.”

  He laughed and pulled his hand away. “Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll just let you work it out for yourself.”

  “Fat chance of that,” she said with a grin. “When you stay quiet is when I know you’re up to something.”

  “That so?”

  She smirked. “You know it.” What the heck girl? What was she doing? Flirting with him? Encouraging him? He’s flirting back. That he was. And why shouldn’t he? He hadn’t made any secret about wanting to get her into his bed.

  “We’re leaving in five minutes. I’ll meet you out the front.”

  And just like that he broke into her thoughts and cut them off.

  Pleasuring herself in her shower had been meant to stop any thoughts of Kai rushing around her head and distracting her, but now she found him in there, all tall and dark and handsome, more often than thoughts of the ocean. Not today though. No, today she was going to push herself a little, no matter what Kai said. She needed to test out her shoulder, see if there was enough range in it to get back in the water for the Freak the Reef challenge. She might have given up on the WSL contest she thought was going to mark out her future, but she hadn’t given up hope that she would smash the contest that had been part of her brother’s crushing fall from surfing.

  #

  “They do what with them?” Brooke looked at the open cave mouth. A bird whizzed passed her and she ducked, out of instinct.

  “They eat them. Mostly in soup.”

  Brooke stuck out her tongue and wrinkled her nose. “Remind me to check that I’m not eating bird spit soup next time someone brings a bowl of anything to the table.”

  Kai laughed. A big belly laugh that was frustratingly contagious.

  “Seriously.”

  “I know. But it’s not made much around here. It’s mostly for the Chinese market. In fact, this place is one of the few natural harvest sites around here. They build big nesting buildings not too far from here.”

  Kai had taken her to a small coastal town where locals gathered bird’s nests, starling nests to be exact. She’d thought that was odd enough, but when he told her the nests were made from bird saliva, she wasn’t sure whether to laugh in his face or hurl.

  “I know the movement practice thing is your jam, but if you think for one minute I’m going to touch anything made of bird spit—”

  “—Don’t worry,” he interrupted her. “We’re not here to gather the nests. I don’t think they’d let you anyway. Those things are worth serious money. Wouldn’t want them getting messed up by a big clumsy ferang.” She must have looked at him blankly. “Foreigner”, he clarified.

  Brooke nodded. “Excellent. So then, you just wanted to bring me here to remind me I have a great life and don’t have to rely on bird spit to make a living?”

  “I brought you here to watch,” he said and pointed to two young men currently clambering up a particularly steep portion of the cave wall.

  Brooke followed their progress up the rocks, the two guys barely looking for where their hands and feet would go. It was as if they sensed where to put their limbs rather than searching out hand holds. “They’re really fast,” she said after a while.

  “What else?” Kai said.

  “They’re barely looking.”

  He nodded. “Amazing aren’t they? I could watch them for hours.”

  Brooke wasn’t sure she was ready to watch people collecting bird spit for hours, but by now she knew Kai well enough to know that there would be something else coming. Something that might just give her insight into her own body and that was what was holding her together right now.

  After a while, Brooke found herself mesmerized. The clamber, the reach, the pluck of the fragile little shell of nest, then the way they tossed it into a bag on their backs as if it was nothing. Both men stopped for a break and a drink of water and Brooke came back to herself. “How long have we been standing here?”

  “Longer than you ever would have managed a week ago.”

  With a start Brooke realized he was right. Both that she would never have been satisfied with watching something so seemingly inane, and that she’d been with Kai for almost a week. With the time she’d had to take off right after the injury, and now this time away, she blew out her cheeks, she hadn’t surfed in almost two weeks.

  The men finished their break and scrambled back up the wall. “Okay,” Brooke said. I give in. What am I supposed to be seeing?” “Watch the sequence. Arm, arm, leg, leg. Look at the power in their thighs. That’s where all that strength is coming from. That’s how they manage to make it look so effortless. If they were hanging by their fingers they’d never have the dexterity they do.”

  Brooke looked again and he was right. The climbers held enormous power in their thighs, and while they certainly used their arms plenty, Kai was right that it was all about how they positioned their legs that gave them such strength.

  “You’re like that,” Kai said simply.

  “What?” Brooke was genuinely confused. “I don’t climb. Not a big fan of heights.”

  “No. Not the climbing, but about having all that power in your thighs. All surfers are like that. You use your arms to paddle out and to hold your balance, but all your power, all your balance, it’s in your thighs.” She took a step back from him “Are you going to start trying to teach me to surf? If you’re such an expert, why isn’t it you out on the water instead of Holo?”

  He scrubbed his face with his hand. “No. You’re the expert there. No, I’m trying to teach you how your muscles fit together so you can look at your own body and check you’re getting the most out of it.”

  She settled and returned to watching the men on the cave wall. When she narrowed her focus to their muscles, she could see what Kai had meant. There was something in the way the length of the thigh matched the extension of the calf. When she looked she could see how it would be like crouching, how the climbers were using their core like she did when she was on the water. If she put herself on the wall she could see which muscles she would use, could understand as she watched that if she bent more, like the climbers were, she’d get more power out of her squat. After a moment she lost focus and became acutely aware of Kai watching her. She turned to him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I forget that I haven’t known you very long. It sometimes feels like our souls are only just catching up with our bodies.”

  That stopped her. Stopped her like a hammer to the heart. Just. Wow. She didn’t stop to think about it, just put a hand to his face and reaching up, pulled him down to kiss her.

  It was like the first time she kissed him. His lips were full and warm and welcoming. He wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her closer and the feeling of his hot, hard body against hers burned a heady mix of lust and need through every part of her. Brooke raked her hands through his hair and pulled on it, making him duck down closer to her. His hands spanned her waist and his thumbs started massaging their way up her sides, one of them catching the edge of her crop top and sneaking underneath, to lightly brush the underside of her breast. She gave an involuntary whimper and wished they really had gone to the ocean so she would have had fewer clothes on.

  Opening her mouth, she met his tongue with hers and the kiss deepened into something that felt like it might never end. Every part of him fit her. His hands, his touch, his mouth, his kiss, his chest crushed against her breast. She longed for him to pull her down and roll on top of her. She longed to shuck her shorts, to open
her legs to him, to feel his hot heavy weight pressed against her center. She wanted him. Oh man, she wanted him.

  “All right maaaaaaaan!” One of the climbers called out and Brooke was snapped back into reality. Kai took a step back too and put his fingers to his lips, even more swollen by the attention she’d just given them.

  “Well—”

  “—I don’t know what came over me. Sorry,” she stammered and then didn’t know what to say. Was she sorry? She stole a glance up at Kai and found his eyes checking hers. “This is about getting my shoulder better. Not having a…whatever,” she said, sweeping her hand between them.

  “Yes. If you say so,” he said. But he didn’t take his eyes off hers. And in the pause that lengthened, he reached out and took her hand.

  “Niiiiice!” the climber yelled out at them again.

  “Shall we go?”

  She nodded, grateful to not be the one making decisions right then. They walked away from the wall and the climbers went back to their work. When they were out of ear shot, Brooke turned and took one last look at the cave, her stomach churning with thoughts she didn’t even know how to start unpacking. “You were right about those climbers,” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “The way they use their body. I figure if I get lower on my board, if I let my arms float more instead of holding them out rigid, I’ll probably be able to get more speed out of my board.”

  He smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “What?”

  “Just you. Working things out. Applying principles of nest gathering to your surf technique. You’re pretty incredible.”

  “I have a pretty incredible teacher,” she said. They were paused now. The path back to where the taxi would collect them stretching through the forest in front.