Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,48

eyes blazed into hers and his voice grew hard. ‘I’m not talking about sex, Honor. I’m talking about the kind of connection that might make a woman want to touch a man without even noticing she’s doing it.’

Honor frowned, then followed his steady gaze down to her side, where her fingers had tucked comfortably around the heel of the foot he’d been rubbing against her. She pulled her hand away as if his skin burned her. It practically had.

‘That’s not... That’s...’ Humiliation washed over her. She bit back the sting of tears that threatened. ‘That’s just physiology.’

‘You think so? So if I ran my hand up your thigh...’

Honor gasped, not because she was shocked by his words, but because she was shocked by her body’s reaction to just his words. Every part of her screamed.

‘...only your nerve endings would get engaged?’

Breath hitched up in Honor’s chest. ‘Only my body... Not my heart. Not my mind.’

He stared out at her from under thick lashes. ‘You think they’re not connected?’

She shrugged casually, faking it one hundred and ten per cent. ‘Not necessarily.’

He was silent for a long time. ‘In you it is. Very necessary.’

The truth took the wind out of her sails. Four hours’ sleep was nowhere enough to fuel this kind of battle. ‘What do you want from me, Rob?’ she sighed.

She sagged back into the mattress and dropped her head. Surrender echoed in her voice and Rob felt the primal, predatory surge of victory. ‘I want you to admit that yesterday meant something.’

Hazel eyes sparkled back up at him. ‘Why?’

Good question. What the heck was he doing, forcing the issue like this? Had he slipped into some kind of bizarre twilight zone when he set foot on the island? Some alternate reality where he gave a damn whether the woman he was with was emotionally invested in their relationship? Since when had he started worrying about their motivation at all? He grimaced.

Right about the time he hit Pulu Keeling’s outer reef.

Sex, for him, had become a quest. Always good. Often great, but increasingly hollow. His father continued to keep score of his own conquests—presumably there was some kind of family record up for grabs—and volume had always been the primary aim. Now, here Rob was, obsessing over whether or not a woman cared for him before she so much as kissed him. Irony twisted his smile. Dad would be so proud!

‘Let me ask you something.’ Her voice was breathless, as if she was fighting for her life. ‘How many women have you slept with?’

In the space of a heartbeat, the power shifted. One minute she’d been as helpless as a mouse in a cat house and then suddenly the light in her eyes changed and she came out swinging. It didn’t help the desire he was working hard to suppress. He found courage a massive turn-on.

‘Come on, Rob. More than ten? More than twenty?’

‘More than,’ he said, guarded.

Her face said but of course and he felt the tiniest hint of shame.

‘And how many of those were you emotionally involved with?’

He didn’t answer. The shame intensified.

‘Let me ask that another way. How many of them were emotionally involved with you? All? Half?’

‘Honor—’

‘Let’s be generous; you’re a good-looking man, after all. Let’s say half.’

Anger swiftly moved in to replace the discomfort warming his features. She was painting a vivid picture and he didn’t like it. ‘Why be cheap? Let’s say three-quarters.’

She smiled a bitter smile. ‘So, based on your extreme level of experience with the opposite sex, you think you could tell the seventy-five per cent of women for whom it meant something from the twenty-five per cent for whom it didn’t, based on their physical responses to you?’

Yes... No... What? ‘I imagine I can, yes.’

Honor took a deep breath and scooted up to kneel in front of him. She leaned in closer. He sat perfectly rigid—under the sleeping bag as well as above.

‘So when a woman does this...’ she pressed her hands onto his bare chest and he felt the tiny echo of trembles before they stilled ‘...do you take it as a sign she’s falling for you?’

His heart thumped violently under her hand but he didn’t otherwise move. ‘Not necessarily.’

She leaned in and pressed her hot, soft mouth to the skin of his shoulder, birthing a ripple of shivers and a clenching of his abdomen.

‘And this?’ she said. ‘Would this be a giveaway?’

If he didn’t lighten things up, this was going to go badly awry for Honor. Did she have