Blooming in the Wild Page 0,102
the goddamn hospital. This was the second morning of his captivity—at least that he’d been awake—and he wanted her here.
They’d told him she hadn’t been admitted to the hospital as a patient, and he’d smiled at one of his nurses and inveigled her into calling a friend who knew one of the Ho’omalus and checking on Bella. She was in seclusion with her family; that was all the nurse could find out.
His phone rang, and he grabbed it. It was his producer. Scowling, Joel took the call. “Hey, Randall.”
“Joel, how are you? Any better?”
“I’m lying in a hospital bed in the middle of paradise,” Joel said. “How the hell do you think I am?”
“Ah, grouchy?” the other man quipped. “But I guess that means you’re feeling better, right?”
“No, it means I’m grouchy,” Joel shot back, but he chuckled, and then winced as his wound pulled painfully.
“Well, let me know when that contract gets there, because I want this deal signed and delivered.”
A woman with wavy black hair backed into the room, wearing a short red dress and carrying a box and a big bunch of flowers. She peered down the hall and then stopped to pull the privacy curtain over the doorway.
Joel glanced at her curiously and let his gaze wander down over her heartshaped ass and pretty legs. Then he froze. “I’ll call you back, Randall.” Clicking the phone shut in the middle of his producer’s squawk of protest, Joel dropped the phone. Finally. Pleasure spreading in a warm glow through his chest, he leaned back in the bed and waited.
She turned to face him, clutching the box. It was white, with a big red ribbon. The flowers were mostly red, tropical blooms like the one tucked behind her ear. Like her.
Bella wore sunglasses that hid her eyes, and her mouth was lipsticked in red. She looked like a Hawaiian femme fatale.
“Go ahead and get started,” he invited, lifting an eyebrow at her.
Her eyebrows shot together over the big sunglasses. “Start what?”
“Stripping,” he drawled. “It’s what you did the first time I met you. Do it again now, and we’ve got us a tradition.”
She pursed her lips at him and shook her head, those glossy curls sliding back and forth on the upper slopes of her breasts and catching on the red straps of her halter dress and the tiny little sweater she wore over it. “In your dreams, Girand.”
He nodded. “Oh yeah. Definitely, Princess.”
She smiled and reached up to push her sunglasses up onto her head. Meeting her black velvet gaze, Joel rubbed a hand over his heart, which felt oddly swollen and tender.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, hurrying to his bedside, her eyes full of worry. She dropped the flowers on the foot of his bed. He could smell them, or maybe that was her, that heady combination of sweet and sultry.
“Not a thing,” he assured her, grabbing her hand in his so she couldn’t get away. “You’re just so damn pretty. Even prettier than I remembered, and that was with your clothes off.”
He tugged at her hand, pulling her closer. She shook her head at him. “You look pretty good too, hotshot. Even with that huge bruise on your face, and—and all this stuff.” She indicated the hospital gown and the stiff bandages visible under the thin fabric.
“I look like hell.” He grinned. “They haven’t even let me wash my hair. And I smell like those damn cleansing cloths. But do you think I could have a little kiss anyway?”
She nodded. Then she leaned over and laid a sweet, soft kiss on him that quickly turned hot and wet and deep. She smelled like flowers and sex, and she was warm and silky in his hands, her hair brushing his face as she kissed him, her hands cupping his face and his forearm. She didn’t even seem to mind his smell.
He groaned when she finally pulled away, and closed his eyes. “Oh God, please don’t let me get a hard-on in this little tiny gown,” he muttered.
She snickered, and he opened his eyes, content to smile at her for a moment.
“How you doing, Princess?”
Her gaze turned ebony with intent, her face solemn. “I’m okay. How much do you remember?”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss in her palm. “I remember a lot,” he told her.
She looked down at their hands, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “We can…talk more about that later, if you like. I don’t want to tire you