“Don’t you know it’s Friday night?” Tutu asked. “I won’t leave until they kick me out.”

Mari gave me a level stare. “She’s not joking.”

“Say goodnight to Lana. I’m taking her home,” Akira said, hearing my comments. Both women protested, but hugged me goodbye.

“I’ll set up a spa day for the day after tomorrow. Does that sound good?” I asked them. They both nodded enthusiastically.

I heard Tutu’s last comment as we were walking out the door. “He’s going to keep her in bed all day tomorrow.” She had projected her voice loudly, as though telling the entire bar.

I was still laughing as Akira pulled me to his car.

CHAPTER TWELVE

He was serious on the drive to his house. “You need to be careful of Milena. It’s hard to know what she’s capable of. You got the better of her that time, but she is usually a better fighter than that. I’ve seen it. I think she was just so mad that she forgot how to fight. If you see her out in public, you need to walk away. I don’t want you getting hurt. She’ll have twice as much to prove now.”

I shrugged. “I’ll be gone soon enough. I doubt I’ll run into her.”

He gave me a hooded glance out of the corner of his eye, his gaze returning quickly to the road. “Are you so anxious to leave us again?” he asked, his voice very quiet.

I didn’t answer, stewing for a while. I decided I didn’t owe him an answer. Not for a question like that.

His hand went to the back of my head, gripping my hair tightly. I sent him a surprised glance, but his face was closed off, his eyes on the road as he pulled left onto the private drive that led to his house.

He started kissing me as soon as he opened my door, pushing me against the side of his car. He yanked up my skirt, lifting me against him. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he groaned. It was a sound of approval from deep in his throat.

He used the weight of his hips to push me high against the car, and used both hands to pull the top of my dress down. He dragged his heavy arousal against me all the while, making me moan. We were in his driveway, in full view of his neighbors, if they cared to look, but I couldn’t bring myself to care, not even a little. Even it if had been broad daylight out instead of two-thirty in the morning, I doubted I would have turned him down. I had always been his for the taking. Anytime, anywhere.

“You said you could never tell me no,” he said roughly, unclasping the front closure of my bra.

My only response was a moan as he kneaded at the heavy globes. He shrugged out of his own dress shirt, ripping more buttons than he ended up unbuttoning in his hurry. He shifted me away from the car, melding our bare chests together.

“Did you mean it, when you said that?”

I felt his hand working below me, and then his bared erection was pressing against me. He shifted aside the tiny scrap of lace that served as his only barrier, poising himself at my entrance in a flash. He worked into me with his hands on my hips, my passage already slick enough to ease his progress. He buried himself to the hilt, but didn’t begin to thrust right away, instead holding himself there, so impossibly deep inside of me.

He used both of his arms to hug me securely against him as he began to walk, moving to his front door now that he’d buried himself inside of me.

I was lost, each step sending excruciating waves of pleasure straight to my core. My thighs were wrapped tightly around his hips. When he used one hand to unlock his front door, I rubbed against him, dragging my nipples against his chest, my sex clenching him as I wiggled against him. He moaned, ramming into me hard with the same motion he used to shut the front door behind us. He pulled out of me with excruciating slowness, ramming back in much harder and faster, then pulling out slowly again, dragging his thick cock against all of the right spots.

“Faster, Akira, I want you to fuck me hard and fast,” I told him on a ragged breath. I wanted to drive him crazy. It worked.

He grabbed my hips and rocked into me. He pounded me against the closed door like his life depended on it, my nails raking his back as I screamed his name. It was almost painful, with his huge girth, but I still loved it.

“This is paradise. You took my paradise with you when you left, Lana,” he rasped into my ear. The words drove me over the edge, and I shouted his name as I came. He followed, burying his face into my neck as he shuddered against me.

He surprised me by biting my neck as the shudders eased. I yelped in surprise. “I’m going to wring so many orgasms out of you that you’ll be too exhausted to even think about leaving this rock,” he growled into my ear.

I laughed, feeling almost drunk from the aftershocks of the powerful orgasm. “You’re welcome to try,” I murmured back.

He pulled out of me slowly, making us both groan in the process. He shifted me around until I was cradled against his chest. His look was a warning. “Baby, I won’t be trying. I’ll be doing.”

I made a contented little noise, burrowing my face into his chest. He stroked my hair, the tender gesture belying the mean look on his face.

He laid me on his bed, pulling my clothes off with swift, economical motions. I just lay where he left me, feeling a little boneless as he disappeared into his bathroom. I heard a bath running and a moment later, he was back striding towards me, completely nude. I drank in the sight of his perfect body as he moved.

I sighed a little dreamily. “You’re magnificent,” I told him. It was a fact.

He smirked at me, bending to pick me up. “Look who’s talking,” he said with a grunt, flipping me onto his shoulder. He squeezed my butt as he carried me into the bathroom. He was much gentler as he lowered me into the scorching hot water. He turned back to grab something on the counter, and I got a full, unencumbered view of his perky butt. I made an appreciative little, “Mmmmm,” at the sight.

He threw a grin over his shoulder. “You always were obsessed with my butt. I couldn’t go out in public without being stalked when you were in high school. You did love to talk about my ass. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for a grown man to get his ass ogled by high school girls every time he goes out in public?”

I laughed until tears streamed down my cheeks, because it wasn’t an exaggeration, and I had simply adored tormenting him with my little schemes back then. The old memories warmed me. I had made a point to tell just about anyone who would listen just how unparalleled his ass was, and my high school friends had been paying attention. All of our eyes had followed Akira whenever we had been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him coming or going.

He joined me in the steaming water, and we washed each other with lingering touches. I straddled him so I could wash his thick hair. He kissed me, and I could feel him growing hard against me.

I shifted, trying to work him inside of me, but he pulled back.

“I want you in bed,” he told me, rising.

We dried off, and he tugged me to the bed, pushing me onto my back, and moving over me. He brought our faces close together.

He watched me, his expression almost wary. We stared at each other for a long time before he cupped my face in his big hands.

“Don’t leave us again, Lana,” he whispered roughly. “Don’t leave me. Stay. Please.”

I shook my head, not understanding, not even letting myself hope that he meant what I longed for him to. “Why, Akira?”

“Because I was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing when I told you to leave the first time, but I was so wrong. I thought you’d see the world and that your infatuation with me would evaporate. I thought you were too young and inexperienced to see that. But you were right. I was the one that was blind. I loved you then. I adored the ground you walked on, and nothing has changed. I knew I wouldn’t stop loving you, but I was wrong to doubt you, wrong to think that your feelings would change. I’ve been consoling myself for so long with the idea that even if I was miserable without you, at least you were happy out there somewhere. And now that I know that’s not the case, I can’t bear the thought of you leaving me again.”

My heart twisted painfully in my chest. It was hard to imagine that something I had wanted for so long would just suddenly appear before me. It felt surreal, and I just stared at him dumbly for a few long moments.

“What about the things you said to Milena back then? About me being a family friend with an inconvenient infatuation? Why would you say that if it wasn’t true?”

“It’s the only way I could think of to manage her. We were broken up, and she was threatening to hurt you. I knew her threats weren’t idle. I’ve seen her do some pretty awful things, and I couldn’t think of another way to stop her from hurting you.”

“I thought you’d forgotten me,” he continued, “until some of your friends stopped by to see me. James and Bianca painted a different picture for me, and when I realized that you hadn’t forgotten about me, I contacted your father. He didn’t know that I intended to get you to stay when I talked him into getting you to come to Maui. In fact, I feel like a bastard for manipulating him, knowing that he probably won’t be pleased to know that you and I are…”

I shook my head. Akira had never understood how highly my father regarded him. He was like another son to my father, but Akira had always been too blind to see it.

“I love you, Lana, and I want you to stay. You said you could never say no to me, and I intend to hold you to that. Marry me.”

He hadn’t made it a question, as though he just couldn’t quite do it, and that made me smile even through my tears.

He wiped the tears away as I nodded tremulously. “Yes,” I said, my heart filling with joy. I hadn’t been lying. I was literally incapable of telling him no.

He smiled, moving against me, and the relief in his face let me know just how much he’d feared my refusal.

“I love you,” I said breathlessly, as he pushed himself inside of me.

“Good,” he murmured roughly, “because I’m keeping you forever.”

“I’m planning our wedding, not Tutu and Mari,” I told him some time later.

He was folded against my back, his hand stroking my hip idly, while we caught up.

He kissed the side of my head. “It’s cute that you think that. Let me know how it works out for you.”

I laughed. “You don’t think I can go toe to toe with your mother and win?”

“I don’t think anyone can.”

“We’ll just see about that.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the end, it was a compromise. Tutu wanted to plan the wedding in two weeks. I wanted two months. We settled on one. I wanted a smaller ceremony, with family and our closest friends. Tutu thought it was completely rude not to invite the entire island. She was closer to winning that one than I was, though I insisted on a ceremony on the beach at my family’s villa, and I got my way there.

I made my dear friend Bianca fly in a week before the wedding. Since she’d retired from being a flight attendant to be a painter full-time, we’d taken to calling each other nearly every day. I’d been helping her plan her own wedding, and I thought that it was only fair that she become equally involved in my own special day.