The Far Side of Paradise Read Online Free PDF

smeared with ashy smudges and black marks. Even her bikini stank of the fire.
    So, probably, did her hair and her skin.
    Blissfully, she washed it all off in the sea’s warm caress. A few minutes after she waded into the water, she caught movement on the beach from the corner ofher eye and inched her head around so she could watch Cade Peredur stride across the sand.
    Her heart jumped, startling her. Formidably and blatantly male, he seemed like some potent, elemental figure from the dawn of time—sunlit bronze skin and a perfect male body showing off sleek muscles that proclaimed strength and energy.
    Some of which she could do with right now. Deep in the pit of her stomach, that hidden part of her contracted and sent another hot wave of sensation through her.
    Lust, she thought, trying to douse it with a prosaic and practical attitude.
    Although she’d never experienced anything so powerful before, this keen urgency that alerted every cell, tightening her skin and making her heart race, was merely run-of-the-mill physical attraction.
    And if she tried to act on it, she knew exactly and in humiliating detail what would happen next; it would vanish, leaving her cold and shaking with that familiar fear. But even those mortifying memories couldn’t banish the shimmers of sensation that pulsed through her, stimulating and undisciplined.
    She turned away when Cade dropped his towel and made a fluid racing dive off the rocks at the side of the bay. An unexpected wave caught her—unexpected because she was too busy drooling over the man, she thought furiously as she inhaled water. Spluttering, she spat out a mouthful of salt water and coughed a couple of times to clear her lungs, opening her eyes to see her host heading towards her, strong arms cutting through the waves.
    Oh, how … how inane! She’d probably just convinced him she wasn’t safe in a shower, let alone the sea.
    Sure enough, he trod water when he reached her and demanded, ‘Are you all right?’
    The sun-dazzled sparkles of water clogging her lashes surrounded him with an aura, a dynamic charge of power that paradoxically made her feel both weak and energised at the same time.
    ‘Fine,’ she returned, only a little hoarse from the dousing. Her heart was thudding as though she’d swum several kilometres through raging surf.
    Get a grip,
she commanded.
    The last time she’d felt anything remotely like this she’d been nineteen and amazingly naive. She’d decided it had to be love, and became engaged on the strength of it. What a disaster that had turned out to be!
    But there was nothing girlishly callow about her response to this man. Her body throbbed with a dark, potent sexuality unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
    She’d deal with that later. Right now, she had to get herself back onto an even keel.
    Somehow she managed to produce a smile and said the first thing that popped into her head. ‘Race you to shore.’
    Cade’s brows shot up as though she’d surprised him, but he recovered instantly. ‘You get a handicap.’
    ‘OK,’ she agreed.
    However, even with the handicap, he beat her comfortably. At least swimming as fast and as hard as she’d ever done worked off some of that wildfire energy.
    When she stood up he said, ‘You’re good.’
    ‘I was brought up almost in the water,’ she said, breathing fast. He too, she noted with satisfaction, was breathing more heavily than normal. She added, ‘My parents love the sea so much they called me after it.’
    ‘Taryn?’
    ‘No, Taryn is apparently derived from an Irish word meaning
rocky hill.
I had an Irish grandmother. But my second name is Marisa, which is from a Latin word meaning
the sea.’
    He observed dryly, ‘It’s a very pretty name, but I don’t think it would help if you got cramps and there was no one around to help.’
    ‘I’ve never had even the slightest twinge of cramp,’ she said defensively, extremely aware of the way water gleamed along the muscular