Even with dread nestled in the center of my belly, the man was still the sexiest thing I’d ever come in contact with. Watching him use his hands and body to steer our boat only made him hotter. And our chemistry wasn’t one-sided. There was a blanket of tension that stretched and pulled in waves as unpredictable as the water beneath us.
Once happy with the direction we were headed—how he could even know since there weren’t any maps around, I had no clue—he took a seat on the bench across from me and retrieved a container of cold roast chicken from the cooler.
“No, thanks,” I said, when he handed it out to me. My stomach was already complaining, either from the motion of the boat or anxiety, I wasn’t sure.
He reached again into the cooler and brought out a bottle of water and a loaf of french bread. “Nibble on this. It will help.”
Reluctantly, I took both from him, setting the water to my side and tearing off a piece of bread that I ate in morsels.
We were quiet for a while as he ate and I pecked, and the sun moved farther west in the sky and the boat sailed farther from land. I kept reminding myself to relax my shoulders and breathe. There was definitely an aura of calm out here with the rhythmic lull of the sea and the wet, salty air. Serenity rolled lazily underneath the apprehension, and I could almost give into it. But not quite.
Eventually, Edward put away his meal and sat back with a bottle of water, his foot resting on the cooler. “Tell me about your relationship with your father,” he said, his attention solely on me.
The tension that I’d managed to release came back in a rush. “Is this a session?”
“No. Just talking.” He brought the bottle up to swig, his throat stretched and exposed as he swallowed.
The casualness of it felt dangerous. Staged.
But also not. Also it just felt genuine. Like a question someone you’d known for a while— had sex with, married—might ask.
Whatever was going on out here, whatever this sailing trip was about, there wasn’t any benefit in me going backwards.
So I went forward and stayed honest. “We’re good, I suppose. Not particularly close, but most of the kids I grew up with weren’t close to their fathers either. They all worked too much. Had too many affairs. Weren’t around. Mine wasn’t any different than the others, except I think the only mistress he had was golf. I’m his only child, and that matters to him. He loves me as much as I think he loves anyone, though he doesn’t really know me. At all. Doesn’t even try. I don’t really try with him either, anymore.”
I considered the distance between my father and me, how it hadn’t been there when I was young. How we’d grown apart when I was a teenager and why. The afternoon that had changed it all.
The story of it pressed at the back of my throat until it was snaking through my mouth and out my lips. “He was never a corporal punishment kind of guy. That was his father’s style, and whenever I was in trouble as a kid, he made sure that I knew that if he’d been his father, I would have had my ass whipped.
“I’m not even sure he knew most of the times I got in trouble. That sort of stuff was usually handled by the nanny or, on rare occasions, my mother. But sometimes it was bad enough for him to get involved.”
“You were a naughty little girl?” The gleam in Edward’s eye caused goosebumps to chase down my skin.
“Not particularly,” I said, smiling. “That came later. But there was this one time, when I was thirteen. Almost fourteen. I’d told him…” I paused, deliberating how much of this I wanted to share in the moment, deciding on sticking to the tale on hand and not branching off to the other. “I’d told him something he didn’t believe, and it made him very angry. He accused me of lying. Told me to take it back, and I considered it. He was so mad, I actually considered it.
“But I’d been telling the truth, and—don’t laugh—that was important to me back then. So I stuck by it. And then, at thirteen flipping years old, he turned me around, pulled down my leggings and spanked me raw. It hurt, I mean it really hurt. I can still remember spending the rest of that weekend on my stomach with ice packs on my ass, but the physical pain was nothing compared to how much it hurt to not have him believe me. I don’t think our relationship ever recovered after that.
“I think that was also when I began to realize that there wasn’t much value in honesty. If truth was so hard to believe, what was the purpose in it?”
The edges of Edward’s mouth turned down. “The lessons from our parents are the hardest to unlearn, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. I think they are.” My body felt lighter, and, even as I wondered what hard lessons his parents had taught him, the tranquility of the sea beckoned me to embrace it and I found I was closer than I’d been before. Closer to peace.
“There is purpose to honesty, you know,” Edward said after a beat. “With the right person. A person who will acknowledge and support your truth instead of admonish it.”
“Yes. I’ve been learning that. New teacher.”
“Better teacher?” He almost smiled, and I wondered if we were flirting.
“Much better teacher.” I leaned my elbows back onto the hull of the boat and stretched my legs out in front of me, the knot in my stomach finally uncoiling.
“If this were a session, I’d respond to this tale with a lesson in a different kind of spanking.”
“I think you’ve already taught me that lesson.” My core clenched at remembering being bent over his desk, at the heat of his hand against my ass, at the delicious pleasure of his pelvis thrusting against the raw skin as he thrust his cock inside me over and over. I hadn’t even thought of my father’s punishment while Edward had been spanking me, I’d been too entirely wrapped up in the moment. In him.
Now I’d go so far as saying I liked being spanked hard. It was possible I only liked being spanked hard by Edward.
“That was a good lesson,” he said, his eyes shining like he could read my thoughts, and this time he was definitely smiling. “I wouldn’t mind giving it again sometime.”
A promise of a future? I wouldn’t let myself get too snagged up on the thought.
Another silent spell passed.
“What was it your father hadn’t believed?”
I sighed, scanning out into the distance where the ocean met the sky. I’d known he wouldn’t let that slip when I chose to say it, and yet, briefly, I’d thought he had.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, sincerely. “But I’d rather it not be here. My stomach’s already fighting the waves. I don’t want to push it.”
When I returned my gaze to him, he was staring, and I could sense how badly he wanted to press. If he did, I’d probably tell him, though I really didn’t want to.
“What about your relationship with your father?” I asked, hoping the change of subject would force him to move on.
It took a minute, but then he followed where I’d steered. “He’s the reason I like sailing.”
“He taught you?”
“Some. I was still young when he died. Thirteen.” The nod of his head acknowledged it was the same age I’d been in the story I’d just told.
Thirteen had been such a transformative year for both of us. It wasn’t significant, necessarily, but it felt binding. Like, I could see him a little more clearly for it, for what had happened to him and what had happened to me.
“He never set out to really teach me, he just liked it. We spent several vacations on the water. We sailed everywhere—the Lake District, the Channel. The Mediterranean. It was the only downtime he took, because my mother liked it so much, I think, and he wanted his leisure to be completely wrapped up in her, and sailing was something we could all do together.
“I had good memories of it, and so, when I had the means, I learned officially. Marion and I sailed a fair amount when Hagen and Genevieve were young.”
My jaw went rigid. “You sailed with Marion?”
“Are you jealous?”
He was so handsome and so smug and so right, I had to
look away. I wasn’t used to being jealous. It prickled inside me like I’d swallowed a porcupine, and the only thing that would make it worse would be to admit it.
“Just trying to understand your relationship,” I said, nonchalantly.
“I’ve gone sailing now with you, too.”
I fought a smile that he couldn’t see, sure that he’d know even though I wasn’t looking at him. He was trying to comfort me, and that did all sorts of delicious and strange things to my insides.
And it did comfort me, because I was out here on the ocean with him, and where was she?
Still, the reality of why and how I was with Edward was unsettling. “I’m not really sailing. You’re sailing, and I’m trying to survive it.”
“You’re surviving just fine from where I’m sitting. So far.”
His addendum set off another roll of nausea. I studied the water, trying to convince myself he meant I’d managed to not throw up as of yet, which was accurate, and there was still a possibility that I might.
But maybe that hadn’t been what he meant at all.
The poke of a fin above the surface just then sent a chill down my spine. Was it a dolphin or a shark? Was this a safe venture or a dangerous one?
“My relationship with Marion seemed complicated from the outside,” he said, drawing my attention back to him. “But very simple on the inside. She was a submissive—a true submissive. She lived to bend and serve and please me. With my help, her entire life was orchestrated so that she could immerse herself in that lifestyle, that’s how much she enjoyed it.”
The porcupine was back, wriggling in my insides, loosing needles into my ribs. “I enjoy it, too,” I said with a pout. “Sometimes.”
He laughed, not as deep as he had back at the house, but a sizable laugh at that. “You like it when you finally surrender to it. I’ll give you that. You just fight tooth and nail to get there.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”
The stare he fixed on me was so heated, I was almost sure he would climb across the cockpit and...I wasn’t sure what would happen when he got to me, but I was ready to find out.
But he didn’t.
The heat slipped away from his expression, his jaw jutting out as he turned to fuss with the rudder. “There were benefits to such a relationship. Trust was imperative for it to work, and we had that through and through. When she said something, she meant it. Every word that came out of her mouth was the truth, unless she was teasing me into play. It was very hard to make her uncomfortable, which was bothersome for me, but she never lied or played me or manipulated me in any way. She never kept crucial information from me for her own benefit.”
There it was—his anger from earlier resurfaced. I’d been waiting for it.
“Sounds like a boring marriage,” I said. It probably wasn’t the best time to sass him. Marion probably never would have. But as he’d not so subtly pointed out, I was not Marion.
He didn’t find my teasing amusing, or, if he did, he didn’t let on. “She was the one who left me, you know.”
I did know, but I’d never heard it from him, and now that I had, it was a wake-up call. His heart had belonged to someone else—might still belong to her, for all I knew. I couldn’t tell if that was the point he’d meant to make, but if he’d wanted to hurt me, he had.
“Why?” I asked, taking the bait. “You weren’t bossy enough for her?” Hell, if I didn’t amuse him, I sure amused myself.
His cheek twitched as he considered his response. “She wanted to be my whole world. She submitted everything, hoping to earn that spot, and she never did.”
“You had other women?”
“I never cheated on my wife. On either of my wives.”
Just like that, the knife he’d pierced through me only a moment before was gone and his words were a salve in its place. He hadn’t been with another woman since he’d married me. That confession tilted my world even more than the rocking of the boat.
“At least not with a woman,” he clarified. “Marion took second place to my other ambitions.”
His career? It seemed the obvious answer, especially knowing what I knew about what it took to be a successful leader of an international business such as his.
Then the real answer struck me, and maybe it was also about his career, but I was nearly convinced there was something more to it. “Ambitions like destroying my father, you mean.”
He didn’t answer, and a minute later he stood to adjust the boom, slowing down our speed. Then he walked around the steering wheel to peer off the stern of the boat.
I stood too, gazing over his shoulder, wondering what he saw out there in that great expanse of nothing. Wondering what he was thinking. Wondering his motives for taking me out here and saying these things—these earth-shattering things that were too real and precious and enormous to have put on me and not have to adjust my stance.
“This is where I was going to do it.” His voice was low, almost a hum, but in the stillness of our surroundings, he was easily heard. “This was how. I’d push you off out here, in a spot just like this. I imagined it a lot—the ride out here, the time of day, the surrounding circumstances. But in my head, no matter how well I tried to plan it, I could never get to that moment, the moment where we stood here, and I did the thing that was supposed to happen next.”
My breath shuddered in my lungs.
He was safe, I told myself. He wouldn’t be telling me any of this if he wasn’t safe. He was being honest with me now, the same way I’d been honest with him.
At least, I thought so.
There was the possibility that I was wrong.
With shaking limbs, I stepped up beside him so my arm brushed against his. At his side, I looked out at the same emptiness that had stolen his focus. “I’ve been on yachts plenty, but I’ve only been sailing a handful of times. Definitely never been sailing without a motor and if anyone had ever invited me to do so, on an ocean no less, that would have been a ‘hell, no.’ Lakes are okay. Bays are okay. There are borders there. Land corralling the water, and even on the big lakes where you can’t see the land, you know it’s there. Your head knows that wherever the wind blows, you’re still contained.
“Sailing like this, out here on the open water, it’s an entirely different thing, isn’t it? The breeze could pick up and, next thing you know, you’re miles and miles from any shore. Completely a slave to the whims of the wind. That’s why I never came out on the ocean like this with anyone before. I’ve been asked—trust me, I’ve been asked. The idea was always too terrifying.”
I could feel his gaze on my profile, and I turned to meet it. “It’s validating to find the real experience is as terrifying as I’d imagined.”
Because I was scared. I wanted him to know I was scared.
But I was still here. Not entirely at my will, but I was here. I was in this with him.
His lips turned up into a smirk. “And exciting too?”
“Yes. That too.”
The breeze sent my hair blowing, leaving a strand across my face. He reached out to brush it back behind my ear, his fingers igniting my skin as they grazed my cheek. “At the whims of the wind doesn’t mean helpless,” he said. “The only reason you’re frightened is because you don’t know how to sail a boat.”
Then, he expertly demonstrated how very much in control of the Vengeance he was, deftly steering us across the ocean, safely bringing us back into port at Amelie.
Twenty-Two
The sun was setting when we got back to the house. I walked in ahead of Edward, my shoes in my hand, having finally succumbed to taking them off. The house was empty, which I’d expected since my husband had informed the staff not to plan on us for dinner, and for Joette to leave plates for us in the fridge.
Despite how little I’d eaten, food wasn’t of interest. Nor was the hot shower that I’d told Edward I wanted to take when we got back. The orange and pink streaked across the scene outside the window didn’t have my attentio
n either. As I stood behind the couch gazing out at the spectacular display of light, it was the man behind me that held my awareness.
He was complicated and terrible. A devil and a jackass.
And I was falling for him.
Spiraling, actually, in all the good ways and all the bad. He made me dizzy and overwhelmed and alive, even when he terrified me, which was almost all the time. I was pretty certain there was no happy ending with a man like him, not coming from a situation like ours, and it didn’t matter. It couldn’t stop my motion. I was still already tumbling down into whatever mess lay at the end, and, if I were honest with myself—something I was being more often than not these days—I wouldn’t try to stop even if I could. I wanted this.
I wanted him.
I wanted him to want me with as much intensity, with no regard to reason. I wanted it so badly, I could taste it. I could feel it. The wanting was as real to my senses as the sunset ahead of me.
I didn’t look back when he came in, but I heard the door open and then there was the sound of the cooler set down on the ceramic floor. In the glass, I could just make out the hint of his reflection, frozen in place, his eyes seemingly pinned on me.
“Celia?” His voice lilted up slightly like it were a question or possibly an invitation, but all I heard was my name on his lips spoken with the husk of desire.
Turning around, I let my shoes drop to the floor, and within the space of a breath, I was in his arms. I had no idea who’d moved first, who had made the first step, who started the kiss. One minute I’d been wishing and wanting. The next, my body was crashed into his, my mouth desperately trying to keep up with his frantic lips. His tongue felt hot and thick as it tangled with mine, each stroke feeling like a promise, each swipe awakening every nerve ending in my body, making my pussy swell and sob.
His hands mimicked his kiss, furiously running over my body, through my hair, grabbing my ass, as if to leave their prints on all of me. As if to leave no part of me untouched.
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