And it was harder than ever as he took in her naked body. Naked. Body. As he ate up every curve and patch of silky skin, he knew he’d been imagining exactly this for quite a while now. “You sure about this? You might just be looking for a way to release tension right now.”
“Who the fuck cares?”
Shit. He’d never heard Megan swear before. He found it—hot.
“I’m a grown fucking woman and right now, I want you. I want to fuck you in that incredibly comfortable bed back there and I don’t want to think about anything else.”
Electric energy vibrated through every word. Her eyes were wild flashes of blue light. Then she froze. “Unless you don’t want to.” Her suddenly tentative tone made him snort.
“You can put that out of your mind. I want to.” He bent his head so his lips hovered over hers. “I think I’ve wanted to for a while,” he murmured. He set his hands on her hips, her skin soft and pliant under his palms. The feel of her flesh sent the last of his misgivings flying off with the storm wind.
The first touch of her lips made the world shift around him. She tasted of salt and chamomile from the tea he’d given her. Beyond that, something else—something wild and rich and entirely new. She opened her mouth eagerly, urging his kiss deeper and sending her tongue to twine with his. The way she moved, her urgency, her heat—the message ricocheted through his system.
She didn’t want hesitation or barriers. She wanted everything all at once.
Her leg slid up his side and curled around him. He pressed his erection into her nakedness. He was wearing a spare pair of fleece workout pants since everything else had gotten drenched. The fabric offered exactly zero way to hide his fierce arousal.
“I know this seems crazy.” She pulled away long enough to murmur that statement, then descended on him again with a flurry of kisses on his chin, mouth, cheeks, stubble. “I know I might kick myself later. Can we just do this and not think about it ever again? Kind of a ‘people do unpredictable things during a crisis’ thing?”
“Yeah, but if you say ‘what happens in Ninlik Cove stays in—”
She cut him off with a kiss so deep it left them both gasping.
“It’s not like that. I just—I need this right now. I need you. I don’t care where it is. And I don’t know how I’ll feel later, but this, here, right now, this is all that matters.”
She pressed a hand against the front of his fleece pants. Holy God Almighty, the fever that shot through him at her touch. He groaned out loud, a sound she seemed to find sexy because it brought her grinding against him again.
With his hands on her ass, he added his own pressure to the rotation of her hips. He wanted her to feel his hardness right where it counted. Right there…the sweet spot in the valley between her legs, the hard little nub that grew as he increased the pressure.
She gave a screaming gasp as he worked her clit against his cock. “Yeah, honey, yeah,” he muttered incoherently, barely aware of what he was saying. “God, you feel good.”
He hoisted her up so her legs wrapped around his hips. Ducking under the low frame of the hatch, he carried her to the bed. The comforter was still rumpled from her nap. She slid out of his arms and kneeled on the bed. With her skin flushed pink and her hair a wild tangle, he was seeing a new side of Megan Miller. A sensual, playful side.
Suddenly, all their verbal battles felt like foreplay.
She beckoned for him to come closer. He stepped to the edge of the bed. She ran her hands under his shirt. Eager, almost greedy, her palms slid across his skin and over his stomach muscles. Heat shot straight to his cock.
She noticed the swell of his erection—how could she not? Gliding her hands down his front, she traced the outline of hard flesh under fleece. First she used the pressure of her palms, then the harder scrape of fingernails.
“My God,” he groaned softly. “What you’re doing to me.”
“I’m just hoping you’ll ditch some of these clothes.” She shot him a sassy wink that didn’t do a thing to decrease his arousal. He obliged by ripping off his t-shirt.
She sighed as she feasted her eyes on his chest. “Do you know I sometimes ogle you from Zoe’s while you’re cleaning fish?”
“Do you know I’ve been imagining you naked ever since I saw you in that bikini top?”
With both his hands, he gently stroked the upper curve of her breasts, circling around the upswell of flesh. The texture of her skin was so smooth under his fingertips. Even though he hadn’t touched her nipples, he watched them rise. Their light rosy pink turned to a dusky raspberry red. His mouth watered as he brushed his thumbs lightly across their tips.
She sucked in a breath and arched back to press her breasts farther into his hands.
Ah, she wanted more. So did he.
While he thumbed her nipples again, a little more forcefully, she slid her hands under the waistband of his pants. Heat pounded through his veins. Touch it. Hold it. Now. Please. Fuck.
He cupped her breasts in his hands, loving the springy weight of her flesh against his palms. In a weird way, they had just as much personality as Megan herself did. They weren’t shy, those breasts. They stood up and spoke their mind—kiss me. Now.
Obeying, he bent to kiss her nipples, which met his tongue with eager responsiveness. As he licked and nipped, the dainty nubs turned to crystal hardness.
Almost as if she needed to stay even with him, she wrapped one hand around his cock. Her thumb flicked across his tip, drawing moisture to the surface.
Part of him had to laugh—this was how they did things, he and Megan. Always going up against each other, making those sparks fly.
He fought to keep his focus on the delicious flesh in his mouth rather than on the delicious things she was doing to his cock. That was the only way he could keep a grip on the fierce lust raging through him.
He wanted to be deep inside her, filling her to the brim, exploding into a million pieces. But he also wanted to draw this out and make sure she got what she wanted out of this experience.
If he was reading her right, she wanted oblivion.
Coming up.
She writhed under the deep suckling he was administering to her nipples. If she kept her hands on his dick much longer, this would be over before it really began. Time to take control.
He drew her hands away from his erection and pinned them with one hand. Urging her back onto the bed, with her arms overhead, he curled her fingers around the raised rim of the shelf above the bed. Its purpose was to keep items from sliding off the shelf during rough weather. Right now, it had a better job to do. Keep her from making him come too soon.
Her breath came faster as she held onto the shelf. “What are you doing?” she breathed.
“Reminding you that you’re alive,” he told her. He kneeled at the end of the bed and stared at her nude body. Round hips, a light sprinkle of downy hair between her legs, shapely thighs, a silvery horizontal scar on her stomach. Skin the color of sweet butter, nipples now scarlet, wet from his sucking.
Gently he placed his hands on her upper thighs and pushed them apart to reveal the shadowed realm of her most secret self. Her lower lips were already pouting and swollen, flashing a hint of wetness.
“Stay right where you are,” he ordered. Ship captains knew how to boss people around, and this was his boat, after all. “Or I’ll have to lash you to the mast and have my way with you.”
Her breathing came more rapidly. “I don’t know, that sounds like it might be kind of fun.”
He should have known she’d have an adventurous spirit. How else would she have landed here at the ends of the earth?
“I’ll have to get a proper mast installed then,” he joked. “Who cares if it gets in the way of fishing?”
While she was still giggling, he surprised her with a long stroke of his tongue across her seam. Soft and wet, the sweet slippery flesh gave way under his licking, parting to reveal her clit. Rising stubbornly, as if to notify him of its presence, it snagg
ed against his tongue.
There you are. He circled it lightly, listening for her reaction—a long and hungry moan. Just what he wanted to hear. Taking his time, setting a luxurious and sensual pace, he lavished attention on that excitable little bundle of nerves. He used his tongue, his entire mouth, his thumbs, even the scrape of stubble on his jaw, until every inch of her body was trembling with tension.
She was babbling something, or maybe just hissing at him. Definitely something about needing to come, and that she was going to make him pay for this, and oh God how good it felt.
He dug his hands into the flesh of her thighs and felt her muscles bunch in response. Her whole body went taut and her back arched. Something fell off the shelf. He couldn’t remember what he’d left up there. But he did remember something else. He had no condoms onboard. Why would he have condoms on the Jack Hammer? Usually the boat was filled with his crew and clients. When he was meeting up with a woman, the last place he wanted to bring them was his father’s fishing boat.
He buried his disappointment. This was about Megan and her near-death experience. This was about the sweet juicy flesh melting under his mouth, the tremors racking her body.
Time vanished as he feasted on her. The gentle sway of the boat, the whisper of waves against the hull, the howl of the storm hammering the bluff, it all wove together into a timeless lullaby.
And then a new sound pierced the air. A cry of joy. A fierce, primal, wild orgasmic yell. Megan came hard, a convulsive detonation that had her grabbing his shoulders and even his hair. He stayed with her, keeping his mouth clamped to her sex, milking every last spasm from her explosive orgasm.
“Oh my God,” she gasped as she finally twisted out of his grip. “Stop, please, I can’t take any more.”
With a hidden grin, he eased his mouth away from her. The taste of her—wild satisfied woman—lingered on his tongue.
She collapsed her legs to one side and arched her neck back to look at the shelf. “Did something fall?”
“Yeah. Nothing big, just an old wrist brace I used to wear at night.”
“I was terrified you were going to stop.”
“Never,” he vowed. He sat up on his heels. He still wore his fleece pants with a giant tentpole trying to pierce the fabric. “So, how do you feel? Alive or dead?”
He grinned at her. Even though he was still fully aroused, it almost felt as if he’d experienced a release himself. As if her climax had penetrated right through her skin to him. Like a secondhand orgasm.
It was a new feeling for him.
“Very very alive. Slightly unconscious.” She raised herself on her elbows and tilted her head at his lower half. “You still have your clothes on.”
“Got a problem. No condoms.”
Her lips parted. “Oh. I can’t believe I didn’t even think about that. Where did my brain go?”
“That’s what you wanted, right? To stop thinking for a while?”
“I suppose so.” She met his eyes. Hers still had traces of bloodshot wildness, now softened by sensual satisfaction. “That was selfish of me. Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, about condoms and things. And now you’re all—” she gestured at his crotch. “Like that. And we can’t do anything about it. Well, except—”
She ran her hands up his thighs, then tugged down his pants. His erection burst out as if it was spring-loaded. He drew in a sharp breath.
“We don’t always have to be even,” he said softly. “You don’t owe me anything.”
She laughed, her face as open as a sunflower. Shifting onto her knees and heels, she dropped the lightest of kisses on the tip of his cock. “I can see how you might think that way. I’m not competing with you anymore. Or fighting. You saved my life.”
He shook that off with a frown. “You’d better not be trying to thank me with a blow job.”
“This isn’t about thank you’s. It’s about…” She put a little more force into the next kiss. “It’s about being alive, remember?”
“Oh, it’s alive, all right.” He gritted his teeth while his penis jumped under her soft lips. She slid her mouth over the tight knob and its hot, bursting skin. Enclosed in that wet embrace, his shaft swelled even harder. His hips pumped, his thighs strained. He filled his hands with her softness—shoulders, neck, back, anything he could reach. Gathering up her hair, he pulled it aside so he could watch her mouth sliding up and down on his cock. The sight—lips open wide around him, her neck exposed and bent—worked like an erotic fireball.
“I’m going to come,” he gritted. “Watch yourself.”
And then he closed his eyes as he shattered into a thousand shards of pleasure. His climax sent him soaring through dark space, stars streaming in hyper speed all around him. Seeing stars—that phrase made sense for the first time. Not just seeing stars, but flying with them high overhead in a space where nothing existed but pure joy and pleasure.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After that mind-melting experience, they went back into the galley and warmed up their tea. Megan resolutely refused to think about the consequences of what they’d just done. She’d gotten naked with him. Seduced him. Not much of a seduction routine, really. Getting naked and begging a man for sex didn’t qualify as seduction, did it?
Her seductress days, such as they were, seemed like ancient history. Ever since Ruby had arrived, there had been very few men in her life—a fellow grad student, her dentist. She’d enjoyed herself but the experiences had barely registered. In both cases she’d ended the relationship shortly afterwards.
This situation was completely different. For one thing, she and Lucas weren’t in a relationship of any sort. Maybe that was why it had felt so good, so freeing. She didn’t have to worry about how Lucas was going to fit into her life with Ruby. After they got back to Lost Harbor, they’d both forget about this.
“Have you had a lot of girlfriends?” she asked as she sat cross-legged on the bench in the galley, nursing her mug of tea. “I know of at least one.”
“Who?”
“The police officer. Officer Badger.”
He whipped his head around from his position over the tiny stove. Still bare chested, he was stirring sugar into his mug. His hair, still stiff with salt, stood up in all directions. The long muscles of his torso made her mouth water.
“How’d you know that?”
“Honestly, it was just a lucky guess.” She smirked at him. “Something I picked up on when she came to check on me.”
“Well, you’re right. It was a long time ago, but yes, we did date in high school. She dumped me.”
“Aw. Sorry. What did you do wrong?”
“Thanks for automatically assuming it was my fault.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Not wrong.” With a wink, he left the stove and sat on the bench opposite her. He stretched out his legs, filling the entire space between the two benches. “I screwed up.”
“What’d you do?”
“Brought her home without warning my parents that she was black. They didn’t know her because her family had just moved here. Her dad was in the Coast Guard. I didn’t generally tell my parents shit about my personal life. But my mom really wanted to meet the girl I was texting with all the time, so I invited her over.”
“So what happened?”
“My father was a rude asshole, like always. Said something about her being bussed from Africa or some shit. My mom tried to shut him up but then she started talking about recipes for collard greens and it was all just terrible. I drove Maya home and she was furious at me. Said I’d blindsided her. She even wondered if I’d done it on purpose to get back at my dad for something. Surprising him like that, I mean. I fought a lot with my father so it wasn’t totally out of left field for her to ask that. But I got all insulted and offended. She broke things off and I didn’t fight it. That’s that.” He gave an uncomfortable shrug, as if the memory still bothered him.
“She said
nice things about you. Are you friends now?”
“Sure, we’re fine now. I’ve apologized to her. She accepted my apology. I never called out my dad, though. Not about that. It’s one of my regrets.”
He dunked his tea bag in and out of his mug. A seagull landed on the deck with a harsh caw. He jerked his head toward it. “Look at that. The birds are up and about.”
“Does that mean the storm’s almost over? What time is it?” This time of year, it could be hard to tell. The daylight lasted past midnight.
He checked his phone, which sat on the counter. “Almost five. Do you want to check in with Ruby?”
“Yeah, I should.”
He handed her the radio and watched quietly as she contacted the harbormaster. A message from Zoe awaited her; Ruby was fine and helping her out at the pizza shop.
She handed the radio back to him and he spoke for a few moments with Bob about the storm.
“He says we should give it another hour or so before we head back in,” he told her.
Wistfully, she thought how nice it would be if the storm picked up again and they could spend the entire night in his bed. Back in Lost Harbor, she’d be facing a storm of another kind.
“What’s the matter?” He clicked the radio back into its cradle.
“Oh, nothing. Just not really looking forward to all the fireworks when I get back. Think they’ll drum me out of town?”
“No,” he said firmly and immediately. “If they let Yanni stay after he advocated for declaring independence from the Earth, they’ll let you stay for speaking up about climate change.”
“Independence from Earth?”
“Yes, he said we should join the planet Jupiter. I think they straightened out his medication shortly after that.” He rested his mug on the bare muscles of his abdomen. She forced herself not to visually devour him, but it wasn’t easy.
“This place really is full of characters, isn’t it?”
“Where do you think the name ‘Lost Souls’ comes from?”
“Actually, that’s a good question. I’ve heard so many different things. What’s the story you heard growing up?”
Mine Until Moonrise Page 13
