Marcus

by Kate Hoffmann

  “Suit yourself.”

  A few seconds later he heard a splash and then a tiny scream. Marcus scrambled out of the cockpit to the stern and stared down into the water. She broke the surface and then frowned when she saw him watching her. “Are you all right?”

  Eden nodded, droplets of water glittering on the tips of her eyelashes. “It was just colder than I expected.”

  Marcus leaned over the rail and watched her swim away from the boat and back again. She’d discarded the thong she’d been wearing earlier, preferring complete nudity while in the water. He was almost growing accustomed to seeing her naked, although he would never become immune to the effect it had on his body. Even now, he felt himself growing hard as he imagined their naked bodies pressed against each other.

  “Come in,” she said. “The water is wonderful.”

  “I should be working,” Marcus replied.

  “It’s almost five. My father can’t expect you to work twenty-four hours a day.”

  “It’s two-thirty,” Marcus countered. “That’s not almost five.”

  “You need a new watch,” Eden said with a grin. She flipped over on her back and kicked away from him. “Besides, I’m not a very strong swimmer and I’d feel better if you were in the water with me. For safety’s sake.”

  Marcus laughed out loud at the absurdity of her request. Yes, Eden Ross was spoiled and manipulative. But she didn’t try to hide it. In fact, she seemed to delight in her flaws. Maybe he ought to answer her playful challenge-just once.

  “Cover your eyes,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m not getting in the water unless you cover your eyes.”

  “Aren’t you a prude?” Eden teased. “I’ve seen it all before and it wasn’t that impressive.”

  True, Marcus mused, there were no secrets between them. But from the moment she’d jumped in, he’d fought the warm rush of desire that had raced through his bloodstream and pooled in his lap. Now the result of that desire was pressing hard against the front of his shorts. Did he really want Eden to know the power she held over him? “Turn around and cover your eyes or I don’t come in the water.”

  Eden groaned, then did as she was told.

  But Marcus didn’t bother to strip off his shorts. He jumped off the side of the boat, slipping into the water with barely a sound. He swam beneath the surface, his eyes open, searching for Eden. When he came up, he was right behind her. “You can open your eyes now,” he said.

  She spun around and splashed water in his face. Marcus grabbed her waist and pulled her under, dragging her down beneath the surface before letting her go. When she came up for air, she spit a mouthful of water in his face, then easily swam away from him.

  “I don’t think you’re in any danger of drowning,” he said.

  “I just ate a donut. I could get a cramp. Or a shark could attack me. Or I could accidentally swallow water and begin to sink.” With that, she twirled around in the water, slowly sinking until she disappeared. A few moments later she popped up a few yards away.

  “That was a pretty slick move,” he said.

  “Synchronized swimming. My mother made me take lessons. I took all sorts of lessons. Ballet, gymnastics, piano, painting, violin, ballroom dancing, horseback riding. There are more-I just can’t remember them all.”

  “You must be quite accomplished.”

  She shrugged, brushing the damp hair out of her eyes. “I was never really good at any of them. The lessons were just an excuse so my mother didn’t have to spend time with me. She had other things to do and I just got in the way.”

  It didn’t take much to see beneath the bravado. For all her father’s money and the comforts it provided, it seemed that Eden hadn’t had a very happy childhood. Even now, the confident facade had cracks that revealed a very vulnerable girl inside. “You’re a good swimmer,” Marcus said.

  A tiny smile curled the corners of her mouth. “Thanks.” She swam up to him and placed her hands on his shoulders, allowing him to tread water while he kept her afloat. “For a while there, I thought you’d never speak to me again,” she said, watching him intently.

  “You do have a talent for getting on my last nerve,” he said.

  “I do?” Her smile grew wider. “And I never took lessons for that. Maybe I do have a true talent after all.”

  “Do you enjoy bothering me?”

  “You’re entirely too serious, Marcus Quinn. You need to lighten up.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his. He held on to her waist and stared down into her pretty eyes. “You can kiss me now,” she murmured, her voice breathless.

  “I don’t think so,” Marcus said. He fought the urge to touch her more intimately, to cup her breast in his palm, to nuzzle his face into the curve of her neck, to slip his hands around her backside. The battle was almost painful, raging in his head and in his groin.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me?”

  “I do,” he admitted, allowing his hands to slide down to her hips. “But not right now.”

  Her gaze fixed on his mouth and she moved closer, her mouth just inches from his. “When?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” Marcus replied.

  But Eden wasn’t one to take no for an answer. In a heartbeat, she leaned closer and brushed her lips across his, running her warm tongue along the crease of his mouth. She slowly pulled back, her eyebrow arched. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  He’d tried to resist, but at that moment, he wasn’t sure why. With a low groan, Marcus captured her mouth with his, pulling her into a deep kiss, his hand furrowing in her wet hair. Their tongues touched, and he felt himself losing control, his fingers desperate to explore her soft flesh. His lips traced a path to her shoulder and then lower, to the tops of her perfect breasts. Her nipples peaked in the cool water and he drew one into his mouth, teasing at it with his tongue.

  In his life, he’d never wanted a woman more than he wanted Eden. It had always been so easy to control his desires, but this had gotten way out of hand. He knew he could have her. And he knew he wanted her. His reason and resolve had vanished the moment her lips had touched his. This wasn’t some girl he’d picked up in a bar. This was Eden Ross, his boss’s daughter, the woman who was about to put a quick end to his feeble attempt at celibacy.

  For a moment, they both forgot to tread water and slowly began to sink, but then Marcus pulled them back up, returning to taste her mouth. Her mouth was sweet and warm, her body clinging to his, his erection pulsing against her belly, aching for release.

  She reached down to touch him, and Marcus sucked in a sharp breath, teetering on the edge of total surrender. Why did he always seem just one step behind her? Every time he gained control, she found a way to yank it from his grasp. Abruptly he pulled away, ending the caress as quickly as it had begun. “I think I’ve had enough…swimming for today.”

  He turned and swam back to the stern of Victorious, then slowly climbed the ladder. Their little encounter had done nothing to diminish his desire, but he was past hiding it from her. Though his body might want to take pleasure in Eden’s, he was smart enough and strong enough to resist the temptation-at least for now.

  “HEY!”

  Eden slowly opened her eyes, then stretched her arms above her head, her cotton T-shirt riding up on her belly. She’d curled up on the berth in the lounge after her swim and had dozed off. The stress of the past week, combined with two days of jet lag and two nights filled with strange fantasies about Marcus Quinn, had exhausted her.

  With a soft sigh, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. Marcus stood in the hatchway, his lean body outlined by the sun, his arms braced on either side of him. Her mind returned to their swim, to the delicious moment when he’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  Even now, a thrill raced through her body at the thought of his touch and the feel of his lips on her breast, the heat of his desire in her hand. He might pretend to ignore her, but now Eden
knew exactly how defenseless he was in this little game she was playing. One kiss, one caress, and he’d tumbled over the edge of reason and into her arms.

  “Come up top. I need your help,” he said. A moment later he disappeared, his silhouette replaced by the soft light of the late-afternoon sun.

  Marcus Quinn was definitely different from any man she’d ever met. Real, she thought to herself. Solid and self-assured. There was a steadiness in him that she found oddly intriguing. It didn’t come from well-honed charm or extravagant wealth or even an overblown ego. He knew exactly who he was and, by that, had quickly figured out who she was-inside and out.

  Though he found her sexually attractive, Eden wasn’t sure that he even liked her. When she wasn’t in the process of trying to seduce him, he barely spoke to her. And though she spent hours watching him, he rarely gave her a second glance. It shouldn’t have mattered to her. But for some reason, she wanted that from him, an admission that it wasn’t just the prospect of sex that attracted them.

  She glanced around the cabin for her sunglasses and slipped them on as she walked up the steps to the deck. She’d give anything if Marcus could see past the woman he thought she was-even just for a few hours. To the world, Eden Ross was a party girl, an heiress, a trust-fund baby. She’d become fabulously famous for being…famous. She hadn’t discovered or invented or contributed anything worthwhile in her life, yet the entire world seemed to be interested in what she wore and who she dated and where she traveled. It was all so silly and superficial.

  And it was entirely her own fault. She’d taken control of her trust fund at age twenty-one and promptly allowed her life to careen out of control. She’d let the press invade her privacy and now she couldn’t get rid of them. Once her latest and most salacious scandal hit the tabloids Stateside, her father would be through with her. He’d threatened to disown her more times than she could count, and this would definitely push him over the edge.

  A sick feeling twisted in her stomach, and she wondered if it was regret or the seawater she’d swallowed during her swim. Eden rubbed her stomach and winced as she walked through the cabin to the hatch. She found Marcus on the bow of the boat, bent over his toolbox.

  “Give me a hand, will ya?” he said, passing her a tool without looking at her.

  She stared down at the broad expanse of his back, bronzed by the sun and shifting with sinewy muscle. Her gaze drifted across his wide shoulders. His long hair, still damp from their swim, brushed his nape. Eden’s fingers tensed and she reached out to toy with a curl that rested against his neck. But when he turned suddenly, she drew back her hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she murmured, a hint of defensiveness in her voice. “What do you need me to do?”

  Marcus pointed to a line dangling over the rail. “I need you to crawl out onto the bosun’s chair. You’re going to fit that wrench over a bolt and then hold on to it while I loosen a nut on the other side. Whatever you do, don’t drop the wrench in the water.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Eden said. “How hard could it possibly be to hold on to your damn…tool.” She stifled a smile, amused by the flicker of desire she saw in his eyes.

  He stood up in front of her, sending her a dismissive glare. Eden’s gaze drifted down, following a line of hair that began just above his belly button and ended somewhere beneath the waistband of his shorts. He’d found a way to deal with his desire, the bulge now gone from the front of his shorts.

  Eden had always harbored an intense fascination with the male body. There were so many different types of men, so many facets to male beauty. Long limbs, hard muscle, sharp angles and smooth surfaces. She longed to touch Marcus again, to test his responses and gently stir his passions. Just how good would it be between them? Would he be the best she’d ever had?

  All men have their breaking point, Eden mused. What was Marcus’s? Did he prefer to be seduced slowly or was it better to catch him off guard? Just the thought of finding the answers to her questions was exciting.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” he asked. “Or are you going to make yourself useful?”

  Her gaze met his and grudgingly she did as she was told, swinging her leg over the rail and slipping into the bosun’s chair. “Happy?” she asked.

  “Deliriously,” he shot back. He followed her over the rail and shimmied out onto the bowsprit, his legs wrapped around the carved figure of a mermaid that decorated the prow of the boat. “Now reach out and slip the socket wrench over the bolt head. And then hold on to it really tightly and don’t let it move.”

  She stared at weathered wood in front of her, gnawing at her lower lip. She really ought to know what he was talking about, but she wasn’t quite sure what a socket wrench did and what a bolt looked like. “So what are we doing here?” she asked, stalling for time.

  “I’m removing this old carving so I can either restore it or reproduce it.”

  “You must be pretty good if my father hired you to work on his precious boat.”

  “I do all right,” he said. His lips curled in a slight smile and Eden took it as a small victory. Strange how something as simple as a compliment could please him. She’d become so intent on seducing him, she’d hadn’t taken any time to get to know who he was and what he liked.

  “How long have you been carving wood?”

  “Since I was a kid. My da gave me a Swiss Army knife for my seventh birthday and I used to carve little animals. As I got older, the carvings got bigger and more elaborate.”

  “You’re an artist, then,” she said.

  “Okay, are you ready?”

  Eden reached out to brace her hand on the bowsprit, but as she did, she lost her grip on the wrench and it slipped from her fingers, plopped into the water and quickly sank. “Oops.”

  “Aw, hell,” he muttered.

  Eden wriggled in the boson’s chair. “Don’t worry. I can find it. I’ll just go get a mask and-”

  “No, there’s an adjustable crescent wrench in my toolbox. Find it and see if that will work.”

  Eden crawled back on board and stared down into the toolbox. Was she supposed to know what a crescent wrench was? Did most women know what a crescent wrench was? She glanced over at Marcus, then back down again at the jumble of tools. For the first time in her life she felt completely useless.

  She opened her mouth to question him but then snapped it shut again. All of the fears and frustrations that had been building over the past week suddenly surged up inside her. She swallowed back the tears and pasted a smile on her face.

  “I-I don’t…I can’t-”

  “It’s the silver thing that looks like a C,” he said impatiently. “It’s got a little screw barrel that makes it smaller and bigger.”

  Eden bent down and rummaged through the tools, but she couldn’t find anything that looked like what he described. A tear dribbled from the corner of her eye, and with a vivid curse she brushed it away. “I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. She hurried along the rail to the cockpit, then quickly descended into the cabin.

  With a shaky sigh, she sat down on the couch and pulled her knees up to her chin, pressing her face against her legs. Unwanted tears dampened her cheeks and she fought against them. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d cried. It had been years, a lifetime ago. But since she’d returned home, her emotions had been bubbling just beneath the surface, threatening to spill over at the slightest provocation.

  “A crescent wrench,” she murmured, a fresh round of tears flooding her eyes. “I’m crying over a damn wrench.”

  But it wasn’t just the wrench. It was the video and the pictures and the betrayal and the shame. The video had been nothing more than a silly game of seduction meant to add a bit more excitement to a night together nearly three years ago. But now it was out there, threatening to make her the object of public ridicule and lascivious speculation.

  She should have known better than to trust Ricardo-to trust any man, for that matt
er. But she’d had a bit too much champagne, and Eden had never been one to be afraid to try something new. And Ricardo had promised to erase the tape after they watched it. She’d thought he cared about her, at least enough not to ruin her life.

  But then, the blame could be put entirely on her. He’d kept the video a secret for three years, until she’d made an offhand remark to a reporter about Ricardo’s sexual prowess and been misquoted. Suddenly the tape had resurfaced in the hands of an Internet entrepreneur, who’d released a few blurry stills to the European tabloid press.

  When the photos had hit the papers, she’d been shocked. Confronting Ricardo had proved useless. He had simply claimed he had nothing to do with it, but she’d heard the lie in his voice. He’d taken the tape and given it to a friend, and that friend was now trying to sell it to the highest bidder.

  It had been a lifetime ago and she’d been a stupid girl who had thought she was in love. And now the tape threatened to ruin her life. She didn’t have the money to buy it back and Eden couldn’t ask her father for help. She had found herself with no way out, so she’d run. The story would hit the tabloids in the U.S. any day now.

  Eden felt a hand on her shoulder and she jerked her head up. “Are you all right?” Marcus asked.

  “Fine,” she said, quickly wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I-I’m sorry about the wrench. It was a wrench, right? I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll buy you a hundred of them.”

  He smiled and nodded. “The water’s clear. I’ll be able to find it. No big deal.” He reached out and tenderly brushed the hair from her face. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

  He studied her face, his gaze skimming over her features as if trying to understand her tears. And then he leaned forward and kissed her. It was a perfect kiss, full of sweetness and warmth. The breath slipped from Eden’s lips along with the frustration and confusion she felt. It hadn’t come as a result of seduction or some game she’d played. It had come from simple kindness.