“It’s not that bad—”
He shushed her, called for Bogie to get the first-aid kit, then pulled her to the bench seat and eased her down.
“Let me see it again.”
Sharona opened her clenched fist, displaying her gashed palm. “It stings more than anything,” she said as salt water trickled into the center.
“Doesn’t look deep.” He placed a cotton pad in the middle of her palm over the cut. “Hold this on there until we get back to the ship, then we’ll treat it. Let’s go, Bogie.”
Sharona stared down at the mangled pole on the floor, reality hitting. Oh, no. What did I do? She swallowed hard, then peered up at Jeff, at his earnest blue eyes fixed on her. “I’m so sorry, Jeff,” she said, sudden tears stinging her eyes. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Did what? You could’ve lost an arm. They don’t usually get that close.” His grip around her tightened. “I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you hang halfway over the bloody side.”
“I mean about the transmitter. I dropped it. Or…the shark ate it.”
He examined her hand again, then placed it on his thigh. “Accidents happen. All that matters is you’re safe.” He ran his hand down her arm, shoulder to fingertips. “You might need this again.”
He was being so sweet, even after she’d totally screwed up. Every time he touched her or stroked her skin reassuringly, her stomach cartwheeled. She wanted to thank him properly. To touch his face, run her fingers through his hair. Then she wanted to straddle his lap and show him how she truly felt. But before long, they pulled up to the helm of the Mad Hatter.
She felt a little embarrassed as the crew gawked in silence. Despite all the blood—there goes another shirt—it was just a cut. She totally loved the attention from Jeff, though, and missed the safe feeling of his arms being around her. Maybe she should’ve played out the panic a little longer while they were alone. Who knew if she would ever get the chance again.
“Nothing to see here,” Sharona called out to the crew. “Just a classic klutz with a weak stomach. And it’s only a Bloody Mary cocktail.”
Jeff burst into laughter and pulled her in so his chin rested on top of her head. “You make me laugh,” he whispered. A second later, he let go so they could stand. “She’s all right, guys,” he added as he helped her step onto the ship. “The pole bit her, not Matilda. Though I do suspect our girl down there has a bit of a crush.”
“Lucky me,” Sharona said.
Some of the guys laughed politely, and Jeff slid an arm around her shoulders. “We do need to get this washed. I’ll take her below.”
He pulled her tight to his side as they walked toward the companionway, Sharona holding her hurt hand against her chest as they went. He let her go down the ladder first but stayed right behind her. “There,” he said, pointing to the rear of the quarters. “Have a seat on my bunk.”
The tiny dozen or so individual sleeping areas were cut into the hull of the ship, like little caves, only big enough for a bed and a few shelves for clothes and personal items. She sat on the bunk and bounced a few times. It had a nice spring to it.
“Before I get the first aid kit,” Jeff said, “let me grab something dry—I’m soaked. And looks like you’ve got a spot or two on you.” He eyed the front of her shirt. Though the spilled tomato juice had been a cheerier shade of red, the blood from her cut certainly did the job. He leaned toward where she sat on the bunk and reached behind her to retrieve two T-shirts from the duffel bag on his shelf. “Will be a little large on you, I’m afraid,” he said, handing her one.
“Thank you.”
They stared at each other for a few still, silent moments…an unspoken standoff of Who-Will-Take-Off-Their-Shirt-First.
Jeff cleared his throat, then dropped his gaze, making a point of looking out the small, round window. Sharona quickly peeled off her blood-splattered top, feeling irrationally shy. Jeff’s replacement T-shirt swam on her, the neck hole sliding off both shoulders, but at least it was clean and dry, and had a faint whiff of its sexy owner.
In the two seconds it took to get herself situated, Jeff had pulled his shirt over his head. She couldn’t help staring at his perfect chest, the tan lines and flat muscles. The sensitive nerves at the tips of her fingers twitched, longing to touch him, trace along the smooth skin. As he turned to the side to toss his wet shirt over a chair, her breath caught.
“Jeff! What is that?” She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the long, shiny imprints running in a half circle from the top of his shoulder to the middle of his side, crossing over his spine.
He took a step back and angled that side of his body away. “It’s just a scar.”
“From what?” Without thinking, she stretched out a hand and ran the back of her finger over the jagged lines, dozens of tiny triangles…the exact size of—
“Shark,” he said softly. “I was sixteen.”
“This is from one bite?” Her heart beats came slower and heavier while her throat began to close, making it hard to breathe. “It’s…it’s half your body.”
“She was a great white, seventeen, eighteen footer,” Jeff said, his voice hushed but steady. “Or so my surfing mates told me. I never saw the whole thing. Just the face. The eye.”
“Jeff,” she whispered, her hand skimming across the part of the scar over his stomach. “Can you tell me what happened?”
He nodded slowly but didn’t speak right away, staring past her shoulder at nothing. “We…we knew we shouldn’t have been out there,” he finally began. “There’d been sightings all day, but”—he paused to shrug—“we wanted to catch some waves. We weren’t thinking. Anyway, I was about to take the next curl when something knocked my board. I saw a shadow but didn’t piece it together fast enough. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, there was nothing I could do. When she knocked me again, I wiped out. I was disoriented in the water, tossing in the waves when I felt another bump. That’s when she had me.”
“Had you?”
Silently, he drew a half circle across his stomach, following the scar. “Funny thing is, she had my arm inside her mouth but it didn’t have a scratch on it after.”
“How did you get away?” Sharona asked through her tightening throat.
“She didn’t want to eat me. I’d pissed her off, being in her territory. She shook me around for a while, but I was lucky she never rolled me down; instead she kept us on the surface so I could breathe. I kept digging my fingers into her eye until she got tired and let go.”
Sharona’s mouth fell open but all she could do was shake her head, wordlessly.
“I lost a lot of blood, but like I said, she wasn’t trying to kill me. Sharks are territorial and I was on her turf. In a way, it was my fault.”
“But…you study sharks now,” she said. “After you were attacked, I’d think you would hate them.”
“Hate?” he repeated, tipping his chin to gaze down at her. “They’re fascinating. I became obsessed with studying them, figuring out how they think and why they behave the way they do. We share a planet with them. I have a healthy fear, but hate?” He shook his head. “It’s the closest thing to true love.”
She stared at him, taking in his words. “What you said last night,” she whispered. “About not taking your shirt off in front of just anyone.” She touched a finger to the scar, feeling the warmth of his skin, his beautiful soul beneath. “Is this why?”
“It freaks people out,” he answered in a strangled voice that made her ache to hold him, comfort him.
“Jeff…” She rose to her feet and stood before him, running a hand up his stomach, feeling the flat planes. When she reached the top of the scar, she pressed both palms flat against him, moving up along his smooth skin. She felt his hard muscles flex when she reached the notch at the center of his chest. She splayed her fingers, needing to explore more, but suddenly, he caught her wrists.
“We…” He started, then swallowed, glancing away. “We need to tend to your cut.” He
let go and disappeared around a corner.
Sharona exhaled and slumped back onto the bunk, trying to catch her breath. Jeff returned carrying a larger first-aid kit than what had been on the speedboat. He was still shirtless, the dry one draped over his shoulder. The bunk she was on wasn’t big and when he sat beside her, she could smell the salty tang of the sea mixed with something clean and manly. Her desire was almost blinding.
He took her hand and poured antiseptic into the hollow of the palm. It stung worse than the salt water.
“If it hurts, that means it’s working,” he said, probably noticing her flinch. But there was a smile in his voice. He pulled her hand toward him and rested it on his thigh. “So, are you ever going to tell me what happened?” he asked, looking down at her hand as he continued to clean the wound.
“I told you, it was the pole, I was trying—”
“I meant last night.” He lifted his eyes to her. “Sharona, why didn’t you come back to me?”
Chapter Eight
When she didn’t reply, Jeff lowered his eyes, running a finger across her palm. The cut wasn’t bad, and he knew he didn’t need to coddle her. But the way she’d been staring at his scar… It had shaken her up, as it did with other women.
But Sharona wasn’t like other women. It wasn’t horror in her eyes as he expected, or even pity. She seemed touched…in a loving way. She was brave and caring and feisty, like the sharks he loved, though more of a beaut than even the most stunning great whites. It sucked that they’d lost Matilda’s tracker, but that was nothing compared to what could have happened.
If she hadn’t been injured—as minor as it was—Jeff might have manned up and finally finished that kiss, the one that had started at the hotel pub yet felt incomplete all these hours later.
Why the hell had he killed the mood by bringing up last night?
“Oh,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. “You noticed that, did you?”
“I’m a scientist. It’s my job to catch the details. And yes, I did notice your acute absence. And I didn’t like it.”
“Sorry.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.
“I don’t want an apology, Sharona. I want to know what happened. If you changed your mind, I get it.” He paused and ran a hand over his face. “You were the one who started it.”
“I know.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve never done anything like that—come on to a stranger. Never even instigated a kiss before.” She laughed, but it was dark and self-conscious—not like the woman he was getting to know. “I guess I was giving myself permission because I was in a foreign country for one night.”
He leaned away from her instinctively. “So I was an experiment?”
“No. I thought it might be…an adventure.” She lowered her gaze again. “I was into it, into you. Which I’m sure you knew.”
“I had a pretty good idea,” he said, relieved that he hadn’t imagined it.
“I know it’s silly, but before we went to your room, I wanted to brush my teeth. I’d been traveling all day and felt a little worn out.” She smiled. “I didn’t want to feel worn out with you.”
“That’s why you went to your room?”
She nodded. “When I got there and had two seconds to think without you kissing me and making my brain mush, I realized I couldn’t go through with it. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl, Jeff. I’m sorry I gave you that impression.” She fidgeted with her rings; it was her nervous habit he’d noticed. “I was trying to be someone different for a change. But at the heart of me, I’m not that person.”
When she finally paused to breathe, Jeff blew out a long, relieved exhale followed by a laugh that shook the bunk.
“What?” she asked, sounding a little hurt.
He scrubbed at his jaw. “Sharona, I’m not that person, either. It was shocking how it happened, but before I knew it, I was too caught up. Of course I was attracted to you, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it, not with me leaving the next morning. I’m not built that way.”
“That’s surprising.”
“My mother taught us manners.”
“Remind me to thank her.”
He tried to ignore the way her smile made the pit of his stomach fill with heat and burn with lightning, another wave of want pulling him toward this woman. “There were five of us boys,” he added.
“I have four siblings, too.”
He touched a lock of her hair. “I know. You told me about your family last night. It’s funny, I didn’t know your name, but I knew about your childhood and your first boyfriend and how you failed your driving test. It was like we’d gone on five dates in two hours.”
“I felt the same way, like we were friends as kids and were playing catch-up.”
He glanced down, adjusting the gauze around her hand. “What was it like growing up in the chocolate capitol of the world?”
“What?” Her forehead furrowed at the question. “Oh. No, Natalie’s from Hershey. We met in college. I grew up in Tampa.”
Jeff took a few beats before asking, “Is that where you live now?”
No, he couldn’t possibly be so lucky. First, meeting an amazing woman like Sharona one night, then remeeting her the next day. But this?
She shook her head. “My parents are still there, but I moved to Miami for school and fell in love with it.”
Jeff sat back—this was beyond amazing. “I live in Miami, too.”
They were quiet for a moment. The only sounds were the chatters from topside. Sounded like everyone above deck was busy preparing the ship for their next stop. Also meaning, no one would be coming down.
“That’s…” she said, her dark eyes blinking once, slowly. “Handy.”
“I travel a lot for work, obviously. My funding comes from UM, but I work out of the uni, too. It’s my home base. And here I assumed our meeting was an accident.”
“I don’t spill my drinks on just any man, you know.” She touched his cheek. “Only dashing shark lovers with panty-dropping accents.”
He chuckled and looked down, running a finger over the inside of her wrist. “I was more than willing to let last night progress naturally, even though it wasn’t my style, either. I went along with it because…well, you really didn’t give me a choice.”
“I was that irresistible last night?”
“Last night?” Jeff couldn’t help saying. “Try right now. Try every damn second since you stepped aboard this vessel.”
Sharona took in a quiet breath, then held it, like Jeff was holding his, all the while his heart picked up speed, galloping like a mountain brumby.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he admitted. “Or that kiss. All of them.”
“I know. It’s like, we aren’t done. Like every kiss is…”
“Not enough.”
The air between them sparked.
Jeff didn’t give her a chance to make the first move like last night. He wanted to take over, take the pressure off them both to be something they weren’t.
He slid a hand behind her head and pulled her to him, getting a fresh taste of her lips. She leaned in, resting her hands on his chest, her touch against his bare skin burned into his blood. Right as he was about to pull her closer, she threw her arms around his neck and crushed her soft body against him, knocking his head against the low-hanging arch of the bunk.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”
He didn’t speak, but looked her once more in the eyes, touched his forehead to hers, then scooped his hands under her perfect ass, lifted her up, and laid her flat on the bunk.
As soon as her head hit the soft bed, Sharona was on autopilot, reacting on instinct and blinding passion. What her instinct told her, what every fiber in her body screamed, was to hold onto Jeff Cruz and not let go.
His body hovered over her, braced by his elbows, while his hot mouth pressed against hers, sweet and firm, pushing her head deeper into the bed. She ran her fingers through his hair, knotting at
the back of his head, keeping him close. There was barely enough room on the bunk for one person, let alone two, especially when one was the size of Jeff.
Finally, he lowered on top of her, moving his mouth to her cheek and ear. She dug her fingers into the back of his head, arching as he ran his lips under her jaw, then across her neck. His breath was hot and perfect against her skin and her heart thumped like the engine of a motorboat.
Sensing what she wanted next, he skimmed his hands down her sides, sliding up the inside of her too-big T-shirt. In response, she wrapped her legs around him and clung to his shoulders, feeling hard, toned muscles and smooth bare skin. She needed to be skin to skin with him, needed her stupid clothes out of the way, so she lifted her arms over her head to remove her shirt, but ended up bashing her hands against the bunk like an oaf.
Jeff lifted his chin, his blue eyes like the deep blue of a sea she could swim in forever. “This might not work,” he whispered, his breath coming in jagged, desperate pants.
“Give me two seconds and I’ll make it work,” she promised, attempting to twist so she could pull off the tangled T-shirt if he wasn’t going to do it. “Why is this bunk so tiny?”
He smiled fiendishly and dipped his chin, planting hot kisses along her collarbone. Sharona forgot all about her clothes when Jeff secured one of her wrists and held it above her head, pinning her in place, his mouth moving slowly up the inside of her arm. With her free hand, she cradled the back of his head and moved to his neck. When her mouth found the spot she liked, she hovered there, breathing in, tasting the salty, manly tang of his skin. Then, with every part of her body that was connected to his—her arm, her legs around him, her mouth on his neck—she clamped down.
Jeff’s body jolted over her, and he drew in a hard, sharp breath. She giggled against his neck as she loosened her grip. After one last suck and gentle nibble, she removed her mouth from his neck.
Love Bites: A Sugar City Novella (Entangled Bliss) Page 8
