by Anna Lowe
“Nice boat.”
She nodded. The little day sailor her family was clustered around had sparked some mighty big dreams.
“And this?” He pointed at the photo with two girls up in a tree house, both wearing paper pirate hats.
She made sure to keep her voice even. “That’s me and my best friend, Lindsay, in the summer between sixth and seventh grade.” She knew the year exactly. Would never forget.
“Ah, the lion tamers,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Nice tree house.”
“Yep, it was our clubhouse, in her backyard. We had our own club, us two. The Lions Club. Original, huh?”
She turned to him, ready to change the topic, and thankfully, that was easy to do with naked male perfection lying two inches away.
He touched her lightly, brushing her breasts, her ribs, her hips. His fingers barely strayed into her erogenous zones before skittering away, winding her up.
“What can I do for you, my pirate queen?” he asked in a low voice. Hushed, hopeful.
She smiled and shifted to watch him as he lay on his side, bathed in the golden glow of morning. “What did I do to earn anything I like?”
He leaned in to brush a kiss over her lips. “Gave a man the night of his life.”
She wanted to snort, but it came out as a happy chuckle. “That’s some line.”
Kyle pulled back from her kiss and splayed a hand across her chest. “It’s not a line.”
She studied his face. “You sure it’s not a line?”
Kyle pulled her closer, eyes refusing to let her go. “You think I get to hang out on fancy boats and make love to beautiful women all the time?”
Without checking for permission, her left leg crept over his knee.
“I hate to break it to you, but what you’ve got here is neither a fancy boat nor a beautiful woman.”
“I beg to differ,” he said, and his eyes swore a solemn oath.
God, it felt good to look into those eyes. But something in her couldn’t help wondering how many other women had been treated to such an intimate view. “Maybe I just picture you hanging out in fancy limos with really beautiful women in cocktail dresses and heels. The kind with tiny, shiny purses that don’t hold much.”
He rolled onto his back, breaking the gaze. “Is that what you think of me?”
Maybe she’d come too close to a bitter truth, or a past he would be happier to forget. A feeling she could relate to; she’d certainly made her own mistakes.
“Sorry, sorry,” she rushed, settling onto his chest and kissing along his jaw. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Mmm?” he rumbled, setting sparks bouncing like hyperactive puppies in her veins. “How?”
“Because I am about to give you the day of your life. Well, maybe just one of the days of your life, but I guarantee it will be a good one.” She sealed the vow with a kiss.
And just like that, the job list went out the window.
“Oh, yes? What does one of the best days of my life look like?” His hands traced her ribcage, then slid down.
Now that was more like it. Hannah slid into a straddle and slowly, languorously, dragged her body over his.
“It starts with a woman,” she said, dotting his ear with tiny kisses. “Maybe not such a beautiful one, but maybe not so bad, either.” He growled, but she plunged on. “A woman desiring you,” she finished, plowing her hips over his groin.
“Desiring me?” His words came out in a mumble, caught by her lips. “How much?”
She smiled, feeling his heart beat faster. Hers, too. “Big desire.”
She lifted her hips, found his erection already waiting for her, and dragged her sex along it. Her eyes slid shut at the rush that set off. But it wouldn’t do to let a guy think he could drive her mindless that quickly, so she licked her dry lips and cracked a smile. “And after that, you get a French toast breakfast.”
He laughed, running his hands around her ass, guiding her closer.
“You can try bribing me with sex,” Kyle growled, “but not food.”
“No?”
“No.”
She rocked her hips and felt his cock jut in response. “French toast with rum?”
He considered that over a kiss. “That might work.”
“Rum—” she nodded “—and papaya on the side.” She rolled one shoulder back and lowered the opposite breast. His eyes flickered there, setting off more sparks.
“And after that, I was thinking we could go see if we can find the mantas,” she continued, going deeper, brushing her nipple against his lips.
“Mmm,” was all he said.
She’d take that as a yes. “And after that, we come back here and, uh…see how much energy we still have.”
“Oh, I think I’ll have some energy,” he assured her, teasing her with his thumbs.
“Good,” she said, already losing herself to the sweet tightness building inside.
“Good,” he murmured, lips back at her breast.
Soon, very soon, she’d be too far gone to think. “Just a second,” she said, rolling away with the last scrap of responsible thinking left in her.
“Hey!” he protested.
She popped back in with her toiletry bag, rooting around for a condom. Her last one. “Here, I got one.”
“Let me guess,” he groaned. “Purple?” He picked up his head, making a thick causeway out of his abdominal muscles.
“Yellow,” she said, enunciating both syllables. She centered it over his straining tip and unrolled it with relish. “Glad to see you waste no time waking up, Viking.”
“Totally awake,” he chuckled. “Unless I’m still dreaming.”
She straightened, enjoying the fact that now he was the one propped back on a pillow, eyes glazing with need, and she was the one mounting his eager frame.
“Let’s see…” She opened her straddle and slipped down over his cock, taking him in, inch by inch. “Definitely awake,” she managed as the inner burn licked a delicious path through her body.
She tipped her head back and she let her jaw drop open in a silent moan. She took him deeper and started rocking. God, they were a custom fit.
She worked up the coordination to tuck her chin against her chest and watched him disappear inside. Not that she’d ever considered sex a spectator sport, but that sight stoked the heat inside her to a new level. It was all she could do to keep her movements slow and deliberate.
Kyle’s lips moved in silent approval. His eyes were closed, his mouth barely open, lost in his own ecstasy.
“Kyle,” she said. It came out hoarse, though the name felt familiar on her tongue. Not a stranger she’d recently met, but a friend. “Kyle.”
His eyes fluttered open and locked on hers.
“More,” she whispered. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. He felt so good inside her. So right. So temptingly right.
Her breath grew ragged and her movements jerky. She hammered down on him, crying out in both pleasure and frustration, because it was so good, but still not quite right.
“Kyle…”
His eyes spun into focus, and suddenly he took charge again. Without breaking contact, he rolled them both and came out on top. “I got this.”
Oh, he had this, all right. She wrapped her legs around him and stretched her arms over her head, blazing with a single, blinding need.
Kyle started pumping inside her, and she surrendered to the haze of pleasure. When he pulled back, she cried in protest. When he rammed back in, her spark erupted into a full blaze. She clenched desperately with her inner muscles, squeezing his rear with her palms. Somewhere in the haze of her climax, his movements lost their smooth slide and sped into a frenzy.
“Hannah,” he panted, stiffening all over.
He quivered inside her, the whole, thick length of him, and for one crazy moment, she resented the condom. Wanted to feel him, skin-on-skin. For one fleeting moment, she even imagined that. If he were hers — truly hers — they could do that.
They wouldn’t have to deny themselves that last scrap of sensation, that sense of possibility.
A moment later, she spasmed around him, and her mind cleared of every crazy thought except that of how incredible it felt to be with this man.
Again, he’d read her perfectly. Again, he’d brought her higher than any man ever before. And again, she clutched his shoulders, wanting to claim him as her own.
No, one night and one morning with Kyle were definitely not going to be enough.
Chapter Eighteen
Kyle was still tingling when Hannah shuttled him ashore, and it wasn’t just the vibration of the four-horsepower outboard. Getting kidnapped by a pirate queen was turning out to be quite the adventure.
Hannah had a quiet kind of dignity about her, a naturalness, blended with a zest for life.
He pedaled back to the hotel, thinking about her the whole way. Had he ever met anyone like her?
Nope. Never.
Would he ever again?
That was the head-scratcher he had to work really hard to push out of his mind.
At Le Beau Soleil, he grabbed a change of clothes along with a few other things and made a quick apology for missing dinner, but Tiri didn’t seem fussed. In fact, the hotel manager might even have had a twinkle in her eye when she shooed him back on his way.
Twenty minutes later, he was back in a dinghy and zipping across the lagoon — this time, the larger dinghy Luc and Marie had loaned Hannah for the day-trip across the lagoon she had planned. With its twenty-horsepower engine, it felt like a rocket compared to Hannah’s — er, Robert’s — little pony of a four-horse outboard. Water slopped in over the sides, but Hannah didn’t seem to mind.
Inability to accept help aside, she was the least complicated woman he’d ever met. She didn’t fuss about her hair, her clothes, or her shoes. In fact, she wasn’t wearing footwear of any kind. Her eyes scanned the water ahead like an old-time whaler searching for a telltale spout, intent on finding a small marker described by Marie.
When she pressed an old milk container into this hands, he looked at it blankly.
She nudged him. “Bail, dummy!”
Right. He bailed the dinghy continuously as they hurtled across the lagoon, sneaking peeks at Hannah all the time. She was grinning the way she had in the back of the truck the first time he’d seen her. Somehow, he could perfectly picture her as a lion tamer, ready with a whip and a roar.
When they were nearly at the narrow pass that led out into the ocean, she slowed, circled, and nodded toward a small red buoy floating on the surface.
“Grab it!”
He grabbed; she tied the dinghy off.
“Marie says the mantas are usually here. Three of them, really big ones!” Hannah said, already sorting through the snorkel equipment. Excitement sloughed off her like a second skin. “But we have to watch the current. It should be slack for another hour. But after that, it will start to pick up.” She swung her flipper-clad feet over the side and settled her mask over her face. “Ready?”
There was only one answer to that question. He fumbled on the flippers Luc had supplied and followed her in with a splash.
He sucked in a deep breath because it was a little overwhelming at first. The water was deeper in this part of the lagoon — and rougher. Foot-high waves chopped the surface into serrated bits. He concentrated on following the wash spinning off Hannah’s flippers and on keeping his snorkel clear. When she slowed and swam in a circle, he popped his head above the surface, trying to keep the dinghy in sight.
Hannah tugged on his elbow, pointing down, so he ducked into the water again and looked. They had come up on a coral garden. A big one, where broad fans of coral spread in several colors and piled up in overlapping layers. Then he followed Hannah’s outstretched finger…and held his breath.
A huge shadow emerged from the distance and swept across the coral, thirty feet below. A manta ray: a flying carpet in sleek black with a thin white stripe on each majestic wing. The edge of one wing lifted, and the manta banked left. Hannah followed it and Kyle stroked along behind her, straining his eyes. The manta was a good eight feet across, if not more.
God, the shot he’d get if he had a waterproof camera…
Another shadow broke away from a coral cliff and joined the first. That made two, then three glistening tuxedos gliding in silent, graceful circles in the sea. The manta rays crossed paths, then drifted apart, each on its own meandering path.
Hannah pointed as one of the mantas slowed to hover over a flat saddle of sand that flashed with tiny points of silver. Tiny fish, Kyle realized, shining in the diffuse light penetrating the clear water. Hannah mimed to him, plucking at one palm, then stroking it flat.
Cleaning? Kyle watched the manta ray glide onward in a long, looping path, circling back for another round. It was a cleaning station where fish plucked at the manta’s skin. He’d seen it in one of those Disney movies his nieces watched over and over again. Not Nemo, but the other one. A whole biology lesson on symbiosis was playing out in front of his eyes.
The mantas continued to loop around their drive-through cleaning station like a trio of 747s circling a busy airport, ignoring their visitors. Hannah dove deep and glided under him, her arms spread wide, keeping her distance yet taking part in the silent ballet.
Mother Nature might as well have grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him hard, screaming her beauty in his face. Do you get it? Do you see what you’ve been missing?
All he could do was try to etch every detail into his memory. The different patterns of white on each manta. The curves of their wings. The awe-inspiring underwater silence of the scene.
The next time Hannah dove, he followed and swept above her, arms wide, mimicking her flight. A few more times and he got the hang of it, getting in a couple of good kicks and working up the speed to glide. It felt like flying, not swimming. At one point, one of the mantas made a wide loop and soared right past him with a mouth flung wide to catch plankton. Paired gills flared as the manta dipped one wing and edged away. When one wingtip brushed Kyle’s skin, he felt the sandpapery touch of a cat’s tongue.
He turned to Hannah, mumbled incoherently through his mask, and saw that her eyes were as big as his.
She popped up to the surface and spit out her snorkel. “That was incredible! Did it touch you, too?”
“That was more than incredible,” Kyle agreed, already ducking down for another look. But the mantas were soaring away, their cleaning session over. The wonder, however, still danced in his mind.
God, what else had he been missing all this time?
Chapter Nineteen
“That was great!” Hannah glowed once they’d climbed back in the dinghy. “Even better than the mantas in Bora Bora! And maybe even the ones back in Tahuata!”
Kyle had no idea there’d be mantas when he booked this trip, much less in Bora Bora or anywhere else, like Tahuwawa, wherever that was. But he had to agree it was pretty amazing. Astounding. Arousing, if he had to admit it. Something about flying over Hannah in mermaid mode did that to him. But he tried not to let on, lest he be mistaken for a heathen of a male who couldn’t observe the wonders of nature without thinking of sex.
Even if that was pretty much the case.
On the other hand, what was so wrong about that? He’d heard the call of Mother Nature, loud and clear. A moment he’d remember for the rest of his life. He just couldn’t help but think ahead, that was all.
“That was amazing,” he murmured for the tenth time.
Hannah smiled, salt water dripping from her brow. “Was it what you expected?”
“I don’t know what I was expecting.”
When he came to Maupiti, he’d been picturing sunshine, palms, and a beach. He hadn’t been expecting mantas. Hadn’t been expecting sailing gypsies. Hadn’t expected a pirate queen to sweep him clear off his feet.
Hannah. She was amazing. Astounding. Arousing.
And there he was, right where he started. He rubbed
the water out of his eyes and tried thinking about cold showers and the Equities section of the London Financial Times. That ought to keep him in line.
Hannah gushed about the mantas all the way to the nearest islet, a little spit of a thing on the edge of the reef. Barely a hundred yards long, it was thick with palms, covered with coral, and inhabited exclusively by birds and crabs. They anchored the dinghy in the shallows and splashed ashore, where Hannah spread a blanket under a palm. She peeled back her wetsuit to expose a sky-blue and yellow bikini, murmured something about a perfect day, and stretched out on her stomach.
A perfect day. Kyle couldn’t agree more. Shaking the water out of his ears, he eased down beside her and folded his arms behind his head to look up through the swaying palm fronds.
A dark thought crossed his mind, and he scanned the space above Hannah, then himself.
“Um… Didn’t you say falling coconuts are more dangerous than sharks?” He squinted into the sunshine.
Hannah just chuckled.
Okay, maybe he ought to let it go.
Maybe he ought to let a lot more go.
He rolled on his side and watched Hannah’s ribs rise with each intake of breath. The breath that had caressed his cheek for most of the night. She might be drifting off into a nap, but he couldn’t, not with every sense of his body saturated with impressions. It wasn’t just the mantas, or the memory of her body against his. It was everything. The gentle nodding of the boat last night. The soft whisper of the wind. The scent of coffee in the morning, with her smile behind the cup. There’d been nothing to rush off to but the mantas. He closed his eyes, listening to the distant crash of ocean on the outer wall of the reef. Such peace, such grandeur.
This life could grow on him. It definitely could. Especially if she was part of it.
What if… a little voice inside him started.
He tried squashing the thought before it arose. Having all this downtime was giving him crazy ideas, like sailing off into the sunset with his pirate queen, far from the bustle and stress of New York.
What’s holding you back? the voice demanded, bolder now.
