He knew then that he wanted to be where she was. After they were rescued. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he knew what he wanted. Just to be with her. Next to her, around her. He didn't need a commitment if she wasn’t ready for that. But he did know that unless she lived in Ocean City, he was going to be moving.
She opened her eyes and brushed the water off her face, looking up at him. They stood maybe a foot apart from one another and Jay’s body absolutely ached to close that gap, to smash her body against his. To feel her against him. Warm and wet.
He let out a low breath and handed the soap over to her. Mari’s lips twitched, like she knew exactly how difficult this was for him. And then, in a tenuous, balancing moment, she slowly pushed the soap back into his hand. Mari lifted her hands to the side in a gesture of surrender. She was asking him to wash her.
Jay snicked open the cap of the soap and sudsed his hands together. Reaching out for her hands, he started there. Paying particular attention to her fingernails. From there he worked his way down each arm. She giggled and squirmed when he got to her armpits and he took the moment to tug her forward.
Mari’s small breasts landed against his chest, the water sluicing down between them. He felt her heart stutter against him and he let out a long breath. Clearing his throat, he guided the soap up around her neck, behind her ears, even over her face and hair. And then he pulled her away and back so the water washed those suds away.
Next, holding her eyes, Jay got more soap on his hands. He worked the soap over her shoulders and he looped his hands around to her back. Then slowly, carefully, his hands came around front and his large hands framed her breasts.
They both gasped as one of his thumbs strummed over her nipple. He did the same to the other side. He was torturing himself.
Dropping to his knees, Jay started at her ankles, soaping upward little by little. He got to her inner thigh and paused. His eyes going back up to Mari’s.
He was stunned by the sight that greeted him. Her mouth open and panting, her eyes lazily half lidded and aroused. Her tan lines made her breasts glow in the shady light all around them, soap slicked and slid over her. Jay lifted his hands and stroked soap over her belly, into her navel.
He finally let his eyes trail down to the trimmed, dark patch of hair between her legs. He couldn’t stop the growl that rolled out of him. He couldn’t sit here at eye level. If he did he was going to lose his mind and devour her in the middle of a jungle. So instead Jay rose up, breathing heavily.
Holding her eyes, Jay slicked a bit more soap on his hand before he trailed his hand down one hip. Mari parted her legs just an inch or two and licked her lips, her eyes on his mouth.
Giving both of them exactly what they wanted, Jay let his hand brush between her thighs. He washed her there and let his hand linger. Mari, moaning, went up on her toes and caught his lips with hers. She hitched one leg up around his waist, giving him her weight and free reign.
But Jay didn’t push the situation further. The moment wasn’t quite right yet and he feared pushing her too far. He cupped her down below until he could bully himself into gently pulling his hand away, holding her as close to him as he could.
“We should get back before it gets dark,” he whispered in her ear.
Mari rolled her head to one side, onto his shoulder, and peered up at him with eyes that saw way too much.
CHAPTER FOUR
A few hours later, they were back, dressed in their swimsuits that they’d washed at the waterfall, and were spread out on the space blanket. It was so hot again that even though they desperately wanted to hold one another, their bodies simply wouldn’t let them.
“That waterfall shower is shot to shit,” Mari grumbled, beads of sweat forming on her chest and brow.
“Yeah, in terms of cooling me off, it was shot to shit the second you got naked.” Jay rolled his head and grinned at her. It was the first they’d addressed what happened at the waterfall.
They’d walked home through the jungle quietly. Both of their hearts and thoughts running a marathon.
Jay had pulled up short of making love to her, even though they’d both desperately wanted to. They’d come to different conclusions as to why.
Mari knew their time was limited. That there was only so much intimacy one could handle with someone they were probably never going to see again after they got rescued. This didn’t have the luxury of the casualness of a one night stand. And this didn’t have the luxury of infinite time, like a real relationship. So whatever it was between them, they were stuck in no man’s land. Too short to be real. Too intense to be dismissed. She understood that he didn’t want to accelerate things, make them even more intimate. She understood that it would just make their inevitable goodbye even harder.
Jay saw it differently, in his head. He didn’t want to take advantage of their situation on the island. He intended to make love to Mari. In fact, making love to Mari had just knocked everything else on his list of priorities down a notch. But he didn’t want to do it in a situation she’d later regret. He didn’t want her to think back and feel like he’d taken advantage of the intensity of their circumstances. So, yes, he was going to make love to her. He was just going to do it in a hotel on Grand Bahama right after he explained that he was gonna go wherever she was going.
So for now they sat in comfortable silence in the supply closet. Jay had broken through a few of the hotel room doors and cracked windows, so there was a bit of a breeze going. Although they both had tacitly agreed to stay in the supply room. The beds in the hotel rooms were moldy and decrepit anyways. This was still their best bet.
“I wish we could go down and sleep on the beach,” Mari said, flinging a bouncy ball across the supply closet and catching it one handed on its bounce back.
“Me too. But when I radioed to emergency rescue this morning they told me to stick close to the hotel. They’ll probably come in a chopper.”
“Really?” Mari asked, bouncing the ball again. “I assumed the coast guard would come.”
“Nah, I don’t think they’d risk navigating the waters this soon after a hurricane. Swells that big can change the landscape under the water. I don’t think they’d risk a shipwreck when it’s only a twenty or so minute chopper ride.”
Jay snagged the bouncy ball out of the air. He wanted to ask about her family. He wanted to ask her where she hung her hat when she wasn’t surfing the tropics. He wanted to ask how old she was or whether or not she was dating anybody back home.
But he also didn’t want to ask. He wanted her to tell him. He rolled the ball over his knuckles and caught it out of the air. He wanted her so badly that he knew he was seconds away from pushing every boundary they had between them. He wouldn’t let himself do it.
Mari leaned over and snatched the ball from him and tried to do the knuckle trick he’d just done. She growled in frustration when she just fumbled it. And then again.
“Here,” he smiled and took her hand in his, showed her how to do it.
She tried again and this time she flicked it neatly into her palm, just the way he had. She grinned at him and both of their eyes dropped to the other’s lips instantly.
Mari was just leaning forward to kiss him when she nearly jumped out of her skin.
A crack of thunder, so loud it sounded like it was directly over top of them, shook the building. She squeaked and Jay automatically reached for her.
“Thunderstorm,” he said, grinning down at her.
“Just our luck.” Mari rolled her eyes.
The thunder and lightning lasted a few hours and then it gave way to just a good, solid rain. Mari drifted off to sleep, halfway across Jay’s lap. Even with the sun down, even with the rain, even with the cross breeze through the hall, it was still oppressively hot.
Jay was drifting off to sleep, his head leaned back to the wall, when he heard it. Tapping on the roof. First just a scattered knocking, here and there. And then it was a full on deluge.
“Mari,”
he whispered, stroking a hand over her silky hair. “Baby, wake up.”
“Hmmm?” She came out of the dream with blurry eyes, stretching like a cat.
“Baby, it’s hailing.”
“What?” She was more awake now, pushing up on her hands and letting her hair tumble all over the place.
God. Jay was not an impetuous man. In fact, in most matters, he moved downright slowly. But looking at her there in the dim dark, he was almost positive that he could love this woman. Something about her was just so right.
He’d been viciously attracted to women before. He’d lusted and liked and crushed. But damn if this wasn’t different.
He tugged her up to standing and nudged her into her sandals.
“Come upstairs with me,” he said and the two of them jogged down the hall toward the stairwell. He led them up to the roof and slid the door open, peeking out tentatively. He grinned into the night and tucked her into his side.
“Well, would you look at that,” Mari shook her head in disbelief. “Hurricane one day and hail the next.”
The hail was slowing down, the storm moving on, but there were piles of it on the roof. Not too big, all the pieces of ice were about the size of marbles, and melting quickly in the tropical heat.
Mari stepped out on the roof, swiped a handful of the ice off the ground and immediately pressed it to her chest, to her neck. Up onto her face, over her belly, even down between her legs.
“Jesus, Jay. You’ve gotta feel this.”
So he followed her lead, pressing the ice all over himself. After days of sweltering heat, the freezing hail was deliciously welcome. It tightened his skin and heightened his awareness. Every place the ice touched felt as if it were burning and melting and freezing all at once.
Mari turned, her hands full of ice, and she brushed it over his chest. He did the same for her, over her back, down across her ass.
The ice was melting between them but they didn’t care. It was natural and unstoppable when their mouths met. When their bodies smashed against one another.
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “Yes.”
Jay’s hands, chilled with the ice, were desperate for her. He’d been holding back for so many reasons. And so had she. But how many miracles did the universe need to kick their way before they got the picture and made love to each other? This was a blessing. Finding her, holding her, surviving with her; it was a wild blessing and turning away from her would be to throw it aside.
Jay anchored his hands on the backs of her thighs and Mari hopped up onto him, her legs clasping around his waist.
Jay stumbled over to the outside wall of the stairwell and pressed her back against it, thrusting his hips into her.
“Yes,” she whispered again, biting at his bottom lip.
Jay freed one hand and tugged her bikini top to the side, dropping his head to feast on her.
“I can’t turn away,” he muttered against her skin.
“Then don’t.” Her voice guttered and gasped with her desire for him.
“It’s too much of a miracle.”
“Don’t turn away,” she begged him.
Jay slid down his swimsuit a few inches and tugged hers to the side, he pushed up against her, testing her readiness. He groaned and dropped his forehead to hers. “You’re a miracle,” he whispered against her lips.
She pushed down as he pushed up and into her. The air left both of their lungs at once as he found his place inside of her. The hail had turned back to rain and the changes in temperature caused steam and mist to rise simultaneously from the jungle around them. Clouds raced across the hot night, and as Mari tilted her head back in ultimate pleasure, she saw patches of velvet black sky. Glittering stars.
The ocean roared from every side of the island, and somewhere far off, a foghorn sounded.
Neither of them had ever felt more twisted into the fabric of the universe in their lives. The world was large and breathing and beating around them. Mother earth had almost wiped them from the planet. But they were here and living and grinding against one another in a dance as old as life.
Jay had one hand banded around her waist and the other he used to steady them against the wall. Mari had her face buried in his neck, her arms clamped around him, and her breasts smashed to his chest. She worked herself up and down onto him as he thrust from below. She could feel his muscles bunching and firing under every inch of her body and she couldn’t help but open her eyes to peer down his back. She gasped at what she saw there. The golden dips and valleys of his muscles. Just the edge of his midnight blue tattoo. And most tantalizingly, the shadowed cleft of his muscled ass as he pounded into her.
Mari moaned and whipped her head backwards, letting her hair dangle back as she clung to him.
He was perfect, skilled and ruthless, making her rise and rise, making her tighten like a fist. But he was also out of control with passion. This was not a refined lover. This was a man who saw no way out but through her. The animal in him was calling to the animal in her.
A guttural noise tore out from his chest as Jay clutched her back with one arm, holding her so tight she thought she might just meld with him.
Jay was burning alive. Everything about her was soft and warm and straining toward that good, good ecstasy. He’d never been with a woman more unrestrained, more unconcerned with how she looked or acted in the throes of passion. Mari had unleashed herself, she was taking everything he was giving her. It woke something deep inside him. Something that had slept his entire life.
Jay felt a beast awaken inside him. This was about pleasure, of course, but it was also something else. His movements were harsh and savage. He kept her in mind, of course, never wanting to cause her discomfort, but it was the least refined he’d ever been while with a woman. All he could think of was that he needed her to feel him. The way he was feeling her.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was teaching him something that couldn’t be unlearned. Sex with Mari was like seeing a new color, just once. He knew he’d never be able to forget it, just as he’d never find it anywhere else.
Jay widened his stance and clamped his mouth onto hers. He swallowed her breaths and panting moans. He tore at her lips with his teeth and then dropped his mouth to bite and suck at her neck. She was perfect. God. She was perfect. He’d meant it when he’d said she was a miracle. She was everything. She was everything.
“Everything,” he couldn’t help but growl into the curve of her neck as she stiffened and tightened around him.
“Jay, I’m gonna—I’m gonna—” she panted.
“Give you everything,” he cut in, unsure if he was issuing a command to himself or finishing her sentence.
And then Mari’s legs clamped even harder at his waist as she squeezed him like a fist. She let her head fall backwards as she screamed her pleasure into the night.
She was certain she could feel every molecule in her body vibrating and clanging against each other. She was ringing like a bell, her blood racing and floating and tremors working their way through her.
She clung to Jay as she felt him stutter beneath her, his strokes intensifying and losing their smoothness. He was close.
“Mari, baby—” he lifted his eyes to hers.
“Yes,” she interrupted him. “Now. I need you.”
And it was with his eyes on hers, blue into green, all the colors of the sea, that he exploded into her, emptying and emptying every feeling he wasn’t ready to say aloud.
***
She shifted her feet to stand but Jay merely swooped her up in his arms to carry her like a baby. Mari laughed as he stepped back into the stairwell and started down the stairs.
“I can walk, you know,” she teased him.
He nuzzled at her ear. “I know. Just let me hold you close for a minute.”
She raised an eyebrow as he kicked back into the fourth floor hallway from the stairwell. “You didn’t get enough of holding me up on the roof?”
Jay scoffed. “M
ari, what do you weigh, a buck? A buck five? Trust me. This isn’t a hardship.”
He didn’t mention that the only time he’d felt calm since the hurricane was when he had his hands on her, holding her close. He finally set her down on the blanket in the supply closet but he didn’t let her go far.
He pulled her up onto his chest and let some of her hair slip through his fingers.
“You alright, baby?” he asked her, his fingers lightly playing over her scalp.
Mari wasn’t sure how to answer that question. She felt as if she’d just returned from an alternate universe. One where her body was capable of showing her God.
And it made her go all funny inside when he called her baby. She had to swallow hard to get her powers of speech back. “I’m very, very good. You?”
“Very good,” he agreed. Suddenly Jay rolled them so that he crouched over top of her. “And about to get even better.”
***
The next morning, the two of them sat under the shade of a tropical tree and waited for someone to answer the phone call that Jay was making. He gripped the phone so hard he was scared it might shatter into pieces.
Jay spoke briefly, giving clear directions and information to the person on the other line. Neither of them knew what they wanted the answer to be. They needed to get the hell off this island. That was for sure. But they also needed this time to go on indefinitely. Into infinity.
They both had trouble picturing their relationship when they got off the island. But whereas Jay had decided that no matter what, he’d make it work, Mari had decided that no matter what, she was gonna leave him with dignity.
Jay ended the call. “They said that the emergency services have been hit pretty hard. But they’ll send a chopper tonight sometime. They said to be on the roof of the hotel so we don’t miss them. It’s the only place safe enough to land and they won’t be able to come back for a few days.”
“Alright,” Mari shrugged. “Sounds easy enough.”
An uneasy silence fell over them. Neither wanted to talk about leaving. But the idea of missing their ride out of here made both of them panicky.
Bachelors In Love Page 30
