She stepped backward. “I can’t. I’m deathly afraid of deep water, especially in the dark. I don’t want to get on your boat.”
“I will always take care of you.”
“I-I know, but I’m still scared.”
“The best way to overcome your biggest fears is to face them.”
She grasped her bottom lip with her teeth, debate filling her eyes.
“Do you trust me enough to keep you safe?”
She nodded.
Christiana hugged her chest as she followed him down the narrow concrete path to the dock. One hand steadied Christiana on her heels on the swaying dock, while the other punched in a code on the iron-scrolled gate. It snapped open. Jonathan gestured for her to follow, and she obeyed. Her footsteps echoed behind Jonathan as he walked to his white schooner, rocking lazily in the water.
“It looks like there’s not much wind.” Her voice shook a little.
“We’ll motor out then.” He uncoiled the rope from its iron pike and threw it to the boat deck. Christiana startled when it thudded on the white cedar planking.
“Slip off your shoes; then take my hand.” His eyes narrowed when she hesitated. “Christiana. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“I know.” She placed her small hand in his and sent him a weak smile.
She didn’t know. Christiana Snow didn’t have faith in anyone. Her life had given her good cause for growing up suspicious, but she had no excuse for laying her trust in the wrong hands anymore. His whole body shuddered with his failure. While they were together, she laid down her defenses with him many times. Yet once they were apart, almost anything would send her hurtling back into doubt. If he was seen with another woman, which he often was, or Avery Churchill made one of her covert hostile remarks, Christiana would jump feet-first back into the abyss of uncertainty.
Another single truth gnawed at Jonathan’s ego. He’d cracked her open, taken her to the edge, but then left her without completing the job by rebuilding her self-confidence. He’d under-estimated her need. Well, tonight he’d make sure her strength was restored or they wouldn’t re-dock.
The boat bobbed upward and caught her foot.
“I’m going to check the lines. Under that bench is a life preserver for you. Pick the yellow one. It’s Sarah’s and should fit.”
After fitting the lifejacket over her head, Christiana clutched the bench. Her sandals lay at her feet. Jonathan picked up his abandoned tuxedo jacket and placed it over her legs.
He hoisted the staysail, and it snapped in the light wind.
Christiana sat silently as Jonathan steered the boat deeper onto the Potomac through the dozens of sloops, cutters and speedboats that had taken anchor for the fireworks display. He navigated to the outskirts of the crowded anchorage. While he needed her to see the other sailors surrounding them, they also needed privacy.
He dropped anchor while scanning the nearby boats. He should drop the second anchor given the wind conditions. No, he wouldn’t. Let the boat swing. It would add to the exercise for them both.
Once the boat was secure, he kneeled before Christiana.
“Those crystals must be uncomfortable.” He lifted both of her ankles to his shoulders, tipping her back on her elbows. He slid his hands up her legs to her hips and hooked his fingers through the thin strips of fabric of the red sparkled panties.
“People are looking,” she gasped, but lifted her hips.
“No, they aren’t.” He pulled down and tossed the thong over the side of the boat.
“Jonathan! That’s not mine. I have to return—”
“No, you don’t. Sarah likely bought it. Besides, it’s not your color.”
She smiled, visibly relaxed at his light remark. “It doesn’t seem her style, but then I only met her the one time. You never talk about your step-sister, Jonathan.”
“I will tonight.” He smiled.
Jonathan wasn’t mad. He acted . . . disappointed. She could fix that. She’d explain what happened if she could find the right words. Before she could speak, he claimed her mouth. His tongue reached inside, as if demanding an answer she couldn’t voice.
He grabbed his jacket from her knees and pulled her toward the center of the deck. “Up,” he directed.
Christiana scrambled up onto the hull. “Is this the best view?” She teetered from the boat’s incessant rocking.
“Almost. Hold on to the masthead.” She stood, clinging to him, unable to gain her footing even though the pole behind her helped a little.
She grasped the T-bar near her waist. He reached around to her back and through the dress, unhooked the bra and pulled it out through her neckline.
“Jonathan!”
He brought a finger to her lips. “Hush.”
Christiana kept her eyes on him, even when he tossed the bra down to the deck.
“I’m going to tell you a story—about Sarah.” Jonathan ran fingertips down her face. The pitching of the boat seemed to increase as Jonathan released his touch and stepped behind her back.
Christiana clutched the bar and tried to forget she was in the middle of the bay, in deep water, on a boat that rose and fell, swayed and bobbed—and that she now stood wearing nothing but a see-though dress.
A soft cottony cord wound around her wrist. Where did he get rope?
“Is that too tight? Move your fingers,” he said.
She opened and closed her fist, then re-grasped the bar.
He soothed her arms with his fingers. “When I was twelve, my father married Sarah’s mother. I’ll never forget the day we met, my father’s chest stuck out, so proud, pushing Claire in front of me like, ‘Here’s your new mom, Son.’ Such bullshit.”
“Ow.”
Jonathan had wrapped a length of rope around her wrist too tightly. He loosened it and ran his thumb over her wrist line, sending a shudder down her spine.
“Better?”
She nodded.
“But then, Sarah stepped from behind Claire. Sarah may have been fourteen, but she was practically a grown woman at that point. Full developed in both body and mind. She knew who she was. It was intoxicating, watching her walk into a room at that young age and have all eyes turn to her. Not to ogle a beautiful young girl, but rather to regard her with respect and admiration. Every fiber of her being demanded it.
“Sarah took a liking to me. Let me follow her around like a puppy dog.” Jonathan helped her release her other hand from its grip on the cool metal. More rope wound around her wrist. “We went hiking and sailing together back in Newport. Went to a lot of society events. Sarah liked dressing me up.” He laughed.
She sent her mind back to his voice to distract her from the fact her wrists and forearms were now lashed to the bar—and that his past rose up in his memory with such fondness.
“The summer before she left for Vassar, we went sailing—a lot. Fourth of July we decided to head out to sea instead of suffer through another one of Claire’s barbeques. Sarah wore the skimpiest bikini known to womankind. She did it on purpose, of course. My incessant hard-on let her know she’d won that game.” Jonathan faced Christiana, eyes dropped to her waist. “I thought she’d laugh her head off. Instead, she tied me to the mast and deep-throated my cock until I came . . . twice.”
Christiana was sure she stopped breathing. “But she’s your sister.”
“Stepsister. No genetic relationship. We didn’t spend our childhoods together.” He paused. “I was her submissive for six weeks that summer. Man, she worked me over. Hard.” He shook his head, clearly bemused, as if remembering a fond, family Christmas day.
“She’s—”
“A female Dominant.”
“But you’re a Dominant.”
“I am now. That summer she showed me what I was and was not.” Jonathan cupped her chin. “That’s why I know what you’re going through. Why I know how to do this.”
He stepped back, and the wind he had blocked blew her hair backward.
Christiana’s fe
et splayed out in a vain attempt to steady her footing. Cool breezes ran through the crochet over her skin. If he stepped back anymore, all the other people on boats would see her secured to the mast, bare-assed.
“People will—”
“Think you’re merely holding on, enjoying the view. People see what they want, remember?”
“Jonathan, please.” She dropped her head, her face heating.
“When you give yourself over as completely as I did to Sarah, it changes you,” he said. “Gives you a confidence that is unshakeable. That’s what you need. So when someone like Avery Churchill comes your way, you’ll know to walk away.”
Jonathan brought both hands to the crocheted V in the front of her dress and pulled. She cried out at the ripping sounds more than the act itself. He let the shredded dress fall, unraveled, to her feet. Water slapped the side of the boat, and the wind in the rigging sent a burst of wind that chilled Christiana’s bare skin. Jonathan leaned down to pick up his tuxedo jacket and hooked the enveloping suit coat over her shoulders, tied the jacket arms around her back. It stayed on, but it barely covered what needed to be covered.
“You’re scaring me.” Shit, she was nearly naked, secured to a mast in the middle of the bay with probably hundreds of people watching. How could she not be frantic?
He ran his hands down either side of her face. “A little fear isn’t bad. But know this. Getting hurt is an impossibility when I am here. I’m going to give you what you’re afraid to ask for. Push you beyond more limits, Christiana. And you will submit to me, fall so deeply into trust you’ll understand from that moment forward what it really means and not just to earn an orgasm.”
“I know—”
“You only think you know. Avery Churchill convinced you to walk down that runway, didn’t she? Played on your greatest fears? Told you you’d only be brave if you do what she says?”
Christiana muffled a sob. “Yes.”
“Why did you trust her?”
“She’s my friend.”
“Are you sure about that? She knows how to take care of herself. I wish I could say the same for you.”
“I don’t like the water. Jonathan, please . . . .”
“I know, lovely.” Jonathan traced a finger down the side of her forehead. “Now, tell me how you got that scar.”
A cry erupted from her chest as the first firework burst overhead, a brilliant red and white chrysanthemum. No. I can’t.
28
Jonathan yanked his tie free and threw it to the deck. He loosened the jacket covering Christiana so his hands could slip underneath. His whispered reassurances were barely audible over the fireworks crackling across the sky. He palmed her breasts until her cries stopped, and she pushed into his kneading hands.
“Christiana, tell me about it.” He dipped his tongue to her neck, tasted the fear, while his fingertips played her nipples lightly.
Even though lashed to the pole, she shook with panic. Far from the water churning around them, he knew her greatest fear was he’d give up and not crash through that final barrier of hers. The fire he’d seen behind her eyes that first day at the country club when they collided wasn’t spirit alone. It was hunger—not just the pining of a young girl, desiring love and romance, but something much deeper.
Bursts of colored light scattered their reflections across the deck, painting Christiana in flashes of color as she thrashed in her bindings.
“You say you know you are safe with me, but you don’t act like you feel safe now.”
“I’m tied to a masthead in the middle of the Potomac. Of course I don’t feel safe!” Christiana struggled against the ropes like a wild animal. “Untie me. Let me go! I can’t do this!” Her voice grew more fraught with each word.
“After you tell me what happened.” His heart wrenched when another sob broke from her chest.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You trust Avery Churchill enough to let her get away with that dress stunt, and you don’t trust me enough to say how you got hurt?”
“It wasn’t a stunt. I—I . . . wanted you to see me.”
“I do see you, Christiana.”
“You don’t want people to know about us. You are willing to be seen with all those other women, but never with me. Never with me!” She choked on a sob. “I’m supposed to be invisible.”
“If I could, I’d parade you on my arm down the middle of the White House lawn.” Jonathan circled to her front, lifted her chin and captured her mouth. When he released her lips, he ran a fingertip over her scar. “Now, what happened?”
“I-I fell when I was seven, okay? It was nothing.” Her voice’s high pitch made clear that what had happened was everything. It owned her.
“Were you alone?”
“No. I-I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
“Everything that’s ever happened to you matters to me, Christiana.” Jonathan laid his hand on Christiana’s shoulder and kept it there as he walked to her back, banding his arms around the masthead and her quaking body.
“Now, you fell when you were seven . . . .” Jonathan nibbled her neck.
“My mom shouldn’t have been alone with me,” she spat. “We were feeding ducks in a park. Dad went to get us ice cream, I think. I don’t remember.”
“And?”
“That’s when she took me . . . in a boat. I fell out. Hit my head.”
“Tell me what you’re leaving out.”
“I almost drowned.”
A fire built inside Jonathan’s belly. He’d known about her mother’s mental illness. But this? He held on to her tighter.
“Dad shouldn’t have left me alone with her. Mom wasn’t reliable.”
“Who saved you?”
“A man. Just some man. A stranger.”
“No wonder you don’t trust people,” he said into her hair.
“I trust you.” She brushed her cheek against his face as her head lolled backward onto his shoulder.
He wanted to erase the anguish from her beautiful face. He wanted her to have confidence in him, more than any woman he’d ever encountered. He wanted all of Christiana Snow.
The boat rocked suddenly. She cried out and not even the darkness between rockets could mask the distress on her face, illuminated in the bursts of color from overhead. She banged her head backward into the mast. “Don’t let me fall overboard!”
He circled to her front and grasped her face in his hands. “Never.” Jonathan claimed her mouth in a kiss, and she softened. He released her mouth and pressed more soft kisses along her hairline, finally resting his lips on her scar. She crumpled forward. If the ropes—and Jonathan—hadn’t supported her, she’d have collapsed to the deck.
“The boat was supposed to be fun. She said it would be an adventure. Mom said I was her mermaid and that Dad was a merman and I had to go find him. I was afraid of the water. It was so black. I didn’t want to go. She hit me over the head with the oar to make sure I did.”
Her words were barely audible over a dozen red, white and blue bursts of sparks in the night sky. The air had grown thick with acrid cordite smoke from the fireworks.
Tears streaked her face. “I don’t come from the perfect family, like you. Mom couldn’t handle raising a kid, so she checked out. Dad liked his bottle more than me. Even you don’t want to be seen with me. Don’t you get it, Jonathan? I’m invisible.”
And there it was. Finally, the truth of Christiana Snow revealed itself in the middle of the Potomac River. She didn’t feel used. Christiana grew up believing she was unwanted. She felt erased.
Yes, he had gone too far. “Oh, baby.”
Jonathan realized in that moment what his father meant about Marla Campbell. She knows her worth. It wasn’t the strong women who were hard to handle. It was the ones who believed they were not enough, unwanted, who’d test a man’s mettle with every self-defeating thought and action. Like Christiana Snow. Worse than feeling unwelcome, she didn’t know how to be loved. Jonathan had promised him
self he’d be the man she needed. Her eyes spoke the truth of his failure in that one simple task.
Every person who declared her important had betrayed her. She’d been caretaker to her father, handmaiden to Avery, and now lover to the most selfish man he’d ever known—himself. He’d hidden her away from others, so his precious career remained intact. He’d awakened her hidden sexual needs and when she was the most vulnerable, he’d left her alone, floundering. Like father, like son.
He hated himself.
Christiana didn’t let go of the bar even when Jonathan yanked the long tail end of the lead, releasing one of her arms. She slumped forward slightly, onto his chest, as he freed the other arm.
Oh, she was tired. He’d pulled out her last grain of despair. Until tonight, Christiana didn’t indulge in the memories of that fateful July Fourth eleven years ago. The taste of strawberry ice cream at the kitchen table, her fingers playing with the white bandage over her forehead—a pirate’s mark of having an adventure, her father had said.
“I never saw her after that day.” Christiana couldn’t focus her eyes on anything but the dark grey water, sparks of silver dancing over its surface form the city lights. “My dad said she’d return when the bounty’s been paid.”
“The bounty?”
“The pirates. Dad said she’d been captured. I guess that’s what you tell a seven-year-old instead of her running her car off the road during a manic phase.”
Christiana raised her eyes to Jonathan’s face, now colored in such sorrow—pity—her heart cracked. He set Christiana upright and placed his mouth on hers. His tongue reached in and took possession of her wariness. Instead of dueling with his probing, she followed his lead, letting him set the pace. He released her mouth, and the last remnants of hope inside her sank to the bottom of the river in an instant. Unlike all the other times he had kissed her, there was no demand, no passion. It was a kiss of comfort, consolation—and good-bye, like a final brand of completion. He had demanded her confession, and she had given it to him. Her purpose—to provide him an opportunity to be a white knight—had been fulfilled. Inside the jacket, Christiana pressed her fists against her sternum as if keeping her heart inside her chest.
Elite (Elite Doms of Washington Book 1) Page 25
