by Amy Andrews
Now he had a whole other picture going on in his head and he was damn sure there was nothing brotherly about it.
And definitely not what Nathan had wanted.
Nathan hadn’t told Rick to leave Stella alone that day he’d caught them almost kissing. But he had spoken about how special his daughter was and left Rick in no doubt that he’d wanted someone just as special for Stella. Certainly a bunch of transient deckhands and divers on a motley collection of salvage boats had not measured up to Nathan’s expectations in any way, shape or form.
Nathan had wanted for his daughter the one thing he’d never been able to give his own wife—stability.
Someone who was going to be there for her always.
And Nathan had made sure every man in his employ had known that his daughter was off-limits.
Himself included.
But that was then. And this was now.
Nathan was dead. And Stella was all grown up.
She had breasts and hips and an imagination that would make a sailor blush.
How on earth was he supposed to ignore that? Particularly when she was downstairs right now—he could hear that bloody bell all the way up here—prancing around, enjoying herself, feeling all smug at his expense.
And it was only day two.
How nuts would he be by the end of it all?
Hell, how nuts would he be in a week?
Unless...
Rick pulled his head off the steering wheel as the cunning of a certain pirate came to his rescue. He sat ramrod straight.
What if he took control of the situation? Turned the tables on her a little?
What if he were to take some of those tantalising scenes from Pleasure Hunt and give them life? He’d already established that she wasn’t included in their little dare. Maybe he could have some more fun...
Vasco Ramirez had been determined to make the voyage with Lady Mary a pleasure hunt—maybe he should too?
Of course he’d never step over the line, the bondage scene would have to go begging, but what fun it could be seeing if he could get Stella all het up. After all, those scenes were written by her about him. Maybe he could indulge those fantasies for her just a little, give her a taste of the real thing?
It would be fun to see how she reacted.
Would she guess what he was doing or would she be unaware? Would she reject his boundary pushing or would she embrace it with the abandon with which she’d scribed it?
His gaze fell on the shower at the stern of the boat and he smiled.
* * *
Stella was putting the supplies away in the galley when she heard a loud splash outside the porthole in front of her. She frowned as she peered out into the night.
Maybe Rick had thrown himself overboard, the dare just too much?
‘Rick?’ she called, a smile on her face. No answer. ‘Rick?’
Still no answer.
Maybe it was one of Moresby’s infamous rascals trying to steal from them and he’d knocked Rick unconscious and into the water.
Her smile died as her heart started hammering in her chest. She reached for the nearest weapon, a heavy-based fry pan, and decided to go up and investigate. She climbed the spiral staircase, one tread at a time, an itch up her spine.
She took a deep breath, then popped her head above the deck line, like a meerkat.
‘Rick?’ she whispered while her eyes took a second or two to adjust from the bright light below to the low cloud-affected moonlight outside.
Still nothing.
She caught a slight movement towards the helm of the boat as the sound of running water defined itself from the gentle slap of sea against hull and the trilling of insects. She squinted to make out the shape, her vision slowly adjusting to its night capabilities.
It was a person...
A man.
Taking a shower.
Taking a shower?
The moon chose that moment to come out from behind the scudding clouds that had been hampering its brilliance all night and Stella was afforded a side view of the man standing beneath the shower spray as if someone had switched on a spotlight.
Rick.
A one hundred per cent, buck naked, Rick.
She stood there frozen to the spot for a long moment caught between two impulses. To get out now before he discovered she was staring at his naked body or just stop and take in every magnificent inch.
As the celestial spotlight continued to bathe him in milky brilliance the latter won out.
The shower head was behind him, his head tipped back, his face raised to the night as the spray bathed his shoulder-length locks into a sleek, silky sheath. His eyes were shut as if worshipping the moonbeams that painted him in alabaster.
He looked like a statue. A Michelangelo nude.
With all the beautiful symmetry of fluid muscles and the more subtle details of sinews, tendons and veins in living, breathing relief.
Water sluiced over his broad shoulders, his chest, his biceps. It ran down the planes of his back, following the curve of his spine, dipping into those two sexy dimples above the rise of his buttocks. It flowed down firm flanks and rippled like a waterfall across the defined ridges of his abdomen.
Rivulets of water ran down one powerful thigh pressed slightly forward, the knee bent, obscuring her view any lower, and Stella frowned.
Damn it, so close...
Vasco’s bath scene had been written over two years ago, and while a lot of it had been scripted out of her imagination some of it hadn’t. Having grown up with Rick wearing barely anything at all—boardies or a skin-tight diving suit being his everyday attire—she’d had plenty of inspiration for Vasco’s body and had been able to portray it with startling accuracy.
There had been some parts, however, that she’d had to... embellish.
It would be nice to know the truth of it. Had her fevered imaginings accurately represented all of Vasco or had it been pure whimsy on her behalf?
And then, as if he’d read her mind, he shifted, twisting his body slightly in her direction, straightening his bent knee and transferring his weight to his other thigh, and she no longer had to wonder if she’d got it right because the evidence that she had was right there.
Riccardo Granville was most definitely Vasco Ramirez in the flesh.
Rick turned so his back was to Stella and smiled to himself as he tilted his neck from side to side, letting the lukewarm water run over muscle that was surprisingly tense. The concentration it had taken to appear unselfconscious and relaxed, as if he were alone and being unwatched, had been much harder to carry off than he’d thought. But to see Stella’s head pop up and then feel her avid gaze on him as tangible as the water cascading from the shower head had made the exercise worthwhile.
He was back in control again and that was exactly the way he liked it. Even if he was playing games with someone he had no business playing games with.
But if she was going to secretly put him in a book and not expect him to have a bit of fun with that then she’d completely forgotten about his devilish sense of humour.
As long as he kept it light and remembered who she was—Nathan’s daughter, not a single, fully grown woman who wrote dirty books—and where the line was, it would work out just fine.
They’d both have a laugh at the end of the voyage and get on with their lives.
It was win-win as far as he was concerned.
* * *
The second Stella strained to see that birthmark she’d been fascinated with since she’d been five years old she knew that happenstance had turned into voyeurism. She forced herself to cease and desist. With one long last lingering look at possibly the most beautiful rear end in the world, certainly in historical romance fiction, she slunk back down below deck, fry pan still in hand.
She should feel guilty; she knew that. If the positions had been reversed she’d have been mortified. But strangely she didn’t. No harm had been committed. He didn’t know that she’d been watching him or that he’d just fulfilled a particularly potent fantasy of hers—so potent she’d put it in a book!—and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him!
But she would use it.
Late at night when a day of crafting sensual tension or a torrid love scene left her restless and achy and the dictates of her body would not be ignored, a naked Rick bathed in shower spray and moonbeams would come in handy.
Very handy indeed.
Vasco examined the milky white perfection of Lady Mary’s hand. He cradled it in the palm of his much bigger, much darker one and admired the contrast for a moment. This was what they’d look like in his bed, their limbs entwined, their stomachs pressed together—coconut and coffee.
He stroked his thumb down the length of her index finger where the long slither of wood had embedded itself and let it drift across her palm. He heard the slight intake of her breath and felt her resistance to his hold.
He looked up into her emerald eyes. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he murmured.
Mary swallowed. They were seated, her knees primly together beneath her skirts, his legs spread wide in that lord-of-all-he-surveyed way of his, bracketing hers. The fabric of his breeches pulled taut across his thighs as he leaned in over her hand, his head perilously close to her cleavage.
‘It really just needs a pair of tweezers,’ she said, trying to pull her hand back. He resisted and she resigned herself to the unsettling heat of his touch.
Vasco smiled at her, her pink mouth a tempting bow before him. ‘I think I can do better than that.’
His voice was low and silky and Mary felt it in places that she’d only recently, thanks to him, become aware of. Her green gaze locked with the startling blue of his as he raised her finger to his mouth and sucked it inside.
Vasco watched surprise pucker her mouth into a cute little O shape as her pupils dilated. Her breathing was loud in the space between them as she lowered her gaze to where his mouth tasted her. He felt a half-hearted attempt to pull away again but countered it by laving her finger with long strokes of his tongue.
Her whimper went straight to his groin.
Mary felt the throb ease as Vasco ministered to her wound in this most unusual fashion. Her gaze returned to his, finding him watching her with something in those mesmerising eyes she couldn’t fathom. She didn’t know what it was but she did know she’d seen it there before.
And it was both dangerous and enticing.
Still holding her gaze, Vasco slowly withdrew his lips, his teeth seeking and finding the rough end of the splinter burrowed in at the tip. He nipped at it until he held it firmly, then slowly eased it out, her glistening finger slipping from his mouth altogether. For a moment he held the liberated splinter between his teeth, then turned his head and spat it on the floor.
He smiled as he turned back to face her. ‘That’s better,’ he murmured.
Mary couldn’t move. Her finger or anything else for that matter. She just sat there, hand still in his, finger moist from his ministrations, staring at his mouth. A mouth that had turned her insides to jelly.
‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, belatedly remembering her manners.
Vasco lowered his head to her finger again, and pressed a gentle lingering kiss to the exit wound.
He grinned. ‘My pleasure.’
Mary felt a sudden urge to call for smelling salts.
After a restless sleep Stella wasn’t in any hurry to look Rick in the eye for the first time since her voyeurism of last night. She’d gone straight to her quarters after her little peeping Tom episode, thus avoiding him altogether.
But she couldn’t stay in her cabin for ever and it wasn’t as if he knew that she’d spied on him. All she had to do was not blush and stammer when she greeted him and pretty soon the awkwardness would pass.
The memory would be emblazoned on her frontal lobe for ever but the awkwardness would pass!
‘Hey,’ she said to Rick as she wandered into the galley fifteen minutes later. He was sitting at the dining table poring over charts. Fully clothed. She looked away as he looked up at her.
Rick forced himself not to smile like a Cheshire cat, but just give a normal everyday hey kind of a smile. Which was kind of difficult when greeted with another pair of brief shorts and some kind of strapless shirt, leaving her shoulders bare and her cleavage...enhanced.
‘Morning,’ he said. You saucy little pervert in barely any clothes. ‘Sleep well?’
He assumed she’d had a pretty fitful sleep if that damn bell jingling was anything to go by.
Stella steeled herself to look at him again and gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Fine,’ she murmured.
Rick stifled a smile as she looked away. Liar. Good, now they were even. Between the damn book, that silly little bell and an array of teeny tiny clothes, sleep had become a rare commodity.
‘You were in bed early last night,’ he mused, because he just couldn’t resist teasing her a little as she had done over their flirting bet last night. ‘Everything okay?’
Stella’s breath hitched as she popped two pieces of bread in the toaster. ‘Fine,’ she replied, her gaze planted firmly on the job at hand.
Rick suppressed a chuckle at her monosyllabic replies. He’d have loved to tease her some more, hell he could have done it all day, but the weather wasn’t the best out there and they should be getting under way.
He picked up his plate and glass and headed towards the galley, squeezing behind her to get to the sink. He felt her stiffen a little as he caught a whiff of browning toast and coconut. Her hair sat in a messy ponytail on top of her head, leaving her neck exposed, and he had the craziest urge to slip his arms around her waist and nuzzle into it.
He stepped away from the temptation—teasing her was one thing, acting as if they’d set up house was another. He placed his plate in the sink and downed the last of his orange juice in one gulp. ‘It’s going to be a bit choppy out there today so I’ll get us under way,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ Stella said again, keeping rigidly still until he’d safely disappeared up the stairs. When the toast popped thirty seconds later she realised she’d been staring out of the porthole thinking about him naked.
Oh, brother! Would she ever be able to act normally around him again?
As it turned out Rick was fully engaged in keeping control of the boat in the worsening swell so there was no time for conversation, awkward or otherwise. The sky was grey and the wind was brisk, keeping him on his toes. It was far from dangerous but it did require his attention.
She sat up front and worked on her laptop for a bit, but trying to type with the horizon undulating drunkenly played havoc with her equilibrium and wasn’t very productive. Even reading through her previous day’s work for editing purposes proved impossible to her constitution.
Stella had always possessed an excellent set of sea legs but they’d obviously become rusty from lack of use as nausea sat like a lead sinker in her stomach.
Which at least wiped away the images of Rick showering in the moonlight.
She gave up on the book, shutting her laptop lid.
‘Do you want to go down and make sure everything’s secured properly below deck?’ Rick called out an hour later as she sat very still, keeping her gaze fixed on the horizon, and concentrated on deep breathing.
Stella stood. Good idea. Something to do to keep her mind off the unsettling up and down of the boat.
It started to rain lightly as she passed him and she shivered as the breeze cooled the water droplets on her skin. He’d taken his shirt off at some stage and his chest was speckled with sea spray.
It reminded her of the
way water droplets had clung to his naked skin last night and she wondered if they were cool on his skin too. Whether they tasted of salt or of man.
Or some heady mix of both.
If she hadn’t felt so rough, she might have been tempted to try. ‘Do you want your spray jacket?’ she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
Rick nodded, examining her face. It had gone from pale to white as the sail billowing above their heads. ‘Thanks. You okay?’ he asked. ‘The bureau says it’ll only last for another couple of hours.’
Stella gripped the leather back of the high captain’s chair where his butt was parked. He looked totally in his element. Calm and confident. Relishing the inclement weather even, as if it were nothing more than a sun shower. Stella nodded. ‘I’m fine.’
He grinned at her, his long hair blowing behind him in true pirate fashion. ‘There are some sea sickness pills in the cupboard above the sink,’ he offered.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied.
Rick laughed. ‘There’s a lot of that going on today.’
Stella was sure if her cheeks weren’t so cool they’d be heating up nicely. ‘I practically grew up on a boat.’
Rick shrugged. ‘Just saying...’
She went below deck and checked every room, securing any items that were lying around. She grabbed her spray jacket and pulled Rick’s off the hook on the back of his door and headed to the galley, finding a couple of cans of soup and emptying them into a saucepan. The boat rolled to the side as she placed it over the element and her stomach lurched.
Damn it.
She reached above the sink and threw back two of the little blue pills, praying they’d work in a hurry.
She stood over the soup as it heated, shifting her weight from leg to leg with the motion of the boat. When it was done she puréed it, poured it into thermal mugs, cut off thick chunks of bread from the loaf they’d bought yesterday and loaded it all onto a tray. She shrugged into her jacket and folded his over her arm.
By the time she rejoined him fifteen minutes after taking the anti-emetic she was actually feeling markedly better.
