It was a struggle to caress the sheets instead of push his hand away. She’d never had this type of soul-deep pleasure, knew without asking that he’d never given it. This was new to them both.
Gradually, he began to stroke faster. The glide of his slick fingers, the slap of friction, became all she could hear.
Trust him...
Trusting him, and trusting what they were sharing, Ona let herself relax into an orgasm. It hit with seismic intensity, grabbing her entire body, and she found herself soaked with emotions, oil and wet arousal.
Shaking, she said his name. “Riker. Just...”
Somehow he understood her, and wasn’t that the point—to reach a previously untasted flavor of understanding? Grabbing her clothes, he came back to the bed and carried her stark-naked out of the VIP room.
Chapter 5
When The Lure arrived at port the next morning, Ona was among the last to leave the ship. It wasn’t because Riker Ewan had kept her busy. On the contrary, after last night’s tantric sex workshop, he’d brought her to her cabin, pressed her hand to his rigid erection and said in the most tortured tones she’d ever heard, “What are we gonna do, Ona?” and when neither of them had a damn answer, he’d kissed her and left. This morning she’d woken up to a slow sunrise, a ringing phone and a dinging tablet, because no one in her group could seem to process that she wasn’t responsible for planning everyone’s individual excursions and couldn’t play go-between the entire day. A full day on the Bahamas awaited the passengers, and the only scheduled activities for the PAAC brats were a photo session in front of Balcony House for PAAC’s newsletter and a laid-back dinner on Paradise Island. Aside from that, she’d need to make sure her group returned to The Lure before departure.
Wearing a pink lace bikini beneath denim cutoffs and an off-the-shoulder white gauzy shirt, Ona fluffed her already poofy high ponytail and tapped her eyeglasses frames as she joined her group for the gorgeous complimentary buffet breakfast Guest Services had arranged at the cafeteria-style pier restaurant. She intended to get in the Bahamian water today, swim a little, splash around a lot, and didn’t want the hassle of worrying about keeping her hair straight and sand out of her contacts.
“Ona, c’mon over here,” Jane called from one of the three rustic tables their group occupied. Seated beside her, Regan appeared reluctant to move her handbag from the chair Jane indicated. “We have mimosas.”
Carrying her tray to their table, she saw the others exchange knowing glances. “What is it?”
“You look amazing,” Jane gushed.
“The glasses?” Ona bit into her powdered sugar toast.
“No.”
“The natural hair?” She tugged a springy lock.
Jane picked up her mimosa, considering Ona. “No again. Few things can put sparkle like that in a woman’s eyes. One of them is a thorough orgasm. Lucky you.”
Regan ignored her untouched mimosa for a lipstick-stained carton of milk and said, “Exhibitionism, Ona? Just seems a little over-the-top.”
“The yoni massage wasn’t exhibitionism,” Jane corrected. “It doesn’t mean those of us who stayed behind have a voyeurism fetish. If we did, so what?” She began to dissect her corned beef hash. “That massage was the most sensual thing I’ve ever watched. It was art, and it was so beautiful. I cried. Ask Cole. He was sitting next to me, and he was very much...inspired by it.”
Conversation continued, and Ona slumped on the bench, her gaze sweeping the table to her left and the one to her right. Cole Stanwyck was seated beside Rajon Sneed, and when she caught a few legal phrases she was relieved that they weren’t discussing her. She’d succeeded in becoming visible to a handful of people she hadn’t socialized with in years. After their entire class’s high school reunion in August, another decade would probably pass before she saw any of them again. Life moved along that way, and her main regret in this moment was that she hadn’t realized it sooner.
Last night, Riker Ewan had mattered. He still did, and the memories of his hands manipulating her body began to drench her with a heated dampness and a greed for more. She didn’t want him for pretend. She didn’t want the lie they’d built together. She didn’t want to make Nicholas Callaghan jealous.
She had the answer now—she knew that whatever had brought Riker to her that first day on The Lure and whatever her heart demanded were in total agreement.
Ona searched the restaurant but didn’t see him. Tonight’s departure seemed an eternity away, but she couldn’t very well text I’m having a great time sightseeing. By the way, I think we should be together for real.
Eating only a portion of her breakfast, she, for the umpteenth time, saw Regan ogle the bacon on her plate. Casually, she wrapped a strip in a napkin, knelt beside Regan’s chair and whispered, “Regan, you’re a WASP. If your love/hate relationship with bacon isn’t a religious issue, am I right in guessing it’s a dietary issue?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you adore Porky Pig growing up and now feel guilty about wanting bacon?”
“Ona, you’re obnoxious.”
“That may be. But am I right?”
Regan put down her milk carton. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s quite the generic response, but I won’t push you. Open your hand under the table. Regan, just do it.” When the woman uncurled her fingers, Ona set the napkin on her palm. “It’s a strip of bacon. Eat it or not. Just thought I’d offer it.”
Regan looked at her, her eyes conflicted. Then she balled up the napkin and dumped it onto her breakfast tray. “I don’t want a Fishtown girl’s charity. Go away now.”
Hate wasn’t the answer to hate, and there was something combustible brewing beneath Regan Waltz’s surface. So instead of dumping the woman’s mimosa on her head, Ona said calmly, “There’s nothing shameful about charity. I wouldn’t have attended PAAC if not for that scholarship, and where would any of us be without someone—whether a stranger or our own parents—to help us out once in a while?”
“Don’t talk circles around me,” Regan snapped, and folks’ attention gravitated to them.
“Maybe you should quit standing in the same place. Then it wouldn’t be so easy to do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just means I’m done with this, Regan. I’m going forward. High school was ten years ago, and the best part of that experience for me died in Alaska. Unless I screwed up by going after the wrong things, I have a shot at something good in my life. I really need that, so hopefully you can understand that I won’t waste another minute bitching this out with you. See you at Balcony House for the picture.”
Ona went to the restroom to wash her hands...and to make sure her heart hadn’t dropped out of her ass. What had just happened? She’d gone head-to-head against Regan Waltz in the most civilized manner she could dream up. No yelling, no petty insults, no hurtful swipes, no hate.
After leaving a tip in the mason jar for the attendant, Ona left the restroom with the sole purpose of getting a private moment with Riker before she was due at Balcony House. Already the whole lot of them were cutting it close, lingering over the buffet.
Spotting Cole waiting for her outside the restroom, she determined she wouldn’t let him delay her in getting to Riker.
“What can I do for you, Cole?”
“Hey, is that a bona fide offer, Stilts?”
“Is there something—regarding the reunion—that I can help you with?”
“This is the situation, Ona. Last night you walked into that VIP room with Nicholas’s arm around you, but you left with some other man. I want some of what he got. What do I need to do?”
Nudging past him, she said, “Insulting me isn’t the way to get my attention. Nicholas and I have never hooked up, and I decided that we never will. There’
s one man for me. Only one. It’s not Nick. It’s not you, Cole. And...it wasn’t even Matty.”
“Do you have any idea how much money I play with? How much does the other guy make?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cole designed apps and Riker tended bar. It couldn’t make Cole a superior man. Riker and Ona had a connection that had begun before they’d truly laid eyes on each other, and with every word, look and unspoken thought between them, that connection had deepened. “I’m in love with him, not his paycheck.”
“Love?” Cole laughed. “I’ll do you a favor and forget you said that. If you loved him, you wouldn’t have been sitting on Nicholas’s lap the other night.”
Ona hadn’t loved Riker that night. She did now, but she wouldn’t waste much more time convincing Cole when he wasn’t the man who mattered. “I don’t want you, though. Never have. Sometimes we think we can make it work with the wrong people, and all it does is cause unnecessary hurt. I’m not going to hurt you, Cole, and don’t you try to hurt me by keeping at this.”
Cole didn’t stop her, but by the time she made it to the cafeteria everyone from PAAC had geared up to leave and she and Cole made for an awkward pair, straggling behind and earning some suggestive looks and uncalled-for remarks.
The lot of them didn’t break up until after they met with a photographer at Balcony House. Posing in front of the centuries-old pink Market Street house, they all smiled brilliantly for the camera. For some the cheer was genuine. For others, namely Ona, whom at six-one was made to stand between Nicholas and Cole, it was feigned.
After the photos, some sought the cannons of Fort Fincastle while others escaped to Blue Lagoon Island. Ona went directly to Atlantis. Guided tours and souvenir shopping were wonderful things, but she valued the separation and didn’t mind trading some excursion opportunities for breathing room.
She visited the resort concierge first to make sure there were no wrinkles in her arrangements for an alfresco dinner. All was confirmed, and finding herself with no coordinator duties for the next few hours, she let herself be a tourist. In the resort casino she gambled away the equivalent of fifty US dollars, then won it back to break even. Afterward she stood outside in the breathless beauty and dreamlike luxury and came to understand that she was unfulfilled. What she’d told Cole in the pier restaurant had been immensely true. She needed more than money to know happiness. It didn’t matter that Cole and Nicholas wouldn’t blink an eye at places like Atlantis while Riker valued a buck.
It only mattered that Riker was her necessity and luxury, and she needed to be in his arms.
I need to see you, she texted. What you asked me last night. I have my answer.
A short reply came only a shard of a moment later. Ona knew, because she’d been fiddling with her glasses, waiting with her heart beating in her throat.
Where are you?
Atlantis. Meet me at the rope bridge.
Going to the bridge, Ona saw a smattering of tourists snapping photos. She panned her camera along the stretch of the bridge, lingering on the pattern of the rope, the rushing waterfall and the spectacular gleam of sunlight on the water. She’d send the video to her parents and make them swear to visit Nassau once they exhausted all the US sites on their must-visit list.
“Hey.”
Ona lowered her phone, swallowing hard and turning toward that sexy Boston voice. It was a reincarnation of their first meeting, only he stood feet away and she could appreciate him all at once. She needed to twirl her fingers in his dark blond hair, wrap her legs around his hips, kiss him uninhibitedly—because a kiss last night hadn’t been enough.
And his hands. She needed to worship the hands that had worshipped her.
There was no time for hesitation or backpedaling. Only time for taking a chance on this man, taking a risk on happiness and taking everything he could give her.
“I know the answer,” she said, sprinting across the quivering bridge until she could leap and land exactly where she belonged. In his arms, she took off his sunglasses, grappled gracelessly at his shirt, circled her legs around his waist and breathed in his scent of simmering sunshine against spicy, citrusy cologne. “I’m gonna run with this. That’s what I want to do. I want to take whatever’s between us and run with it.”
“Ona.” Riker’s strong hands clutched her ass. His mouth trapped hers, and they kissed as though battling for dominance or survival. Biting lightly. Licking fiercely. Demanding more. “We don’t know each other.”
“We understand each other,” she said, gasping in air, dizzy with lust and love and joy and fear. “You said you prefer it. Guess what, Riker? So do I.”
“If I said to you, ‘Ona, when we get off the ship in Miami I want you to come with me,’ would you do it? Would you pass up Philadelphia and New York and come to Boston with a guy who serves drinks and sweeps up a floor?”
“Yes,” she said roughly. Certain. Convinced. Probably crazy.
“Yes?”
“Yes, if that guy is you. I’m not asking for forever. I’m not jumping ahead like that. But I didn’t want to find myself watching you walk away on that pier in Miami, not knowing that for me this is more than pretend or some half-baked plan to find myself with someone else.”
Again with the quiet stare. This time she held it and didn’t falter. “Ona, don’t let some stranger you met on a cruise twist your life. I’m saying it again, and I want you to listen. We don’t know each other. Damn it, you don’t know me.”
“What don’t I know, then?” she challenged. “What fact about you is going to change how I feel? You made me feel this way. I can’t stop it. I don’t want to.”
“You don’t know my scars,” he grunted. “You haven’t seen my scars.”
Ona unfolded her legs, then her feet touched the bridge. She handed him back his sunglasses. “Then let’s change that.”
The sugary white sand was hot beneath her bare feet as she walked beside Riker on the beach. She waited until they moved beneath the sheltering shadows of a grouping of palm trees before she dropped her sandals and said, “I’m done waiting for things to happen. I can’t wait for this. So show me, right here.”
Riker studied her through his dark lenses, then he yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it onto the sand at her feet. He was all flexing muscles and taut limbs, all intense, tightly controlled male, and she wanted everything.
Ona lifted a heavy muscled arm, coasted her fingers over his marred flesh. It was a palette of whites and reds and violets. The scars, smooth in some spots but raised in others, began at his armpit and appeared to overlap straight down to his hip bone. They made her think of pain, of screams void of sound and of nightmares. At the same time, they made her think of miracles and sacrifice and courage.
Bending, she traced a raised scar with her lips. Added a light lick. “You’re incredible,” she said, repeating what he’d said to her in Sirens’ Song.
He gripped her hair. “I really need to get my hands tangled in this.”
Ona pulled the silk tie free, whipped her curls left then right and let it tumble. She sighed when his hands plowed through her hair to guide her head to his. He met her with a kiss that shattered her boundaries. His teeth caught her lips, his tongue writhed against hers. She was hardly aware of his hand sliding around to her neck, then settling on her shirt collar.
Riker’s mouth left hers, and she felt robbed of something precious. “How fast can you take this off?”
She stripped off her shirt and, taking it further, discarded her cutoffs. Down to her lace bikini, she asked, “Fast enough?”
Dropping to his knees in the sand, in this semi-secluded paradise, he took off his sunglasses and kissed her abdomen. His lips sucked at her skin, his stubble grazed her, his teeth teased. As his mouth moved over her, his hands went inside her bikini bottoms to squeeze her butt. The sensual play of his
mouth was echoed with the dirty maneuvering of his hands. “I have condoms, Ona.”
“Then—” she reached behind her to spring loose the bikini top’s ties “—I have one demand. Don’t stop.”
Bringing her down to the sand, he unfastened his jeans. He wanted her to handle him, and that was what she would do. No holding back and no remorse. She pushed his shoulders until he was lying on his back, and after she had him naked between the sun and sand, she gently dragged her fingernails down his torso and watched his shaft leap reflexively. Massaging his pelvis and thighs, she charmed his stiff flesh...
“You’ve been getting me hard like this every day, Ona. Every day I see you, I end up like this.”
“Today’s different.” And then she kissed him intimately. Bowing between his legs, she maintained a steady, relentless pace, coming up for one last declaration. “Today we don’t stop.”
Easing up, licking her lips, she watched and listened as he groaned, cussed and pounded his fists into the sand. She felt her temperature rise and her skin dampen. Sand started to stick to her, but she didn’t care as he spun her around and pinned her.
Indolently, he pinched her breasts and tongued each nipple. The more she squirmed against the sensation, the more deliberately he teased her. “I knew that first day you would taste good. Now tell me,” he said, removing her bottoms, “Ona, are you wet for me?”
“I am. I swear it.” Spreading her thighs, bringing them up so she could grip her calves, she would let him discover for himself. “It’s for you. I thought it could be for someone else, but it can’t.”
“Tell me again this is for me.” His mouth moved down her body. “Tell me you’re for me.”
“It is. I am. I swear, Riker.”
Opening her with his fingers and shoving her to chaos with his tongue, he dined until he had her sweating from the heat and her own arousal. She watched her hips roll, watched herself come against his open mouth. And she impatiently waited for him to share her taste. He trailed kisses up her rib cage, to her nipples that were dark from his hands and teeth. Her mouth was parted and ready for his when he reached her, and he slipped his tongue inside.
Blissful Summer: Make You Mine AgainUnraveled Page 16
