Don't Let Go

by Marliss Melton

  While Solomon read Treasure Island and tucked Silas in, she showered and dressed as usual. She descended briefly to kiss the boy good night. “I’ll see you upstairs,” she informed his father breezily.

  The scorching look that followed her had her prickling with anticipation. She found she couldn’t just sit and wait in the living area. Crawling into his bed was just too obvious. So, she slipped outside to cool her overheated skin.

  Chapter Eleven

  The summer rainstorm had departed, yet the air remained saturated with the scent of wet leaves. Jordan approached the rail to eye the waxing moon. A hoot owl loosed a hopeful call, and far away, another answered.

  A chorus of frogs and insects serenaded Jordan’s stroll to the rear of the boat. The wide inlet reminded her of how Solomon had taught her to think through her fear. She had a sinking feeling that lesson would come in handy very soon now.

  She found herself climbing the metal steps that zigzagged up to the pilot’s station—the bridge, Solomon called it. There, the view was intoxicating, especially when she heard Solomon’s muffled footfalls pursuing her.

  She whirled to face him, and his gaze pinned her to the ship’s wheel as he gained the last few steps.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she stalled, her heartbeat accelerating. His naked chest, awash with moonlight, made him look like the god Poseidon. He wore only soft gray sweatpants, and nothing, she would wager, underneath.

  He stalked her, and her breath backed up in her lungs as he tipped her chin up. “Waiting for me,” he guessed, searching her face. “Am I right?”

  She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “Yes,” she admitted.

  With a brief, triumphant smile, he lowered his head and kissed her.

  Whimpering with what sounded like relief, Jordan threw her arms around him, surrendering to the tide of passion that rose up and engulfed them.

  He drew her fiercely into his embrace, and she coiled one leg around him, then the other, supported by the ship’s wheel at her back.

  “Say it, Jordan,” Solomon exhorted between deep, hungry kisses.

  “Say what?” she asked, trembling uncontrollably.

  “Tell me that you want me,” he added, nudging her just where she wanted him most.

  “I want you,” she repeated, but her heart froze in dismay as she realized it was more than that. This wasn’t about the compulsion to procreate the species. “Right here, right now,” she added helplessly.

  She could feel his heart thundering beneath her palm as he whisked off her tank top. His eyes blazed for a moment, then he bent down to nuzzle her. With movements that were both possessive and gentle, he drew her deep into his mouth. His hands dove beneath the waistband of her pajama bottoms, pulling her off the ship’s wheel in order to undress her completely.

  In a single, sweeping motion, he exposed her to the moon’s regard and the wind’s caress.

  Come what may, she was going to let this happen, Jordan realized. And in the morning, once the yearning was fulfilled, she could only hope that her heart would still be wholly hers.

  His hands cradling her face brought her eyes open.

  “You’re so damn beautiful,” he murmured, catching her off guard with his romantic-sounding utterance. His taut, admiring gaze made her feel exotic, slightly endangered, and wickedly alluring.

  She surprised herself by sinking gracefully to her knees, dragging down his sweatpants.

  The need to consume him had her circling him with one hand, cupping him below, and driving her lips as far down him as she could. He whispered an archaic-sounding curse and fisted her hair with hands that trembled. Jordan smiled.

  If she was going to lose control then, by God, so was he. She would not be alone in this risky venture.

  She repeated the assault until he stayed her movements, dragging her up with a plea for mercy. He swung her around, so that her backside fit against the curve of his hips. His breath rasped in her ear as he gave his hands freedom to roam over her body, his desire burning like a brand between them.

  Reaching around her, his fingers slipped between her legs. He stroked her, attentive to what pleased her, pausing with each clenching of her innermost muscles to thrust a finger into her wet warmth.

  “Tell me what you want, Jordan,” he whispered, as she arched against his hand, clamoring for more.

  “You,” she panted.

  “You want me to what?” The smooth head of his erection nudged her opening. “Say it.”

  Shaking with the force of her need, craving the feel of him inside her, she whispered what he wanted to hear.

  But in her heart of hearts, she knew she wanted more.

  She shied away from analyzing just how much, concentrating instead on the feel of him surging and retreating, stroking and seeking. He drove into her, deeper and deeper, clasping her hip with one hand, her breast with another, fiercely enough to let her know he suffered the same irrational compulsion to burn in the flame as she did.

  The realization made her climax. Stars exploded behind her eyelids as the sweetest, keenest sensations wrung her womb. If not for Solomon holding her up, muffling groans against her neck, she would have crumpled.

  They remained locked together, their gusting breaths subsiding. Jordan’s heart beat heavily against the palm that cupped her breast. Too weak to pull away, she relied on the wall of his body to remain standing, gazed up at the stars pulsing in the cobalt sky. Don’t let it end, a part of her whispered, as she reveled in the ripples that resonated in the aftermath.

  She clutched him in remembered pleasure, wringing another groan from him. He remained where he was, buried deep inside, in no more of a hurry, apparently, than she was to separate.

  “Jordan,” he finally murmured in her ear. “Come to bed with me.” He gave a thrust that rekindled her yearning. “Say, yes,” he urged, his voice as much a persuasion as the fact that he was swelling again, reawakening her desire.

  She resisted his propensity to take control. She had to believe she could navigate these waters and still come out whole. No man would ever make a fool of her again. But, for now, desire outweighed the considerations of her heart.

  Reality doused Solomon the instant he pushed into the houseboat’s dark interior. He’d forgotten to use a condom—again! He had sixty-four of them beside his bed, but he hadn’t thought to bring a single one along when he’d joined Jordan on the deck. That meant they’d had unprotected sex two times now.

  He pulled up short beside the bathroom door. “You want to shower first?” he asked, not knowing if it would help. It couldn’t hurt.

  She glanced at him and shrugged. “Okay.”

  He placed their clothing on the back of the toilet, turned on the water, and then hit the light switch, using the dimmer to conceal his sudden concern. He didn’t fool her, though. She was looking at him intently.

  “If you’re worried about the lack of protection,” she said, reading his mind, “you don’t have to be. I can’t get pregnant the normal way.”

  His gaze slid curiously to her soft-curving hips. She looked perfectly equipped to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She flinched at his tactlessness and dove behind the shower curtain.

  Kicking himself, he followed more slowly. “What I mean is, you look perfectly good to me,” he amended, joining her.

  “I had endometriosis when I was younger,” she explained, her voice muffled as she bent over to reach for the soap.

  “But . . . you implied that you’d been pregnant before.” The day she’d driven the boat, she’d mentioned something like that.

  “I was. But it took the help of a fertility specialist,” she admitted, averting her face. “I had to stay in bed most of the time, and I still lost the baby.”

  The wobble in her voice had him reaching for her. He wanted to chase off hurtful memories, yet all he could do was pull her water-slick body close and hold her tight. She held herself stiffly, at first, but then softened in hi
s arms as the shower’s spray sluiced over them.

  To Solomon’s consternation, protective and tender emotions held him in thrall. He wondered at the reason for them. Just how far out to sea was Jordan carrying him that he no longer cared about the shoreline? He cautioned himself to break free of her before he found himself disillusioned.

  Not that Jordan was like Candace, a woman too self-absorbed to be content with one man. Jordan would be faithful, no question, as long as her man treated her well. For a brief instant, Solomon pictured himself in that role. Silas would have a mother and a father, perhaps even a sibling if Miguel’s adoption went through.

  He jerked his imaginings to a halt. Love was a fabrication. He’d proved that time and time again, leaving his lovers without a backward glance, relieved to be free of them. The same thing would happen when his lust for Jordan subsided. And when that time came, he’d be the one to end their affair, keeping his heart safely intact.

  “Tell me about your childhood, Solomon,” Jordan whispered hours later, as they lay in his captain’s bed, limbs entwined, sheets smelling of shared passion.

  He grunted noncommittally. “It’s not a happy story.”

  She had sensed that already. “Tell me,” she urged.

  He heaved a sigh and rolled toward her so that they lay hip to hip, nose to nose.

  “My father was a fisherman. He fished off the coast for mackerel, mostly, and he was gone a great deal. My mother was an English teacher. She loved the Romantic Period, best of all. She read me books while we waited for my father to return from his work. Only, one winter, he didn’t come back.”

  “How old were you then?” Jordan whispered.

  “Eight. My mother pined for him. She went slowly mad.”

  “You mean, she lost her mind?”

  “Aye.”

  “Oh, Solomon.” She envisioned him, looking much like Silas. He must have felt orphaned, like he’d lost both parents. “What happened to her?”

  “She overdosed on Valium,” he said flatly.

  “Oh, no.” She put an arm around him, surprised when he willingly accepted her gesture of comfort.

  “My grandparents took me in,” he continued after a moment. “They owned a store in Camden, and from that day on I worked after school, stocking shelves, sweeping. I had to sneak away to read my books, which they considered a waste of time. And I swam,” he recollected. “I swam in water so cold it made the Bay of Coronado feel like a bathtub.”

  “Isn’t that in California?”

  “Where I did my SEAL training,” he corroborated. “I was a soft intellectual trying to make it through the most rigorous selection process in the world. The one thing I had going for me was my swimming. I excelled in exercises in the water. The rest I had to work for.”

  She squeezed the dense muscle of his upper arm. “It feels like you worked pretty hard.”

  “Aye,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s ironic?” he added.

  “What is?”

  “That my strength is your weakness. You’re afraid of water,” he pointed out.

  “I almost drowned,” she admitted. “In a cow pond of all things, so shallow that I could’ve stood up if I hadn’t panicked. My sister pulled me out, and I wasn’t even breathing. She gave me mouth-to-mouth, and then I threw up on her.”

  He grunted in amusement. “This is the sister who owns the horse ranch?”

  “Jillian. I worry about her,” Jordan reflected. “She’s widowed with two children and a baby on the way. I wish I were more of a help to her.”

  “We all do what we can,” he murmured sleepily.

  Wasn’t that the truth, Jordan considered, her heart weighted by the many hurdles before them. Jillian faced starting up a business and giving birth to a baby, all without a man at her side. Rafael Valentino had made himself scarce, lately. And she, Jordan, faced even more menacing obstacles in her bid to rescue Miguel from a country torn by revolution.

  Lying in Solomon’s arms, she suffered the impulse to unburden herself, to tell him of her plans because backing out now might mean never seeing Miguel again. She opened her mouth to broach the subject, only to be cut off by his soft snore.

  Another time, perhaps.

  Perhaps not.

  Emotional intimacy was not supposed to follow their earthy, physical union. She might just regret telling him her plans lest he find some way to frustrate them. “Good night,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder lightly before yielding to the pull of exhaustion.

  Ellie divided a panicked glance between the road signs bisecting the dark highway up ahead. Which way do I go?

  “Christopher,” she called, careful not to wake up the baby and Caleb, both asleep in the backseat. “Christopher!”

  But her ten-year-old navigator was sound asleep.

  Hitting her directional signal, Ellie guided her car into the breakdown lane. The instant her tires dropped onto the rougher pavement, steam bloomed out from under her hood to cloak her windshield. She braked abruptly, terrified of striking the guardrail that divided the highway from a copse of trees.

  The car came to a shuddering halt. As the steam rose and thinned, Ellie found herself pinned between a forest and intermittent but fast-moving cars.

  Releasing her held breath, she unfurled her white-knuckled fingers from the steering wheel and glanced at the boys to find them still asleep. Then she eased from her seat to round the steaming hood. It wasn’t like she could fix her engine in the dark, even if she had the right parts.

  God, you’ve got to help me, she thought, lifting eyes that burned with exhaustion toward the starry sky. She had thirty-eight dollars in her pocket and miles to go before she could let her guard down—if ever.

  But how was she going to get her family to Virginia if her car broke down?

  The sharp snapping of a stick and the sound of something rustling through the woods had Ellie dashing for her door. She jumped inside, locking it behind her. With her heart beating fast, she peered through the beams of her headlights, waiting fearfully.

  But nothing happened. She felt foolish for being so afraid. She’d lived in the country, knew what kind of critters lurked in the woods. Regretfully, she turned off the ignition, not knowing if her car would even start come daylight.

  The quiet that enveloped them was stifling. She cracked her window to let in the warm summer air, the sound of chirping crickets. It wasn’t safe to remain in the vehicle, right there on the side of the highway, but what could she do—haul three sleeping children out to sleep in the wet ditch?

  Wriggling across the front seat, she put an arm around her eldest son, fighting the urge to cling to him. With her cheek on the headrest, she closed her eyes. A car roared by, and her eyes sprang open.

  This, thought Ellie, is bound to be the longest night of my life.

  Awakened by a silvering sky, Solomon opened his eyes to the vision of a woman in his bed.

  An extraordinary woman.

  Jordan’s hair lay like a russet scarf across his arm. Her full, pale breasts brushed his chest with every rise and fall of her chest. His gaze lingered on the curve of her jaw, the soft fullness of her lower lip, and memories of her passionate nature had an immediate, physical effect on him.

  What if it was more than physical?

  He tried to dislodge the uncomfortable question from his mind. But from last night to this morning, with each shared word, each tender caress, Jordan seemed to sink inside of him to a place where no woman but Candace had ever been. How had she done it, breaching the cold fortress he’d built to protect himself?

  It wasn’t as if she’d set about seducing him. She, more than he, had resisted their magnetic attraction, only it had overpowered them both. And now it was steamrolling his defenses; he could feel the walls crumbling just looking at her.

  He had to protect himself, but how?

  What did he fear most about Jordan? It was her fierce independence, her private determination to adopt Miguel in the face of ever-growing odds. She was
keeping secrets from him; he could sense it. She had plans, plans that would put her in danger; plans that might ultimately destroy this beautiful intimacy they enjoyed.

  The only way for Solomon to ease his fears was to address them. Today he would find someone, a third party, to retrieve Miguel, so that Jordan could remain safely here, in his bed, in his life where she belonged.

  Until, of course, he was done with her.

  Jordan plucked a gallon of milk off the shelf in the grocery store and froze in alarm. The milk expired on August 8, Jillian’s birthday. She, Jordan, would be three days out of the country by then. She would miss Jillian’s thirty-fifth birthday.

  Oh, dear. And Jillian had hinted heavily that she would enjoy a dinner at Waterside, Norfolk’s waterfront. Graham’s gift to his mother was to babysit his little sister.

  I’ll be in the doghouse forever, thought Jordan, placing the milk in her grocery cart. Silas seized her momentary distraction to slip a box of Popsicles in beside it. Would Jillian ever forgive her?

  She would have to do something to make it up to her.

  Half an hour later as she stocked Solomon’s refrigerator with nutritious snacks and meals appealing to a six-year-old, the answer came to her. If she could convince Rafael Valentino to take her sister out to dinner, then Jillian would surely forgive her.

  And it was just Jordan’s luck that the agent had handed her his business card the day he’d retrieved her in Curaçao. She’d stuck it in her passport, which she kept in her purse.

  With one eye trained on Silas, who sat on the pier licking his Popsicle, Jordan dialed the agent’s number.

  He answered the phone after three rings. “Special Agent Valentino.”

  “Rafael?”

  Silence.

  “This is Jordan. Jordan Bliss.”

  “Oh, Jordan. How are you? Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, I found your business card in my passport,” she explained. “I’m heading out of the country soon, and I realized that I won’t be here for Jillian’s birthday. I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” he inquired warily.