For the Love of Beard

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Other than the grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, everything came out perfectly, and we spent the next few hours in each other’s arms.

  It was blissfully perfect.

  ***

  Three hours later, though, we found ourselves bored, with nothing to do and time on our hands.

  “You want to walk around the boat?” he asked hopefully.

  I could clearly see his desire to walk around and explore, so I gave him what he wanted without too much of a fight.

  “I heard from the lady in the cabin next to ours that level six is the one you’d want use if you’re looking to walk all the way around the ship without hitting a dead end,” I supplied helpfully.

  So off we went on our little adventure, heading down the long hallway away from our room toward the elevator.

  “This is where you went this morning when you got lost?” he teased.

  I glared at him.

  He’d changed and showered and was now in a pair of black sleep pants and a tight black t-shirt.

  His thick hair swept over his captivating eyes, and every time I looked at him I wanted to crawl into his arms and never leave.

  “Yes,” I confirmed as the elevator dinged at our floor.

  We both got on, and then rode down four floors to the sixth floor.

  I saw almost immediately what I’d done wrong that morning.

  “Is this the front of the ship or the back?” I questioned, pointing to the left when we made it outside.

  The breeze from the boat moving through the water, combined with what was coming off the ocean, was enough to blow my hair completely back away from my face when we stepped up to the railing.

  “Actually, this is mid-ship and to the left is the bow,” he answered, walking up next to me, and immediately leaning over it.

  I rolled my eyes and carefully did the same, staring at the black water with barely concealed alarm.

  “If I fell overboard, would you come after me?” I questioned him, looking up at him through veiled lashes.

  His smile was quick. “Depends.”

  “On what?” I wanted to laugh.

  “Who’s around,” he answered. “If you fell overboard, I’d have to call someone for help before I followed after you.”

  My brows went up.

  “That’s pretty smart,” I conceded. “That’s my worst fear about being on this boat,” I told him. “Falling over the side without anyone knowing that I did.”

  I looked over the side at the churning ocean, and idly wondered if I’d even survive the fall.

  “As long as you didn’t get stuck under the ship and sucked in by the propellers,” Tobias answered my unspoken question.

  I snorted.

  “Kind of like ‘luck of the draw?’” I teased.

  He nodded.

  “If you had a decision in how you went overboard, I’d suggest jumping out.”

  “There was a woman, I heard from our neighbor, who was drunk as a skunk and jumped off the last time they were cruising,” I told him. “She said they circled the water for like six hours. They missed their port, and the woman ended up being dead. They found her body floating some hundred miles away from where they’d lost her.”

  He grimaced. “Stupid.”

  I started to laugh. “You’ve never done anything stupid in your life?”

  He gave me a droll look. “Not something that stupid, no.”

  “Come on,” I urged, elbowing him lightly. “You’ve never done anything bad?”

  With the little light that this part of the ship provided, I could see that his answering smile was a little devious.

  “Well…I have done some risky things…like fucking you in public.”

  Chapter 13

  I’m somewhere between ‘fuck you’ and ‘I want to fuck you.’

  -Written note from Audrey to Tobias

  Tobias

  “Well…I have done some risky things…like fucking you in public.”

  I could tell that my words had shocked her. It was almost as if the words were a surprise, but I couldn’t see why.

  What, she thought I’d never mention it again?

  And when she slapped her hand over my mouth and hissed out a ‘shut up!’ I started to laugh.

  “There’s an old woman like ten feet away,” she urged, still holding her hand over my mouth.

  My eyebrows rose. “She’s old.”

  It came out sounding more like ‘shesmold’ but Audrey caught the drift.

  “I don’t care if she’s old,” she countered.

  I licked her hand, and she yanked her hand away as if the end of my tongue had a barb on it and I’d poked her with it.

  “Gross,” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “That lady over there has to be at least ninety, if not older, and it’s loud as fuck out here due to the waves we’re currently cutting through,” I informed her. “If she can hear us, I’d be damn near amazed.”

  Audrey shrugged. “You still don’t mention stuff like that.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “I said that I’d done something illegal, not that I wouldn’t do it again.”

  The lights around us dimmed even more, and I halfway wondered if they were trying to tell us that it was bedtime with all the light dimming bullshit that happened down the length of the ship.

  People started to go inside almost immediately.

  “It’s just so…bad.”

  I reached for her and pulled her into my chest. “Not bad, per se. More like…naughty.”

  “There’s a difference between naughty and bad?” she countered, cocking her hip and jamming her fist into the soft cushion right above her hip.

  The stance made her look cute instead of stern like she was probably going for.

  All I wanted to do was yank her to me, turn around, and fuck her up against the lifeboat.

  I didn’t, but only because she was obviously outraged that I’d even brought up the other time she was a little bit wild.

  “Naughty is more of an ‘on occasion’ type thing. Bad is more of an ‘all the time’ type thing,” I told her. “Naughty girls are sexy, adventurous and fun to be around. Bad girls are the ones who do that kind of thing on a regular basis…and might even pick your pocket afterwards.”

  She started to laugh, and then took a step forward until barely an inch was separating us.

  “So you’re saying I’m naughty?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, when you want to be.”

  Just the fact that she was so close to me was enough to bring my dick to life.

  I’d already been fighting to keep it in check, but her nearness, along with our topic of conversation, was enough to plump my semi to full mast in a matter of moments.

  “So, would a bad girl,” she trailed the top of one finger down my chest, heading straight for the waistband of my sleep pants, “fuck you right now, in the shadows, at the front of the ship, or would a naughty girl?”

  I swallowed hard. “Naughty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d be doing it with the man who incites the fantasy.” I paused. “Any man won’t do in this situation. Only I will.”

  Then I grabbed her around the hips, pulled her roughly to me, and moved until the only thing that we could see was the reflection of the moonlight off the water.

  Stray rays of moonlight broke through the clouds periodically and bathed the side of the ship in light.

  But this new spot, at the bow of the ship, was dark.

  With it being so dark, I highly doubted that anyone would come this way, especially since we’d had to hop over a ‘do not enter after sundown’ gate to get there.

  “What are you doing?” She gasped the moment I pressed her up against the cold, metal wall that was so deep in shadows that it was near impossible for me to see her, let alone anyone else.

  I rubbed my hardened cock against her mound and growled. “Wha
t does it feel like I’m doing?”

  “It feels like you’re about to do something bad that might get us kicked off this boat.”

  “Where are they going to take us?” I questioned. “And I already told you. Not bad…naughty.”

  “Maybe they’ll send a Coast Guard helicopter all the way out here, and then, since we’re in international waters, they’ll send us to prison in Mexico where we’ll never be let free again.”

  I started to kiss my way down her neck.

  “That would be an enormous waste of the tax payers’ dollars,” I told her. “Not to mention that since we’re in international waters, they wouldn’t send the Coast Guard.”

  “Who would they send?”

  “I don’t…care.”

  Then I pulled her shirt down.

  Though I did know who they’d send if the need were to arise, it was a complicated process, and I couldn’t think clearly enough to form the words to explain it to her with all the blood rushing to my cock.

  I’d been a Navy SEAL, but the feel of Audrey’s breasts pillowed against my chest, and her hot breath tickling along the sensitive skin of my neck, sent me straight into overdrive. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t keep a thought in my head. I could only feel and do…and right then, my body was screaming that I do her.

  So when she yielded to my prodding, I knew that I was lost.

  “I’ve never, not once, been so glad to have worn shitty sleep pants,” she whispered.

  “Why?” I questioned.

  “Because,” she said. “They have a small hole in the butt.”

  I blinked. “Okay…”

  My brain wasn’t firing on enough cylinders for me to process what she was saying.

  “So,” she turned around. “Rip my freakin’ pants.”

  I slowly blinked, and then stared.

  I didn’t see a hole. Granted, it was dark, but I’d watched her ass earlier on the way out of the room, thinking quite a bit about the indecency of her pants, and not once had I seen a hole of any kind.

  “Audrey…” I hesitated.

  She reached around her and took my hand, guiding it to the rolled over waistband of her pants.

  There, I found the hole she was talking about.

  “Audrey…” I said. “You already said that you didn’t have any more sleep pants that were warm to change into.”

  As I spoke, I caressed the hole, letting my finger trail along the bare skin just above her ass.

  The hole was about the size of my fingertip, and was able to be easily hidden from view when she rolled her waistband down.

  But with it up like this, I knew that I’d see the sexy, white lace panties that Audrey had slipped on after dinner.

  But since I couldn’t see, I could only feel.

  “You want me to rip this hole bigger?” I confirmed, wiggling one finger deeper into the hole.

  She shifted. “I said I did, didn’t I?”

  That was answer enough.

  With laughable ease, I hooked my finger deep into the hole and pulled down.

  The fabric tore like a piece of paper, straight down the seam of her pants to the apex of her thighs.

  She gasped and wiggled. “Not my underwear.”

  Too late.

  Those went too as I hooked a finger into the stretchy elastic and tugged.

  It tore just as easily, if not more easily, than the pants.

  She gasped, and before she could utter a word of reproof, I trailed the wide pad of my thumb down the length of her ass cheeks.

  She tilted her hips, and offered herself up to me, urging me further inside without saying a word.

  “Gotta be quiet, honey,” I growled when I started to push my fingers forward. “Or someone might hear you.”

  That was a lie. There was nobody around, and even if there were, the sound of the wind whipping across the deck was enough to drown out or distort any sound that someone close by could hear.

  Her hands moved to my sides, clutching onto my shirt, and I growled. “No touching, or I’ll lose what little control I have left.”

  She immediately brought her hands up, placing them on the sides of the cabinets holding the life jackets that we were sandwiched between, and leaned her head forward.

  “Good girl,” I cooed, brushing my lips down the length of her t-shirt covered shoulder.

  She moaned again, and I didn’t bother to correct her this time.

  Not when I was finally sinking my finger deep into her sex and feeling like I could explode just from this one act that didn’t even involve my cock.

  I moved my finger inside of her, planting it all the way up to the webbing of my hand, and my knuckles bumped the ridged entrance of her rectum.

  She didn’t flinch like I expected her to and my body stilled.

  Ass play was always something I’d been interested in, but I’d never found the right woman to do it with. And though it wasn’t something I thought she was ready for just yet, I knew that maybe someday she might be if she was comfortable with how I was touching her and not telling me ‘no’ immediately.

  After everything she’d gone through…it was humbling that she allowed me so close.

  Filing those thoughts for later use, I started to slowly pump my finger inside of her, loving the way I slid so easily inside of her, due to her wetness.

  “You feel so good,” I told her, whispering it against her ear. “So soft and tight. So fucking sweet.”

  She moaned and tilted her head, giving me the use of her mouth while I pumped my finger inside of her.

  She started to quiver in my arms, and I broke away from her luscious mouth with a smile.

  “You want to come on my finger?” I asked her.

  “Yessss,” she hissed, drawing the ‘s’ out slightly.

  I started to wiggle my finger so that it brushed against her G-spot with my movements, and she widened her stance, giving me more access.

  Her hips were jerking, and I knew that within the next couple of seconds, she was going to come.

  Which was why I pulled away from her.

  “Will you suck my cock, honey?” I breathed, pressing a soft kiss on the shell of her ear.

  I didn’t want to push her. If she couldn’t handle it, I didn’t want her to do it.

  She’d never once done it, and after hearing about how the man that’d raped her had almost forced her to do the act, I’d been hesitant to ask.

  But she’d garnered a promise from me and I was going to hold her to it…and myself…even if it hurt to see the fear that locked her body tight.

  “Yes,” she cleared her throat. “Yes.” Much firmer that time.

  My arms were now caging her in, and she turned, pressing her back to the smooth metal wall behind her.

  “I’ve never…done this,” she admitted.

  Goddamn.

  This was her first time, and now I was going to have to make it good for her or she’d never do it again.

  My hands went from the wall to the sides of the metal cabinets that were flanking us on each side, and I pushed as she timidly traced a finger down the length of my cock through my pajama pants.

  She started to whisper something else, but before I could ask her to repeat herself, she hooked her fingers into the waistband of my pants and tugged them down. Or tried to, anyway.

  She didn’t get anywhere.

  “The tie, honey,” I croaked to her. “I knot them on tight so they won’t fall down.”

  I’d been pantsed one too many times by my brothers to ever make that mistake again.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

  One hand moved, and she pulled lightly on the tied string. It gave way easily with her gentle tug.

  Then I felt wind on my bare ass as she pulled them down.

  My cock hung on the fabric, so stiff and hard that it didn’t want to bend.

  She hesitated, and then reached forward and push
ed it down while she tugged my pants down just past my cock to the top of my thighs.

  She let my cock go the moment my pants were down, and it bobbed twice before settling, stiff and straight, directly in front of her hovering mouth.

  Then she fucking kissed it.

  “Goddammit,” I breathed, eyes clenching so tightly closed that it was on the verge of painful.

  Just a soft brush of her lips against the very sensitive tip.

  “Mmmm,” she breathed. “You taste good.”

  I squeezed my hands into fists to stop myself from doing anything more than standing there.

  I wanted to grab her head with both of my hands, bury my fingers in her hair, and fuck the absolute hell out of her mouth.

  But instead of doing that, which would most assuredly ruin everything, I let her have her way with me.

  Let her touch, lick, tickle and kiss.

  And then she swirled her tongue around the entire tip of my shaft like a melted ice cream cone, and my balls drew up.

  “Stop.”

  She stopped instantly.

  “What?”

  Her voice was wobbly, as if she was about to cry.

  “I want to fuck you, and I can’t do that if I come in your mouth or on your face,” I told her bluntly. “Stand up and turn back around.”

  She did stand up, but she didn’t turn around.

  “I want to be able to kiss you while you’re inside of me,” she told me. “Please.”

  Like I could deny her a goddamn thing.

  Nearly laughing at the absurdity of not doing anything that she asked of me, I gathered her up in my arms and pressed my mouth against hers. No tongue, just a hard kiss that told her everything I was feeling with a brush of skin.

  “Audrey.”

  I could tell her eyes were on me, but I couldn’t see them.

  Still, I waited until she said, “Yes?”

  I lifted her up into my arms, and then ripped the hole in her pants even bigger, exposing her sex to my aiming cock.

  The moment that my cock was lined up with her entrance, I slowly lowered her down, filling her with everything I had to give.

  She gasped, and I felt the soft thump of her head hitting the ship behind her.

  “I love you.” The confession was wrenched out of me.

  Her pussy clamped violently on my cock, and without even the least bit of movement on my part, she started to come.