Love on the High Seas

by Yasmin Sullivan

  When he pulled her into his arms, she laughed, kissing him, and then put an arm up between them.

  “We’re ready to go.”

  “But you don’t even know where we’re going, do you?”

  “Well, no. Do you?”

  “No.”

  They both laughed.

  “While you’re deciding what we should do,” he said, taking the eyelet shirt from her shoulders, “I’ll be right here.”

  He kissed the back of her shoulder and followed a pathway up to her neck until a shiver ran through her body.

  When she turned to him, her lips were greedy for his. It was the first time since they’d been seeing each other that she’d let herself go so easily. She was a woman who wanted him, and that turned him on as much as anything else could.

  They had started to know each other’s bodies. He knew where to touch her to make her shiver, where to put his mouth to make her wet and where to put pressure to make her moan. But there was still so much that they hadn’t done, and today he wanted to do some of those things.

  He nibbled her breasts through her tank top until the nipples were hard, then he moved his hand under her skirt to play between her legs until he could feel her moisture on his fingertips. When he turned her toward the table and pulled her panties down, positioning himself behind her, she was startled for a moment, but then she moved with him, her eyes glazing over with desire.

  Then she took one of his hands from her breasts and moved it to her sex, pressing it against her as she rocked up and down. It made her sigh. It made her grip the table to steady herself. He was on the verge of exploding, and they had only just started.

  “Is this okay?” she asked.

  “You never have to ask that, honey.”

  They spent the afternoon making love. In his book, it was the best time they’d had, not because of anything that they did but because of the raw passion between them. And because Safire seemed freer than any other time. She was always responsive, but today she finally seemed to let herself go.

  When she showered and put her clothes back on, it was hard for him to imagine that she was the woman who’d been so sensual and erotic a few minutes before. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, adding a youthful innocence to her look. Her calf-length skirt made her seem more staid and conservative.

  It was when she looked at him and smiled that he could see the wilder woman beneath the tamed exterior. And it was when she tilted her head up and kissed him gently on the lips that he knew she was the same, sensuous woman.

  They had dinner at the Bird of Paradise Restaurant.

  “Okay,” he said. “You got all my embarrassing moments from my friends. What about yours?”

  “No, no. It doesn’t work that way. People don’t voluntarily offer up their worst moments. You have to get that from my friends and family members.”

  “But that’s not fair. You’re here alone.”

  She shrugged and then smiled. She wasn’t giving up the goods.

  He smiled back, making a mental note to grill her family when he met them.

  “Do you go right back to work when you get back?” she asked.

  “Yes, I do. I wish I had another week, but I’m back the day after tomorrow.”

  “So am I. We better make the best of tonight.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Does that mean we should play or that we should rest?”

  “I don’t know. Which do you prefer?”

  “I know you’re not asking me. I always vote to play.”

  He reached for her hand across the table and stroked her fingers in a tell-tale manner. She drew back her hand and swatted at his knuckles.

  “We just did that all afternoon. You’re not ready for more, are you?”

  “With you, I’m always ready for more. But we can meet the crew and do something else first, if you’d like.”

  “First?”

  Just the thought of having her again made his body start to get hot.

  “Yes, that can be second.”

  “Would your friends want to go to the theater? We haven’t been yet. Not for an actual play.”

  “If not, we can go together. What’s showing? Can we get tickets at this point?”

  “I’ll have to check and see. I’ll do that after we eat. I need to make a call anyway.”

  They finished their meals and started to part.

  “Should I come with you?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  It was no longer strange to him that he wanted to go with her, would rather be with her than hanging out with his boys.

  He met the guys in the Tiki Lounge. Safire and Verniece weren’t there as yet, so for a few minutes, it was just him, Alistair, Myron and Rudy. They were already seated at the bar and had started in on a round of margaritas.

  “Where is she?” Alistair asked, swiveling on his stool to face Jeremy’s direction. “We haven’t finished our conversation.”

  “She’s coming,” Jeremy replied and signaled the bartender so that he could order a margarita.

  “We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you this trip,” Rudy said.

  “And we all know why,” Myron added.

  “You hush,” Alistair said to Myron. “We’ve hardly seen you, either.”

  Jeremy, Rudy and Alistair laughed. Myron turned shamefaced, acknowledging his absence from the group to be with Verniece.

  “You shouldn’t be laughing,” Rudy said to Jeremy. “We haven’t seen you at all.”

  Jeremy found a bar stool and hiked his leg up. His margarita arrived and was placed on the counter before him.

  “And with good reason,” Jeremy said.

  “He’s made a love connection,” Rudy said and laughed.

  “That’s not the only thing they’ve connected,” Myron said.

  “Yeah,” Rudy added, turning to Myron, “You said he had his tongue in her mouth the first time they kissed.”

  Jeremy didn’t like the direction of the conversation. He nodded grimly and put down his drink.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s going a little too far.”

  “But it’s true,” Myron said.

  Rudy gave Myron a high five. “I want to be like Mike,” Rudy said. He was leading the charge to make fun of Jeremy and dragging Myron along with him. Unfortunately, Myron was willing to follow the lead.

  “Wait,” Myron said. “Alistair has the listing.”

  Alistair held up both his hands and shook his head, taking himself out of the ruckus, but Rudy grabbed the brochure on the bar in front of him.

  “She’s looking for a man who thinks he can tame her urges with tender loving care. She’s a bit risqué. Oh, she’s a sensual woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to get it. She’s naughty and nice.”

  Jeremy didn’t like them laughing over Safire’s bio, but he knew that once they were started, it would take them a minute to cool down. Then he would have a few choice words for them. He decided to leave the group for a little while. He could come back in a few minutes when they’d gotten the message.

  But when he swung his leg down from the stool and turned around, there she was. She’d been standing behind them for who knows how long. The crushed look on her face said that she’d heard enough.

  Before he could say anything, she had turned away and started off.

  “Safire,” he called after her and beat a path to follow her. “Safire, it’s not what it might have sounded like. The guys were just being idiots to tease me.”

  She didn’t slow down. He tried to grab her arm, but she shook herself free from his grasp and stomped on.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Safire, I wasn’t participating in their conversation. They were just ribbing
me, and they went too far.”

  She had to wait for the elevator. He tried to take hold of her shoulders, but she waved her pocketbook at him furiously.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He boarded the elevator with her and then pursued her down to her room. She tried to slam the door in his face once she got inside, but his foot was already in the door so he followed her into the room.

  “Safire, don’t make too much of this. They were wrong, but it was me they were kidding with, not you.”

  Safire went to her desk and rifled through a stack of brochures for the cruise. When she found the one for singles, she flipped through the pages until she came to her bio. He saw tears spring into her eyes as she started reading.

  “This is what you thought I was, isn’t it? You read this before we even met, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did, but I was only trying to find your name so that I could see you again.”

  “So you didn’t think I was the one who made this up?”

  She was trying to rope him into seeming like a bastard.

  “I didn’t know what to think. I only wanted to see you again.”

  “You thought I was just some hoochie mama. You were looking for a booty call, and that’s what you and your boys think you found, huh?”

  “Safire, it’s not like that, and you know it.”

  “I know what I heard, and I didn’t hear you say anything about it.”

  “Once they get started—”

  “That’s why you invited me back to your place the second time we met, isn’t it? You thought I was just a tramp, an easy fling. Why else would you invite me back to your cabin before we knew anything about each other? Get out.”

  There were tears streaming down her face.

  “Safire, you’re not being fair. Hear me out.”

  “I can’t believe I let this happen to me. And I just went along with it, being reckless and wild.” She cringed for a moment, covering herself with her hands. “And you were part of this, having yourself one hell of a time. And just when I was starting to trust you and let...go with you.”

  “Safire, I never intended to—”

  “No, you were just doing what the ad said. Right?”

  “I wasn’t following any ad, Safire.”

  “It’s how you knew my name. You read it.”

  “You’re turning this into something it wasn’t,” he said, “and you don’t know me the way I thought you were getting to know me.”

  “Well, you don’t know me at all. You should leave.”

  “We should talk about this.”

  She read over the bio again, shaking her head. Tears were still running down her face, but her expression was resigned, jaded. “This is what you thought of me. You should go.”

  “Safire—”

  “Please go.”

  There was no reasoning with her right now, so he headed toward the door.

  “When you calm down and remember that I’m not the one responsible for what the ad says and that I’m not the one who was kidding about it, call me.”

  He was frustrated enough to slam her door, and his next stop was going to be his so-called friends. Alistair was more mature; he hadn’t participated. But Myron and Rudy were soon to be off his list. Still, their joshing wasn’t meant for her ears; they were just guys. She had blown that out of proportion and wouldn’t give him a chance to explain otherwise.

  When he got back to the Tiki Lounge, the guys were apologetic. He was still angry with them and said so, but he knew from the looks on their faces that it wouldn’t happen again.

  Safire was another question. He went back to his room, but she wouldn’t answer his calls. He even went to her door to knock, but she didn’t answer.

  Back in his room, Jeremy tried to calm down and see it from her point of view. She obviously had never seen the bio before, so she hadn’t written it, and it did make her out to be...well, in his words, sexually empowered. But she wouldn’t see it that way. She’d see it as making her out to be slutty.

  That wasn’t why he was attracted to her or why he had acted on that attraction, but she wouldn’t give him a chance to explain.

  He tried to read a bit, but it didn’t work. They should have been at the theater by now. He waited a while and called her again, but again she didn’t respond.

  He went to bed early, hoping that she would be cooled off by breakfast and would come. That’s when they would be exchanging information, working out how they’d keep seeing each other once they got back home.

  In the morning, however, there was no sign of her at the restaurant they had chosen, and by the time he got to her stateroom, the maid service was cleaning it out. She had already gone.

  Chapter 9

  Her cousin Alex picked Angelina up at the Port of Miami earlier than they had first arranged, too early, as far as he was concerned. His days generally began at noon, unless he had a job interview, which was getting rarer and rarer these days.

  Angelina was still distraught over the fiasco with Jeremy. She couldn’t believe what she’d let happen, what she’d done. Being someone’s booty call wasn’t her idea of a way to have fun. She knew her sister would call her a prude, but so be it.

  She wanted to have a word with her sister about that ad and about letting her skip onto the ship without knowing what it said. In a real way, her sister had set her up for what had happened. Only Safire didn’t know Angelina would be going when she submitted that bio. Even if Safire had wanted to get her a few dates, she wouldn’t have said those things.

  But she couldn’t tell Safire about the problem with that ad without having to tell her about what had happened with Jeremy also. She would have to admit to being reckless and wild with a stranger. Ironically, her sister would probably be glad for her, but that wasn’t the example she wanted to set.

  As inappropriate as the ad was for Angelina, she had to admit that Safire would never have gotten herself into that kind of mess. If Safire wanted something casual, it would be casual. If she wanted something serious, she could have that, too. She would never have let herself be the butt of the joke shared by a group of guys.

  In the end, she didn’t begrudge her sister her sexual liberation, so it wasn’t worth mentioning. Now, if only she could forget the incident and get on with her life. It was just so hard to believe that after all that time they’d spent together, she amounted to a sex toy to him. She couldn’t imagine what her friends would say if they knew. She shuddered and tried to put the thought from her mind.

  When they got home, Angelina unpacked and distributed the presents she’d gotten. The coral necklace was for her great-aunt, who admired it with palsied fingers and then got her walker to go put it in a napkin. The silver chains with ship pendants on them were for Philly and Alex. She put Philly’s on for him. At six, he was excited with just about anything.

  The handheld game was for Philly with instructions to let Alex teach him how to use it. Alex was twenty, and he would have as much fun with it as Philly would, so they could share it. The bracelet was for Safire, who didn’t live with them, so she would have to get her gift later.

  It was Sunday, so Angelina had her regular errands to run—grocery store, bulk food store, pharmacy, discount store. Then she needed to braid her great-aunt’s hair, set her medicines out for the week, and get her clothes out for the next morning. She needed to wash and set her own hair. Then she could pull out something for work the next day that would cover up her tan, which didn’t fit with her sober work clothes. And she was there in time to make lunch and dinner.

  She would be up all night finishing her three syllabi, but at least she would be able to post them online and take them to the copy place in the morning so that they would be ready for classes. After that, she could figure out a schedule for getting her article done and
working on her novel.

  Next week, Philly was back to school, so she wouldn’t have to rely on Alex and Aunt Rose as much to keep their eyes on him while she was at work. And her great-aunt needed attention herself, so Alex had been doing double duty over the last nine days—with Safire’s help.

  Now it was up to her again, and the cruise seemed almost like a dream—a cruel one at that. Playtime was over, and now she had to play catch-up.

  By the next afternoon, Angelina was starting to feel the drain of the constant running around. By the end of the week, she was running on automatic.

  “You have five more minutes to finish your paragraph on chapter then of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. Homework for Monday is to finish reading Douglass’s autobiography and to read chapter one in History of the Black Atlantic.”

  Students began handing in their paragraphs. Angelina smiled as she took each one and began packing up her books and notes.

  She had the next period for office hours, but it was too early in the term for anyone to come in, so she busied herself checking email. Just then, her thoughts ran to the cruise and to him.

  She still hadn’t been able to rid her mind of Jeremy, but here in her real workaday life, thoughts of him were simply interruptions of fantasy into reality. They usually started with a time that they had made love or had spent together, but they always ended with her shame and embarrassment—with her being the butt of his friends’ jokes. It was just starting to get easier to shake them off and get back to real life.

  She worked at her desk for an hour and a half, then she packed up for the day and headed to her car. She stopped for a few items at the grocery store and then drove home.

  When she got there, she went to Philly’s room to check on him.

  “Hey, pumpkin.”

  He was playing a car racing game on the computer, and unlike most other days, he came and greeted her with a hug.

  “Hi.”

  She squeezed him and rubbed his head, wondering what prompted the hug.