Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  Still, Regina half expected— hoped— Dylan would argue with her. Instead he walked her through the kitchen and up the stairs, waiting on the landing outside her apartment as she unlocked her door like a nice boy seeing a girl home after a pleasant evening out.

  At least, Regina imagined it was like that. She’d never dated nice boys.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said politely and kissed her good night.

  He didn’t kiss the way she imagined a nice boy would kiss. He backed her up against the door, plunged right in, and took her along for the dive. He used his tongue, his teeth, and the friction of his body, pulsing his hips against her, making her shake and ache and want. When they surfaced, her blood was pounding, her head was spinning, and he had a wicked glint in his eye.

  “Sleep well,” he said.

  * * *

  “Dude,” Danny complained. “We’re dying here.”

  The two boys lay on their stomachs in front of the TV, a bowl of fried pizza dough covered in cinnamon sugar between them. Their faces were sticky. So were their game controllers.

  Nick hit Pause, and the legions of terror surrounding their embattled warriors froze. “Sorry. I thought I heard my mom.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Nick chewed his lip. “So, why doesn’t she come in?”

  Danny cocked his head, listening to the noises from the landing outside. “ ’Cause somebody’s with her. That Dylan guy.”

  “Oh.” Nick relaxed. That was okay. Dylan was cool.

  “He’s probably kissing her good night.” Danny made a giant sucking sound and then gagged.

  Nick laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it, because the idea of Dylan kissing his mom made his stomach feel tight. Or maybe that was the fried dough, but he didn’t think so.

  “He’s just here to take care of her,” Nick said, because that was what Dylan had told him last night. It had sounded good then, but now, in front of Danny, Nick wondered if maybe it sounded stupid.

  Danny rolled his eyes, confirming Nick’s suspicions. “Right. That’s why he gave you that coin.”

  Nick squinted. “What are you talking about?”

  “The coin, numb nuts. He gave you something, and now he’s hanging around your mom. Dude, if a grown-up does that, he wants to have sex with her.”

  The tight feeling in Nick’s stomach got worse. He clenched his fists. “He does not. Take it back.”

  “Okay. Whatever.” Danny regarded him a moment, his hazel eyes concerned. He smiled. “Hey, if he really wanted to do it with her, he’d give her presents. Not you. Right?”

  Nick smiled gratefully back. “Yeah.”

  Then his mom came in, and she looked the same as always if you didn’t look too hard at the bruises around her neck. Nick was getting good at not looking.

  But the next morning when he stumbled down to the restaurant kitchen hoping maybe his mom would make more of the fried pizza dough for breakfast, he snuck another peek at her neck and felt a weight like a gorilla sitting on his chest.

  “What’s that?”

  His mom rubbed two fingers over her necklace— not like always, there was something hanging there besides the cross, a pearl or something— and her face got kind of red. “Oh, it’s a present. From Dylan. Because my chain broke.”

  Danny’s words came back to Nick. “Hey, if he really wanted to do it with her, he’d give her presents. Right?”

  Nick wasn’t hungry anymore.

  But even that wasn’t as bad as after lunch, when Dylan came by to invite Nick’s mother out on the boat. Not Nick, just his mom.

  “I can’t leave now,” his mother said, looking flushed and excited and not like his mother at all. “I can’t leave Nick.”

  Which made him feel like a baby. He stiffened and said, “I’m fine. I’m going to Danny’s this afternoon anyway.”

  “No, you are not,” his mother said, and she still sounded like herself, that flat voice she got when she was serious about something. “You are not leaving the restaurant.”

  Which was so unfair, because she wasn’t stuck here all day.

  “I can keep an eye on him,” Margred said.

  Like Nonna wasn’t enough. Like Nick needed two babysitters, for crying out loud. And that made him so mad that even when Dylan asked if he wanted to come, Nick said no.

  He was sorry about it afterward, though.

  Boy, was he sorry.

  16

  DYLAN HAD INVITED HER OUT ON HIS BOAT to have sex.

  Regina knew it, accepted it, had planned for it. This time, she resolved, she would not be at a disadvantage. This time she wasn’t drunk or hurt, cold or in need of comfort.

  She stepped onto the cutter’s deck armed with a picnic lunch and her best red underwear, ready to take the battle to her lover’s home turf.

  Dylan raised his eyebrows at the picnic basket, but he didn’t say anything until she had wobbled to a seat on the cockpit bench.

  “This was supposed to be a break for you,” he said as he eased his craft away from the dock.

  “It is,” she assured him.

  “Then why the basket?”

  Regina rested her arms along the warm trim of the bow and tilted back her head to watch him work the lines. He’d stripped off his shirt; his body was long and lean and golden. Watching the sleek play of muscles under his skin, the competence of those long-fingered hands, she felt something inside her flutter and rise with the sails.

  “I wanted to feed you,” she said. “I haven’t yet.”

  The sails flapped and snapped like sheets on a back-yard line.

  Dylan adjusted them, pulling them taut, before he folded himself onto the seat beside her and gripped the rudder. “You feed me all the time.”

  “You eat at the restaurant all the time. It’s not the same. I wanted to cook for you. It’s what I do.”

  “Feed people.”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “Take care of them.”

  She met his gaze. The wind ruffled his dark hair, obscuring his face, making his expression harder than ever to read. Steady, Regina. “Yes.”

  “I don’t need someone to take care of me,” he said.

  Maybe not. But if they were going to have any kind of equal relationship, any relationship at all, he needed to see her as something more than a poor human female who got herself knocked up and kidnapped. Someone more than a victim.

  She cocked her chin. “You only say that because you haven’t experienced the full range of my amazing powers in the kitchen,” she told him. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  He glanced from the open hatch where he’d stowed the basket to her red-painted toes. His gaze trailed up her skinny jeans to her eyes. Her mouth. “I take it I’m about to find out?”

  The air between them hummed with sexual challenge.

  Warmth uncurled in the pit of her stomach. “Yep.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Dylan murmured.

  Regina had planned a leisurely seduction, a slow siege on his senses, an assault on his heart. She hadn’t counted on the building anticipation that was itself seduction, that made foreplay unnecessary. Heat poured over the deck like sunlight, like honey, heavy and golden, thick and sweet. She breathed it in and felt desire rise in her like sap, flowing through her veins. By the time Dylan dropped the sails and anchor, she was melting inside.

  She surveyed the empty rocks, the short, deserted dock, the shielding trees along the shore. Private. Perfect.

  Dylan turned his head, a glint in his eyes. “Ready to eat?”

  She flashed him a grin. “Yes.”

  His gaze narrowed, but he turned obediently enough to retrieve the picnic basket from the hatch.

  She was on him in an instant, her arms sliding around his waist, their bodies bumping, her busy fingers yanking at his belt. She pressed her breasts against his back— lovely warm skin, long, smooth muscle— and felt him harden in surprise as he caught her hands.

  She nipped h
is ear.

  “Regina.” Her name was an explosion of laughter and lust. His breath hissed as her fingers found him. He turned in her arms. “You’ll flip the boat.”

  “Mm,” she said and licked his chest. He tasted like salt, like sex, like man. Her starved palate craved him like a drug. She wanted to eat him up. So she did, trailing her tongue over the quivering muscles of his abdomen to where his jeans gaped and his body strained to meet her.

  She sank to her knees on the sunlit deck, enjoying his choked exhalation. She could do this for him. For them both. He was so beautiful to her, smooth and then rough, dark and then pale, hard and silky. Inhaling his musk, she laid claim to him with her mouth. His hands fisted in her hair as she fed.

  The boat rocked, pulsed, pitched. Dylan trembled and groaned. He sank beside her, his hands cradling her head, dragging her mouth to meet his. Her touch streaked over him.

  He reached for the hem of her shirt. “I want to see you.”

  She raised her arms. He ripped the shirt over her head. The sun was warm and heavy on her eyelids, on her naked breasts.

  “Beautiful,” he said hoarsely.

  She felt beautiful, powerful, and free. She unsnapped her jeans and worked them over her hips and down her legs. She kicked them across the deck and reached for him, blinded by the sun, dizzy with the heat, drunk with love and lust. His hands shaped and caressed her. He tucked her into his long, strong body, turned her so she kneeled with her forearms flat along the bench and her buttocks in full, warm contact with his groin. He covered her, his breath hot in her ear, his body hot at her back, thick and tempting.

  But she twisted again, pushing at his chest, shoving him back against the bench seat.

  “I want to see you.” His face, his wonderful body. Let him see her. Let him see who was loving him.

  She rose on her knees to straddle him, strong and broad and hers, watching her with dark, dazed eyes as she came over him. She took him, lowering herself by inches, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders, biting her lip with pleasure.

  “I need you.” He gripped her hips. “Now.”

  A fresh thrill assaulted her system. “Yes.”

  She let him pull her down, felt him surge up high inside her, deep inside her, closer than she’d ever felt to anyone in her life. His eyes were hot and dark on hers as he rocked inside her, hard at her center. She was pinned by his hands, impaled by his cock, while everything around her, sea and sky, was flowing, molten, golden.

  She stooped to lick his parted lips, his breath so hot it seared her.

  “Mine,” she said, her voice thick with satisfaction, her nails curling into his shoulders, and he shuddered and came, inside her, hers, and that was enough to make her come, too, over and over in a blinding white rush that emptied them both beneath the blue sky.

  * * *

  Regina draped over Dylan like seaweed on a rock, limp, boneless, fused to him by sweat and sex. Her hair was in his mouth. His body was lodged in her body. She was soft and slick surrounding him, and he wanted her again.

  As soon as he got his breath back. His strength back. His mind.

  The boat had steadied, but he was reeling still.

  She lifted her head, dislodging his face from the slim curve of her throat. She smiled at him with her kiss-swollen mouth, flushed and warm and desirable, her heart right there in her glowing eyes, so beautiful it hurt his chest to look at her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Which hit him like a two-by-four upside the head.

  Panic seized him. He didn’t, couldn’t, speak. What could he say? “Thank you”? He wasn’t grateful.

  “I am . . . honored,” he managed.

  That sounded good. Reasonable. Appreciative, even.

  Her clear brown eyes clouded with annoyance. “No, you’re not. You’re scared.”

  She scrambled off his lap, her slim pale legs flashing in the sunlight, and stooped for her underwear. The curve of her butt made him dizzy. Regret weighted his tongue.

  “Regina . . .”

  “Don’t sweat it.” She scooted the thong— red— up her thighs and wiggled it into place. “You want lunch?”

  Dylan watched the movement of her hips and didn’t know what he wanted. He was uneasily aware of something missing, something lost: a mood, a moment, an opportunity.

  “I am not scared.” His jaw set. He was terrified. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

  She shot him a glance over her shoulder before she tugged her shirt over her head. “Uh-huh. Get the basket. We don’t want all that food going to waste.”

  “Of course I care about you,” he offered stiffly.

  Regina looked at him like he was the restaurant cat and he’d just deposited a dead mouse at her feet. “Don’t throw me a bone,” she said. “I told you I love you. You don’t love me back, that’s my loss and your problem.”

  “My father claimed to love my mother.”

  She set her hands on her hips just above the line of red elastic. “So? I’m not your father. If you leave me, I’m not going off on a drunken twenty-year bender. I had a life before you came. I’ll have a life when you’re gone. But I’m not going to hide or lie about how I feel because you might be threatened by it.”

  She was blazing. Furious.

  “Are you done?” he asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Good.” He picked her up in his arms and jumped with her over the side.

  Water rushed over their heads, cutting off her shriek.

  She surfaced sputtering and clutching at him. “You son of a bitch! Are you out of your mind?”

  He buoyed her up, felt her shiver with shock and cold.“Scared?” he demanded.

  She glared, her hair dripping in her eyes. “I’m wet.”

  “Out of your element.”

  “Yes!”

  “Over your head?”

  She squinted, adjusting her grip on his neck. “I . . . so?”

  “Me, too,” he confessed.

  She gaped at him. He kissed her open mouth until her lips warmed and her body was soft and fluid, until her fingers tangled in his hair and they almost bobbed back under the water.

  If he was going down, he was damn well taking her with him.

  * * *

  The grill hissed; the fryer belched steam. The smell of the hot grease turned Regina’s stomach.

  She pressed her lips together and drizzled olive oil over a piece of swordfish. Baked potato, butter, broccoli, done.

  “Order up,” she called.

  Heat rolled from the pizza oven as Antonia slid out one medium pepperoni-mushroom and slid in a large with clams.

  Regina reached for another ticket. Two chowders, two pastas. She ladled the soup into cups and added crackers.

  Lucy grabbed the swordfish from the line, looking hot and harried. “The dining room’s packed. Is dinner always like this?”

  “Nope. Guess closing for a day was good for business.”

  Antonia snorted and zipped the cutter over the pizza. “You getting kidnapped was good for business. Every fool in town’s been in to have a look at you.”

  Regina shrugged. “They’re going to talk. They’ve got to eat. We might as well make money.”

  “They’re talking all right,” Antonia said a bit grimly. She set the pizza on the pass and began shaping another crust.

  Another cramp hit. Regina pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, praying she wouldn’t be sick.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” her mother snapped.

  Regina swallowed and stirred the pasta bubbling on the cook top. “I’m fine. Tired, that’s all.”

  “Tired, or pregnant?” Antonia asked.

  Regina’s gaze jerked to hers.

  Antonia nodded. “When were you going to tell me?”

  Regina felt a pressure in the center of her chest like heartburn. Or shame. She added shrimp to the chili peppers and tomatoes simmering on the stove, stirring to coat them in the sauce. “I . . . Soon
. I didn’t want you to think . . . I feel so stupid.”

  “Hm. When are you going to tell him?” Antonia pursed her lips toward the dining room, where Dylan watched the door.

  At least her mother didn’t have to ask who the father was.