Every time Swain tried to bring up her problems, she shut him down, and usually got damn angry that he’d tried, so they’d end up arguing. He didn’t like feeling useless and wasn’t used to being out of control. But, while Sassi had access to all his switches and levers, she’d managed to hold onto her own. She could control him, but he couldn’t do the same with her.
“I’ll keep a berth open for her,” Swain said, watching her sleep again.
Out there in the world she’d be vulnerable. Her father was dead. Her brother had cut out on her. Yet, she believed she could stand up to the world. Nothing fazed his Sassi, she just pulled herself up by her bootstraps and trudged on.
“That’s not what lassies want to hear,” Jockey said, sitting himself on the corner of the desk. “Women are a brutal squall, unpredictable and fierce, but you never let ‘em control you. Keep the wheel, son, ride the waves, maintain your headings.”
Shaking his head slowly, Swain’s gaze drifted to her peaceful face. “She’s hiding something from me, Jock.”
“Something like what?”
“She’s in trouble.”
Jockey slid off the desk. “Then you gotta start bailing for her. If she’s taking on water, you keep her afloat, whatever it takes.”
Balling his fist on the desk, Swain clenched his jaw. “I can’t fucking bail if I can’t find the leak. She says one thing, but her body tells me something else… I don’t have a fucking clue what she wants, Jock.”
“Step outta the wheelhouse, Swain, just like I taught you when you were a nipper. Get the spray on your face and feel the wind. Trust your senses, not the instruments.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said, knowing damn well how to sail a ship even if he couldn’t navigate his relationship with this woman.
“You gotta feel her emotions, ride ‘em like you would the waves in a storm. If you know you can make it, keep your eye on the crest. You hesitate, you founder… Do you want to keep her?”
Sassi was complicated, he often thought she was too complicated. He’d been conned into believing their relationship would be simple because out here it was, but it wouldn’t be like that back home.
“I can’t keep her against her will,” he said and forced himself to look away from her. “There’s another guy.”
It made him feel sick to think he’d be delivering her to the arms of another man, to another man’s bed. Jockey sucked in a long breath and sighed it out. “Now it makes sense…” Swain looked up hoping for some clarity. “We could’ve finished the survey yesterday, but you’re still saying two more days. You’re trying to keep us out here… To keep her out here because as long as she’s here, she’s yours.”
“She is mine,” he said. A surge of anger made him growl and shove a hand through his hair. “I don’t make operational decisions based on a piece of ass.”
Shooting to his feet, Swain was sick of mooning after the woman who’d made it clear she ranked him lower than some guy who’d apparently never touched her. According to her words anyway, he didn’t know how much he could trust those. How could she say she belonged to another guy if she’d never been intimate with him?
“If that’s all she is, order the return,” Jockey said. “We pack up today, get underway by sunrise.”
Back home. Back to reality. Glancing at the sleeping woman again, Swain wavered for only a second before giving his first-mate the nod. Swain couldn’t keep them at sea forever; he’d have to face the truth eventually.
Until Sassi stepped off Eros, she was his. It was the only thing he’d been assured of in their relationship. Fuck knew what would happen after that or how he’d feel watching her go. But, he was done putting his life, and the lives of his crew, on hold for a woman whose only plan was to abandon ship as soon as she possibly could.
EIGHTEEN
Jockey had told Sassi that they were making good time. Without the delay of the pan-pan or the night in Miami, they should knock at least three days off the time of their return trip. Though they’d be stopping somewhere to refuel. But, Jockey wasn’t worried about that taking too much time apparently.
They were about four days into their voyage home, on her twenty-eighth day at sea.
Sassi missed being at anchor already, being still meant there was no imminent danger and… No, that wasn’t why she missed it. Sassi missed it because it had been a perfect existence for a while.
Lazy afternoons in the galley practicing her techniques, swimming, sunbathing, scrubbing the deck with Fidget and touching up paint on the bulkheads. And regular afternoon delight, of course.
She got to spend time enjoying her man almost every day; sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes longer. Even if he was working, he’d talked to her, listen to her, just exist with her, and he didn’t mind her presence loitering around.
It didn’t matter if they were interacting or if he was busy with tasks or crew, Swain would let her read on the quarterdeck while they were diving or practice her knots in the wheelhouse when he was on watch or making plans with the others.
Since they’d been on their return trip, he’d had moments of being distant. She didn’t like it when he detached himself. Sassi recognized that the grumpy captain she’d first met was joining her more frequently. While she didn’t like to see him in a bad mood, she’d identified the cause: their relationship. It would be over in a matter of days.
Sassi didn’t like to think about being without Swain since he’d been such a massive part of her life every single day for weeks. There wasn’t going to be a period of adjustment or a gradual weaning off. She was going to have to go cold turkey.
Sitting in the mess feeling the ship rise and fall in the waves that were also pushing them left to right, she tried her best to move with the motion, tensing her core and relaxing into the rhythm. But, it was difficult for her to stay balanced even at the calmest of times.
The ocean had a sense of humor, at least that’s what Swain had told her once when she’d stumbled on deck after an unexpected wave made the ship sway. In this storm, the lurching made her cling to the bench beneath her thighs and hold her breath.
Swain.
Yes, if she thought about him, about being in his arms, his mouth, his body, she could distract herself from the sound of the wind battering the bulkheads and whistling through the portholes, doors, and hatches that were all supposed to be sealed.
Once in a while there would be a thud, a bang that echoed down the passageways and sent a chill zapping through her. Up on the wave and down, up and down, listing left, then further right.
“You okay, Miss. Sassi?” Swing asked.
He and Fidget had been ordered to stay in the mess with her while the other men battled the storm raging in the night around them. “It’s like a rollercoaster,” she said and smiled.
That’s what she convinced herself it was and with Swain at the helm she knew there was nothing to worry about. She was precious cargo, that’s what he’d said, and he protected precious cargo. She’d be fine. Just fine.
When they’d known the storm was coming, Swain had briefed her to tie everything down, like, literally. He wanted all the equipment in the galley stowed behind locks. Sassi didn’t want anything to break or to have a mess to clear up, but she’d gleaned a better understanding of Swain’s strict orders when Jockey explained how something as simple as Tupperware could become a weapon, a dangerous hazard that could kill someone if it came flying off a shelf in the midst of a storm.
Sassi didn’t want to be responsible for killing anyone, so she’d checked and re-checked everything to make sure nothing in the galley, or in their cabin, could become a threat. That meant tidying up all of Swain’s papers from the desk. The computer could be packed away and the printer was fastened to the file cabinet and the wall, so their room was safe. It had also never been so tidy.
“The cap’n is good in storms,” Fidget said, his voice was quiet, but not as unsure as it had been when she’d first come aboard. “He says he just
feels how the ocean moves.”
Initially the apprentice hadn’t wanted to talk to her directly at all. He’d talk to Swing and speak to the others when spoken to, but it had taken time for him to come out of his shell with her.
In addition to keeping herself busy, that was another reason she’d tried to spend time with him while the other crewmembers were diving. She didn’t want him spending too much time alone and because she’d managed to bond or find something in common with the other crew members, she didn’t want him to be left out.
Swing nudged his buddy and snorted a laugh. “Don’t gotta tell Sass that, bet she lets the captain steer her.”
It was sort of impressive that Swing could still make sex jokes when the rain had just started pounding the portholes like a hail of biblical locusts. It felt like they were in an abyss at the start of the apocalypse.
Trying another smile, her stomach bounced from her guts to her throat on the next hump. Shit. Closing her eyes, she let her head bump on the wall and thought of her man at the wheel. She believed in him, she did, and wanted to send as much positive energy his way as she could.
A smile managed to quirk her lips. Her mother would be proud.
Sassi had never been one for new age ideas or alternative medicine, not that she was against it, she’d just never given it much thought. Her grandmother had been strict in her ideas of what a woman should be and airy-fairy was against all those rules. Agnes Robins had believed in appearances above all else and no matter how a family may be crumbling on the outside, it should never be obvious to outsiders.
In that respect, Agnes would be proud of how her son had handled his debts and the shame he’d brought on them all. At least no one respectable had known about it. Sassi couldn’t be as noble. There she was in the midst of a storm that could tip her home on its head and toss them all in the drink and there still wasn’t any other place she’d rather be.
“We do lifeboat checks all the time, Miss. Sassi,” Fidget said.
It was so nice that he was trying to comfort her, but she was actually doing okay and didn’t feel sick, just a little off-balance. Swain was good at doing that to her. She figured Fidget’s reassurance was more for his own benefit than hers. If he needed to say these things out loud to help alleviate his fears, then she wasn’t going to ask to stop.
“Thank you, Fidget,” she said, leaning over the table to take his hand. “Would you like to come sit by me?”
Again, she didn’t need the comfort, but on this side of the table, there was something to lean on. Fidget and Swing’s side only had a narrow bench. Fidget wasn’t usually allowed to sit on this side, but she slid up and patted the bench beside her.
Fidget wasted no time in skipping over to her side and she took his hand on the seat between them, giving him an anchor of his own.
“We’ve got great lifeboats, the best,” Swing said. “You seen inside ‘em?” She shook her head. “Cap’n is always telling us to check stocks, to rotate, make sure they’re seaworthy and all. So, even if we founder, you don’t have to worry, there’s plenty of space for seven in the raft. Bet we could all lie down flat. You for sure, you’re a skinny thing… that why the cap’n calls you waif?”
“I thought he called her wife,” Fidget said.
He’d probably misheard waif, though Swain had called her his wife more than a few times. The boys were debating her pet name, but she was frowning, stuck on the number Swing had said.
“Eight,” she said aloud, interrupting them. “You said the lifeboat was big enough for seven. You meant eight.”
Swing shook his head. “Only seven go aboard,” he said. “Captain stays with Eros.”
The captain went down with the ship. Was that what he was saying? How had that idea not occurred to her? She was with a man who was actually suicidal!
She stood up, the ship moved and she sat back down. Sassi couldn’t go to the wheelhouse and ask about the evacuation plan now, and she couldn’t beg Swain to make her promises that he would never do something so crazy.
Her grip on the bench beneath her got tighter.
In a few days, she’d walk away from Swain and never see him again. But, did that mean she wanted to read his obituary in a newspaper next week? No, it didn’t.
After the shock wore off, she stopped feeling distressed and started to get angry. Sassi hadn’t wanted to fall in love with Swain because she knew marrying Dario was a real possibility. But, now she knew that even if she wasn’t betrothed to that monster, she still had to distance herself from Swain who had chosen this crazy and dangerous career for himself.
While the sea was calm and the sun was shining it was easy to think of this ship as a private paradise. Tonight, she’d discovered it was anything but.
NINETEEN
After grabbing a couple of hour’s kip, Swain went for a shower and then stuck his head through the hatch that led from his cabin to the wheelhouse. He got a quick report, weather and heading fine, speed, no issues, no delays.
Great.
He decided to get some grub before going upstairs to relieve Hector and Jockey. It was early for lunch, but not much, and he’d still been in the wheelhouse while the others had breakfast. He hadn’t eaten a thing since last night. Sassi should be able to throw something together. She always had something on the go and she’d understand why he had to be on the bridge at sunrise as the storm cleared.
He’d slept with the woman every night for weeks. Waking up without her felt odd and gave him new appreciation for her comment about him neglecting her. He wouldn’t tonight. He’d figure out the schedule and make sure they got an early night. He hadn’t even had a chance to ask her how she’d handled the rougher waters.
Swain had never hurried to his mess before. He always been take it or leave it about food, never that bothered. But, it wasn’t the food that was kicking up his speed. When he ducked in the door and made eye contact with the woman shaking her booty in time with the song she was murmuring to herself, he was surprised to see her gaze cool and her body stiffen before she drew her eyes away from him.
Hmm…
Instead of saying anything, he went over to her and attempted to slide a hand around her waist. But, she picked up his wrist and dropped his hand before moving away.
She loved it when he held her and kissed her neck. Wasn’t she freaked by the weather? With his tongue in the corner of his lips, he considered what might be eating her. He’d done good work last night, they were all alive, weren’t they? Okay, so it was hardly navigating a hurricane, but it was rougher than she’d ever experienced before. Shouldn’t she be grateful?
“Okay,” he groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Is it the beard?”
He hadn’t shaved since they’d weighed anchor. Not deliberately, he’d just been keeping himself busy trying not to think about what would happen when they landed.
“Nope,” she said. “I guess you’re here for chow. Sit down.”
Was that an order? He’d guess from the glower on her profile that it was. Seemed he didn’t move fast enough for her because she gave him a push with the side of her body to get him out the way so she could reach the fridge.
Without going too far, he crouched to murmur in her ear as she transferred sauce from Tupperware to a pot on the stove. “I guess no one around here told you I’m the captain.”
Though he noticed she was wearing his hoodie under her apron again and it proudly declared that she held that rank. Seeing her in her own clothes that bore his name was a turn on; her uniform declared her to be his and he loved that. He’d never looked at his uniform as a mark of possession before he’d seen it on her body.
But, seeing her in his clothes took his arousal up another notch, then she’d started wearing his uniform, apparel that bore his name and his rank, and that triggered every primal instinct in his animal brain.
He’d never told her that. She knew too many ways to turn him on already; he didn’t need to be giving her more ways to fuck with his restr
aint.
“I know exactly who you are, sir,” she said, stomping over to the cabinet to pull out something else.
“Sir? Hmm, okay,” he muttered to himself and was forced to catch the tub she thrust at his chest.
“Go, sit, eat a donut,” she snapped and turned away from him.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “What is going on? What’s changed since the kiss I got on the way to the wheelhouse last night?”
And, boy was it a kiss. He’d told her to sit in the mess and not to move and she’d launched herself on him, telling him to be careful like he was going to war rather than the wheel he could manipulate blindfolded.
The boys had given him some grief about it, but he was getting used to their teasing and as long as he had the only girl on board, he’d take it. Swain figured he could cut them some slack. Like Foist had said, they were all horny mutts who hadn’t touched a woman for weeks. Swain had been spoiled by his every single day.
And, it wasn’t until he’d had Sassi that he realized how much he needed the touch of a woman while he was on the water. Though that might have been more to do with the woman herself, because he couldn’t see himself ever bringing another one along.
Well, he’d employ other women, but he’d leave them to the other guys. He sure couldn’t go through this experience again. He loved being with Sassi, no other woman would match up to the standard she had set.
He loved Sassi.
It wasn’t just being with her physically or talking to her that he loved. He was in love with the frustrating woman. That truth had hit him at the most inconvenient moment last night when they’d been riding a high crest, listing, with near zero visibility.
A shot of adrenaline for a second had seemed to be anxiety and it actually knocked him from his focus. Swain didn’t get anxious when he was in the wheelhouse. Weather didn’t scare him. He’d always figured when it was time for him to join the Locker, he would. He’d fight it every step of the way, but one day he wouldn’t be the victor.
Sweet Seas Page 17
