Windswept (12 page)

“I didn’t know you were right there.”

“Exactly my point!” She had to strain not to scream. “Behind my back, you treat me like shit. To my face, you’re all kind and nice.”

And sweet,
her subconscious threw out.
And cute. And really, really sincere.

“It was a mistake, Mia. A really bad one. I spent the rest of the day shutting them up.”

“Very effective,” she shot back, although her resolve was wavering.

Ryan’s jaw jutted forward. “Ken’s black eye. He didn’t start the day with that, did he?”

She blinked. There had been a guy with a black eye…

“And Murphy falling in the pool?”

She shrugged. “Very mature.”

“Mia, I’m sorry.”

“Go back in time and undo it,” she said, knowing she had him now.

He wilted. “I can’t. But I did make them—”

She cut him off, because she’d heard enough. “Look, Ryan, what are you doing here?”

Other than saving my life,
her subconscious pointed out.
Twice.

God, it was hard to stay mad at him when he was a foot away. She closed her eyes.

Bed. Dropping into bed and turning off her brain had a lot of appeal right now.

“Mia, what the guys said was wrong. That I didn’t stop them was wrong.” His voice was pinched, like the words had to be forced out. “But we’re not complete assholes. Just listen for one second, please.”

She kept her eyes closed and her lips squeezed tight.

“I let them get carried away because it was the first time in a month that the guys were laughing again. Loosening up. We’d had a really bad couple of weeks. The accident. The interviews. Recovering the bodies…” His voice cracked just a tiny bit.

Bodies?

“The funerals, the investigations...”

Then it clicked. She’d arrived in New York the week after a terrible accident that killed two members of the dive squad.

Ryan’s squad.

Somehow, she’d never made the connection before. She’d mourned the tragedy along with all of New York, but she hadn’t known Ryan was a police diver at that point. And when she did find out what he did for work, she’d been too mad to give much thought to the nitty-gritty of his job.

Like wondering what it might be like to recover a body. And not just an anonymous body, but the body of a colleague. A friend. And then she got to wondering a little more, like what if that hadn’t been Ryan’s first time doing such a gut-wrenching thing. The Navy didn’t work in kiddie pools, after all.

Maybe the furious laps he’d swum weren’t only about exercise. Maybe the times he’d gone silently distant meant a different kind of time-out.

“None of us wanted to do that refresher training that day. Everyone was in a really crap mood, so when they started joking…”

She watched him scratch at the hem of his shorts while a tiny twitch started up in the outside corner of his left eye. Now he was the one staring at the floor, and she was the one studying him.

Maybe…maybe a guy could be forgiven for not sharing certain things. For letting crude jokes cover the pain of some really bad things.

“I didn’t know about the shower video thing, Mia. If I had, I would never—”

Her head jolted up. “You know about that?”

He nodded, looking a decade older. “I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”

Her ribs ached as a familiar flash of anger rose up inside. She wanted to point her finger right in his face and yell, rage, and scream.

But she didn’t have it in her. She’d been so mad for so long, she was all worn out.

That, and she’d had a really shitty day. Her skin itched, her muscles ached, and her joints creaked even when sitting still. But no matter how tired she was, she knew she’d never get to sleep. Her body was so out of kilter. Her soul, too.

She put a hand on the deck, because
Serendipity
had a way of calming her, like her grandfather always had. The day she’d run home from college when the whole video scandal broke, her grandfather had come over, hugged her, and led to her dad’s liquor cabinet.

We’ll deal with this like true sailors,
he’d joked, trying to shore her up.
With a good, stiff drink.

He’d made her feel so grown up, so strong, that in the end, she didn’t take the drink. Not even the Irish coffee her granddad had settled on and spent the next hour nursing quietly while he told her sea stories. She’d sat at his feet and petted the dog and let a little bit of goodness creep back in through the pain.

Maybe that would help now: sailor’s remedy. A good, stiff drink.

“You want something to drink?” She lurched to her feet so quickly, she nearly bowled Ryan over.

Ryan sitting down was that much shorter than her, and his deep, sad eyes took her in like a faithful old hound. “What do you have?”

She took mental stock. They had a couple of beers, wine in a box, and a little rum, plus the whiskey her cousins Seth and Tobin had left onboard for special occasions. Somehow, she doubted this was the kind of occasion they had in mind, but hell, a shot of whiskey in coffee might just do her good. It certainly couldn’t make things worse.

“Irish coffee,” she whispered.

“Works for me,” he said, so softly she could barely hear.

She went into the tiny galley below, lit the propane stove after priming it exactly the way her granddad always did, and stood staring at the kettle as the water heated up. Then she let her eyes slide closed and her mind go blank, because blank was better than totally messed up.

The water started ticking toward a boil when the companionway stairs creaked. The air behind her warmed, and two tentative arms slipped around her waist so smoothly, she could have sighed. All she had to do was lean back a little and heaven would be hers: her back to Ryan’s football field of a chest.

The question was, did she want heaven? Did she trust heaven? Did she trust herself?

She pulled in a deep breath. Let it out again, struggling inside.

She drew another breath, and then she sighed, because it seemed her body had already decided to settle back against him. And damn, that felt good. He rested his chin on her shoulder, his cheek against her ear, and the two of them stood there, breathing as one. On the inhale, his chest rose, and her back followed. On the exhale, a tiny flutter of air warmed her cheek. Inhale: her ribs tightened against his arms. Exhale: his body curled around hers.

The waves rolling over the pebbly beach not too far away did the same. The bay was calm, and
Serendipity
seemed to be nodding off to sleep.

Maybe she didn’t have to figure everything out tonight. Maybe all she had to do was breathe and let her mind go blank.

Which was a great plan…theoretically. But blank wasn’t coming, not with Ryan standing that close, smelling that sweet.

Mia breathed him in the way she breathed in starlight on perfect tropical nights: with a long, slow intake that triggered all of her senses, not just the sense of smell. Like the feel of his body heat, seeping over to her. The touch of his thumbs, gently stroking over hers. The sense of the boundaries between their bodies blurring until two were more like one.

The stubble of his cheek scrubbed across her collarbone, lighting a spark that jumped from one nerve to another until her entire body was alive with a sudden, aching need. A need that shoved the pain and anger of the past into a distant corner and pulled the present front and center.

And just like that, nothing else mattered but his touch.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispered midnuzzle.

“I don’t want you to stop,” she breathed.

Ever,
an inner voice added.
Never stop and never leave me, even if I’m dumb enough to try to make you go.

His arms tightened as if in answer.
I will never let you go.

She tilted her head to drag a little more scrape out of his gentle caress, because that pulled her body back from exhaustion into something closer to bliss.

His lips closed over her ear, tugging the lobe so gently her frown turned into a grin. She tipped her head back, coaxing him closer to her neck, and sighed when his dry lips fluttered kisses along her soft skin.

“Hmm,” he mumbled. “You taste good.”

She was about to say,
I taste salty
, when he went on.

“You always taste good.”

The bass of his voice made her toes curl, and whatever molecules in her body weren’t yet on fire ignited and crackled happily alongside with the rest.

Yeah, she could burn up for this man. She could throw her pride to the wind. Could lose herself in this moment and not even feel guilty about it, at least not tonight.

She wiggled her backside against him. “Still got some energy somewhere?”

He answered in a hum. “You give me energy.”

She nodded. If they could somehow harness the heat coming off their bodies now,
Serendipity
wouldn’t need solar panels.

Her back pressed into him in all the right places, and every atom in her body jumped up and down like the water in the kettle, just beginning to boil.

“Might just put that coffee on hold,” she whispered, turning off the burner.

He murmured in agreement and let his hands slide an inch lower, then slide back up. Like a cat, she arched against him, and he hesitated, deciding where to go. Her body was at war with itself, too, making impossible demands like begging his hands to cup her breasts while screaming for them to roam farther south at the same time.

With Ryan, though, nothing was impossible. His left hand slid up and under her bra while his right plunged down, and she moaned in response. A tiny animal moan to tell him he was getting it just right.

“Mia,” he murmured, cupping the soft flesh of her breast.

A series of breathless kisses tickled her neck, and she raised her arms, folding them to his shoulders to get them out of the way. She rested her left leg on the step of the ladder, opening her core to him. He ran his left thumb over her nipple at exactly the same moment that the fingers of his right hand slid under the edge of her shorts and teased her folds.

“Ryan,” she moaned.

Coffee was definitely, definitely on hold. Maybe forever, if he managed to keep up that heavenly pressure over her clit.

As he pressed down and circled her sex with his whole hand, the fabric of her shorts moved too, sending her higher and higher up the charts. The hard jut of his cock against the small of her back had her rubbing up and down his body. He worked her shirt up to roll and pinch her nipples, and if he kept that up, she’d come screaming like a kettle in no time.

She wanted that. Wanted to come long and hot and hard, but she wanted to come with him. And Ryan, damn him, liked to stretch things out to marathon lengths, which she was just not up for tonight. He’d gotten her flying good and quick; it was time to do that to him, too.

She turned in his arms and dove into a sloppy, soul-licking kiss that made his eyes go wide. She knew; she peeked. When his cock jerked against her stomach, she reached for it. Granted, with a lot less finesse than his own gentle, calculated touches of her body had shown, but Ryan didn’t seem to mind. He only protested when she let go.

“Wait,” she mumbled, starting again.

This time she slid her hand into his shorts and took him one finger at a time in a wide, loose grip. She didn’t have much choice but wide and loose because he was that big and thick. He put a hand over hers and helped her slide up and down at exactly the pace he liked. She went from the broad, throbbing hardness of his cock to the soft skin of his sac and back again, picturing the pleasure every hard inch of him would provide when he drove into her.

Soon. Very soon, she wanted that to happen. Needed it to happen. Her day had been all about survival, and instinct was screaming to take the reins from her mind.

With her free hand, she shoved his shorts lower. She kissed him at the same time and flattened her breasts against the wide expanse of his pecs. She ran her fingers over the tiny grooves in shoulder muscles piled in thick layers that rippled and heated under her touch.

“Need to get rid of this,” she grunted, pulling his shirt up.

“And this,” he added, working hers up the minute his arms were free.

She folded around him the second she could, caught in a whirling, dizzying tornado she never wanted to escape. Pulling his face to hers with both hands, she pressed into another hungry kiss and consumed him. His skin was salty from their unplanned swim, just like hers, and rubbing against him ignited her like a struck match. She shimmied down, then scrubbed back up, making her nipples peak. She could practically smell the sulfur, see tiny threads of smoke rise from every long, hard scrape. If it hadn’t been for the steady sea breeze wafting in from the open cabin door, they might just have burst into flames.

Something fluttered like a flag of surrender. Her bra, discarded to one side.

She peeked up and found Ryan’s eyes burning into her like never before.

Mine,
they said.
Mine.

Mine,
her body sang back as she explored the delicious curves of his rear.
Mine.

She’d heard a thousand hushed warnings when she set off for the Caribbean. To watch the wind, the waves, the tide. To be wary of reefs and robbers and sudden storms, and she’d scoffed them all away. But here they were, all those dangers, wrapped in one man. Ryan was the reef that caught her hull and held it fast; Ryan was the thief, and he was sweeping her away. Around the two of them were the wind, the waves, the tide — unstoppable forces of nature propelling them to hidden shores.

But that was only the half of it. The other half was the thrill of surrendering to nature, because nature knew things no mind could grasp. Nature knew about man and woman and the comfort to be found in joining as one. Nature knew that a mind too tired to think could only be soothed by one thing.

Serendipity
nodded over the rippling water of the bay, which combined with another movement: Ryan, turning her so her back was to the chart table. He caged her in with his arms, leaning into her space. His wide hands gripped her ribs as his lips worked hers.