“Oh my
god…”
I heard myself say but I couldn’t be sure it was my voice. I was in a euphoric haze, like I was riding out the longest, softest, purest orgasm of my life. My whole body floated and it was a little bitter sweet as I recognized that this was one of those moments that sure, subsequent times would be really fucking good, but there was nothing as awesome as your
first
time. I recognized that in this, and oh my god, I was determined to enjoy it, to ride this out as long as I could because it felt incredible.
Cutter was amazing. He moved slowly, his stamina beyond fucking compare. He took his pleasure now, at his own pace. From the feel of his long, leisurely, strokes he was in no hurry to come. He would ask how I was doing every once in a while, and I would try to pull it together long enough to moan but I was in that place between worlds now, loving every minute of it.
“Don’t stop, God please don’t stop,” I whispered and he made a satisfied hum, his hands stroking leisurely over my ass, my hips, up my back in a sweeping arch to my shoulders and back to my hips.
“Oh, Baby, oh Hope, I can’t help it, I’m gonna come,” he said, voice breathy and almost as euphoric as my own when I found it. His hips jerked and he came inside me and it felt so, deliciously
dirty
. I loved it, he slowly and carefully pulled out and smoothed his hands over my body one more time as I giggled and just sort of keeled over onto my side, panting. My legs were numb from kneeling so long.
Cutter lay facing me and gathered me to his chest, kissing my forehead, which made my eyes drift shut. Reverent, cared for,
loved
, that was what his kiss made me feel in that moment and it was all I had ever secretly longed for… It was a powerful spell he wove over me.
“Jesus Christ that was good,” he uttered when he had mostly caught his breath.
“Hmmm…” I hummed gently, words were not in my forecast just yet.
“C’mon Baby, let’s get you cleaned up, I’ll change the sheets while you’re in there and tuck you in, wash up myself and be back before you know it.” I nodded reluctantly. It needed to happen, it really did.
“Be right back, let me get the shower heated up for you…”
He left me and I dozed lightly, I wondered if I were going to be sore tomorrow… then I lazily drifted from that thought to wondering if I would care. He came back, made me drink some water and helped me into the shower. It was a pain in the ass holding my cast out of the spray but I managed a good wash and rinse of my body and only mildly got my hair wet.
Cutter was a man of his word. He had the sheets changed and the bed ready when I got out. He dried me off, tucked me in and kissed me with that same reverence of before and I melted. I couldn’t ever remember a time when anyone took such care of me…
He kissed me, and smoothed my hair back from my face, “Back before you know it… I wish my damn shower were big enough for two. You good?” he asked.
I smiled, “I’m good,” I whispered drowsily.
“Okay, back in a minute,” he promised again and I was alone.
I lay in the soothing dark, lulled by the sound of his small shower and the water lapping against the hull of his boat, the gentle bob and sway of the vessel in the harbor. This was peace. I opened my eyes, I didn’t want to fall asleep before he came back, despite how it sucked at my edges. Light from one of the portholes fell across the image of the sad girl I’d examined the first time I’d ever been in his bunk. I closed my eyes then. I didn’t want to think about him with anyone else. Not after what we’d just shared.
I was barely, vaguely aware of him coming back to bed, he slipped in behind me and pulled me back into the curve of his chest, kissing the back of my shoulder with that same reverence, making me sigh and drift off more soundly, more completely into the deepest, securest, dreamless and probably most restorative sleep I had ever had.
Chapter 32
Cutter
She slept soundly, and I drifted off right along with her. The sun was streaming bright through the portholes the next morning when the sound of people boarding the Mysteria Avenge jolted me awake.
I carefully slid my arm out from under the curve of Hope’s neck and slipped to the end of the bed. I pulled a pair of blue and white board shorts out of my cupboard without really caring and pulled them on. If it was some of the guys, which was likely, they didn’t want a view of my junk. Not that I cared. I stood up and stretched, yawning and plucked a hair tie off the hook from under my cut, replacing it. I whipped my long hair into a low pony as I trudged the length of my boat just for the first knock to fall on the hatch leading above deck.
“All right!” I called out and flung it open.
A keen girly excited shout and I was stumbling back into my living room confused, the glaring light of the outside which had stolen my vision resolved into the smiling pixie face of Li’l Bit who was legs around my hips and arms around my shoulders.
“Hi!” she crowed and laid one on me, her lips as soft as I remembered, lush and warm. Her enthusiasm caught me off guard and I froze of a second, eyes wide, hands on her hips and the world lost focus for a second.
Damn. I was completely caught off guard. I’d wanted the woman in my arms for fucking ages, had been bitter as hell to let her go back to her man, to her life and now she was here, warm and enthusiastic and all I could think about was putting her down, putting some distance between us before…
“Eh he he hem…”
Fuck.
Chapter 33
Hope
Fierce, hot, intense and immediate. Jealousy ripped through me like a rocket propelled grenade. I finished buttoning the front of my black shirt dress and watched the man I loved, who supposedly loved me back, kiss another woman in front of me and I didn’t have a damn thing I could really say. I reached down and pulled my flip flops out of the pocket on the side of my pack that just happened to fit the two pairs I had perfectly and dropped the black ones to the carpet by the bunk step.
I shrugged my feet into them while Cutter stared at the woman in disbelief and then it registered, not what I was looking at but
who.
Fuck. It was the sad green eyed girl. The one whose picture was taped, wrinkled and forlorn to the inside of Cutter’s bunk. Where he could wake up to her image every morning and fall asleep looking at it every night… like I had last night.
Holy Christ. It hurt. Deep in the center of my chest, it fucking hurt and I just didn’t have any room to process, to deal with it, so I did what I do best. I put on my resting bitch face and ghosted up the hall. I leaned my shoulder nonchalantly against the beautifully restored, wood paneled wall and cleared my throat.
“Eh he he hem…”
Cutter’s eyes drifted shut and his shoulders dropped and I could see it written all over his face…
Fuck.
The woman turned her head and looked taken aback and blushed furiously.
“Oh…” she said and unwound herself from Cutter’s body, sliding down him to the floor. I kept my face impassive. I wasn’t going to fucking cry. It wasn’t happening.
My phone started ringing, shrill, filling the weighted silence as the thump of another man boarding the boat, made the woman and Cutter both redirect their attention to the open hatch. My phone rang and rang and I went for it, pushing off the wall and reaching for it with my casted arm, which I really,
really
wanted to use to beat the fuck out of the man I’d let fuck me last night.
I picked it up off the table as Cutter drew breath to speak. I put my hand up and arched a brow coldly. I didn’t want to hear it. Not right now. Not yet. I wanted him to save it.
“Hello?”
“It’s Marlin, the doc from up north is in town, I’m taking your sister to the clinic to have him check her out and she wanted me to call you, wants you to be there for the exam.”
“Location.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, “Everything okay, Hope?”
“Location, Marlin.” I said and I knew I didn’t sound okay which just made me want to leave more. Cutter and I were staring hard at each other across the short space between us. The atmosphere tense. The woman’s head bobbing back and forth between us as if she were watching a demented tennis match.
“Pear Street, other side of the Boulevard, down two blocks on Vine.”
“Copy that, en route.” I hung up.
“Hope…” Cutter tried.
“Fucking save it,” I snarled bitterly.
“Oh hey, it’s not what you…” I glared the woman into silence and she rocked back, a dubious expression on her pixie-like face.
“Hope!” Cutter tried again but I’d snatched up my jacket which had my wallet and sunglasses in it and dug them out. I left the too hot garment to flop onto the recliner it’d come from and marched for the steep steps out the hatch.
I didn’t have time to deal with my fucking feelings on this. Faith needed me and I could deal with it later. I shoved it down, and when that didn’t work I shoved it aside and burst into the bright Florida mid-morning sunshine.
“Whoa, hey!” A dude with a light brown, almost faux hawk, with sparkling blue eyes and a row of switchblade patches on his vest put up his hands. He had a smart phone in one of them and looked like he’d just finished a call of his own. I blew past him.
“Hope!” Cutter called from the hatch, the woman was on deck behind me hugging herself looking like she was about to cry.
“Go fuck yourself, Cutter! Faith needs me,” I leapt to the dock, chest heaving with uneven breaths borne of too much emotion. I didn’t break stride all the way to the clinic.
I got there just in time for Nothing to pull up with Faith and Marlin in the back of what I presumed was his Subaru Outback, an older one, probably early two-thousands, that had seen better days. Behind them was a man on a Harley. He was older, wearing a vest like the guy back on Cutter’s boat. A Sacred Hearts vest, I realized as he rolled to a stop. Shit, this was the doctor?
My sister was curled up in a ball on the back seat, staring sightless out the passenger side window of the Subaru. She didn’t look good. Pale and sweating, brow creased with pain. Nothing got out of the driver’s seat and was frowning at me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked by way of greeting.
“Nothing,” I said and he raised his eyebrows at me. I scoffed, “You know what I fucking mean,” I said and scowled. I knew my tone was acerbic and I also knew that Nothing didn’t deserve my pissed off but I didn’t have time to apologize, but rather, just enough to change my attitude for when Marlin came around to help my sister out of the car. The older man came up while Nothing used a set of keys to let us into the clinic’s side door.
“You the doctor?” I asked.
“You must be the sister?” he asked and I dismissed the skepticism. I was the tall, dark and fucked up one in our family. Didn’t look anything like my sisters, my mom, and while he’d been around, my stepdad either.
“Yeah, I’m Hope.”
“Doc,” he said and he was smiling but it held the ghost of something in it, like the smile had once been something much more than what I saw now.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
“No problem, these boys did us a big boon not too long back, we owe ‘em a whole lot more ‘n a house call,” he was looking me over, and nodded to himself, “You wanna talk about whatever it is, I
am
a doctor, may not be a headshrinker by schooling or degree, but I am fair good at listening.”
I startled a bit and hoped it didn’t show, “No I’m good, just look after my sister please.”
He nodded, and turned to follow Marlin and Faith inside, he had to help her. She was moving like an old woman and I was betting the withdrawals were setting in hard core.
I followed the doctor, Nothing stayed outside to look out and warn us of trouble but the clinic was deserted. I wondered about that, but Marlin was talking.
“We have to hurry up some, the place is only closed down for two hours for lunch.” He helped my sister onto the edge of the exam table and the room was already prepped for the doctor to do his thing. He slid his big black bag he had slung across his chest off, and set it down.
“Won’t be needing that, you guys are good and stocked here, let me have a look at you if that’s all right, Sweetheart,” he said to my sister and the term of endearment made me close my eyes and count to ten. I needed to be strong, to be here for Faith. I stood at her side, and she held my hand and I held hers as the doctor looked her over.
He left me with her to help her into an exam gown for the pelvic and Faith started to cry. She hadn’t said anything yet, and that was okay. I just helped her get into the gown and laying down. I cracked the door to give them the signal she was ready and went and leaned a hip against the table by hers. I faced my sister and gathered her hand up between mine while the doctor did his thing behind me.
“Remember the first time we did this ever?” I asked and she laughed brokenly, her aquamarine eyes swimming with tears, the clear liquid magnifying her eyes and making them luminous. My sisters both managed to remain pretty when they cried. Not me.
“Yeah,” she said brokenly and jumped.
“Easy, Faith. Ready? Going to use the speculum now,” the doctor was kind, treated my sister gently and with respect. He was good. I had to appreciate that.
My sister and I murmured back and forth, talking about that long ago first pelvic exam and even managed to laugh a time or two. She was so afraid, so broken and in so much pain that I couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out if I wanted to. We cried together, the doctor paused.
“Faith, I have to ask you something…”
“Yeah?” her voice warbled pitifully.
“Honey, you ever been pregnant?” he asked.
My sister dissolved into tears and I saw Marlin just outside the door, stiffen through the crack in it. I held my breath…
“Yeah, they had some doctor come… they killed my baby.”