Windswept (14 page)

Serendipity
barely bobbed, and she closed her eyes, tuning in to the boat. She had so much to be grateful to her grandfather for: the fun, the adventures, the unconditional love. That feeling of having a compass when she needed it most. The boat was the least of the things her grandfather had gifted her with, though. He’d given her time to take stock of a crazy couple of months. Time to get to know her sister all over again. And now this. A quiet morning with Ryan, the kind she thought she’d never get again.

She thought it was the gentle rocking of the boat at first, but it seemed Ryan was stroking her hand, too. Just one thumb, strumming hers slowly like the E string on a guitar.

“Hmm,” she sighed quietly. “Nice.”

Being anchored in a hidden cove off a tropical island shouldn’t have reminded her of a quiet Sunday morning in New York. But in some ways, the forward bunk felt just like those perfect weekends in New York. The same sleepy feeling of contentment. The same tingle of anticipation in her bones.

Maybe it wasn't the place. Maybe it was the guy. She could snuggle with him on an Arctic ice floe and it would still feel this good.

She wiggled backward, erasing the last empty spaces between their bodies. His fingers knotted around hers then left them for the taut skin of her belly. Hunger might register there soon, because it had been hours since her last meal, but not yet. Not that kind of hunger, anyway. Because the more he stroked, the more a tiny, licking flame built under that warm point of contact and spread throughout her body, so that even parts he wasn’t touching felt good.

A low, growly rumble came through her back. Ryan shifted to get closer, working his coarse thumb over skin that felt like it had survived a long drought to finally taste rain.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled, making sure he knew it was good.

She guided his hand higher until he caressed the lower edge of her breast. Her left leg went exploring in the meantime, something she barely registered until it was wound snugly behind his and reporting all kinds of good things to be discovered back there.

“Mia,” he whispered, and it was like a poem, all in one word.

She wiggled lower, maneuvering the rest of her breast into the hand doing all kinds of amazing things to her as it grazed back and forth. Wishing she had a little more to offer him there, hoping to hell it was good enough.

His fingers showed no signed of stopping. It was only his voice, slowing things down. “You sure you want this?”

It was just like the first time they’d slept together, when she was the one practically tearing his clothes off with her teeth, and he was the one showing a little restraint.

“I’m sure.” God, she was sure. It was about the only thing she was sure of right now.

“What if you decide you hate me later?”

She twisted in his arms and caught his face in both hands. No tease, no innuendo. Just her heart and soul on a platter, for him to take or reject. “I never hated you. I never will. And I promise—”

He put his fingers over her lips before she could say the rest. Like he wasn’t quite ready for what she might say to him just then.

So she parked the thought in the back of her mind, saving it for a time that wasn’t the heat of the moment, when he’d know she meant every word.
Ryan, I want you. I want us.

Anyway, he was right. She didn’t have to talk to show trust and forgiveness. She opened her mouth and caught his finger with her lips. Licked it, up, down, and around while her right leg looped over his.

The emerald eyes blazed and said,
Mia, be sure.

She tilted her chin up, leaned in, and showed him just how sure she was by diving in with a deep, hard kiss. She slid her tongue inside, finding the soft, cushiony curves beneath. That was Ryan: hard and uncompromising on the outside, yielding and sweet underneath. The trick was getting past the outer armor, but once she was in… She sighed.

When she pulled back for a breath, his eyes were smoldering, his jaw set hard. He ran a hand over her stomach, working her flat against the mattress as his eyes swept over her chest.

“Like this,” he said, rising to kneel over her. Hunched, because the ceiling was that low. His eyes glimmered with some deliciously wicked vision as he bunched the pillows and blankets along her side. His hands smoothed her shoulders, then scooped behind them and lifted her up.

A rush of warmth shot through her veins as she realized what he was planning, knowing just how good it would feel.

“This okay?” he grunted, tucking the pillows under her back, making her arch.

“This is great,” she mumbled, letting her head fall back, her legs fall apart. Opening up to him in every way possible as he finished arranging the cushions under her back.

There was a yoga pose like this, she vaguely remembered: body arched back over a pillow, chest open to the sky. Something supposedly good for breathing and relaxing and centering or something like that.

Which was all very nice, but it took a former Navy SEAL to teach her what else the position was good for. The one time they’d done this in New York — one of the rare times she’d been content to settle back passively and let him have his wicked way — it had been so good, she’d left the apartment shamefaced from all the noise she’d made. But this time, they were the sole boat in a quiet anchorage far from the beaten track.

Oh, yes. This was going to be good.

Ryan smoothed his hands over her chest, studiously missing her breasts each time.

“You are not going to tease me again,” she groaned.

He rocked back on his heels and looked at her, dead serious. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

One more sweep of hands, and then he ducked down and ravaged her like a hungry pirate, plucking at her nipples, nipping her lips. He gathered up the loose flesh of her breasts in greedy handfuls and worked them so hard, her cries filled the cabin.

“Okay?” He looked up, barely waiting for her nod before diving straight back to work.

She thought she couldn’t get any higher, but then his hands worked down her belly and his head followed.

She moaned even before his tongue made contact, and then she moaned even more, because that marauding tongue was very, very insistent, and very, very skilled. Being ravished really shouldn’t feel this good, but with Ryan, giving herself utterly, totally over felt absolutely right.

Trust. The kind of miracle she’d never really considered, just like the sunrise. But now that she took notice, it seemed like the most beautiful thing. Or the second most beautiful thing, because his tongue explored deeper, pushing coherent thought right out of her mind.

Her orgasm came out of nowhere to blindside her, a freight train of clenched muscles and strangled breath and keening cries that carried her a mile down the tracks before throwing her limp and panting to one side, leaving her wondering where the hell she was.

She opened her eyes, found Ryan holding her, and just like that, she knew just where she was.

Home.

One side of Ryan’s mouth curled up but not the other, like he wasn’t sure smiling was permitted. On the rare occasions when he really smiled a full, unguarded smile, it felt like the sun beaming back into the universe after an eclipse. Another one of those miracles she’d be sure to appreciate from now on.

“Come to me,” she whispered, tugging on his shoulders, and he did.

She’d bet good money that no couple in the history of mankind had orgasms that far apart and still called it bliss, because she was utterly spent. But Ryan was only getting started. She lay back doing nothing but feeling the hard slide of him inside her, listening to his heavy breath, letting her hands dance over his back as he thrust into her again and again.

“Mia,” he groaned, going stiff all over.

The muscles in his face tightened, one by one, and veins rose up along the arms bracketing her sides. His warm heat engulfed her as his cock pulsed deep, deep inside. It was as close to a miraculous out-of-body experience as she ever wanted to get, and it was so, so good. So good, she managed to rouse one last shred of energy and meet his final thrust.

He groaned; she howled; then they were both panting into the sheets. The boat slid sideways on the mooring, and a single shaft of sunlight traced the line of Ryan’s back. She followed it with her hands, sheltering him from it, then pulled a loose sheet over the both of them, huddled in a limp heap.

Reality was out there. Reality was waiting.

She pulled the sheet higher. Let reality wait, just a little bit.

“I owe you an Irish coffee,” Mia sighed.

“I’m good with this.” Ryan reached for the mug she offered, put it on the chart table, and pulled her into his arms. “And this.”

He was crushing her just a tiny bit, but he had to, because the day they had ahead of them might be as crazy as the day before, and he wasn’t heading into it without this.

When she nodded, her hair tickled his cheek. “This is good.”

He held her tighter. Yeah, it was good. Great. So great, they were likely to have to have another long talk when they finally got more pressing problems off their plate. A talk he might not mind too much, if she was thinking what he was thinking. That this wasn’t just a crazy interlude, but a new beginning. A second chance.

They sat over a silent breakfast in the cockpit, which was just about as similar to New York as Saturn was to Mars. The air was salty, a gull cried overhead, and the sun was sneaking along the scrub-lined hills, sparkling off the calm water.

“So peaceful,” Mia murmured.

He scanned the cliffy sides of the bay. Other than a darting bird among the bushes, there was no movement, no hint of trouble. But trouble was out there somewhere, that was for sure.

“Me and Meredith, we can sit in the cockpit for hours, just looking at it. Not taking pictures, not reading, not doing anything but just looking.”

He suspected he could do the very same thing, for days, even weeks, especially if she were there with him. But this was her adventure, and her sailboat, and not his. He’d managed to drag a week off work at short notice to come track her down, but even if she wanted to let him stick around, he couldn’t.

Which meant it was his turn to sigh. Guys like him didn’t take months off at a time. They worked their jobs, year in, year out, and squirreled away their savings in tiny little bits so that maybe in retirement they might rent a trailer not too far from the water and pretend it was a place like this.

Still, a guy could dream.

“You and your sister…” He changed the subject. “You’re kind of alike, but you’re so different, too.”

Mia chuckled. “Different, for sure.”

“She seems a bit more…anxious than you,” he ventured.

Mia flashed a bittersweet smile. “If there’s a cloud on the horizon, Meredith sees a storm. You get the slightest cut, and she treats it like the first sign of the plague.” Her face darkened. “She wasn’t always that way, but then…” She trailed off, looking sadly at the horizon, and he had to wonder what the
then
was.

“Anyway,” Mia continued, hitting a lighter tone. “You give her a boat to steer or a life-threatening emergency with lots of blood, and she’s a rock. Broken bones, bleeding wounds, no problem. Cooking, too. She’s a really good cook.”

He laughed. “I’d say that’s a good start. Plus she can sail like Captain Cook. You, too.”

Mia shook her head. “Everything else, though, and her confidence goes down the drain. Like she’s a failure before she even tries. She takes care of everybody but herself, as if she doesn’t deserve anything more than what she has.”

Now he really wanted to know what the
then
in her past was, but Mia sighed, shook her head, and stared into the distance, where the aquamarine shallows turned to deeper blues and grays that melted right into the horizon.

He looked, too, and pushed thoughts of painful pasts away to try to focus on promising futures filled with fantasies like having a boat, a horizon to point it toward, and Mia to share it all with. He closed his eyes on the shimmering waves of heat building over the island and let the fantasies grow. A little time sailing with Mia would be perfect. Then both of them could head back to New York, and when they were ready, they could move to Florida for that dive salvage job with slightly better pay, slightly saner hours, and a lot more private time. Maybe even family time.

Then he forced his eyes back open, because a man could dream himself right onto a reef if he didn’t watch out.

He tried joking the choked-up feeling away. “Imagine a guy like Stanley here.”

Mia snorted. “Watching the world through his camera lens.”

He held up an imaginary camera, happy for the distraction, and trained it on her. “Good morning, Mia!” he said, imitating Stanley’s high-pitched voice. “How about you shatter the silence of this beautiful place by telling us all about it?” He panned along the boat. “Tell us everything we can see with our two eyes, please.”

He focused the imaginary camera back on her then stopped.
Oh, shit.

Mia was frozen, her face completely still. She wasn’t even meeting his eyes, just staring into nothingness over his shoulder.

God, he was an idiot. He’d stuck an imaginary camera in her face and brought back the ugly memories and ruined everything and—

“Stanley,” she croaked.

Stanley?

She waved vaguely behind him. “The camera.”

Stanley and his camera? “What?”

Her eyes focused on him, shining bright now with some realization, some hope.

“Stanley was videoing everything! He was filming over your side of the dive boat, where that other boat was moored.”

He froze while the gears ticked over in his mind. “The boat with the two guys…”

“The guys that sped off right before the explosion,” she finished, looking grim. “If they show up on Stanley’s footage…”

“We would have a new suspect for the cops.”

Neither of them moved for a second, but then they both jumped up and started hustling around. They rushed through breakfast and the quickest, most water-efficient shower he’d had since leaving the Navy before finally paddling the kayak to shore.