“Are you begging already?” He picked up her hips so her feet no longer touched the deck. “Remember, don’t let go.”
He lifted her higher so that her opening was level with his hips despite their height difference and positioned his forearm so it crossed her lower abdomen, holding up all of her body weight as if it was nothing. She clutched the steering wheel, her entire body buzzing in anticipation.
“If you only knew how long I’ve wanted this.” He pushed the head of his cock inside her. “Do you want more?”
“Yes.” The desperate cry didn’t sound like her, but it was. She’d never wanted anyone as much as she wanted him right now. He chuckled, but the same desperation electrifying her came through in his voice.
“I’m always happy to oblige.” He sank into her, filling her completely before withdrawing and pushing forward.
It felt so good she nearly lost her hold on the steering wheel as the sensations pummeled her.
“Fuck, you are so tight.” He tightened his grip around her waist and increased his pace. “You feel so damn good.”
Again and again he rocked into her as her second orgasm built, making her entire body vibrate.
“Hunter, I—” The climax hit before she could give him any more warning.
He buried himself as deep as he could, once, twice, three times while wave after wave of pleasure washed over her and then came with her name on his lips. She could barely keep her eyes open as he slipped out of her and turned her around, sweeping her up into his arms. He carried her across the deck to the lounge chairs where their best mistake, as he called it, had begun. As she settled against him, his chest rising and falling at the same fast pace as her own, her eyes drifted shut.
“Cyn, that was amaz—” He stiffened underneath her. “What the fuck?”
She snapped up into a sitting position and opened her eyes, but Hunter wasn’t looking at her.
He stared out into the distance. Following his gaze, she looked out over the water and her gut twisted. The entire sky had turned an ominous black and the water was choppy around them, jerking the boat this way and that with the viciousness of a toddler in a temper tantrum. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed almost immediately by another, and the heavens opened up, pouring rain down on them.
Chapter 4
They were in deep shit.
Hunter grabbed his shorts and pulled them on. “Get dressed. This is going to get ugly.”
They dressed quickly as the yacht bobbed up and down on the water. It wasn’t easy going, but they’d managed it. The storm had come up out of nowhere to appear full-blown all around them.
No. That wasn’t true. He’d been too focused on Cyn to notice the signs. He’d been like his parents, too busy at leisure to notice the real world crashing around them. Unlike Sarah and Sydney McKenney, he didn’t plan on paying the ultimate price for his mistake. This was not how this was supposed to go. All he’d wanted to do was spend a few hours alone, just him, the ocean, and that never-ending need for Cyn Aston gnawing at him like a feral cat.
She never should have been out here on the water with him.
They never should have had the best sex of his life.
He never should have fallen in love with her.
The thought came out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It was like he’d finally looked up and realized the sky was blue and it scared the ever-loving shit out of him—even more than the storm barreling down on them. What the hell did he know about love? Nothing.
The best thing he could do was to make sure they got out of this storm alive and then make sure to stay the hell away from her before he fucked up and touched her again. He knew how to make money and how to work eighty-hour weeks, not how to be in love. After practically growing up in the Astons’ house and seeing Cyn’s parents together, there was no doubt that, unlike him, she knew exactly how love was supposed to be and would hate him when he failed to live up to the standard her family set.
Cyn grabbed his arm, her fingers curling around his forearm like a vise, yanking him from useless mental meanderings. Worry lines slashed their way across her forehead as the rain pelted down on her, slicking her hair to her face.
“What do we do?”
If he’d been paying attention, focused on the ocean like he should have been, he would have gotten away from the storm before it hit. Now, he didn’t have any other option than to stick it out and hope the waves didn’t knock them over.
“Grab everything that isn’t bolted down and secure it below so we don’t have to worry about flying debris going through the window.”
The winds swallowed his words as he pointed to the glass wall around the stairs leading down to the living quarters. It was made with a protective laminating shield that, if something were to break the window, would lock the broken glass together and keep it watertight. Still, Hunter wasn’t one to take risks. If the storm could send it flying, he wanted it below deck. The water around them was getting choppier, the waves cresting at frighteningly high peaks.
The ocean wasn’t rocking them anymore, it was jerking the craft this way and that. He glanced down at Cyn. Her clothes were already plastered to her skin and her eyes were round with worry as she looked out at the angry waters. She had a death grip on his arm.
Fury flashed through him, jolting his body as if he’d been struck by the lightning exploding in the sky. It was his fault that they were caught up in the storm. If he’d been paying attention instead of lazing away like a summer storm couldn’t appear suddenly on an otherwise perfect day, then they wouldn’t be facing down waves cresting high enough to slap the railing.
“What are you going to do?” She had to shout her question even though they were standing right next to each other.
“Call in our coordinates just in case something goes wrong.”
She squeezed his arm. “Nothing will.”
Self-recrimination slithered through his belly like cold, gag-worthy bilge water. “It already has.”
But she didn’t hear him. She was rushing around the deck and gathering the few items the wind hadn’t already scattered. As he made his way toward the yacht’s control panel by the steering wheel, he ran through the rules for boating in stormy seas. The fuel tank was close to full. All of the hatches except for the one leading to the living quarters below were closed. As soon as possible, he’d send Cyn down below to ride out the storm there in safety.
They could do this. He just couldn’t get distracted again.
The marine radio was slick with rain, but he managed to call in their coordinates just in case. They weren’t that far off the Oregon shore and the worst storms tended to hit in the winter, but this squall had come out of nowhere and hit hard. Rather than head inland, they needed to ride it out in open waters.
Cyn hustled over to his side. She was soaked to the bone from the sheets of rain slashing sideways across the bow and the splashes of ocean water slapping down on the deck. “Everything’s taken care of,” she said. “What’s next?”
He handed her a life jacket and put his own on, praying they wouldn’t need them. “We slow down and head into the wind.”
“That’s not what they do in the movies.”
Pivoting so he faced her, he tugged hard on the white clips fastening her orange life jacket to make sure the fit was secure and tight. “It is when you’re doing it in real life. If we head straight into a wave, when we ride down it, our propeller could rise up out of the water and kill any ability we have to control the yacht. We need to hit the waves at a forty-five-degree angle, keep the propeller below water, and limit the amount of pounding we’re going to take until the wind shifts and starts blowing us from behind instead of from the front.”
“Why?”
“That means the center of the storm has passed over us and we’re almost home free.”
Judging by how the wind was blasting down on them from the bow as the sky lit up with flash after flash of lightning as the storm barreled down on t
hem, that wouldn’t be any time soon. Fuck.
He widened his stance to better balance and tightened his grip on the steering wheel and kept the yacht at a forty-five-degree angle to the waves in the choppy water. Keeping on course was going to take all his attention, but he couldn’t help but note where Cyn was in his peripheral vision. Her bright blonde hair darkened by the water was plastered against her pale cheeks and she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering. He’d promised her that sex would be their best mistake. Now he hoped it wouldn’t be their last.
“You need to go below,” he shouted over the storm. “It’ll be safer for you.”
“I can help.” She grabbed ahold of the captain’s chair as if that ended the whole discussion. Things really did come too easily for her if she thought that was the case.
“The best way to do that is to get bel—”
A huge wave hit the yacht, shoving the vessel to the side. Cyn went flying. He lunged for her but closed his arms around wet, empty air. The move knocked him forward enough that when the next wave hit, he lost his balance. He skittered across the deck, threw his arms out for balance, and overcompensated by leaning back as far as he could. It was too much. His feet slipped. He fell back.
Cyn’s scream pierced the wall of sound around him before everything went black.
The secured lounge chair broke Cyn’s fall. It also made her vision blur and her head ache, but considering the alternative was bobbing for apples in the Pacific, she’d go with the lightly battered skull.
As she blinked away the fuzz, everything cleared up right in time for her to see Hunter stumble and land flat on his back. She bolted up and screamed just as his head hit the deck with a sickening thud. It bounced once and then he didn’t move again. She scrambled to his side as fast as she could with the yacht tossing and turning in the ocean. Between her pulse pounding in her ears and the waves beating against the yacht, she was amazed she could hear her own voice as she screamed, “Hunter!”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t move.
Bile burned its way up her throat as she pressed her fingers to his jugular and watched his chest for the telltale rise and fall that would show he was still alive. A second lasted an eternity before the strong thump-thump of his pulse pushed against her fingers.
“Thank God.” She rested her forehead against his chest, relishing the steady up and down of his rib cage for a moment before a lightning flash jolted her back to reality. “Hunter, you gotta wake up.”
He mumbled.
Relief spread through her like warm sunshine and she nuzzled his cheek, curving her body around his to protect him from the punishing rain.
“Come on, stop being such a drama king and wake up.”
More mumbles before he cracked his eyelids. A confused haze clouded his gray gaze, but he was there.
“Yes, that’s it.” She couldn’t keep a grin from curling her lips. “Come back to me.”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, just almost to the great beyond.”
Now that he sounded like himself, the reality of the situation sank in. He could have broken his neck. She didn’t want to move him, but leaving him sprawled out on the deck in the middle of a massive storm wasn’t an option.
“Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?”
The glare he gave her was total badass, alpha stud Hunter. “Of course I can. I’m not a total slacker.”
“Just a klutz.” She ran her hands over his body, needing to feel for herself that he was all right.
“What are you—” He sat up and his whole face turned green. “Oh, God.”
Automatically she reached out to steady him, wrapping her fingers around his large bicep and trying to ignore the spark of electricity that made her stomach do the loopty-loo.
“If you puke, don’t aim at me.”
A soft touch was the last thing he needed to recover himself. She’d spent most of her life studying her brother’s best friend, hoping to find the crack in his impenetrable armor that would let her inside. She knew what made him tick and how he reacted to the world. A soft touch was the last thing he needed—or wanted.
Taking a deep breath, he looked around as if trying to figure out how he’d ended up flat on his back. “What happened?”
“I got knocked off-balance and you tried to come to my rescue.”
He grimaced. “Obviously I did a stellar job since I’m on my ass and seeing two of you.”
That was not good. He wasn’t bleeding and didn’t have any broken bones, but he probably had a concussion. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, so bright it made her see spots. Out in the elements was the last place he needed to be. She stood, bracing her legs far apart to maintain balance as the yacht rolled on the choppy water, and held out her hand to help him up.
“We need to get you below.”
Ignoring her hand, he lumbered up on his own. “I’m okay.”
“Is that why you have that super-healthy clammy skin and greenish pallor going?” God save her from stubborn men.
“Someone needs to steer us through the storm.” He tilted his face up, impervious to the rain pelting him from above, and held up a finger. “The wind changed. It’s coming from behind us. We’re through the worst of it.”
And wasn’t that the second-best thing to have happened to her today? “Believe it or not, I can turn a wheel and keep us at forty-five degrees to the waves.” She took his arm and started toward the stairs leading down to the living quarters. “Let’s go, Hunter. I’m taking you to bed and this time it’s not to jump your bones.”
He jerked to a stop. “We can’t do that.”
Rolling her eyes, she snorted. “I’m limber but not enough to bang you and steer the boat at the same time.”
“No, I mean ever again.” He turned and faced her. Another flash of lightning exploded in the sky. “It wouldn’t work out and you’d hate me for it.”
All the post-coital glow and the warm fuzzies of facing down Mother Nature drained out of her. Looking up at him, she saw everything she’d forgotten to guard herself against when it came to the man she’d never been able to get out of her mind. Censure. Disappointment. A distance she couldn’t breach—ever. From everyone else in her life, she could accept that look and walk away. She’d disappointed them all many times before. But Hunter? It broke something in her, leaving razor-sharp shards in its place.
The wind howled around them, but she barely heard it. The rain whipped her skin, but she didn’t feel it. The storm raging around them had nothing on the ice-cold numbness that blotted out the last residual happy inside her.
“Right.” She straightened her shoulders and gave him her best I-don’t-give-a-fuck stare. “It wouldn’t work because I’m just a big, lazy, rich party girl and you’re Mr. Work Is My Life.”
He blanched. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m not—”
“Look, let’s not get all into it. We got high. We had sex. It’s over. Fine. You know me. I don’t get emotionally involved—it takes too much work.” She walked him the few steps toward the stairs, each step a torturous goodbye. “I’m staying topside. You stay down there while everything’s still rocking. The last thing you need is to take another blow to the head.”
Now she, on the other hand, could use a little thunk to knock the memory of today out of her brain forever.
“Cyn…” Instead of going down the stairs, he sat down on the bolted-down lounge chair, his face pale and drawn but lined with enough Hunter stubbornness for her to know there was no way she was going to force him below. “I’m sorry.”
Welcome to the club. “Don’t be. It’s not productive and you have a reputation to uphold.”
And so did she. After all, she was the tabloids’ favorite slacker, Princess Cyn—or at least that was what she’d been pretending.
“So you’re staying topside?” she asked, knowing there was no way to move him where he didn’t want to go no matter how much it would benefit him.<
br />
He nodded, the movement adding another shade of green to his cheeks.
Bullheaded man. “Whatever.” She shrugged as if she didn’t give a shit, as if her heart wasn’t cleaved in two. “Do what you want. You always do.”
She stalked over to the captain’s chair and grabbed the wheel, adjusting their course to maintain forty-five degrees and steered true. She’d get through this storm. She’d get through her brother’s wedding. Then, she’d get through the rest of her life without touching the man she loved ever again.
The storm’s tail end swirled around them and all Hunter could do was watch as Cyn piloted them through the choppy water as the pounding in his head subsided, leaving only the ache in his chest that had nothing to do with cracking his head on the deck.
For more than an hour, he’d watched her control the yacht with ease, as if she’d been born to do it. She was fucking magnificent. He shouldn’t be surprised. The woman always got what she wanted. What about him? What did he want? He’d always thought it was ensuring he didn’t make the same mistakes as his parents, so he’d practiced moderation in everything but his work habits. The balance sheet was where he’d operated in excess, focusing all of his attention on building the family coffers instead of trying to empty them, but it hadn’t stopped him from wanting what he couldn’t have—Cyn. And he’d wanted her. Damn had he wanted her. He’d had her for a moment. He’d seen it in the total blissed-out glow she’d had as she came down from her orgasm—she’d been all his.
Then the storm came, shaking everything loose, knocking them off their planned course, and washing away everything that wasn’t bolted down. Something about Cyn had gotten under his skin and reminded him that maybe life was about more than a balance sheet. It was about appreciating the moments, taking your time to savor and—yes—allowing yourself the luxury of acting like a sloth every once in a while.
She let people think she was Princess Cyn, but out here on the ocean, he saw who she really was… the woman he loved and couldn’t have.
Alphas of Seduction Page 13