Shit.
She sighed and leaned her head against the bulkhead of her cabin. She stared blankly at the ceiling, watching the way the overhead light there flickered. No solutions were coming to her and she had to get her apparatus ready for its first dip in the real sea within the next two days if she wanted to stay on schedule.
She thought of Dane and what he had said. Not about his offer of sex, but how sex could clear her mind and give her focus.
The idea of unabashed sex seemed strange. But the fear of failure and professional ridicule and shame were downright terrifying. Sex could be kept a secret and easily dismissed here, she’d seen proof enough of that for herself. But scientific failure was something that would follow her all the way back to shore.
She knew which she preferred.
“When all else fails, fresh tactics,” she said to herself.
Resigned, she got up and left her cabin.
When she arrived she saw light from under his door, the telltale sign that he was there and just as she usually did, he was burning the midnight oil. She was pleased that he was at least awake, given that it was close to 1 AM. She knocked on his door and waited patiently there, hoping that her sudden appearance there wouldn’t be an inconvenience if he were too deeply in the throes of his work.
When the door opened she saw him. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of raggedy old jeans and she saw that he had more tattoos on his chest and belly. Once again, he reminded her more of some kind of a punk rocker than a scientist and billionaire.
“Nya,” he said with a pleasant tone, “good evening.”
“Hi,” she said, suddenly feeling a pang of nervousness that hadn’t been there before. Her mind and mouth both searched for something to say. “I was wondering…”
She didn’t need to finish. All Dane did was smile and he stepped aside, allowing her room to enter. He knew why she was here.
She stepped inside.
Chapter 7
The door had barely closed when she turned around and found him upon her as if he were some wild beast that had been starved before its next meal. His mouth met hers as if they had been connected by invisible strings suddenly pulled taught and drawn together. His beard from several days of not shaving tickled her, but she relished it. And pleasant as that sensation was, it didn’t compare to his tongue as it slipped over his lips and into her mouth.
Her arms wrapped around his neck and she held him close, excitement rising up inside of her. There was something to be said for this kind of encounter. There was no need for the getting-to-know-you stage of a relationship. The end goal was firmly on her mind as it must have been his. And each, she felt, was eager to get at it.
Her arms tightened and he responded by encircling his arms around her larger waist. It was only a moment before he slipped his hands flatly inside the waistband of her jeans. His fingers snaked their way down, grabbing her ass cheeks and squeezing them tightly.
She moaned under his touch as he used the new leverage to grind his pelvis against hers. The sensation made her damp in her panties and she felt herself yearning for more. She wanted the old sensations of sex… warm flesh pressed against warm flesh… the sweat… the taste… the smell…
Dane seemed attuned to her desires and removed his hands from inside of her jeans and brought them to the hem of her shirt. In a single fluid movement he removed the garment. The ease with which he did so impressed her.
But he took hold of the bridge of her bra between her massive breasts and yanked so hard that the fabric tore with an audible snap. Her bra ruined, he yanked it free from her torso and fell to his knees like a priest at prayer before the idol of a goddess. He buried his face in the valley between her breasts, cupping them both with his hands. His tongue inscribed a primal language upon her skin in invisible ink as his hands massaged her bosom. The combination of his touch and tongue sent earthquakes down her spine, threatening to topple her where she stood.
Dane, however, offered her support that she was lacking. The firmness of his hands upon her breasts spoke a silent message: stay standing. Though she trembled in doing so, she stayed upright. The aftershocks of his mouth as it worked on her threatened to collapse her, like a house of cards suddenly troubled by a slight gust of wind.
His hands abandoned her breasts and his mouth took over their duties. He took one of her large dark nipples into his mouth and the sensation of his teeth as they gentle nibbled on her set fire to her skin.
His fingers traveled down and unfastened her jeans. With speed that spoke of pent up lust he pulled her jeans and panties down in the same motion. His left hand found her free breast, his fingers tracing her areolas and pinching her nipple, making it hard. His right hand shot between her legs and two of his fingers slipped inside of her.
This time there was no denying the quaking of her legs. As if she was held up by nothing but toothpicks she felt herself give way under her own weight as she fell to her knees. Dane’s mouth reclaimed hers, but his hands stayed where they were, pleasing her both inside and out.
His tongue went wild inside her mouth, probing every corner. Her tongue played lightly at his, she tried to pry her way into his mouth but like a stubborn sentinel he refused to give her that much leeway. His tongue barred, tackled, fended off, and held her tongue in place as if he were trying to keep her from learning some deep and private secret.
His fingers thrust in and out of her like mad. She had owned a vibrator once that hadn’t felt half this good. His technique was practiced, but somehow it felt savage… primal… like he was indeed venting his scientific frustrations sexually. She found the experience more than a little agreeable.
“God!” she moaned between kisses. She managed another quick breath before uttering, “Take your pants off.”
“You do it,” he whispered back, “my hands are busy.”
She obeyed, her fingers fondling the zipper and clasp of his ragged shorts. She pulled them down and found that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. Somehow she found this as amusing as she did arousing. Thinking that this was perfectly in sync with the kind of character she had imagined him to be. His cock was already hard and ready for her.
She gently began to stroke it, her fingers moved slowly as if mapping him via touch alone. She felt the veins of his dick becoming harder, throbbing with anticipation. The crown of his cock was perfectly shaped, the tension he was already feeling called to her.
“Harder,” he murmured. “Harder.”
She complied, wrapping both hands around his shaft and pumping him. It was like no other sensation that she had felt before. Her past lovers had all had techniques that she had found interesting, but the simultaneous stimulation of her mouth, breasts, hands, and vagina… she’d never experienced its’ like before.
He seemed to relish this control over her, she noticed. And though it felt like hours later – though perhaps it was only several minutes – he freed his mouth from hers and withdrew his hands from her body. Her senses cried out from the loss, noticing the lack of energy that he’d generated from her at once and silently she demanded that they return.
Dane laid on the floor before her, his cock upright and ready. “Get on.” She began to mount him but before she could complete the movement he stopped her. “No, no… turn around.”
She felt a second rush of excitement and flashed him a toothy grin. She turned her back on him and slowly mounted him. She remained upright on her feet and inch by inch she claimed him. He slid inside of her as if their mutual organs had been custom made to fit together. His hands reached out and took hers, giving her some support though she still felt as if she were half suspended in mid-air. The weakness she’d felt in her legs from before was nothing compared to now. But the feeling of pleasure drove her to remain on her feet. With her legs like springs she began to lightly bob on him.
This sensation too was unfamiliar to her. Perhaps it was the gentle rocking of the boat on the ocean waves, but she felt as if the tides of her own body were s
wirling within her like a typhoon. Dane clenched his fingers around hers and the feeling was both painful and pleasurable. She became aware of everything around her as their bodies fell into an unpracticed yet perfectly synchronized rhythm.
Every sound that the boat made presented itself to her as if she was hearing it for the first time. The constantly present but overlooked thrum of the engines, the sound of a buzzer as someone was summoned on an intercom, footsteps as they passed in the hall, even the sound of water as it lapped against the hull through the bulkhead were easily noticeable. And that she was able to take notice of it all filled her with a sense of wonder as to how she could not have noticed these things before.
There was an inherent beauty in them.
“On your knees,” Dane said after what felt a long time.
Though she didn’t acknowledge it aloud, she was grateful for the change in position. Her knees felt sore and stiff, unaccustomed as they were to such a repetitive motion. Her hands freed she slowly inched forward, her legs relieved of their delightful burden and she came to rest on all fours.
Dane scrambled behind her, seemingly filled with a reserve of energy. She found that admirable as well and as his hands found her waist he again slid inside of her. The sensation was different this time. She felt him probing to new areas of her body, stirring her, making the typhoon that had already been growing inside of her into a hurricane. It was as if he was some primitive god of the sea and she was the ocean that he could bend to his will.
He reached out and took hold of her hair, bunching it in his fist and pulling back on it just enough to give her some small measure of pain, but not enough to make her cry out. She found that that too was something that no lover had ever done for her.
“Yes,” he said as he began to thrust deeper and deeper within her. “Yes.”
With her head tilted back lightly upon her shoulders she began to lose her sense of time. Other senses followed. Her vision became blurry, her ears began to ring, and the sounds that had been as numerous as the cells in her body seemed to diminish. All that mattered was the feelings that she had inside of her and so long as they remained she was content.
Chapter 8
They lay together afterwards in a pile of sweaty clothes that had served as their bed with the dull noises of early morning all about them on the boat. She lay with one arm draped across his pelvis, gently stroking at his cock.
Their exertions had been something that she truly hadn’t anticipated. They had been so intense… so full of life… so full of something that had always seemed lacking before when she had been with her other lovers. She couldn’t put into words what the sensation was, except to say that somehow, it felt pure.
“You say that you do this only once every voyage?” she asked.
Dane’s arm curled up and gently stroked her hair. “Usually.”
That stung her a little. A pity, that. She was certain that she would have liked to do it again. She still had two weeks before they returned to shore. Maybe she could seek a second erstwhile diversion with another of the people aboard ship. She recalled Dr. Yao had been inclined to share a little time with her. Maybe she would try that?
He kissed her forehead, dragging her away from such thoughts. “Did that help you at all?”
She chuckled. “You know, I think it did.”
She wasn’t wrong.
By the time the call box was ready to take its first dive she had thought of the solutions to not only one, but all of the problems that she had been having. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, the answers to her problems had seemed obvious and positively laughable that she hadn’t realized them before.
“What did you do, exactly?” Dane asked her as she prepared to lower the call box over the side of the boat into the water.
She chuckled as the breeze of the sea kissed at her skin, spraying her with the delightful feeling of salt and open water. “I coated the electronics inside with nissaprine.”
“Nissaprine?” he asked.
“It’s a kissing cousin to latex, really. It’s used to make stinger barriers in Australia… you know how they say wearing a pair of pantyhose can protect you from the stingers of a jellyfish?”
He nodded.
“Nissaprine does the same thing, except you spray it on and it stays there until you rub it off with a solvent. I used the same thing to coat the electronics.”
“And it doesn’t muffle the signals?”
She shook her head. “Not at all, it keeps humidity that builds inside of the box if it’s in shallow water from affecting the gear and I used the same substance – but in a different medium – to line the seals of the box itself.”
“Double redundancy,” Dane said with an approving nod. “Impressive.”
She lowered the box into the water and the rope on which it was tethered lightly bit at her hand until the device sank into the surf with a loud plunk! She tied the rope off to a mooring hook on the edge of the boat and stepped to her laptop that was electronically tied to the call box.
She keyed a sequence and an image appeared on the monitor. The image was of a shifting series of blimps that Dane was quick enough to recognize.
“Sonar?”
She nodded. “The captain was kind enough to allow me to tether in for the experiment. It keeps me out of their way on the bridge and lets me stay close to the equipment in case something goes wrong.”
“Do you think something will go wrong?” he asked, his question a test.
She smirked. “With the gear? No. I don’t. With the whale song needed to see if this works… well, I liked to be surprised.”
He smirked back and watched as she typed away on her laptop. She almost wanted to laugh. Three days ago she would have been pulling her hair out if she hadn’t solved the problems that she’d had before now. But with her mind cleared and her ideas executed she felt as confident as though she were about to ride a bike.
She keyed the final sequence and while her laptop ran a series of numbers across her screen she turned to Dane, who alone of everyone else on the boat, had turned up to see her experiment in action.
“Okay, those blimps,” she said, indicating the images on the screen, “is a pod of gray whales.” She pointed to the series of numbers traversing across the screen. “My software has identified them through the call box and is interpreting the warning signal I’ve fabricated to match their tones and thrums.”
“Alright,” he said, following along. “It’s like an interpreter for whales?”
“More or less. If this works,” she said, hoping that she didn’t sound doubtful, “the pod will change direction. They’ll turn about and head back in the exact opposite direction that they came from.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then they’ll probably stay right on course and ignore us,” she admitted.
“How soon before you’re ready?”
She looked back to her laptop, the variables were ninety percent completed. “About ten seconds.” She waited and watched her screen. According to the sonar the pod, which looked to have only six members, was nearly three hundred yards off from where the Sea Sprite presently swam through the sea.
Please, she silently pleaded, let this work.
Her laptop completed its calculations and chirped with a large Ready signal. She clicked on her execute button and from beside the ship, there was a thrum that sounded deep and bellowing. Yet it was undeniably artificial, like listening to a synthesizer rather than a piano. Yet there was more to it… it was… organic in nature.
“Signal’s sent,” she said, her eyes fixed on the screen.
“How long will it take for the signal to reach the pod?” Dane asked, leaning over to look at her laptop.
“When they’re this close they should get it almost instantly,” she said. “But that’s genuine whale song. I have no idea how they’ll respond to an artificial one. It might be that they have the equivalent of a spam filter.”
Dane chuckled.
She silently counted the seconds as they went by. Eight... ten… fifteen… nineteen…
Slowly, the pod began to change direction.
She almost yelped with glee… but the feeling did not last.
The blimps on the screen changed their course, yes, but not in the way that she had hoped. They were simply heading in a new direction, but still mostly on their original course. Like sidestepping a puddle on a wet road, they were intent on keeping their heading and weren’t deterred by something in their way.
Their course shifted slightly, but still, their general direction remained unaffected.
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
She sighed and shut her eyes, trying to sieve the positive from the negative of this experience. “It means they heard it… but they’re not deterred.”
“Or they just didn’t understand it,” Dane offered consolingly as he put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t forget, whale song still isn’t a language you can learn in school. You’re trying to speak in gibberish.”
She almost chuckled at that, but the sound would not come.
“It’s not a failure,” Dane assured her. “Nobody gets it right the first time, remember?”
She sighed. She was still secure in the familiarity of scientific process, yes, but she couldn’t deny – at least to herself – that there had been some part of her that wanted to succeed on the first try. She wanted to be the first to accomplish something great the first time it had been tried in the field, like the Wright Brothers.
But alas, it seemed that it was not to be.
At least not today.
HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) Page 87