by Toby Neal
“Give it to me like you mean it,” I said, and he did, and I swear it just got better and better. And then he flipped me over.
“Oh, this ass,” he whispered. “I need to write a poem just about your ass.” He bit it, just lightly, and shivers of anticipation rippled over my body.
“I like poems,” I panted, as he shoved a pillow under my hips and hefted me up. I could already feel myself bending and melting to open for him, and I wished we had a mirror so I could see it all going on. But I also felt another quaver of apprehension. The Captain was so very big.
“Consider this a poem.” And he entered me. I arched and cried out as I felt whole new mind-blowing sensations, and all was a blur after that of an almost violent clashing that ended in the most glorious orgasm I’d had yet.
“I guess it does get better,” I murmured, face down in the sheets.
“And we have a lifetime to practice,” he said.
Knowing that filled me with something a lot like joy. And I got it suddenly, why he’d wanted to marry me. This particular ecstasy could bloom only in a protected place, where hearts were bound together.
I was glad I was reckless enough to take the ride with no seat belt.
Chapter 22
Five Years Later
Rafe
God, she’s beautiful, my Ruby. I can see her sleeping from where I sit at the desk, and the sun coming in the porthole is hitting her hair and turning it all those vibrant colors it goes when the light hits it—a red so deep it’s like a good pinot noir. But there’s cinnamon in there, and an orange like the heart of flame, and even some gold, each strand so purely metallic it seems like they were spun from a dragon’s hoard.
Ruby makes me a poet, even after five years of marriage. I keep waiting to wake up from the spell she’s cast on me, but it only gets stronger, deeper, and more complex.
We’re on board our yacht, the Creamy Maid, and last night we finally got the boat in the water. She’s been sitting in dry dock way too long, waiting for us to have the time for her. If we ever needed a distraction, it’s now. It’s the ideal time of year to take the boat to Saint Thomas from Boston, and we need to help Ruby’s family pack up to move.
Ruby’s father, Peter Michaels, died suddenly of a stroke. We’ve already flown out to the Virgin Islands for the funeral and been through that, but now, a month later, Ruby’s still having a hard time getting out of bed. To complicate things further, her mother, Kate, called me to say she “couldn’t handle” all the reminders of Peter and is packing up Pearl and Jade, Ruby’s sisters, and moving back to the mainland United States, to her family’s hometown of Eureka, California.
It didn’t help that this happened just when Ruby had graduated from law school and passed the bar. She’d been looking for jobs, refusing to work for any of our McCallum Enterprises companies. She was determined to build her own career “without nepotism,” which I thought was silly; I hired lawyers all the time and could genuinely use her. Now, with this tragedy, she seems to have lost all interest in the job hunt and doesn’t have a good reason to get out of bed in the mornings.
Ruby’s sister Pearl is seventeen now, and Jade fourteen, and apparently the girls aren’t taking their father’s death well. Pearl has taken to being out at all hours, while Jade has become overly perfectionistic, cleaning everything and washing her hands all the time, according to Kate.
Ruby’s family needs help—help it would be good for her to give.
So we’re sailing to Saint Thomas, and it’s a sign of Ruby’s lethargy that she didn’t even ask any questions, just packed her things and got on board the Maid with the crew.
I set my ledgers aside and stand up, looking at Ruby, curled into a shrimplike shape, barely visible under the blankets except for that bonfire of hair on the pillow. I know her body so well that memory fills in all the places hidden by bedclothes: round, pink-tipped breasts, a deep waist with a tiny cup of navel, and that ass. Oh, that ass.
I want her with that painful tug of need deep in my body, a nagging ache that has had me going around at half-mast for days now; but she’s withdrawn from me. We haven’t made love since she got the news on the phone. That first, terrible wail she gave before she broke down was the last time I felt close to her.
But I’m getting less and less functional, constantly irritable with deprivation and missing her. It’s been a month, and if that makes me a horn-dog who can’t keep his hands off his wife, then I’m guilty. I’m done waiting for her to come back to me. We need each other.
Ruby
I don’t sleep well since Dad died, though I constantly feel tired and want to slide into that oblivion. Rafe wakes me instantly as he gets into bed. I sense a slow-moving stealthiness in his movements that puts me on alert.
It’s been a month since we made love. I know he misses me, but in my own misery, I’ve felt unable to reach out to him, even to draw the comfort I know being with him would give.
His hand moves up my hip as he slides in close, spooning me from behind, and I feel the heat of his naked body. He always burns hotter than me, like he carries around a little furnace inside—and right now, in this frozen place I’m in, it feels so good.
His hand, large, warm, and rough with calluses from working on the boat, circles my nipple, loose in that tank top with the skimpy straps I can never wear in public because my breasts are too big. I have a sense of how my breasts feel through his hands by the way he hefts and caresses each of them, and he moves closer still, moving the long hair off my neck to kiss the exposed skin there and sending a shiver through me.
I feel what he feels somehow, as often happens between us.
My body tells me of his strength, his intent, his gentle but persistent waking, and at the same time, through his hand I feel how deliciously silky my body is, the softness, the velvet texture. In the big, hot, humming restraint of his body, I sense the ache to be in me where all is slippery tight warmth and a fit that’s perfect.
I let my breathing quicken just a little to show I know he’s there and I like what he’s doing. It feels like Rafe’s thawing the ice that’s surrounded me with his very hands.
I arch back against him, feeling his hard length against my butt, but he makes no move there. He slides his roaming hand under my shirt, traveling down from my sensitized breasts along the curve of my waist, tracing along my ribs, and through his touch I feel the contoured plane of my belly as he slides across it with that delightfully rough hand. He palms my plump mound, just for a moment, just long enough for me to want more of that, before he’s moving again.
He circles around my thighs in the cotton pajamas, then abruptly slides that exploring hand into my pants and panties, lifting the fabric away as he presses the length of his muscular arm against my butt and penetrates my slick heat with firm, knowing fingers.
Deep. So deep. Just there, just that place that knows him so well.
I jerk and moan instantly and press back against him, but again he doesn’t stay there. Quick as lightning his hand is gone and back up at my breasts, working the nipples until I’m twitching and panting, impatiently tugging my shirt off and shoving out of my pajama pants. I push my ass against his crotch and feel his hardness leap at the contact.
I feel good that I’m affecting him, too, as I slowly arch back and forth so he feels my firm, silky ass against his length in invitation, even as I turn my head to see him, up on one elbow as he looks down at me, working me with that busy hand.
I push the covers off, and the bright morning light pouring through the porthole hits my white body like a spotlight. He looks dazzled by the brightness on my skin as I roll onto my back and open my legs beside him, guiding his hand. We gaze at each other a long moment and I shut my eyes, the intimacy too much.
“I want you,” I say. “I need you.”
He smiles and leans down to kiss me as that clever hand slides down and between to stroke me firmly. Again and again. And again. And again.
I’m moaning, and he takes th
e sounds into his mouth as if sipping them, as if we have all the time in the world, even as I know touching me there makes him just want to pry my legs wider and dive in.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, that skillful hand, so delightfully rough, slides up my belly, wanders and circles, and everywhere it goes tells me everything it touches is beautiful, beautiful.
And that makes me want him even more. My hand slides down his hard, hair-roughened chest, across the chiseled plane of his abs to circle his length with my hand. It gives a happy throb of greeting as my hand circles it and my thumb caresses the shapely head, so much like a warrior’s helmet.
I’ve always thought so and never said it, afraid to be cheesy. But his shaft is a beautiful thing to me, as all of him is, and perfect for all we do together. Now that I have him in hand, I tug him closer and I feel him chuckle, a vibration that rumbles against me as I slide my hand, caressing, up and down the steely length.
He slides his free, roaming hand one more time up and down my body, leaving sensation stirred like the movement of bioluminescence on the tide. That expert hand comes to rest on my breast, and he pinches my nipple hard, leaning over to capture the other nipple with his hot, slick mouth at the same time, biting, and it’s exactly what I want in that moment, and my body arches involuntarily off the bed as I cry out in delightful pain-pleasure, “Yes!”
He turns me on my side again, my back to his front, and he lifts my knee and slides into me in one long, slick stroke, filling me so completely I arch back and my head bangs his collarbone in my rapture and my cries sound like seagulls flying by outside the porthole.
It feels like a key sinking hard into a lock, turning tumblers of delight. Like a plug connecting with an electric socket and lighting up with current. Like what it is, lovemaking that’s an utterly perfect melding of power, connection, and pleasure.
I wonder how I lived a month without him in me.
He grabs my hip and pumps into me, so hard, so hard, and in this moment of connection, I know his loneliness, his desperate need for me, how much he missed me and needs to be in me, and it melts me further so I feel myself fragmenting in his arms, coming unglued as I reach back to grasp his ass and he hauls me closer, grasping my breast for leverage, and it’s hard and sweet and exactly right, and I am on the verge of coming, pressing back for more.
But he doesn’t want that yet, and he pulls out abruptly.
I moan at the coldness and emptiness of being left behind as he rises above me, his face dark and intent. I feel him want an even deeper connection with me, to be so deep in me I’m filled only with him. In some way he wants to obliterate the pain of my grief and fill it with only him, with his life, with his passion and love for me.
That shaft I’ve come to love juts in front of him, promising all the pleasure I’m going to feel, and he rolls me onto my back and folds my knees up against my chest. I’m open to him, tight, hot, and slick, my movement restricted, utterly vulnerable and in his power, and somehow in this mind meld we have, he knows how much I need that, and I know it, too.
“Yes. More, yes. More, yes,” I breathe as he gazes at me for a long moment as if impressing the sight of me on his eyes.
I live through a long moment of anticipation until he plunges into my vulnerable slippery tightness. My eyes instantly roll back as he goes so deep it seems to touch my spine, lighting up sensation that ripples up my nerve endings, cascading me with pleasure like a pinball machine going crazy with lights and music and a pulsing SCORE!
And if it’s possible, and somehow it is, he’s holding himself above me by pressing down on my shoulders, pressed against my knees, and he’s pumping, pumping, pumping, no restriction of any kind between us, and all I can see are spots of light behind my eyes, all I hear are our panting cries of pleasure, and all I know is that there is nothing and nowhere better than this long, hot, trembling pulsation…that goes on and on.
Rafe pulls my legs down suddenly, still deep in me, and the change of angle pushes me over the edge, bucking and mindless, coming around him coming, too, a long, physical crashing into each other that feels more like fighting than sex, a grappling and wrestling as we wring every bit of pleasure from each other while simultaneously giving all we have to each other.
It is messy, ugly, loud, hard, soft, generous, taking, and utterly beautiful.
He falls across me, huge and strong and as totally felled by me as if I were a woodsman who just took down the biggest tree in the forest. I feel triumphant. I own him, my great felled tree, and somehow, in that intimate sharing we still have for a little while, I know he feels exactly the same.
Triumphant possession and utter fulfillment.
I wonder, as I stroke his cooling back beside me, if we two are the only ones to know this feeling, and somehow I know we’re not, but we’ve been lucky enough to taste this remarkable ecstasy more than most.
His back feels vast and smooth and so familiar it’s a part of me and yet fascinatingly different from everything about me. There are tiny vertebrae bumps in the deep groove of his spine, and the tops of his buttocks are silky with tender fuzz, and he vibrates with the beginning of a snore.
It’s chilly in the bright sunlight, and I pull the blanket up over us and snuggle against him. For all the time we were making love, I was in both our bodies, and it was everything good and perfect, and for a little while I forgot my father is gone from the world.
But eventually Rafe moves and gets up, and I sigh sadly as he does. He fetches a towel and puts it between my thighs and tucks me up in the blanket and says, “I have to go topside. We’re casting off in an hour.”
Casting off for Saint Thomas. Where I have to help pack up my childhood home and help my mother and my sisters get ready for a huge move into the part of all of our lives that is after.
After Dad.
I shut my eyes because the grief is back, like a sickness in my bones, draining and cold as I remember my father’s dead ashes on the ocean and nothingness, and I nod and can’t even smile.
Chapter 23
Rafe
It takes ten days to get to Bermuda if all goes well sailing and five more to get to Saint Thomas. A week into the voyage, we’re making good time. The crew and I are glad to be back on the ocean after five years of nothing but summer trips, and though most of them have families and lives now, scattered across the States, they dropped everything to come when I called. Freddie, with his big, bald head, who runs our galley; Sven, my right hand, who helps me with navigation; Fitz, an all-around sailor but who’s in charge of monitoring our lines and sails on this voyage; and Ronnie, who is an engineer in his other life and the official mechanic for the Maid; plus an assortment of other hands who are new to me.
We’re busy all day, keeping the Maid shipshape, on course, and moving steady, and so far we’re ahead and the seas have been good.
The only person without a real role is Ruby. She sits in a deck chair at the bow of the Maid for hours at a time, watching the horizon.
I’m used to a different Ruby. Always on the go, she is usually bubbly and talkative, or serious when she’s reading or studying. But whatever she’s doing, it’s a hundred percent. Now she stares at the far horizon, wrapped in a blanket from the cabin, her expression empty.
I am at a loss as to how to help her. All the guys are worried about how she’s acting, trying to think of ways to cheer her up. We’ve made love a couple more times since the voyage started, but it certainly hasn’t been the sex marathon I’d been hoping for. Even though being with me seems to help get her mind off her loss for a little while, it always comes back, and she hasn’t initiated anything with me.
Sven asked her to play chess, which she usually loves, but she said “maybe later” and never took him up on it. Fitz tried to get her fishing, but she lost interest after five minutes. None of that is like the Ruby we know.
This morning I bring her a cup of hot chocolate that Freddie made for her in the galley. Freddie keeps cooking her litt
le special things in the galley and asking me to take them to her; he always fixes me one, too, as if whatever it is was my idea.
Today is brisk and there’s a feeling of some far-off northern storm in the air, and I’m glad of the rich, steaming chocolate to warm my hands if nothing else. I take it to her in her usual spot at the bow, and I pull up another low webbed chair to sit in beside her. Today she has a journal open on her lap. It’s new, and I hope it’s a good sign.
“Freddie made you some chocolate.” I hand it to her so there’s no argument about whether she wants it or not. She hasn’t been eating much lately either, and I see the sharp wing of her collarbone in the low neck of her shirt. She takes the chocolate.
“Freddie’s so sweet,” she says absently.
I pull part of her blanket over my legs. The wind feels like it’s cutting through my clothes, but I love it out here. The sky and ocean are a broad sweep, as if we sail right into a universe that’s all shades of blue. There’s a tiny glint of flying fish leaping across the surface ahead of us. I’m so used to the endless rocking motion now that it doesn’t even register consciously, and won’t until we’re on land again and I feel it as something I miss.
“You really love it out here, don’t you?” Ruby looks at me, her white fingers wrapped around the mug. Her eyes are a changeable green; today they seem almost turquoise, as if they’ve picked up blue from the ocean.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Has it been hard for you, being a landlubber with me?” She’s been in school the last five years, and we’ve been living in one of our Boston houses, just taking the boat out for short runs in the summer.
“It was time for me to give the businesses attention. It’s been good.” I don’t answer her directly, because the truth is, I have missed the ocean. When I met her, I was at the end of three years of sailing around the world. After we got married, all that ended abruptly—but it was good timing. I don’t regret it. She had college, and it was time for me to pick up the reins of the businesses I’d inherited.