Sweet & Wild

by Viv Daniels

  “What’s wrong with you, dude?” Todd said.

  “I have a strange guy shouting in my face while I’m trying to eat dinner,” Boone replied evenly.

  “Loser,” Todd said, and purposefully bumped the table before stomping off.

  I let out a long breath.

  “So that guy’s an asshole,” Boone said cheerily, as he placed the top bun on his burger and lifted it to his mouth. “Now I know why you have more fun with me than Canton boys.”

  “I thought you were going to punch him or something,” I said, breathless.

  He finished chewing before he said, “Why?”

  Because that’s what guys like Boone did. “Because he was being slimy to me.”

  “Why didn’t you punch him?”

  I was taken aback. “Because…I don’t know. I don’t punch people.”

  “Neither do I,” he said simply.

  “But—” But what? Was I disappointed to find out my bit of rough was not actually rough?

  “Bullies hit people,” he said. “My father hit people all the time. He hit me, he hit my mother. No one would help us, and my mother wouldn’t leave him. So I left. By myself.” Then he returned to eating his burger.

  My eyes began to sting, and I couldn’t seem to find my tongue. “Boone—”

  “I’m not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me, Hannah. I’m telling you because we were going to get there tonight anyway. You already knew I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I might as well tell you why, too.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “Like I said, don’t be.” He dipped a french fry in some ketchup. “I turned out awesome anyway, remember?”

  “Yeah.” I thought while I poured the dressing on my salad. “And here I am telling you my deep, dark secret that I’m—gasp—a horror movie blogger.”

  He chuckled at that. “Yeah. You’re kind of sheltered, did you know that?”

  Don’t worry, Boone. I really, really do.

  * * *

  I expected Boone to drive us to some new wilderness make out spot after dinner, but instead he took me home.

  I looked out the window at the darkened house beyond. I wondered if my father had come home at last. I wondered what my mother had told him about our fight this afternoon.

  “What’s wrong?” Boone asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s like I told you last night, I feel like I’m two different people. The Hannah Swift I’m supposed to be is just a mask.”

  He nodded toward the house. “And they make you feel like you have to wear it?”

  “Yes. And I’m not sure what to do.”

  “You walk away.”

  “I can’t.”

  He looked at me. “Why not? I did.”

  This wasn’t comparable to whatever horrors he’d gone through with an abusive father, though. Dad wasn’t abusive. Just a liar. “It’s not that bad.”

  “It was bad enough to leave school and go to Europe.”

  True.

  “Why didn’t you just stay there?” Boone asked.

  “Because I wasn’t happy in Europe, either. Because I didn’t want to waste my whole trust fund.”

  “Your trust fund?” He laughed. “You have a trust fund and you’re living at your parents’ house?”

  Yeah, because I wanted to spend it on something that mattered. “Well, I’m getting an apartment near school again this fall.”

  His mouth spread into a smile. “If you had an apartment now, I could take you there and give you that last orgasm I owe you.”

  “Or we could go to your place,” I countered.

  “I told you, my place is far away.” He slid his hand up my thigh.

  “So is fall,” I replied, and kissed him.

  Boone’s mouth opened at the touch of my lips and we fell into each other, our tongues meeting, our breaths mingling, our arms slipping around each other and holding fast. He kissed me slowly, deeply, as if he had all the time in the world to sit in his pickup and devour my mouth. I don’t know how long it lasted, but by the time he pulled back I was breathless with need.

  “Take me to your place,” I whispered in his ear. “Please.”

  He buried his face in my shoulder, breathing hard while he fought some kind of inner war. But I don’t know if he’d won or lost when he finally said, “Okay.”

  * * *

  Boone’s place was far away. We drove for nearly an hour, and as we came up to the exit for the bridge, I turned to him in surprise. “You live out on the island?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Just off it.”

  I had no idea what that meant until we turned down the road to the yacht club.

  “You live on a boat.”

  He parked, and we got out. “It’s over here,” he said, his tone gruff. Together we walked down the pier, past gleaming speedboats and stately yachts. “Don’t get too excited. It’s a piece of garbage.”

  And I saw it. A little 30-footer, with a worn wood deck, splintering rails, and a mast with a few rust spots. Of course he didn’t have air-conditioning. I’d be surprised if he had working plumbing.

  “Is this the boat you said you were working on?”

  He nodded.

  “And they’re letting you live on it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What do you mean? Are you squatting?”

  He sighed. “No, I’m living here officially. But I’m not particularly proud of that fact.” He climbed aboard and held his hand out to me. I joined him, feeling the boat pitch and sway beneath us.

  “What do you mean? This is cool. I mean, as long as it’s seaworthy.”

  He grinned at me and released the ropes. He turned on the motor and backed us out of the slip.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “It’s nighttime.”

  “I’m just giving us a little space. Or do you want to be in a mess of boats and yacht club members?”

  “Good point.”

  Boone took us down the shore a little way, to a small pier far at the end of the yacht club property, out among the reeds and scrub, where no one could possibly see us. During the day, it was probably a fishing pier. He tied us up there and cut the engine, then came around and sat by me. There was little moonlight tonight, and the lights from the distant yacht club pier cast deep shadows on this side of the rustic dock. I could barely see him, but I could feel him, the warm, muscled bulk of him right next to me, like a magnet drawing me in.

  “So,” he said.

  “So.”

  “This is my place. What do you think?”

  “Good enough,” I said, and tackled him to the deck. His hands were all over my body and mine were running up under his shirt and unbuttoning all those troublesome little buttons and cursing the day he traded in his white T-shirts. “I’m going to rip this,” I growled.

  “Please don’t,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of spares.”

  Finally, I undid the last button, and opened his shirt wide to reveal the planes of his beautiful chest. I could barely see him in the shadows, but I could definitely feel him, every ripple of muscle, every curve of flesh. I dragged my lips up the center of his chest, over his neck and chin, and right to his mouth. We kissed like that for quite a while, Boone lying on his back on the worn wooden deck with me straddling his hips and leaning over him. The boat rocked softly beneath us, water lapping against the wooden sides. His mouth and tongue were driving me wild, hot and urgent, teasing and nipping. I couldn’t get enough of him.

  “I really—” I gasped, grinding my hips against his “—love kissing you.”

  “Yeah,” was all Boone managed before he pressed his mouth against mine again. Somehow he’d gotten my jeans undone, and was running his fingers back and forth beneath the waist strings on my thong underwear.

  “Take your pants off,” he said.

  But I had plans. I started scooting down his body, trailing kisses as I went. I licked the edge of his Voltaire tattoo, then popped the button
on his jeans and carefully pulled the fly down over his straining erection. He lifted his hips and I drew off his pants and boxers.

  “Maybe it’s your turn,” I said, and took him in my mouth.

  I heard his sharp intake of breath, felt his stomach muscles twitch and flex beneath my eager fingers as I went on. His hands wove into my hair, gently twisting fingers around the locks and tugging softly in time to my movements. Deep, guttural moans were erupting from Boone’s throat, nonsense mixed in with pleas and my name. “Oh, Hannah, oh, Hannah. Oh, God, please, Hannah…”

  I lifted my head for a moment to smile at him, and he grabbed me and yanked me up alongside him

  “No,” I whined. “I was just getting started.”

  “No,” he said. “I need to kiss you.” His mouth met mine, a desperate, trembling kiss. His voice had dropped to a breath. “I need to touch you.” He pressed his forehead to mine, hard, as if he could somehow transmit whatever impossible thoughts were running through his brain. “I need to…dammit, I’m afraid of all the things I need to do with you.”

  I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here.”

  Boone made a sound that was half cry, half laugh. “Yeah. The last place in the world you should be.”

  “Not if it’s with you.”

  His kiss was almost painful in its intensity, as if Boone could melt us together. “Don’t say that,” he begged. “This was just a game in a bar…”

  I laughed. “I never had sex on a boat.”

  Boone sighed in defeat, then smiled at me. “I never did give you that third orgasm.”

  “I never thought this would happen.” I slid off my sandals, then pulled off my top. And as I was sliding my jeans and underwear over my hips, he got a condom.

  “I never did, either,” he said, pulling me down on top of him. I hadn’t ever started on top before, so it was a new experience, feeling him stretch and fill me as I sank down around him, and then we were moving in tandem, working with the rhythm of the boat, whose rocking beneath us intensified slightly as I rode Boone harder and harder. His hands moved up my body to cover my bra cups. A lovely, unbearable pressure built between us and my movements became wild and unmeasured. Soft moans came pouring out of me, building in volume and crescendo as I neared orgasm.

  He licked his thumb and pressed it against my clit, making me cry out. “That’s right, baby,” he moaned. “No one can hear you out here. Come for me. Come for me, Hannah.”

  And, trembling, I did, my muscles shivering and clenching around him. As waves of pleasure radiated out from our joined bodies, I couldn’t help the primal cry that escaped my lips.

  He followed a few thrusts later, grabbing my ass in both hands and pushing more deeply into me than ever before.

  I collapsed to the deck beside him, panting. “How the hell do you do that?” I asked. “It’s like a magic spell. You tell me to come, and I do.”

  “You’re complaining?” Boone asked, tucking a lock of my tangled hair behind my ear. “Maybe you just like being ordered around in bed.”

  I traced his jaw with my fingers. “I’ll let you know if we ever make it to a bed.”

  Fourteen

  We did, in fact, make it to a bed—if you counted the narrow, thin mattress he’d installed in one of the berths down below as a bed. It was hot down there, despite Boone’s battery-operated fan. Or maybe it was just hot any time I was near this man.

  “Told you it wasn’t so nice,” he said sheepishly. There was a tiny light on over the sink in the corner, bathing the whole cabin in chiaroscuro shadows. “Now you know why I sometimes sleep in the truck.”

  I trailed my hand over the wooden paneling above my head. This part was either undamaged or had already been restored, as it was glossy and golden. “But it’s so beautiful. I’m jealous of whoever will get to sail this thing once you’re done with it.”

  His breath seemed to catch beside me. “It’s mine.”

  My hand froze on the woodwork. “What?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and turned to him. He sat up at the other end of the mattress.

  “Well, I’m going to sell it. But for now, it’s mine.”

  “You own a yacht?” I shook my head in disbelief.

  “I own a barely watertight piece of driftwood, yes.” He shook his head. “It’s stupid, right? I thought I could get more money for it if I fixed it up before I sold it, but some of the bigger repairs are beyond my skills, and every time I pay an expert to look into it, I feel like that’s cutting into any profit I could reasonably make.”

  I looked around the boat, at the carved wooden paneling and the elegant lines. Yeah, real stupid. Boone was a man of mystery, indeed. “I don’t know. Properly restored, she’d be really gorgeous. I think you might make a lot off of her.”

  “Yeah.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

  “What’s her name?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Sunrise Suzie.”

  I laughed.

  “I know. I’m going to change it.”

  “I think that’s hard to do,” I said. “Don’t you have to sail across the equator backwards during a full moon or something?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Who told you that?”

  People at the yacht club my whole life. “I don’t know. It’s a rule.”

  “I assure you, all I have to do to give her a new name is paint over the old one.”

  “Well, yeah,” I replied, mocking, “but then you’ll incur the wrath of the sea gods.”

  He smiled and crawled on top of me. “True. There’s a horror movie in that, I’m sure.”

  I trailed my fingers up his biceps. “Oh, definitely.”

  And then we stopped all pretense of conversation for quite a while. But we still talked—boy did we ever. I don’t know what it was about sex with Boone, but every time he touched me, it was like I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I would have been embarrassed by it, but he talked through the whole thing too, and every wild, sexy thing he said only spurred me on.

  Afterward we fell into a sated, sweaty sleep, our slick bodies wrapped around each other as the cabin cooled in the night. And when I woke, sometime later, still hot, I didn’t want to move. It had been years since I slept on a boat, rocked to sleep by its soft swaying. It had been nearly nine months since I’d slept in the arms of a man, too. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. I couldn’t believe I was here.

  With Boone.

  He was supposed to be my one-night stand. My bit of rough. But this was three dates, now—or whatever you wanted to call those first two. And here we were spending the night together, and sharing secrets, and he took me to horror movies and got me a new salad because he remembered about the nuts…

  This wasn’t the plan. Not that I was any good at making plans.

  I snuggled farther into his arms and he stirred, tightening his hold on me. “Hannah,” he whispered into my hair. “What are we doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, leaving soft kisses on his jaw. At least I wasn’t alone in thinking we were nuts. “Something stupid, probably.”

  “Probably.” He ran his hands down the length of my body. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I should stay away from you. Why can’t I stay away?”

  “Because I’m crazy hot?”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s definitely the reason.” He shifted a little, propping his head up on his hand so he could look down at me. “Listen, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. You still don’t know me very well. Before this boat, I was living in my truck. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  I nodded soberly. “I figured as much.”

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Not these kinds.” His pale eyes held entire seas of sadness. I would have kissed it away, but somehow I knew that Boone didn’t need distractions right now. He needed to tell me the truth. “I’ve lived on my own since I was fifteen. I fucked u
p a lot. I’ve lived beneath bridges, I’ve lied, I’ve stolen things. I’ve been with people I shouldn’t have and sold things I really shouldn’t have—”

  “You sold drugs?” I asked, wide-eyed. I had been seriously sheltered.

  “Yeah. Four years ago.”

  “Did you do drugs?”

  “I…have done some drugs,” he admitted. “But not much. I saw the way it messes you up. And I stopped selling, too. I got scared. I thought I was such a badass, you know, to leave home, but I realized how close I was to falling off a cliff.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I started working construction. You know those guys that hang out outside construction sites? A lot of times they don’t get picked up, and they are hanging out all day. And when I was one of them, I’d ask them to show me stuff. Once I turned eighteen, and I knew they couldn’t put me in the system or send me home, I got a GED and went to a technical school. The GED was easy. My real high school had been great, before I dropped out. And I took some classes in carpentry and contracting and stuff.”

  “So things are better,” I said, as if convincing both of us.

  He shook his head and looked at me, incredulous. “Sure. Better. Hannah, you don’t know me.”

  “I’m getting to know you,” I insisted. “That’s why you’re telling me all this, right?”

  “Or maybe I’m just waiting to see how long it will take before you get scared off.” His shoulders raised in a shrug. “That would be the easiest route.”

  “I’m not going to get scared off.” I set my jaw. If I was planning on getting scared, the time to do it would have been before I let Boone take me out into the middle of nowhere, multiple times.

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re not scared off by the drug dealing, the drug use, the living under bridges, the thievery—”

  “You said it was over.” I gave a firm nod. “That’s what matters.”

  “You aren’t thinking to yourself, ‘gee, I should have asked if he’d been tested for sexually transmitted diseases before I had sex with him three times’?”

  Okay, he had a point there. A little late to be making it, though. “Do you have any diseases?”