He glanced her way, but he didn’t stop her. She caressed those shifting muscles, enthralled with them. Enthralled with him. Still, she wasn’t sure what was allowed, so she contained herself, withdrew her hand.
He’d made her don a lifejacket, but he wasn’t wearing his. While she appreciated the access that provided her questing hand, as well as his effort to make her feel more secure, she wondered if that was more of what Lyda had implied. So protective of others, but not of himself…
She was glad he’d warned her about the sunblock, because the reflection of the sun on the water which felt so good would nevertheless fry tender skin. He was so evenly tan, she expected he spent a lot of time out here with his students, but he had the faint coconut aroma of sunblock as well.
A boat went by with a black Labrador on the bow. The dog was wearing a yellow life jacket and wagging his tail. With his majestic profile, he looked like a figurehead. The lolling tongue and dancing eyes made it clear he was ready to fling himself in the water the moment his master gave the go-ahead. Noah pointed out a set of kayakers paddling closer to the shore, one of whom had a dachshund sitting on his lap. The little dog was also wearing a lifejacket.
When she asked, teasing, how Lyda’s cats would react to boating, Noah gave her a slow smile. “It depends. Farclaws will lie in the birdbath on hot days. Sleep there, even. I think it just has to be their idea. They’re a lot like their mistress in that regard.”
After about an hour of sailing, he maneuvered them into a quiet cove and loosened the lines, letting the sails flap and slowing them to a drifting halt. “Okay, let me show you the basics of handling her yourself. When you’re comfortable, we can go back out again where you can really put her through her paces. Then we can park and have some lunch. This is a nice secluded place to relax and take an afternoon nap.”
“Okay.” It occurred to her, the things that could happen during such a siesta, but there was no innuendo to the friendly suggestion. This time there’d been no instructions, no indication that Lyda was “giving” him to her. Caressing his abdominals was one thing, but more than that? She could ask him, of course, but felt shy about it. Maybe because if Lyda had said no, it would feel like rejection.
Noah touched her collarbone, bringing her attention back to him. “Take off the lifejacket. You need to put on some more sunblock, because you’re turning red in a couple places. Lyda and Marguerite will have my ass if I let you get burned.”
She unclipped the jacket as he retrieved the tube from stowage. When he proffered it, she met his gaze. “Will you put it on me?”
“Sure.” He gave her that look that made her stomach do a somersault like a happy squirrel. “Hold your hair off your neck.”
She turned her back to him. As those capable hands started smearing the block on her skin, a deep sigh welled up. Part pleasure, part other. “I don’t know what’s allowed, Noah.”
He paused. “What do you want to be allowed?”
She looked at glittering water and green shoreline. A heron fished in the shallows of the cove. “I want to do whatever I feel like doing with you. But I don’t want to do anything to offend Lyda. Or take advantage of how you are.”
“And how am I?” His teasing tone reassured her. Then he slipped the back strap of her bikini top. When she caught the front, he tapped her gently between the shoulder blades. “There’s no one here but us. A lot of women get burned at the edges of their swimsuit because they put the block on while they’re wearing it and they don’t want to get the swimsuit messy. You can do the front part if you like, or I can do it.”
She shook her head. Spoke with a catch in her voice. “I want you to do it.”
His breath was on the back of her neck. Without saying anything further, he released the neck strap as well. Reaching under her arm, he slid his fingers beneath her grip to give the top a gentle tug, telling her he wanted her to let it go. She did. It left her sitting in her shorts and bottoms only. She heard him squirt more of the sunblock into his hands. The faint quiver of the boat suggested he was rubbing his hands together, making it less cold. She was still holding her hair up on her neck, and now she added the other hand, moving both arms out of his way.
He slid up behind her, adjusting so one leg was aligned with her hip, the other angled so his foot dangled off the boat, though his thigh pressed against her, keeping her between his legs. When he leaned forward, his bare chest brushed her back, making her aware of the faint stickiness where the sunblock was drying.
As his hands closed over her bare breasts, she drew in a breath. They rose in his hands like bread dough responding to heat. Chloe, their passionate baker, would laugh at that comparison. Gen looked down at his brown hands against her pale flesh. He rubbed the sunblock into the area the edge of her swimsuit would follow. The deliberate omission of the area closest to her nipples made them tighten, beg for touch.
“You didn’t answer my question, about ‘how I am’,” he murmured against her throat. She laid her head back against his shoulder, turned her face so her nose brushed his jaw. He was gazing down, eyes intent on his task, on her breasts.
“I’m still learning everything a male submissive is, and Chloe keeps insisting you’re all different. My exposure has been to Brendan. Doing things Marguerite or Chloe ask him to do brings him pleasure, the service. But I think there’s a tendency for a woman to think it means…that she can treat you like an unpaid prostitute.”
His hands stilled. “I know that’s not what you are,” she added quickly. “But I would be really, really upset if you let me do that anyway, simply because you knew I was too ignorant or driven by my hormones to know better.”
She was very cognizant of how he cradled her breasts, simply holding them, but she forced herself to focus on the importance of the topic. “Your feelings are important to me, and I can’t get a grasp on them. Or Lyda’s, for that matter, in a lot of things. It’s hard to get a handle on anyone when you’ve just met them, let alone two people who are part of something I really know so little about.”
“You know everything you need to know. In your head and heart. In your body.” He put his mouth to her neck, shifting his grip so her nipples pushed into his palms. The contact made her moan, a soft sigh.
“Lyda thinks you’re good for me, Gen,” he said. “And I like being with you. All you have to do is follow your own needs and desires. You don’t have to think about it more than that, because I know you have a good heart. I’m not worried about what you’ll do to me, only about what you’ll allow yourself.”
Nothing in life was ever that simple. Yet when he resumed massaging the cream around her breasts, she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Not when he occupied himself with kissing her neck, slow, sucking kisses that awoke erogenous zones all the way to her curling feet. Her backside pressed into the fiberglass in tiny, coital movements.
“If we don’t start sailing, there’s going to be a lot of bare places on me where you’ll need to apply sunscreen,” she muttered.
“You say that like it’s a problem.”
She chuckled and wiggled to put some space between them, despite the incredible difficulty of finding the willpower. She retrieved her swimsuit top and gave him a narrow glance. “I was promised sailing lessons.”
He smiled. He also helped her put the swimsuit top back on, fastening the back and the neck piece, smoothing his hands briefly over her breasts, solemnly informing her it was to ensure everything was covered properly.
When he finally began her sailing lesson, she realized he never really had answered her question, unless deflecting it back on herself was an answer. The man was like the sunlight glittering off the water. He wasn’t the water or the sun, but some sparkling reaction between the two, part illusion, part reality.
He shifted gears well, though. After about forty five minutes, thanks to his excellent teaching skills, she could handle the mainsail lines while he handled the jib of the small craft. She had them tacking well together, leading
them in the duck beneath the boom. He’d been right about the privacy of the cove. They were undisturbed.
“Only shallow craft can get through here,” he explained. “With it being off the main channel, a good distance from the marina, only your most experienced sailors navigate to it. Plus it’s a weekday. Ready to try the channel again?” he asked.
“I’m not ready to solo yet.”
“We’ll do it together until you tell me you want to solo. And I’ll be right next to you when you finally do that. We’re going to practice capsizing as well. In here,” he added at her alarmed look.
They were at rest again and he’d turned fully toward her, one leg bent, the other doused in the water up to his knee. “Aren’t we supposed to avoid doing that?”
“Yes. But if it happens, you need to know how to right the boat. Say if I was hit on the head, or whoever you were sailing with was less experienced, you should be prepared. But you should never sail alone.”
“You do.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I really don’t ever want you to sail alone, okay?”
“Okay.” She responded to the determined look in his eye, but she couldn’t help asking. “Noah, do you care what happens to you?”
For the first time since they’d met, she saw a shutter close fully behind his eyes. He lifted her hand, brushed his lips over it. “I serve my Mistress’s will. I know it’s important that I care for her. And you.”
She didn’t know how to push it further than that without ruining their day. As Lyda had warned her, he could be stubborn. Proving it, he didn’t let her pursue it, instead getting them back to the sailing.
The wind had built and the tide had turned. Going out into the stronger wind and current of the channel, she discovered the exhilarating speed of a small craft, especially in the company of an incredibly experienced sailor like Noah. They made a good team, her following his direction to the letter about when to let off or draw in, shift weight. At one point they were both stretched out at a forty-five degree angle, the boat heeling enough to have them skimming over the water like a bird. She tipped her head back, her hair whipping over her shoulders, and laughed at the feeling of it. His eyes shone with the same feeling, making everything just perfect. A perfect moment, no matter what came before or after. She’d learned to treasure those rare gifts.
She loved watching his mix of concentration on the sailboat and their surroundings, his appreciation of all of it. Another cliché discarded, the idea that a submissive male avoided situations where he was completely in charge. He handled the sailboat and her direction as crew with an impressive mastery she found arousing, mixed as it was with those conflicting signals in his personality. But she loved running Tea Leaves, and yet she’d submitted so willingly to Lyda, hadn’t she? What had Lyda said? A strong sub needs and deserves to be able to surrender…
When they finally sailed back in the cove, she was wired with the pleasure and excitement of the day, but ravenous. They disembarked on the strip of beach, setting up an impromptu picnic under the canopy of trees hanging over the bank. She’d made four thick sandwiches and brought cookies, chips and fruit. Noah provided the bottles of water and put away two and a half sandwiches easily, complimenting her between bites. He grinned when she reflected men had a relationship to food in general the way a woman did to chocolate. Yet he ate his share of the cookies too. From the discreet way he eyed the rest, she expected he was hoping she’d only want a couple.
She extended one of hers to him. “Here. I’m stuffed. At this rate, we’re going to have to wait on teaching me how to right a capsized boat. I’ll sink if I go into the water now. You too.”
“We can take a little break.” He bit into the cookie, stretching out on the wet packed sand and folding an arm behind his head to gaze up into the trees. Because she wanted to do it, she stroked his chest to his stomach, and back up again.
“I love touching you,” she said. “You’re so pretty.”
When he gave her a pained look, she laughed. “I didn’t mean that in an unmanly way. You’re beautiful, Noah. It’s not just a physical thing. There’s something about you; it’s really kind of mesmerizing. Like a drug, but not. More like a feeling of happiness. Like being out on the sailboat when everything is working right. You’re a living, breathing, perfect moment.”
He propped himself up on his elbows, staring at her so that she colored a little. She wasn’t in the habit of stating things so out front like that. But that was part of his magic, as well. Anything could be said to him, without judgment. No games, no embarrassment. He’d simply accept it. Like talking to the trees or wind.
“Lyda was right, about your poet side. Thank you,” he said with sincerity. “You’re a gift, Gen. I wish everyone you’ve loved realized that.”
He was also good at touching past scars and making them feel better, even as it also made them hurt. It pricked at tears that had never been shed, because they required the right stimulus to bring them to the surface, purge them. Stimulus she tended to avoid. “It’s water under the bridge. And I’m here with you today, probably because of some of those things. So that’s good, right?”
“Right.” His gaze remained serious. “I want to make love to you, Gen. Right here. Okay?”
“I… Okay.” She whispered it.
He put his hand on her jaw, fingers curving around the side of her neck, pressing against the tripping pulse there. Drawing her down onto his chest, he guided her hand so it spread out there, over his nipple, the firm pectoral, as their mouths met. His other hand framed her face, holding her. He focused first only on her mouth, his tongue teasing hers, his fingers sliding into her hair, releasing the clip so it spilled over his hands, down against his face and shoulders. He traced her lips with his tongue, sealed his lips over hers again, taking the kiss even deeper. He moved his mouth to caress her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, her eyelids.
Dropping his hands to her waist, he opened the cutoff shorts, pushed them off her hips. When she kicked them away, he shifted her on top of him, his stiff cock pressed against her belly, her knees pressed into the sand between his thighs. He cupped her buttock, fingers sliding beneath the edge of the swimsuit to play as his other hand held her, keeping her still while he suckled her throat, bit. She dug her fingers into his biceps, her pussy throbbing already, needy for him. She rubbed against his hardness, transmitting her desire.
But he let the feeling build, until she didn’t care if the cove was private. A cruise ship could have come through with a legion of camera-snapping tourists. Everything was Noah. His hands, his mouth, his body. Then he destroyed another idea she’d had about a submissive male. He reversed their positions, turning her so she was beneath him and he was pressed solidly between her legs.
She arched full against him, rubbing in frustrated desire against that barrier of clothing. He gave her a full stroke back, cock against cunt, but then moved down her body, getting rid of her bikini top so he could suckle her nipples. That stud in his mouth began its low level hum, stroking her there, making her writhe and gasp at the stimulation. He cradled her breasts, squeezed them together, lashed at her nipples, taking that vibration to the channel in between, while she bucked her lower body.
“Noah…God…” She raked his back with her nails, not expecting her own ferocity. She choked out an apology, but his gaze scorched her.
“Mark me however you want, Gen. I’m yours.”
Yours Unconditionally. Who had he meant that tattoo for? At the moment, it felt like her, Lyda…he was a gift given to a woman, whatever woman he was with. He was everything she needed. A treasure from the gods.
He was playing at her navel now, disrupting the intensity by deliberately tickling. When she pushed at him, he sent her a wicked grin, then went lower, catching the swimsuit bottoms in his teeth, letting his vibrating tongue play beneath the edges. When he took those off her, he stood on his knees, pushed his trunks down. He’d brought a small waterproof container with him
to shore, and he removed a condom from the wallet in it.
“Prepared,” she observed, her voice shaky. “Take the swimsuit off, all the way.”
He nodded, to both things, she assumed. Standing, he removed the swimsuit, the sun praising every line of his body. He rolled the condom on while she watched, moistening her lips.
He knelt between her legs again, met her gaze. “I was going to make you come with my mouth first, but I want inside you too much, Gen. I need to be fucking you.”
In answer, she reached for him. He came down, guiding himself into her wet heat. It had been so damn long. She closed her eyes at the feeling, shuddering hard as he eased in.
“So tight…” His voice was strained. She could feel the energy of his body, the desire to thrust, and yet he took his time, concentrating on not hurting her. The care it took to do that, to step outside oneself and make someone else matter more, was something neither of her husbands had given her. Noah gave it to her in ways large and small, and the smaller things held more significance. Yes, he’d keep her from falling off a cliff, but the fact he’d give her the last cookie if he thought for a second she wanted it meant even more.
And that thought was the kind capable of unlocking those more painful memories. She didn’t want them to intrude, so she lifted her upper body abruptly, shoving her hips forward and pulling him to her core in the same motion. The lancing pain of it had her sucking in a breath, her face reflecting the discomfort, but she wouldn’t let him draw back. She dug her short nails into his buttocks, feeling their muscled tension as well as that in his thighs, against the inside of hers.
“No. Please stay. Stay.”
“Sshh.” His brow was creased, eyes concerned as he slid his arm beneath her shoulders. He kept her close to his chest, holding their upper body weight on his other braced arm. “It’s all right, Gen. Don’t do that to yourself. I’m right here. Ease back. I’ve got you.”
Nature of Desire 8 - Divine solace Page 19