West claims my mouth again in a hard, deep kiss, but his hands leave my hips. I’m about to protest when I hear a thud, the rasp of a zipper, and the rip of foil in quick succession.
West bends to hook an arm underneath my right knee, then lifts me up off the ground. Pressed between him and the wall, I curl my arms around his neck and wrap my left leg around his waist. Finally I’m high enough, and West nudges my panties out of the way. I sink down onto him, gasping at the invasion. It feels incredible, and as West fills me to the hilt, the angle has me groaning in pleasure.
West kisses my neck fiercely, his mouth hot against my throat. I drop my head back and arch against him as he starts to move within me. Over his shoulder, I can see the weathered bronze bell, and beyond, the endless rolling countryside. The green of the hills blurs in my eyes as I thrust my hips to meet his rhythm.
West thrusts again, and again, and I’m lost to waves of pleasure. My back pushes against the uneven surface of the stone, and I might have bruises tomorrow but I don’t care. My whole being is centered on the feel of West inside of me, keeping me upright. I close my eyes, letting the sensations roll over me like the tide.
Our hips move faster and excitement builds deep within me, a pressure and tightness that swells with each stroke. West reaches between us, slipping a hand down and under my skirt to caress my aching clit. His touch sends shockwaves through me as he moves his finger to the beat of his thrusts.
“West,” I gasp into his ear, opening my eyes, my nails digging into his shoulders. He pushes harder, still rocking inside of me, fast and deep, and everything tightens, building until I can’t stand it one second longer. West flicks his finger and kisses my neck hard, and suddenly I’m there, over the cliff, and my vision dissolves into a starburst of ecstasy.
I’m floating, coming apart, and West grips my hips and plunges into me fast, faster, until finally he’s there too. He goes stiff, and I feel him spend himself inside of me. He presses his forehead into the curve of my neck, and I clutch his shoulders, my legs wrapped around his waist as waves of pleasure wrack my body.
Slowly, gradually, I come back to myself. If I had to stand right now I’d fall over, but West holds me against the wall, solid and strong. I want to stay here forever.
Finally West raises his head and meets my gaze. His eyes are hooded with pleasure, his broad shoulders deliciously sweaty under my fingers. The uneven stones dig into my skin, but I don’t say anything because I don’t want to break the spell. We’re still joined, entwined, and in this moment, everything is right.
Everything is perfect.
Then West opens his mouth.
Chapter 11
West
“This was a mistake,” I blurt out.
Yasmin blinks, the dreamy look in her eyes fading.
“Excuse me?” she says.
Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. I panicked. I’ve been fighting to keep Yasmin at arm’s length since she stepped on board the Radiant Star, but it only took two days to lose the battle. That’s more than a little scary.
Once she kissed me, I lost all control. I should have stopped this before it went too far, but Yasmin was too damn sexy. I couldn’t think of anything else except getting inside of her.
“Sorry.” I fumble for something to say. “We … I mean, I … I shouldn’t have done this.” Yasmin stiffens in my arms, and I wince, feeling like an idiot. Real smooth, West.
“You can put me down now,” Yasmin says sharply.
I really don’t want to. I want to stay right here and do this all over again, take my time with her like she deserves. But Yasmin is a member of my staff, and I’ve got to stay focused on the job—not lose my head. In any case, Yasmin looks like she might throw me bodily over the bell tower if I don’t let her go, so I set her gently on the stone floor. She’s lost one of her shoes, and she stands unevenly, her hands propped against my bare chest, whether to steady herself or push me away I don’t know. For a moment she looks up into my eyes, and I almost think she’ll kiss me again.
But Yasmin turns away to readjust her skirt and locate her shoe.
Before she turns back around, I put on my shirt, get rid of the condom, and pull up my pants. Just as I finish, I reach for Yasmin because I know I’ve acted like an ass, but then I hear rustling behind us.
A strange voice barks something in Spanish, and Yasmin and I whirl to see a guy with a museum nametag scowling at us. “You are tourists?” he says, switching to English. “You’re not allowed up here! Who let you in?”
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “We’ll go.”
“What are your names?” the guy demands. “I want to see your passports.”
Time to scram. I grab Yasmin’s hand and pull her toward the door. We rush past the sputtering museum guard, swipe our cameras from the table, and sprint down the stairs. When we reach the bottom, we slow down just enough that we won’t get stopped for running, and speed-walk across the museum and out the entrance. Only when we’re around the corner and half a block away do we pause for breath.
Adrenaline pumps through me, a laugh teetering at the back of my throat because we barely made it out of the museum. Yasmin tugs her hand free from mine with a sour glance, and my humor fades.
“Hey, about what happened,” I say as I catch my breath. “I didn’t mean what I said up there.” Somehow during our flight to freedom, my brain managed to process what happened in the tower, and now I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t a mistake. I swore off shipboard dating with good reason, but I’ve met a lot of people in my stint on the Star Heart Cruise ships, and Yasmin’s not like most girls. At first I thought she was just a spoiled college grad, but after today … There’s a depth to her, a fire I want more of.
I’m about to tell her that when Yasmin shakes her head.
“No, you’re right.” She runs a hand through her dark hair. “This was a huge mistake. I can’t believe we hooked up just a couple days after you and Camelia did. I mean, she said you’re not together, but—”
“Camelia and I didn’t have sex,” I interrupt. Yasmin stares at me. “You can ask her, if you want.”
“Oh.” Then Yasmin groans. “It doesn’t matter. I’m so mad at myself. I wasn’t supposed to do this.”
I frown. “Do what?”
Yasmin leans against the stone wall of a souvenir shop hawking bright scarves and straw hats.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t have any more meaningless hookups,” she says.
“Meaningless hookups?” Ouch. Is that all it was to her? Anger starts to fizz through me. “Do you do this often?”
“Not recently …” Yasmin gives me a pained look. “All of senior year, I didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to hurt. So some nights I wound up sleeping with guys so I’d be too distracted to feel the pain. It was stupid.”
Anger wars with sympathy. Damn. How the hell am I supposed to be pissed at her when I know exactly how she feels? Because as annoyed as I am, I get it. Distraction is about the only thing that helped when my mom died, and I did a lot of stupid things afterwards. But the idea that I’m one of Yasmin’s stupid things is hard to swallow.
Suddenly I notice a few dark splotches on Yasmin’s neck, near the base of her throat and along the curve of her collarbone. Are those … ?
“What?” Yasmin asks. I reach up to brush her hair out of the way, and wince.
“Oops.” I try to drape her hair over her neck. It covers most of the marks, but not all.
Yasmin’s hand flies up to her neck in dawning horror.
“Oh my God, did you give me a hickey?”
I wince again. “Or three.”
Yasmin wheels away to the entrance of the tourist shop, where roped necklaces dangle on a little stand with a mirror on top. She cranes her neck to inspect the damage.
“Dammit, West!”
“I got a little carried away.” Am I a jerk for feeling sort of pleased? Maybe Yasmin wishes the whole thing never happened, but those marks prove it did. God, I want
to give her more.
I recoil from the thought. Not only because Yasmin basically said I was a mistake, but I’m in the running for a corporate job in Miami and now I’ve slept with an employee? That’s not going to impress my boss. And continuing to sleep with Yasmin would look even worse. So if Yasmin doesn’t want this to be anything more than a one-time blip, then fine. Works for me.
“This doesn’t have to change anything,” I say, and Yasmin glances over. “We can forget the bell tower ever happened. No one knows but us. Okay?”
Yasmin’s dark eyes flash before she lowers them. Her fingers trail over her bruises.
“They’ll know if they see my hickies,” she says.
Crap, she’s right. “They won’t know I’m the one who gave them to you,” I point out. She raises a brow.
“So I’m supposed to have made out with a random stranger in Portales?”
“Apparently that’s not so farfetched,” I shoot back. She gives me a narrow-eyed look, then turns back to the mirror.
“I can hide them,” she says. “I’ll wear a scarf, and makeup will help.”
“A scarf?” In this heat?
“A light one. For fashion, not warmth.” In the mirror’s reflection, she notices the doubt on my face and gives an airy wave. “Don’t worry, I can carry it off.”
My lips tighten.
“I guess this is a tactic you’ve used before?” I say sourly.
Yasmin pauses, then turns to me and crosses her arms.
“If you’re trying to call me a slut, just come out and say it,” she says softly. Her dark eyes cut me, and I sigh.
“No. Sorry. I obviously don’t have the right to say anything.” I take a deep breath, and exhale slowly, trying to find words that won’t make things worse. “I … I handled all of this really badly.”
“Let’s never mention it again, okay?” Yasmin mutters.
That hurts, but I shrug. “Okay by me.” I can be professional. If this is how she wants it, fine. We’ll never talk outside of work. I won’t think about her. I won’t touch her. Even if my body rebels at the thought of not feeling her skin beneath my hands or her tongue grazing my neck. Or her back arching as I …
Jesus. I need to forget that.
“And you don’t have to help me with my Sofia project,” Yasmin adds.
I find myself shaking my head.
“I’ll still help. If you want me to.” What am I saying? She gave me an out. I should take it and keep my distance, but I can’t bring myself to retract my offer.
“Thanks, but no,” she says curtly. “I’ll be fine on my own.” An awkward silence falls between us. The shop owner bustles over to ask Yasmin if she’d like to see more necklaces inside. Yasmin shakes her head and moves past the shop entrance. Not knowing what else to do, I follow.
“We’ll pretend the bell tower never happened,” she says to me as we walk through the market. “Everything will go back to normal.”
Normal? Ha. Nothing’s been normal since Yasmin boarded the ship.
“Okay,” I say anyway.
“Friends?” she asks after a moment. I meet Yasmin’s gaze, a little surprised. After the way I’ve mangled everything today, why would she want to be friends with me? But her gorgeous dark eyes are filled with shadows, and she manages to seem both vulnerable and annoyed at the same time.
“Friends,” I say, not at all sure what that means right now.
We start heading back to the Radiant Star, both of us silent. I realize that we never did get the photo Yasmin wanted, but it’s too late now. I glance over as we walk side by side through the dusty street, the colors of market blurring behind her.
All I have to do is forget the last half hour ever happened. I can do that.
~ ~ ~
Except, it turns out, I can’t.
Oh, I manage to keep my hands off of Yasmin over the next few weeks, but my thoughts are another matter. Ever since our bell tower interlude, I haven’t had a single night where I didn’t stare sleeplessly at the ceiling, imagining Yasmin with her head thrown back, moaning, as I thrust into her. I’ve tried to focus on numbers and revenues and who among my staff I should fire to appease Randall, but none of it works. I’m lucky to get a few hours of rest before another day begins and I have to avoid Yasmin all over again.
It’s hard enough trying not to notice her when we’re working. The Star Heart company polo isn’t supposed to be sexy, but somehow it is on her. Every day I have to suppress a fantasy of stripping it off her in the shop’s storeroom and taking her between boxes of glossy paper. Maybe on top of them.
If work is difficult, though, it’s nothing compared to when we’re not working. I’m helping Yasmin with her sister’s collage after all. I hadn’t planned to, but one morning I ran into Yasmin at the gym. Staff is allowed to use the passenger gym, as long as it’s not full. It’s way nicer than the one reserved for crew, so I like to grab workouts early in the morning, before passengers begin to rise.
Apparently so does Yasmin, and we got to talking while lifting weights. She mentioned her project, and I offered again to help. I guess she’s forgiven me for the way I handled our hookup, because before I knew it we were agreeing to meet up later to work on the collage.
Now, a few times a week Yasmin and I meet in neutral territory, a public lounge or the photo shop, to work on her project. She showed me the images that her sister took before she passed, and I have to admit I’m impressed. Sofia had real talent.
Though she gets teary sometimes, Yasmin’s face lights up whenever she talks about her sister, and I can almost picture Sofia from the stories she tells. In turn, Yasmin gets me talking about my mom, which is something I almost never do.
As the marks on her neck faded, we’ve actually turned into friends. But I can’t help wondering if, when Yasmin’s alone in her bunk bed, she thinks of me too. I wonder what she wears to sleep. I wonder what she’d look like naked next to me, her curves pressed against my body. I can’t stop thinking about how she felt, legs wrapped around my hips.
I’ve tried to compensate by talking to her as little as possible while on the job, and never scheduling us to work together. Aside from our time working on the art project or taking photographs during port days, I steer clear of her after hours.
Unfortunately, I need to have a private chat with her today, and it won’t be a fun conversation.
“Yasmin, can you come over here?” I say after our group meeting at the start of a new cruise. Charlie won the weekly competition, with Paolo and Camelia in second and third. No surprise there; they’re my most consistent earners. Their positions are safe, but I can’t say the same for the rest of the staff. Just yesterday, Randall asked me if I had a general idea of who I wanted to let go. I’d been half-hoping that he’d reconsider his order and I wouldn’t have to fire anyone, so I could only tack on a smile and tell him I was taking the decision seriously and would give him an answer by the deadline.
The rest of the staff head off to their tasks as Yasmin steps over to where I’m sitting at one of the cashier computers.
“What’s up, boss? You’ve reconsidered making me suit up as Kippy?” Shadows lurk in her dark eyes, but Yasmin gives me a quick smile, one that usually makes me smile back. This time, I draw my features into a stern managerial expression.
“What’s up is that your numbers were low last week,” I say.
Yasmin shrugs.
“I’m still getting the hang of things, I guess.”
“They were low the week before, too,” I continue. “You’re not trying.”
“I’m working as hard as I can,” she says, but I shake my head.
“Yasmin, I see you.” Ever since the bell tower, I’ve been hyper-aware of everything she does—from when she dons the Señorita Star Heart outfit to when she chats up a family visiting from London. “You talk with passengers more than you take pictures of them. And you never try to up-sell them when they’re buying a package.”
“I guess I don’t want to
be pushy.” She frowns as if annoyed, glancing at her watch impatiently. She’s probably eager to grab lunch before our new wave of passengers hits.
Well, too bad.
“We had this same talk last week,” I point out. “You promised you’d improve. You didn’t.”
Yasmin’s eyes flash.
“Sweet Jesus, West, can you give me a break? I said I’d try harder.”
If she were any other member of my team, I’d be writing up a formal reprimand by now. Not for sassing me, but for low numbers. She doesn’t even realize how much of a break I’m already giving her.
“I’m trying to help you, Yasmin,” I say through my teeth, holding on to my temper by a thread.
“Help yourself, you mean.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re only worried about your precious Miami job.”
A goal she clearly doesn’t respect, even though I’ve told her how important it is to me. My eyes narrow. Time to play hardball.
“Until your numbers go up, you’re not getting off the ship,” I tell her. “Not even for port days.”
Yasmin’s eyes widen.
“What about our hikes?”
We’ve taken to spending an hour or two roaming together and taking pictures at each port of call. It was awkward at first, but as we proved we could hang out without winding up all over each other, it’s gotten easier. I’ve shown her some ISO techniques, and she’s found a few items on Sofia’s list. Cutting Yasmin off from that will undoubtedly hurt her, and I feel like a jerk for doing so. But she’s got to take this job seriously.
“I guess I’ll be going alone,” I say stonily. She stares at me for a moment.
“I thought we were friends.”
“This isn’t West your friend talking,” I tell her. “It’s West, your boss. There’s a difference.”
“In that one’s an asshole?” Yasmin says, then snaps her mouth shut, as if realizing she’s gone too far.
With Every Breath (Sea Swept #2) Page 9