Dangerous Waters

by Laurey Bright

  And there was possibly another reason—Rogan made no secret of the fact that she attracted him; sexual jealousy added to the mix made for a powerful though irrational motivation for his escalating paranoia. But this had gone far enough. "For heaven's sake!" she said, her voice rising as unease grew to real fear—although she wasn't certain what she was so afraid of—and then transmuting into anger. "Drop the conspiracy theories, Rogan. You don't have any proof!"

  He regarded her unblinkingly for a second or two, then appeared to give in. "Okay. I need to clean up. We should drink a toast to the new year later."

  Bewildered by the sudden capitulation, she took a moment to digest what he'd said, and looked at the saloon clock. There was still an hour or so to go. She turned back to Rogan and remembered she loved this man. It didn't seem right to start the new year angry with him. "Yes," she agreed. "On deck?"

  "Okay." He gave her an odd little smile that went straight to her heart, starting a slow fire, and then he headed for the washroom.

  Camille went into her cabin, leaning back against the door. What a fool she was, but she couldn't suppress the emotional fire that careless smile had ignited. Despite the despairing knowledge that this could come to nothing, her feelings wouldn't be denied. Was being in love always this terrible mixture of euphoria and dread bordering on panic?

  A line came into her head: Love makes fools of us all. She didn't know where it was from, but everything she knew about love reinforced the sentiment.

  Maybe from the day she'd agreed to move aboard the Sea-Rogue she'd been fooling herself, all the good reasons she'd come up with mere smokescreens to mask the fact that already she'd fallen under the perilous spell of his flagrant attraction, wanting to be with him, to know him.

  It was too late to stop herself from falling for Rogan, the most unsuitable man she could ever have chosen. But it wasn't too late to do something sensible about it. She couldn't stay here. Already she'd procrastinated long enough about her departure. First thing tomorrow she was out of here, taking herself far away from temptation, from further heartbreak. Because the longer she stayed around the more difficult and traumatic the inevitable parting would be.

  She thrust clothes into her suitcase and zipped it up, packed her computer and emptied her things from the desk into her backpack. The sale agreement that James had signed was in the top drawer—two copies folded inside each other. She looked at them for a long time, tempted to tear them across and drop them in the plastic rubbish basket by the desk.

  Think, she told herself.

  There was one way to make the clean, sure cut that would ensure her emotional survival.

  With shaking hands she opened the folds of the agreements, smoothing the document flat against the wooden surface of the desk. The print blurred, but she knew what it said anyway. She stood with a pen poised in her hand for more than a minute, and then, hearing Rogan leave the head and close the door behind him, she bit her lip fiercely and signed her name at the end of both pages.

  Backing away, she resisted an urge to retract, take the pages and consign them to the wastebasket.

  This wasn't a betrayal—it was a pragmatic action that should have been taken before. Her mother would get the money that was morally hers. James would probably persuade Granger, if not Rogan, that the sensible thing to do was sell their share to him—her conscience twinged uncomfortably but she refused to give in to it. And Rogan…?

  Rogan would go back to his profession. Probably the idea of keeping the Sea-Rogue had been a mere whim anyway. Camille was doing him a favor. His obsession with the boat and its link to his father's supposed treasure couldn't be healthy. Already he was manufacturing bizarre fantasies about James—a respected businessman—being involved in some kind of skullduggery, even suggesting he might be responsible for Barney's death.

  When Rogan rapped on the door she jumped.

  "You're not working…now?" He glanced at the pen she still held.

  "No." She looked down as though unaware how it had got into her hand. Her brain seemed foggy.

  "White wine or red?" he asked. "We still have a bottle of bubbly."

  He retreated into the saloon and she followed, putting the pen on the table. "I don't mind."

  "I like a woman who's easy to please." He grinned at her. "Bubbly, then. I guess that's appropriate."

  He liked all women, she suspected. Easily pleased women probably pleased him easily too…

  She was sounding like her mother, soured by experience.

  Rogan collected two plastic flutes and led the way to the deck. When she'd settled herself onto one of the cockpit seats he passed her a flute filled with crisp, bubbling wine.

  The music came clearly over the water, and most boats were fully lit up. Fairy lights twinkled along the foreshore, and beyond the curve in the shoreline the appreciative crowd about the hotel waved upraised arms in time to the beat. Occasional shouts and squeals of laughter cut into the night air. There were parties going on everywhere.

  Yet despite the noise all around, Camille could hear the restless ripple of the waves against the Sea-Rogue's hull, the soft thump as it rode close to the wharf.

  She said, "Mollie misses your father."

  "Yep."

  Odd, she thought, when Barney had only been in port a couple of times each year. "She's very grateful to you for helping her. What will she do when you leave?" Her throat ached.

  He turned to look at her. "Granger will make sure she's taken good care of."

  And what will I do?

  Silly question. She'd be long gone before then. Tomorrow she would hand over the sale agreement. Burn her boats—an appropriate metaphor, she thought wryly—because after that it would be untenable to stay around Rogan. She was very sure he wouldn't want her then anyway. He would never forgive her. A sharp grief assailed her at that, and she gulped down the remainder of her wine to dispel it.

  They were on their second refill when a faint breeze raised bumps on Camille's skin, making her shiver.

  Rogan said, "Are you cold? I'll get you a jacket."

  "I'll get it…"

  They both stood up in the tiny space between the seats, and found themselves not only face-to-face but so close they were touching, her breasts brushing his chest, his hands closing about her arms to steady her.

  Their eyes locked, scant inches apart.

  Distantly Camille heard a drumroll, and the chant of the crowd onshore counting down the last seconds to midnight, joined by people on the boats bellowing across the water.

  Softly, Rogan joined in: "…four…three…two…one…"

  Huge cheers and whistles erupted, bells and horns followed, and a rocket whooshed illegally skyward and burst in a shower of stars. The band broke into a strident rendition of "Auld Lang Syne."

  Neither Rogan nor Camille took any notice. His eyes dark and fathomless, his expression taut, he said quietly, "Happy new year, Camille."

  And then he kissed her.

  It was slow and tender and utterly ravishing. He tasted of wine and heat and the sea, and his mouth was a seduction in itself, firm and assured, working an enchantment that she couldn't—didn't want to—resist.

  He lifted his head a fraction, and his hands smoothed the goose bumps from her arms. "Oh heck, Camille!" he muttered. Then he shifted his grip, one hand at her waist shaping her body to his, the other about her shoulders, nestling her head into the crook of his arm, and he kissed her again. Surely, deeply, with an edge of impatient sexual hunger that recognized her tentative, cautious response and sought to break through the restraint she put on it.

  She tried to retain some measure of control, even as he gathered her still closer to him, and gently but inexorably coaxed her mouth to open to his erotic invasion, a mind-destroying, insatiable onslaught on her already aroused senses that sent her spinning into a vortex of pure physical delight, crumbling every carefully built defense.

  When they surfaced she was dizzy and Rogan's breathing was loud and uneven, his voice
gritty when he said, "I want to continue this down below. If it's not what you want too, say so now. Either way, you'd better be sure this time."

  The pain that squeezed her heart threatened to break it in two. This was their goodbye, although he didn't know it. Was she going to leave with only the memory of a few kisses to sustain her for the long years without him?

  As she hesitated, he gave a moan of frustration, and his hand slid to her breast; his palm closed over the softness of it, as if he held something delicate and precious. "You want me," he said, stating a fact without triumph or surprise. His thumb briefly found the evidence, and Camille drew a sharp breath, her head involuntarily lifting, and a shudder of sheer pleasure shook her.

  Rogan dipped his head and his open mouth was hot on the skin of her throat, his tongue buried in the hollow at the base. "You want me," he repeated, raising his head and looking into her eyes. Someone had a searchlight and the broad light beam swept over the boat, showing his face with the skin of his cheeks taut, his eyes glittering under close-drawn brows, the face of fiercely reined desire. Then it was dark again and she was shivering.

  "You're cold," he said. "Let me warm you. I want you hot under me, on top of me, around me. Naked with me, as close as two people can be. Just this once I want to be inside you, Camille, with your breasts in my hands and my tongue in your mouth, making you come for me, with me. To be with you all night, together in a bed. Tell me you want it too. Please."

  She wasn't cold, she was shivering for a quite different reason, and the eroticism of his words was so powerful she almost melted right there and then in his arms.

  He was asking for one night. Starkly honest as always, not declaring undying love, making no empty promises. And what more did she have to lose, when already her heart was lost for ever? At least she'd have one unforgettable memory to keep by her. "I…I want it," she whispered. "I want you…"

  She felt the deep breath that he sucked in and then let out in a sigh of satisfaction. "You won't be sorry," he said. "I promise."

  Camille couldn't help a wry smile at that. She might regret this step for the rest of her life. But right now it was what she desperately wanted, and although her head might be warning her that she was being rash and perhaps making the biggest mistake of her life, for once she was going to let her heart have its way. Just this once.

  Rogan led the way down to the saloon, taking her in his arms the moment she reached the bottom of the companionway to kiss her again as the night wrapped a thick, warm blanket about them. Banishing her rational mind, she slid her arms about his neck and kissed him back with abandon, matching his fierce passion with her own.

  The minimal top she wore yielded to his eagerness to remove it, and she lifted her arms, allowing him to haul it off, not caring where it went. He urged her to her cabin where the berth was wider than his own, and they kissed over and over, discarding clothing as they went.

  Deliberately Camille cast aside all shyness, all reserve. She didn't have much experience, but had read plenty of books, seen films, heard her friends talk. Even experimented a little, although her wariness of involvement had inhibited her considerably.

  This was the only time she was going to have with Rogan, with her one real love, and she didn't mean to waste any of it. There was no point in treating it as an exercise that could be repeated until she got it right. She'd let Rogan lead—at least at first—but she was determined that for him too this would be a night to remember. Not because he'd had to hold back and teach a novice, but because she'd matched him in every way, given him as much as he gave her, been generous and voluptuous and irresistibly sexy.

  By the time they reached the bed and fell onto it in a tumble of limbs, they were both nearly undressed. Rogan shucked the rest of his clothes and then devoted himself to doing the same for Camille between a storm of kisses, and finally they were skin to skin, mouth to eager mouth, climbing over each other in a laughing, breathless effort to explore each other's nakedness on the less-than-ample mattress.

  The laughter turned to tense anticipation as Rogan adjusted their position, deliberately drawing out the preliminaries, taking his time to find out all about her body, smilingly gauging her reaction to this touch, that caress, inviting her to touch him and letting her know exactly how he felt about her fingers lightly running down his chest, her mouth defining the muscles of his shoulders, her hand discovering the contours of his haunches, and the hard, proud jut of his penis. But he pulled her hand away, saying, "Not right now. I don't want to jump the gun."

  She smiled and dropped a quick kiss there, making him groan and swear, at which she laughed, and he punished her by gently closing his teeth over her shoulder, nibbling on her fingers, drawing them into his mouth, until she did the same for him, and his eyes darkened and smoldered, and he freed his hand from its imprisonment and kissed her almost roughly, his mouth moving over hers in arrogant possession.

  They murmured and stroked and teased, kissed again and again, found other places to kiss, grew steadily more unbearably aroused, until Rogan reached for his jacket and after a few moments finally turned on his back and held her over him. "Is this okay with you?"

  "Yes." She was scarcely able to speak. He had her breasts in his hands, just as he'd promised, and she was beginning to feel floaty and golden. Molten. Light and ethereal and yet earthy, sensual, totally conscious of the state of her body—and his.

  "Now?" he queried, and she nodded.

  "Now…please!"

  He made a guttural sound in his throat, like a leopard's purr, and then he slid easily into the slick, satiny depth of her, and his hands settled her against him, snug and close.

  She let her sigh of pleasure breathe into his mouth as she bent to meet his kiss. A deep, increasingly excited and exciting kiss, although his hands urged her to stillness as the uncontrollable drive to the ultimate goal grew despite his efforts to delay their climax.

  When she flowed around him, her muscles clenching in ecstasy, he finally let go and joined his own pleasure to hers, increasing it so that she thought she would never be able to stop the continued waves of sensation that washed over her, until at last they quieted to lovely, waning ripples.

  She lay against him sated, her mind blessedly dormant, content to wallow in the aftermath, until Rogan stirred and looked for tissues. His jacket lay at the foot of the berth, and when Camille moved she accidentally kicked it off so that it thudded on to the thin rug covering the boards. "Oh," she said guiltily. "The log."

  "No harm," Rogan assured her, settling again beside her, sliding an arm under her shoulders.

  "You haven't found anything in there, have you?"

  "Not that pinpoints their find. There are dozens of scattered islands in the group, over fifty miles, but I can't see a group of three or even a pair that would account for that cryptic note."

  Camille said slowly, "There were really four heroes in the book, you know, counting D'Artagnan. Maybe you should be looking for four islands."

  He stared at her. "Maybe. If we could narrow it down…"

  Gazing into space, he frowned. Over the door he dimly saw his mother's picture smiling down at him. Remembering her love for and loyalty to Barney, he was attacked by a grief he'd thought put behind him long ago.

  Something teased at the back of his mind—something he'd noticed after the burglary when replacing the picture on the sturdy hooks his father had secured it to. "Just a minute," he said, easing himself away from Camille. He left the berth and took down the photo.

  Coming back to her, he switched on the light over the bed and turned the picture. The cardboard backing was obviously old, yellowed and dusty. But it was fixed with shiny silver staples to the frame. He reached for his jeans and took out a pocketknife.

  "What are you doing?" Camille asked.

  He didn't answer, lifting the cardboard to reveal the white back of the photograph with numbers penciled on it.

  "No map," Camille said, disappointedly, assuming the numbers were a phot
ographer's code.

  "Better than that! It's a GPS coordinate." His father had used the Global Positioning System on board to pinpoint exactly where he'd found his target, and rather than trust it to the log, had recorded it here, cautiously not hiding too many eggs in one basket.

  "A what?" Camille asked.

  He explained, "Look, this figure is the latitude, and this is longitude."

  She stared at the notation. "How exact is it?"

  "It's practically a pinpoint direction. X marks the spot. He must have found something there!" Hauling her close, he kissed her triumphantly, and kept on kissing her as he pressed her to the mattress and his hand found her hip, then stroked upward to her breast while the kiss deepened.

  When at last he lifted his head and she could get her breath, she said, "Don't get too excited—"

  "Oh. Sorry…are you too tired…?"

  He began to release her and she said, "Not that. I mean…you still don't have any proof there's a treasure."

  "The only way to prove it is to go there and see."

  Slightly troubled, she said, "Is it so important?"

  Rogan regarded her somberly for a moment. "It was to Dad. Maybe important enough to have indirectly caused his death. Somehow I feel I owe it to him."

  Camille, a slight lump in her throat, nodded. She wasn't sure what had inspired such loyalty and love in Barney Broderick's son, but then if he'd been anything like Rogan…

  She touched her palm to his face, a small ache in her heart reminding her that she probably had only this one night with him. Her eyes stung, and he said, frowning, "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." Determined not to spoil what time they had left, she lifted her other hand and drew him down to her, offering her mouth.

  He willingly complied, kissing her with glad passion, wrapping her again in his arms, fanning the embers of desire to a renewed white-hot fire that flared quickly and consumed them in its wild and glorious blaze.

  This time she fell properly asleep, and didn't even stir when Rogan eased her down, pulling the sheet over her.

  He got up to go to the head and stumbled over his jeans, picked them up and quietly left the cabin.