Hooked (WET, #1)

by K. C. Falls

  I deliberately lightened the tone. We'd had a nice roll in the hay, right? There was no need to play drama queen with him. I forced myself to suck it up and accept our little ‘thing’ for what it was—just another mindless fuck for a player and a girl who was a genius at choosing poorly. "I guess you and Richard are setting some marlin baits in the morning?" A neutral question was my brave attempt to pull off my charade. He could have easily seen through it. He chose not to.

  "Uh, yeah?"

  "He told me there'd be an early start tomorrow. I'll have the coffee hot and ready."

  "Oh. Right."

  "Well then . . . you need some sleep. Don't do too much damage to that Goose tonight." With that I raised myself onto my tiptoes and gave him what I hoped was an appropriate—not pouty, not needy, not desperate—kiss.

  Then I went into my room and cried myself to sleep. Stupid me making my favorite mistake again.

  Chapter 18—Morgan

  I went back to my room and got drunk as a fucking skunk. I drank fast and hard until all the confusion just melted into a puddle of alcohol induced numbness. It was cowardly but efficient.

  When I had awakened from my nap and she was gone I panicked. It was irrational. It was crazy. But the first feeling I had was abandonment and it scared the shit out of me. Literally. I had to run for the head where my bowels emptied in a sick rush of watery sludge. I doubled over on the commode, clutching my belly with the pain so intense I broke into a cold sweat.

  Deep breaths, man, deep breaths. I concentrated intensely on the rhythm and pattern of my chest slowly moving to my will. It was a technique I’d learned years before from a shrink who told me that it was similar to what women are taught when they go for natural childbirth. I could believe it. If labor was as painful as what my gut did to me during an anxiety attack, I think I’d opt for major drugs.

  Irrational never grows up. A person doesn’t reach sixteen, eighteen or twenty-five and suddenly wake up and say—“Well, gee, I’m glad that’s over!” There’s a process to healing. In my optimistic moments, I believe I’ve come a long way.

  In moments of panic I am eleven years old and the one warm soul in my and Clari’s life has vanished. Or I am thirteen and my sister—the best friend I ever had—is gone. I am as scared and stricken with inconsolable grief and loss as a person—young or old—could ever be. It terrified me that Lara could evoke such feelings.

  She brought me to a place where I wanted her to know me as a better man. I wanted her to see the man hidden inside me. I didn’t want to show her the man who postured and pretended to be greater than he was. I wanted to give her the truth. I wanted to be, for her, a man who was all he could be. And I wanted the sum of me to please her, fundamentally and deeply.

  And when I woke and she was gone, my half sleeping mind thrust me into the terror so profound it overwhelmed.

  When I looked at her sweet face in the kitchen I saw that she was ready to understand anything. She was there for me in all the ways a woman could be there for a man. She had given me the precious gift of her body and her expression told me that she was more than ready to give me the rest—her trust, her affection and, yes, most likely her heart.

  I felt like an ass for pushing her away. Make that a childish ass. A damaged child and certainly not the man I wanted to be. It was cowardly not to trust her when she was so clearly worthy of that trust.

  So I ran away and hid in a bottle of vodka and left her to do whatever it is girls do when a guy does a number like that on ‘em. It never mattered before with anyone. If I gave a girl the ‘later babe, I’ll call’ routine there was a very good chance she didn’t give a rat’s ass whether I did or didn’t. Everyone played the same game and the rules were pretty much understood by all the players.

  When the alarm woke me the next morning, the fog of the hangover I so deserved lifted just enough for me to drag myself to the table in the dining salon. She brought me a cup of coffee and I couldn't meet her eyes.

  I had a vague understanding that Richard was already setting the lines and there was a faint possibility that we might get lucky and hook up. For the first time in my life I wished it wouldn't happen. I wanted to crawl back into my cave and hide.

  Lara eyed me warily and tiptoed around. She was walking on eggshells and didn't know what to do with me. I knew it; I just didn't know how to make it right.

  What kind of small talk do you make when your special hell is swirling around your head and you can't make sense of it yourself, let alone share it?

  "Breakfast?" she ventured.

  "Not just yet, but thanks." I wanted her to stop being so nice. It wasn’t her fault I was so fucked up. I was giving her every reason to believe that her first instincts had been right about me. I was a mistake, but she didn't know why.

  She'd blame herself and it wasn't her fault. Not at all. I was a bad choice but not because of anything she had done. I had to try; somehow, to make her see that is wasn’t her. That much she deserved.

  “Lara . . .” Her ‘yes’ came too quickly. It was a yes that made me squirm. It was a yes that begged for an answer. “I don’t want to give you the impression I didn’t enjoy last night.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t doubt that you enjoyed it. You supplied evidence.” She smiled a half-sexy, half-sad little grin.

  “But my behavior left you confused.”

  “Why? Do you think that I expected roses and a diamond ring? I’m a big girl, Morgan. Eyes wide open and all that.” Her body language turned the temperature in the room below zero.

  “You don’t have to turn hostile and cold. I told you last night—you’ve taken me by surprise.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be hostile, just realistic. Surely you don’t believe that I imagine I’m the first girl you’ve fucked in that stateroom.”

  “Not as many as you’d think. Mrs. D. isn’t fond of strange women.” Her frankness unnerved me. Of course I’d banged a few lovelies in my stateroom. But with Lara, it wasn’t about sport fucking. And that was the problem. I swallowed hard and said, “You’re right, though. You didn’t christen that bed, for sure. I’ve had a few women on this boat. But this is the first time—I swear it—that I’ve ever awakened in that bed thinking that I’d just ‘made love’ to someone.”

  “That’s quite a statement.”

  “It’s the truth. And, for reasons I’m not ready to talk about, it scares the living shit out of me, okay?”

  “Ooookkkkaaay. I’m not sure what you want me to do with that information.”

  “I just need some time.”

  “Looks to me like you can take all the time you need. I can’t exactly pack up my toys and go home to Mommy.” She straightened herself to her full five foot nothing. “Morgan, I don’t mean to scare you. Can’t we just have a good time together? Really. I’m perfectly fine with everything.” The smile was convincing and made me miserable.

  I put my head in my hands and stared into my steaming mug. She was right of course. ‘I’ll call ya, babe’ wasn’t exactly an option. Not that that was an option I wanted to take.

  I watched her body move as she lined up a few more mugs for the guys out on deck. There was an awkward stiffness to her normally easy movements. I knew what I had to do and there was no better time than that moment, hangover or not. She deserved the truth—ugly and sad as it was. It was gut spillin’ time.

  She moved toward just slightly past the table, I reached out to touch her arm and guide her into the seat beside me. I needed to explain, at least a little, why I had been such a jerk.

  Then I heard it.

  Chapter 19—Lara

  "Fish on! FISH on! Fucking FISH ON!" They were urgent words I only half understood.

  Morgan's ice-crystal eyes flashed at me for the briefest moment. He sprang up from his seat at the table and knocked the tray out of my hands. Cups crashed on the floor as long urgent strides carried him toward the salon door. The predator in him came alive and I thrilled to witness the beast awake. He seemed a
lmost comatose only moments before.

  The mess of broken china and the brown coffee stain spreading over the polished hardwood could wait. The awkward conversation that we needed to have could wait. The door was just closing behind him when I pushed my way through on his heels. Captain Richard came flying down the ladder from the bridge. His feet never touched the rungs; he just slid, fireman style, down the side rails.

  The two men vaulted the transom in unison. "Right rigger, Boss," the mate announced. It was hardly necessary. Even my untrained eye could see the bent rod and the whizzing reel playing out yard after yard of line.

  Morgan grabbed the pole and steadied his feet on the dive platform that jutted out from El Lobo's stern. Captain Richard grabbed a wicked looking contraption and strapped it around Morgan's waist and between tensed thighs. Then both men jockeyed the notched end of the rod into the gimbal on the fighting belt. The rod rose from his crotch singing with the release of line as Morgan adjusted the drag.

  He seemed calm but perspiration beaded on the taut muscles of his neck. Soon the inky curls above his collar began to droop with the weight of his sweat. The spooling line slowed and the tip of the pole bent ever so slightly.

  Morgan leaned back and pulled the tip of the rod high over his shoulder. "Set," he told Richard.

  The Captain was peering off into the distance. I assumed he was looking for the fish, hooked at line's end somewhere far in the distance. Morgan wasn't looking. He was bringing back line as fast as he could put it on the reel. He pulled the tip of the rod up as far as his strength would allow. Just when it seemed that the rod was bent to the breaking point, he would furiously reel back line as he lowered the rod. He repeated the arc time and again.

  I was mesmerized by his display of force and finesse. There was a grace in it that made his movements seem like a dance. Of course, that didn't surprise me. Morgan was a man who made every move recall his namesake. Morgan Wolf—alpha predator, wild and wily animal, naked night wanderer, bringer of ecstasy, messenger of disaster.

  "Shirt!" He growled at Richard. The Captain stripped Morgan's torso with a few expert strokes of his knife. Apparently, the prey was more important than a shirt, however expensive it might be.

  His naked back shimmered with sweat. I watched each sculpted muscle ripple with the to and fro of battle. His back was chiseled and tight. The trapezius muscles strained in steely resistance each time he pulled up and reeled back down.

  He turned to follow the fish's desperate attempt to escape and his chest undulated under bronzed skin. His pecs looked ready to pop from his chest, nipples clenched and hard as the teak under his feet. His flat abdomen pulled taut, folding into his slim torso every time he heaved himself into one impossible show of strength after the other.

  The shorts he was wearing drifted well below his navel and revealed the line of fur pointing down to the hidden perfection below. I fought the fish with him in my mind. I felt the arousal of the hunt and the desperation of the hunted all at once. Lust for blood fogged the air. Lust for him crashed like breaking waves inside me. He was a magnificent animal in his element. I forgot my confusion and my hurt. The drama in front of me wiped everything else away.

  One of the mates handed down a fighting chair that was quickly mounted onto the center of the platform. Morgan shifted the pole to the slot on the chair between his legs. His body shook with exertion as he brought in the line. The sight of his flesh, pulsing and alive in the pursuit, aroused my senses in so many ways. I stood above him against the transom but I caught the scent of salt and man. I studied the movement of his arms and watched the patches of hair in his armpits grow wet with his effort. My heart beat quickened as the utterly masculine dance played out in front of me. There was heat spreading through me that had nothing to do with the blazing sun above our heads.

  Richard ladled water from a bucket over his shoulders and mopped his brow with a bandana. Occasionally the Captain would massage the straining muscles of Morgan's shoulders as he worked the line. My own hands twitched with the thought of those hard muscles above me and the slick softness of his moist skin under my fingertips.

  Having never caught anything more exciting than a catfish in a lake, I wasn't prepared for the marathon the fight became. It seemed to me that a normal human being couldn't possibly continue to pump and pull for so long. But Morgan wasn't a normal human being; continue he did, hour after grueling hour. He'd turn his head and Richard or the mate would fill his mouth with water. After the first hour, I was sent back to the kitchen for some Gatorade and he downed bottle after bottle. Morgan had been fighting the fish for more than five hours when he finally brought it close enough to the boat for us to get a good look at her. According to the Captain, she was a 'grander'—a behemoth of at least a thousand pounds. I had witnessed her many acrobatic leaps above the water as she fought for her life. She exuded raw bestial power against a predator who wielded what seemed to me an impossibly fragile stick against such a creature.

  Every movement morphed into cinematic slow motion as she made a desperate final jump across the dive platform. Morgan was at the bitter end of the line the angry fish was trying with all her might to lose. She was glowing—'lit up' the men called it. Her skin wore a miraculous palette of iridescent shades of blue—electric blue to dark deep indigo. She slashed her massive head back and forth with such force that we could hear the sound of her rapier through the air. When the sharp sword of her bill viciously bit into Morgan's leg she won her freedom. Blood fountained from the huge gash in his leg and his hands dropped reflexively to his injury. She sounded, rod and reel trailing behind her and was gone.

  ***

  Blood formed a sickening pool on the island's granite counter top. The inky slick spread out and started to seep over the edge.

  His blood. The red of life.

  Captain Richard and two of the mates maneuvered him into the middle of my kitchen. He passed out by the time they got him into position. That was a blessing.

  Short hours before puff pastry for last evening's meal of shepherd's pie stretched over the cinder colored marble of the work island. The polished surface was perfect for keeping butter nice and cold. For a gravely injured man? Not so much.

  My shaking hands ripped through the first aid kit and I could barely get the gloves over my clammy fingers. I found compresses I needed to slow the blood so I could get a look at the jagged tear in his muscled thigh. His gorgeous leg had been carved up by a dull knife in the hands of a bad chef.

  The mate mopped away the mess under him and the Captain hailed a medical team on shore. The wound was serious. The fish's bill had sliced nearly to the bone. Fortunately for Morgan, she had hit the front and side of his leg. The bleeding was profuse, but I knew that if her slashing had found the femoral artery it would have been deadly.

  My trembling eased as I realized how vital it was for me to stay in control. I'd been hired as the chef, but I also had the most advanced first aid training on the crew. Pushing my emotions to the back of my brain, I forced myself to deal with the crisis mechanically. The pale, still body under my care was Morgan. Morgan, the man who scared me with delicious fear. Morgan, who made me feel alive. For his sake, I needed to forget who he was, at least for the moment.

  A steward fetched pillows from the salon and so we could elevate Morgan's legs and feet. Richard peppered me with questions from the doctor on the radio. How long was the cut? How deep? Could I see evidence of cut tendons? Was the patient in shock?

  The fight for the fish was enough to exhaust even a man in the shape Morgan was in. Most men couldn't take an hour of what he'd been doing for five. I had watched him pit himself against the beast and it awed me. He gave himself to the fight in every way a man can—his mind and body and, yes, his soul too—engaged in an epic struggle. It was Ahab against the whale, the old man against the sea.

  Only this was no embittered one-legged captain. And Morgan was certainly no old man. But still, add a traumatic injury to the exhaustion and probably
a terrific hangover and you had a recipe for serious shock. He was undoubtedly dehydrated in spite of all the fluid he'd consumed. I relayed his blood pressure and pulse to the doctor.

  There were several bags of saline in the kit, but I wasn't trained for that sort of thing. I was petrified that the doctor across the ocean would ask me to get an IV going. I looked at Morgan's large, elegant hand and wondered if I could even find a vein with the needle. Thankfully, the calm voice on the radio told me just to concentrate on keeping pressure on the wound.

  The blood flow from the gash finally began to slow. I followed the doctor's instructions to irrigate and sterilize the nasty cut before attempting to close it. Because it was inflicted by the marlin's bill, infection was a very real possibility.

  To my great relief, he didn't even suggest that I suture the wound. Trussing a turkey or mending a hem is a far cry from sewing human flesh and the thought terrified me. I was instructed to close the wound with strips of duct tape. Carefully drying the surrounding skin, I taped the gash closed leaving quarter inch spaces between each strip as the doctor had instructed. Finally, I covered my 'surgery' with clean gauze and lowered myself onto a kitchen stool. I peeled away the bloody second skin of my soiled gloves and started to cry.

  My tears didn't surprise anyone. I had earned them. I watched them plop onto my jellied knees and brushed them away. They felt hot against my clammy fingers. If anyone thought I wept for any reason but relief, they didn't let on.

  Sooner than I could have hoped, his chest began to rise and fall in a far less ragged rhythm. When I checked his pulse, it was almost back to normal. I marveled at his miraculous strength and felt a rush of gratitude. The doctor advised us to let him stabilize further before we moved him to his stateroom.

  In the panic, I hadn't heard Mrs. Dalloway wailing on the other side of the kitchen door. I found the little monkey pressed up against the partition standing in a puddle of her own urine and feces. She leaped into my arms and tried to scramble over my shoulder to get to Morgan.