Ocean scooped up a duffle bag and came around the counter, placing one hand on her back and leading her out the front door. Helena waited in the bright sunlight for him to close down and lock up the building. When he came out into the light, she was struck again by his pretty-boy looks.
He wore his dark hair long. The majority fell to his ears, cut in soft layers, allowing locks to drift forward in front of his eyes.
He ran his fingers through one side, scooping it behind his ear. Almost immediately, most of it fell forward again. In the sunlight, his hair picked up hints of russet, not the uniform black it had appeared that morning.
His eyes were blue. Ocean blue. Helena slipped her fingers into his when he held out his hand. The small hotel where Helena was staying was near the dock, probably the reason why her vacation package included accommodations there. It was not to the hotel, but to Ocean’s truck, that they headed. After opening her door, Ocean slung his bag into the back and climbed in.
Helena leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
Ocean stuffed the key into the ignition and started the car, taking his eyes off Helena long enough to back out of the parking lot and turn onto the main road. Her eyes were closed, her head resting against the back of the seat. She might have looked relaxed if you didn’t notice the faint tightness around her eyes and the nervous motion of her fingers, pleating and smoothing the fabric of her sweats. He found her nervousness adorable, her brave attempts at femme fatale endearing, but now it was time to see how much she would take, how far she would go. “Take off your sweats.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Please.”
Eyes still closed, she braced her feet on the floor and lifted her hips, slipping the pants and knotted hoody down and off. She let them pool on the floorboard. Helena crossed her lightly tanned, satiny soft and smooth legs, drawing his attention to her best feature.
Hello, legs.
Ocean took in her long stems and forced himself to focus on the road, shooting glances at her out of the corner of his eye. Her suit had bikini-style bottoms but the material of the top extended down her waist to meet them, making it look like a single piece. She’d been hiding those under the clothing, but now, wearing only her bikini bottom, her secret was out.
The built-in underwire of the top hugged and lifted her breasts, offering them up for Ocean’s viewing pleasure. The suit was a simple dark green with silver stitching, the color of lush leaves near a rainforest pool. Her skin glowed a pale cream in contrast.
Ocean breathed deep, keeping his attention on the road. He was a leg man, and those were a truly exemplary set. He imagined them wrapped around his body as he rode her, and nearly crashed the car. He needed to slow down. They had all day and night to play, no reason to get too excited now.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered, voice rough from arousal. “Helena.”
Her wide eyes had a doe-like softness to them, at odds with her flirting body language. She was beautiful, magic, utterly unique.
“All right, gorgeous, I want you to turn in your seat. Put your back against the door and swing one leg up and onto my lap. Leave the other on the floor.”
In the warm cabin of the truck, Helena obeyed, turning and placing her left leg across his lap, slipping her foot between his knees and the steering wheel. She drew her other leg in close to the seat.
Ocean, eyes still on the road, wrapped his right hand around her calf and slid his palm up her leg to her thigh. Her skin was smooth under his hard palm. He pressed his fingertips into her exposed inner thigh, massaging it as he had on the dock, but this massage had no pretense of physical therapy. It was purely sexual.
Her other leg fell to the side, splaying her open, only a thin barrier of stretch fabric interrupting his view of her sex. His palm traveled back down her leg, even moving under the steering wheel so he could cup her foot, pressing his fingertips into the arch.
He pulled off the road into a parking lot. At one end a small dock stretched out, with other small docks sticking out the sides like evenly spaced tree branches, a stately sailboat docked in each slip.
Tall masts with furled sails speared up, and endless lace patterns of white ropes glittered against the blue sky.
“You live on a boat?”
“A sail boat. A thirty-one foot Catalina 310 to be precise.”
“Which one is it?”
“I’ll take you to meet her.”
Ocean jumped out of the truck, grabbed his bag and came around to her side of the truck. He opened the door and held out a hand.
“Just a second, let me get my pants.” She was blushing, trying to hide it by reaching down for her sweats.
“No, leave them.”
“I can’t just walk to the boat in my—”
“Yes, you can.” He smiled, making it a challenge.
Helena fished her shoes out from under the sweats and slid on the flip-flops, leaving the pants behind. Her flush might have been from embarrassment, but he didn’t think so. To him it looked like arousal. Placing her hand in his, she hopped out of the truck. Ocean gifted her with another smile as they passed out of the parking lot and onto the dock. Made of smooth, tight-fitting planks, it was unlike the rough and uneven boardwalk-style docks. This was a real dock, a working dock.
“So you can live on these little boats?”
“Not comfortably, no.” Ocean smiled as he said it and Helena laughed. “One of the back rooms down at the office is full of my stuff. I sank my life savings into her. Someday I’ll need an apartment, but for now it is just me and Moira.” He gestured to their left.
Sitting calm and pretty in the green water was a sleek white lady. “Moira” was written out in navy script on the side. The sails were down, strapped to the arms by coverings.
“Your boat is very pretty.” Helena’s comment was cautious, as if she wasn’t sure what kind of compliment was appropriate. Non-boat people were often unnerved by the personification of the vessels.
“She is, isn’t she?” He loved his boat, and it was apparent in his voice. “Come on, let me introduce you.”
They moved down the short pier running along the left side of the boat. Ocean moved in front of her onto the platform at the back of the boat and swung open the thigh-high door which gave access to the cockpit.
Ocean held her hand tight in his as he guided her onto the ship and through the little door. One step down had them standing in a comfortable seating area where the captain’s chair was situated. Helena looked around curiously, and Ocean took advantage of her distraction to slip his hands around her waist, fingertips sneaking under the waistband to press against her bare hips.
“Helena,” he whispered in her ear, “I would like you to meet Moira. Moira, this beautiful creature is Helena, who has already proven herself a lover of the ocean.”
Ocean laced their fingers together once more and led her to the door to the cabin. It was blessedly cool below deck, the light maple-colored paneling and the white and navy décor giving the room a welcoming feel. The minute they stepped inside Ocean remembered he wasn’t exactly ready for guests.
“Just stay here for a minute while I go clean up the berth.”
“The what?”
“Bedroom.”
Less than ten steps had Ocean at the door to the bedroom, which he opened a crack and squeezed in, not wanting her to see the mess inside. Helena craned her head to see past him, but Ocean slammed the door shut, leaving her in the cluttered cabin while he dealt with the truly disastrous berth.
Helena smiled as the door closed. She liked that he was messy, it made him much less perfect and the situation less surreal. She’d been suffering from regrets and nerves in the car on the way here, but they were drowned out by her arousal. Ocean made her feel beautiful, sexy. The way he looked at her did more for her self-confidence than dozens of compliments from a different man. Nothing had really happened in the truck, she was wearing a bathing suit after all, but the way he’d ordered her to stri
p and change position so he could play with her made it seem more sexual than some of the technical sex she’d had with previous lovers. It was almost kinky, and with him she felt sexy enough to enjoy kinky.
Pulling her braid over one shoulder, she tugged out the rubber band and fumbled to get the strands separated. Saltwater spray, like high-intensity gel, had glued the hair to itself. Grimacing at the texture, she scrubbed her fingers along her scalp.
She made her way to the low bench that wrapped along one wall of the cabin. The multitude of throw pillows made the otherwise plain seating look lush and inviting, and she plucked up a few pillows along with a faux fur throw.
Chucking the pillows to one end of the seating, she held up the blanket. It was a lopsided oval rather than square. She rubbed it against her cheek. Layers and layers of downy hair made the fur unbelievably soft. Jerking it away from her face, she curled her lip. Ugh. Not fake fur. Real fur. It seemed out of character for him to own a fur blanket, but then again, she had only known him for eighteen hours.
Resolved to talk politics after they had some yummy sex, she folded the blanket, and not wanting it staring at her, reached down and lifted the seat bottoms. Several of them opened but most were already full—some with essentials like canned goods and paper towels, others with life jackets and miscellaneous boat paraphernalia. When she lifted one seat to reveal a cubby full of sleeping bags, she tucked the blanket down between them. Satisfied, she made her way back to the space she had cleared, sitting and arranging herself carefully.
This was going to be fun. No, it was going to be more than fun, it was going to be hot and sexy and amazing. She wouldn’t worry about her belly pudge or the fact that one boob was slightly larger than the other. She’d made a choice, the choice to have a once-in-a-lifetime vacation fling with a gorgeous man who was inexplicably attracted to her.
A smile playing over her lips, she waited for her lover.
*
Ocean found one last sock hidden in the folds of the sheet and stuffed it into the drawer built into the platform of the bed. As he knelt to force the overstuffed drawer closed, a dark shiver skipped down his back. A moment later, every inch of his flesh stood up in goose bumps. His skin.
He jerked to his feet, but could go no farther, a creepy-crawly sensation on his human skin telling him that another held his skin. Icy fear settled in his belly as his breathing became quick.
He shouldn’t have left it out, or should have remembered it was just sitting there, but no one ever came on his boat, the island a tight-knit community with a low crime rate. Besides, one would have to believe in magic and faerie tales to understand the importance of his skin, and most humans had closed their minds to magic so he’d relaxed his guard.
There was only one logical culprit. Helena.
He knew she was magic, knew because she’d preformed an ocean ritual in the kayak that morning, raising the water to the sky three times. He was so entranced by this he’d never stopped to consider that her apparent knowledge of magic might mean she knew the truth about him and had come to capture him. He assumed she was of the ocean, hiding in a human skin as he was. He’d hoped to spend time with her, get to know her, and then reveal what he was, hoping his revelation would prompt her to do the same.
But now it appeared she did know what he was. Perhaps she was a witch. If so, his skin was probably gone from the boat, transported to a hiding spot by magic. Even if it were on the boat, he would have a hard time finding it.
The curse of his people dictated that once caught by others the skin would be hidden from his people’s eyes. Most humans hid the skins anyway, in case the magic preventing the captured creature from seeing their skin were to fail.
His people were known to be physically beautiful and skilled lovers. That combined with the fact that once bound by the theft of their skin, his people were unwaveringly loyal to the thief, meant they were prized as husbands and wives. There had been a time when so many females had been captured, taken as loyal, beautiful wives by human men, that they’d faced extinction.
If he wanted his skin back he had only two choices. He could kill the one who had taken it. Most chose continued enslavement over committing such an act. They were creatures bound to the earth and sea. The taking of a life for anything other than food or defense was one of the most reprehensible crimes.
Or he could coax her into giving it back, please her until she returned it. Despite his nervous fear at having been trapped, he couldn’t help but like the idea of coaxing his skin from her. If he chose this path he would be completely under her control, giving himself to her until she was satisfied.
The theft of a skin was powerful, uncertain magic. Having never been in this position before, Ocean couldn’t know how it would affect him, or her. He needed his skin back. Knowing he could not go to the sea as long as she held it frightened him, so he forced himself not to think about it. Instead he focused on how he would get it back. This brought a smile to his face. She was shy, uncertain of her own appeal, and he wanted her. Despite the fact that she’d stolen his skin, he still wanted her. He’d been enthralled by her before she took his skin. Now they were bound by magic.
He would get his skin back, and he would enjoy doing it.
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