“I can imagine.” Backing away from the narrow berth, Harmony’s steps brought her close against Xander again, and he caught her hips in his hands, setting her solidly on her feet again. “So,” she asked, clearing her throat, “Where did you sleep, then? On the deck?”
“Nope. Over there.” Lifting his chin toward the area behind Harmony’s back, Xander edged his way around, making space for her to turn and move back toward the seating area. “See, look. Check this out; the table lifts up, and then you unscrew the table pole. Stow it wherever you feel like, and then the tabletop fits right there in that groove. There’s an extra cushion stowed in a compartment up there, and it fills in the space. Not your average bed, but it’s got more space than the berth back there, so I tend to prefer it.”
“I imagine you do,” Harmony laughed. The humor died though, when she turned to look up at him.
He stood motionless, watching the smile fade from her lips, his eyes hooded. The tip of his tongue dipped into the corner of his mouth, and he swallowed, stepping forward as he reached for her. The air froze in Harmony’s lungs as she lost herself in Xander’s eyes, and she sighed as she felt the feather-light touch of his fingertips on her waist again. A shiver trembled over her skin as she felt her breasts flatten against his chest, her hands creeping up to close behind his head.
“Finally alone,” he said quietly. “You and me.”
“Yeah,” Harmony breathed. Her heart tripped in her chest as she realized how right he was, how alone they were together. All those years she’d been studiously avoiding any resemblance of danger, and she hadn’t even realized that going out alone with him meant she’d be alone with him.
“You okay with this?” Xander asked her, tension radiating out of him as he held himself still, their bodies pressed together, his face only inches away as he looked down at her.
“This?” she echoed, swallowing nervously as she met his eyes.
“Mmhmm. Being along with me. You got ... stiff,” he answered, wiggling her hips slightly with his hands, pointing out her sudden tension.
“I just – I –“
“Give me a chance to not scare you. We’re not all bad, remember?” he asked, smiling easily down at her. “I didn’t bring you out here with any kind of ulterior motive, Harmony. I just want to spend time with you, have dinner with you, and get close enough to really kiss these perfect lips of yours.” As he spoke, Xander moved one hand from Harmony’s hip, trailing up the flat of her stomach to finally brush against the curve of her mouth.
“And what if that’s all I want you to do, nothing more?” she asked, her fear warring with her desire as he cupped her face in his palm, lifting her face to his. “What if all I want is just this?”
“Then all I’ll ask for is just this,” he whispered, his eyes closed as he touched his forehead to hers. “I don’t take what isn’t given to me.”
“Just this, then,” Harmony murmured, slipping her fingertips into the short hair at the base of his skull.
“Mmhmm.” He held himself still, waiting.
“Okay. Just this,” she whispered, trembling against him as he brought his mouth to hers.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Xander finally pulled away, Harmony was surprised to feel a sense of loss; it was only as he smiled down at her that she realized how tightly she’d been holding onto him. “I could stay down here for days with you, but I have to get back on deck,” he murmured, brushing the tip of his nose against hers and dropping another quick kiss on her lips. “I want to make sure we haven’t drifted too far.”
Harmony nodded silently, lowering her eyes as she waited for him to turn and climb the stairs to the boat deck. He didn’t though; instead, he slipped a finger under her chin and lifted her face, concern in his eyes. “Something wrong?”
“No, I – I’m fine,” she breathed, forcing a slight smile to reassure him. “I’m okay.” The truth was that she was a little shocked. Strong arms holding her close against an undeniably powerful body, warm lips working expertly against hers, and the deliciously soft feeling of his tongue dancing with hers, intimately exploring her mouth when she opened to him … the sensation was unbelievably sexy, but she was surprised to find she wasn’t even slightly afraid.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she repeated, marveling at the truth in the words, touching her tingling lips with the tips of her fingers before looking up into his questioning eyes. “I’m okay. Come on; let’s go back up so you can check the boat.”
“If you’re really sure?” Xander waited for her to nod again before turning and leading the way out of the cabin and back onto the sun-warmed deck. “Looks like we’re just fine,” he said, turning and examining the area around them, gauging how much the boat had drifted in the lake while they’d been occupied in the cabin below.
“It’s so pretty out here, the sunshine on the water,” Harmony said, running her fingers over the railing that surrounded the deck. “And this boat, it’s beautiful!”
Xander laughed, reaching down to open one of the little compartments next to one of the bench seats. “I brought this for you,” he said, shrugging a little before tossing her a bottle of sunscreen. “I didn’t know if you’d want it or not; it’s the same kind Bethany uses sometimes. And watch this.” Moving to the far bench at the edge of the deck, Xander pulled a lever and lifted the seat of the bench, pulling it out until three little poles fell out from underneath. Crouching down, he fastened the poles to the deck, bracing up the bench-turned-bed so that it held strong and sturdy against the rocking of the boat.
“Wow, this just keeps getting more awesome,” Harmony laughed. Dropping the sunscreen bottle onto the widened bench, she turned, suddenly self-conscious. “You sunbathing, too?” she asked.
Xander’s answer was a devious grin, just before he snatched at the hem of his t-shirt and swept it over his head. As he tossed the fabric to the floor, Harmony watched the rippling movements of the muscles in his torso and the flaming tattoos trailing down his powerful arms, the heat of the day and the power of his body slowly feeding another flame in the pit of Harmony’s stomach.
“Well, I guess that answers my question,” Harmony laughed, her fingers nervously pulling at the hem of her tank top.
“Keep it on if you want to,” Xander said, noticing her sudden nervousness. “It’s not like you’re wearing a turtleneck, Harm, the sun can still get you.” Dropping lightly onto the more solid half of the bench, he tapped the space beside him and said, “Come lay here, there’s room.”
As Harmony inched her way closer to him and lowered herself onto the edge of the bench, Xander reached above his head and opened a console, pressing buttons until music began to pour from hidden speakers around the deck. “Is there anything this boat doesn’t have?” she asked, stretching out beside him on her back.
“Other than more space? Not really,” Xander laughed. “I’ve even taken it out for little waterway trips. This lake goes into the river. And from there, you can travel through most of the US waterways without much trouble.” Raising up, he braced himself on one elbow, his size casting her face in shadow as he looked down at her.
She lay with one leg slightly bent, her hands resting quietly over the flat of her stomach, looking up at him as he talked about river travel and the places he’d seen. “If this thing was a little bigger,” he finished, “I think I’d take it into the ocean a little bit, too. But it’s not really good for long distances, you know? It’s kind of too small.”
“Maybe one day you’ll have a bigger one to use,” Harmony said quietly, closing her eyes against the brightness of the sun as Xander moved to adjust the volume of the music.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Xander asked. “You seem … I don’t know, tense or something. Have I said something wrong?”
Harmony’s eyes flew open, taking in the slight pout of his mouth, the concern settling again in his eyes. “No, I’m okay, really. It’s stupid; it’s nothing.”
/> “It’s something,” he answered, settling his hand over hers on her stomach. “And if it’s something that worries you or bothers you, then it’s not stupid. So … if you want to talk, Harmony, I want to listen.”
“It’s you,” she said, sighing as she lifted one of her hands, covering his cheek with her palm. She pressed gently to hold his face as he tensed and started to move away, waiting for him to grow still before going on. “I don’t know what to do about you.”
“What to do about me?” He narrowed his eyes slightly, looking down at her, his blue eyes shadowed as the sun drifted over his shoulder to spill warmly over her arm. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you really like me, don’t you?” she asked. Clearing his throat, Xander bit his lip slightly before simply nodding in answer, his hand still resting heavily on her stomach. “And I’m thinking … I really like you, too,” Harmony went on. “And I’ve never really had that happen before. I just don’t know what to do with it yet.”
“I do,” he said, relaxing. He slid his arm around her waist, his thumb tracing circles over the fabric of her tank top.
“What?” Moving her hand along his cheek, she traced the curve of his eyebrow, watching as a slow smile spread over his lips.
“Just keep doing this,” he whispered, his eyes falling to her lips. “Keep hanging out like this, together. Talking.”
“Hmm. Just talking?”
“And maybe one other thing, one other thing that’s pretty much all I’ve been wanting to do since the day you went off on me in the bookstore, cute and mad and sexy and bossy.”
“One other thing, hmm?” Harmony asked, smiling. “What’s that?”
“Just this,” he answered, his voice low, as he watched her face.
As his lips lowered to meet hers, Harmony slipped her hand around the back of his neck, urging him lower, the tip of her tongue darting out to sweep the curve of his bottom lip. He groaned quietly, his arm tightening around her waist, sliding her body closer to his. He lifted his body away when she nudged him with her elbow, silently asking him to free the arm that had become trapped between them.
Once it was free, she slipped it beneath him, running her hand up the naked skin of his back. His muscles tensed, following the motion of her hand. He sighed softly, tightening his embrace and holding her more firmly against him. Soon, he craved the touch of her skin, and he slipped his hand down her back; when he found the hem of her tank top, he smiled against her lips. The smile widened as Harmony moaned, a quiet sound barely audible as Xander nudged aside the fabric at her waist, his hand hot against the bare skin of her ribs as he circled the softness of her stomach with the pad of his thumb, his palm flat against her body.
Harmony’s body soared at his touch, her blood racing through her veins as she met each thrust of his tongue with her own, soft mewling noises escaping her throat as Xander moved his hand over her stomach and back to her ribs before sliding it beneath her again. His arm was a hot band of power around her body and she squirmed against the restraint, moving still closer to him as she rolled to press her body against his.
Xander groaned again as their hips met, the hard planes of his body meeting the soft angles of hers, and he slipped his arm under her to pull her more firmly against him. She gasped as he slid one hand down her body to cup her bikini-clad bottom and he smiled again at the sound, pressing himself more tightly against her.
Her head fell back against the cushioned surface of the bench as he left her mouth, his lips burning a hot trail over her chin and down her throat. “Xander,” she sighed, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back as he moved down her throat and nipped gently at the curve between her throat and her shoulder.
It wasn’t until he rolled her onto her back, his body twisting so that his chest was nearly flat over hers and one of his thighs lay between her knees that she broke away from the heat of his kiss. “Xander, wait,” she whispered, wondering if maybe she was crazy to stop him. She didn’t want him to stop; she didn’t want her first moment of real passion to end … but she didn’t want to get caught naked on a boat deck in broad daylight either.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, raising his head to look down at her, his eyelids heavy, his breath coming in short pants as he held himself away from her.
“We’re on a boat,” she whispered, lifting her head to kiss him gently. “A boat in the middle of a public lake.”
Nuzzling under her chin, Xander burrowed into the curve of her throat again; his reluctant sigh releasing a breath that trickled gently over her chest. “Probably good that you were feeling too shy to strip down to the bathing suit, huh?” he asked, smiling against her skin as he kissed her throat again.
“Yeah, I think probably, since this bathing suit only ties on,” Harmony teased, laughing as Xander groaned and dropped his forehead to her chest. “One wrong move and we’d have scandalized all the other boaters.”
“Oh, dear God … I gotta go … check the boat or something,” Xander groaned. “Just chill here and I’ll be right back.” And then he was up, moving stiffly around the deck while Harmony tried not to laugh out loud.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the time the sun began to fall over the horizon, tinting the sky pink and purple, yellow and orange, Xander and Harmony were settled comfortably on the deck bench. He had done a spectacular job of providing dinner for them aboard the ship; he’d lain out a spread that included various fruits, crackers, cheeses, and meats.
“This was really sweet of you to put together, Xander,” Harmony murmured, looking up from where her head rested in his lap. “I’ve never had anyone do anything like this for me before.”
He laughed, looking down at her, curling his fingers through the spill of her dark hair. “Well, did you give anyone a chance before?”
“Not really,” Harmony admitted. “When I was younger, my sister was … she was ... date raped. Some guy drugged her ... Cameron was really traumatized, and for me to see her go through that was really hard. I felt like I lost my sister.”
“That must have been hell.”
Harmony nodded, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue before she went on. “The thing was, it wasn’t like it was just some guy at a party gone wrong; she knew the guy. I don’t know much more than that because I was really young and my family tried hard to shelter me from what was going on. But what I did know made me really scared.”
“That’s sensible,” Xander said, nodding quietly, as he waited for her to go on.
“My sister had PTSD, and it had a huge affect on the whole family. I mean, my brothers sort of became the security detail around her, watching out for her, reassuring her. And mom or I would sometimes sleep in her room with her, to look out for her so she could sleep. Mom said we needed to keep her company, but when the whole house is on guard, you can tell, you know?”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“I think sometimes PTSD has more of an effect on family members than people think, though, Xander,” Harmony said softly. “Like me. After a while, I didn’t want to trust anyone either, or be with anyone ever.”
“And that’s still with you, isn’t it?” he asked, lifting her hand and pressing a soft kiss to her palm.
“It’s getting better, I think so, anyway,” she answered, smiling slightly. “But I didn’t know how to cope with everything back then. I just kind of avoided it all – I focused on gymnastics almost to the exclusion of everything else.”
“Even excluding dating? I mean, you were still pretty young at that point, right?”
“Yeah, I was a teenager,” Harmony answered, wiggling her fingers lightly against Xander’s hand as he traced circles along her palm. “I just didn’t want to risk it. As I got older though, it started bothering me that I was a virgin … You know how people tend to think that horrible things could never happen to them? Like, parents always think it won’t be their kid to get kidnapped, or women always think they could never be raped?”
“Yeah.” He lo
oked down watching as she struggled to find the right words, her face shadowed in the twilight.
“Well, I didn’t think that at all. I’d seen the way rape affected my sister, and I just got more and more scared that it would happen to me, too. And I didn’t want to lose my virginity like that. I didn’t want to remember it like that, having it stolen from me.”
“That’s fair enough,” he answered, crossing one ankle over the other and smoothing her hair over his leg. He waited a while, quiet, but when Harmony didn’t speak again, he nudged her arm softly and asked, “Want to tell me the rest?”
“Okay,” she said. “There was this guy, Turner – we had trained together for years, and we knew each other pretty well. We were comfortable together – pretty good friends, I guess. And he was really awkward around girls, you know. Well, other girls. He was comfortable enough with me,” she laughed, turning over to curl against the warmth of Xander’s body.
Wrestling Harmony (The Kingsley Series) Page 20