“The sun hasn’t set,” he whispered into the top of her head. It was a wonder such an abrupt man could make her laugh, but a whisper of one managed to escape her. “But, if I say pretty please…”
“Yes,” she exhaled, forgetting her laughter. All she felt now was urgent need. “Yes, Captain, please.”
“If we’re gonna be doing this stuff, it should probably be Swain.” Her eyes opened and though he couldn’t see her smile, it didn’t matter, her happiness was for her. He’d never given her that permission before and she’d never called him that. “Unless… does the captain thing work for you?”
Making her own executive decision, she spun around, catching herself with her arms around his neck, holding him in a way she never had. “What if the pirate thing works?”
He sneered. “What if I tell you to swab the deck every day for the rest of the trip?”
Tightening the circle of her arms, she drew him lower. “I can think of something more productive to do on the deck.”
His lips were just a whisper away from hers when the intercom squawked. “Cap’n?” Jockey’s voice echoed through the room.
Talk about a mood killer.
Swain’s eyes closed and he bared his teeth before smacking a palm on the door behind her.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
“You there, cap’n?”
Letting her go, Swain stalked over to the intercom, casting an eye over the water as he did. Nothing out there, nope, nothing for miles.
“What is it, Jockey?” he snapped, watching her retie the strings at her hip.
“You need relief up there?” Jockey asked.
With his elbows locked to straighten his arms and his hands flat on the counter under the intercom, Swain let his head fall as he muttered. “You have no idea.” But, he did glance at her for long enough to see her smile before he poked the button on the intercom again. “No, I’ve got another two hours up here.”
“Just thought, maybe, you know, with Robins up there…”
She gasped and bounced forward a step. “Can they see us?” she whispered, looking around for any kind of spy cam.
“No, just Fidget can’t keep his mouth shut.”
So, the youngster liked to gossip. He was the only one who knew they were in here… alone. He’d wasted no time in telling someone. Jockey probably thought he was doing them a favor, but she could see the abandon leave the captain’s attention as it slid over her.
“Will you go below decks and put some clothes on for me, Waif?” he asked and she nodded, pushing her lips to one side. She hadn’t meant to guilt him with her disappointment, but he pushed off his hands to straighten up and explain. “I’m in the wheelhouse, alone on watch…”
“I know,” she said, nodding. “You don’t owe me anything.”
His teeth stayed together as his lips moved and his eyes devoured her. “Then why the hell do I feel like I do?”
Sashaying over to him, Sassi let her smile grow sultry. “That’s probably your dick doing the feeling,” she said, opening her palm over the shaft still thick and insistent in his pants. Pressing into him, she stroked his length once, then again, impressed by both his length and his girth. But he was big everywhere else, it would be a disappointment if his dick didn’t follow the trend. She sighed. “Maybe some other time.”
When she turned away, he snatched her wrist and hauled her back to him, taking Sassi so by surprise that she gasped.
“Standing behind me, when you flirt with the crew,” he said. “You do that for protection, right?” She nodded. “That what this is?”
“For protection?”
Yes, she flirted with him more than anyone else, and tended to stick close to his physical presence when it was available. And she was more forward when he was around because she knew he’d always step in if anyone got the wrong idea of what she was saying or implying. But that didn’t explain her instinctive urge to fantasize about submitting to him or her desire to feel his touch.
“Is it?” he asked.
“You’d protect me whether I was attracted to you or not… whether I have sex with you or not… wouldn’t you? I don’t need to share my body with you to be safe… In fact…” She paused before disclosing a revealing truth. “I have a feeling I’d be safer if I stayed the hell away from you…”
“You’re probably right about that,” he said, touching her nose. “Put on some clothes… The rest of the crew don’t get to enjoy the Captain’s girl, not ever… we clear?”
Suddenly, just like that, she was his girl, when they hadn’t even kissed? Why in the hell was she nodding? Why did she feel that fizzing in her hips and across her breasts? Why were butterflies dancing and multiplying in her belly?
But that statement was his way of telling her they’d get there. He was letting her know that he was interested and that if she thought about dallying with any other member of the crew, there would be no chance of an intimate future for them. The captain’s girl had to be held to a high standard, almost as high a standard as the one he held himself to.
This was complicated and insane. It could never be anything, and she’d be smart to stay celibate until she knew whether or not she had a future. But, Sassi didn’t want to disappoint him, and the fantasy of believing, even for a minute, that she could belong to him, was too powerful to resist.
NINE
The following night, close to midnight, when the men were engrossed in their poker game in the mess and digging into their second cheesecake of the day, Sassi slipped out onto the deck.
One of her favorite spots in the night was standing against the rail outside her cabin’s porthole that faced the back of the ship. She left the main passageway to get to the deck that swept around three sides of the superstructure. It was so quiet and calming that she felt like the only person on earth when she was there.
When she’d boarded Eros, she’d had no idea that after just six days on board, she would feel this intensely about the vessel or the voyage.
Standing there, contemplating her life, Sassi didn’t hear the captain coming toward her. Even when she became aware of him when he propped a hip on the railing beside her, she didn’t turn, but she did speak.
“I love that smell,” she said. “I’ve lived by the ocean all my life, but it’s different out here.”
“There’s nothing like it,” Swain said and caught a loose section of her hair that was flapping in the breeze. As soon as she felt the tension of him holding it, she reached up to take it from him to tuck it away with the rest on top of her head. “Are you ready to talk?”
Ready to talk? That wasn’t what she assumed he’d sought her out to do. “Is that why you came looking for me? To talk?”
Glancing sideways at him, Sassi expected to see guilt, instead, his expression remained steadfast. “It’s been five days since we left Miami. Your trouble didn’t follow us. I thought you’d be pleased; that you’d relax the further away we got… but you seem more tense these last couple of days.”
“It doesn’t have to follow me,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’ll wait for me… I’m glad your crew is safe, and Eros too, but distance doesn’t matter. We can put as many miles as you want between me and land. Time is what’s against me. Every second that passes takes me one second closer to…”
“To what?” he asked, sidling closer. “What is it you’re into?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said and tried to turn away, but he caught her elbow to hold her in place.
“It matters if it’s screwing with your head. I need you focused.”
Getting defensive, Sassi didn’t appreciate him implying that her work was sub-standard. “Have I slipped?” she asked, making eye contact. “Have there been complaints about the meals?”
“That’s not why I need you focused.”
Standing there in the dark night, staring into him, she wished she could regain that high she’d felt in the wheelhouse when she’d let herself believe the fantasy. “You don
’t know who I am, not really,” she said. “I signed on for four weeks and four weeks is all you’ll ever get from me, after that, I’m gone.”
“Gone where?” he asked with a real sense of urgency like he was desperate to know, desperate for her to let him in. “Are you telling me someone wants to hurt you?”
That hadn’t been what she was saying, but she could see how he took her statement that way. Sassi had meant that the captain wouldn’t see her again. But, he wasn’t wrong to suspect there was potential danger in her future.
“He won’t hurt me,” she said, seeking the water, but it was just a black void at night. Only the scent of the spray and the beat of the waves on the hull betrayed that they were on the ocean at all. “I can’t promise I won’t hurt myself.”
That, to her, was an inevitable truth. She doubted she’d last long as Dario’s wife.
Swain didn’t know the details of what they were talking about, so it was easy for him to be more optimistic. “Right,” he said, lunging over to grab her other elbow to spin her around to face him. “I won’t hear talk like that. You’re my responsibility—”
“Not after we’re back home,” she said. “After that, it’s every man for himself.”
He shook her. “I want to help.”
Her captain could be infuriating, but she held onto her patience. “You can’t help.”
“Don’t be a martyr. Someone must be able to do something.”
“My brother was the only other person capable of stopping this… but he’s too much like my father.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s just it, Captain, I don’t have a clue.”
Turning to the stern again, she hoped she hadn’t signed her brother’s death warrant by leaving the States. If Dario knew she was on this ship, that she wasn’t on land any more, he might think that she was fleeing. That could lead him to him assuming that catching up with Stuart was his only chance of receiving any repayment.
Sassi tried to reassure herself that Dario wouldn’t kill his only chance of getting his money back. Stuart was resourceful; he could talk himself out of any mess. She had to believe that. Maybe he could offer to do work for Dario… Except, she didn’t want her brother signing his future away.
All Stuart had to do was keep breathing until she got back, then she could fix everything. Dario would have his money and they’d walk away clean. Whatever they’d had to do to stay alive, they’d just never mention it again. It would be like the whole sorry affair never happened.
After that, she could build up her business again. Stuart could get back together with Karen. In short, they could return to the lives they’d had before their father screwed it all up.
Swain’s fingers loosened for the briefest second before they tightened again. He pulled her forward, shaking her from her drifting thoughts. Blinking at him, she knew what he planned when he began to dip lower.
But, she quickly dropped her chin and put a hand to his chest. “That stunt with the bikini, I’m sorry, it was… I didn’t think it through, I shouldn’t have played around like that. It was immature. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking you wanted my attention,” he said. “You’ve had it since you stepped aboard, I was too stubborn to show you.”
Something about being alone with him in the night air was screwing with her common sense. Lifting her chin, Sassi met his gaze. The softness in his eyes that he hid whenever he was on duty, whenever there were others around, was shining down on her. It wasn’t softness like she might see in other men. But, by the gruff captain’s standard, it was outright romantic that he’d grant her his complete focus like this.
And it was so nice, such a testament to his character, that he at least asked about helping her, even if the situation was hopeless without her bonus. Sassi couldn’t, and wouldn’t, ask him about that. Money was a dirty subject that just made her feel sick.
Her father spent his life going from one creditor to another, and she’d had no idea just how close he’d come to losing a kneecap or an eye so many times. Not until after he was gone. Though she hadn’t put voice to it yet, Sassi had a sinking expectation that Dario wasn’t the only one who’d be calling in outstanding debts. Soon they’d all be coming out of the woodwork.
Swain began to bow again, more slowly. Sassi knew she should be pushing the captain away, knew she should step back, should send out a firm signal that this would never happen between them, not ever.
But, the fantasy began to play in her mind’s eye again.
The fantasy of the gruff overbearing captain, who it turned out actually had a heart, taking control of her body, of her heart and her destiny.
At the same time his lips made contact with hers, Sassi exhaled and let her eyes close. A kiss. Something about the basic gesture of their two mouths coming together for the first time erased all kinds of trouble from her mind.
Contact with him had made her feel invincible like this before; his touch gave her security. Even as his lips parted and his entitled tongue advanced into her mouth, she didn’t feel threatened. Sassi wanted to grab hold of him, to kiss him harder, to pull him to her, and to beg him to take her to his cabin.
It was just insane that she was letting this happen.
Stepping back, she touched her lips and rushed away to press her forehead against the cold metal wall under her porthole. “What are you doing, Sassi,” she whispered to herself. “You don’t kiss the captain.”
“No,” Swain said, his deep, certain voice approaching behind her. Grabbing her shoulder, he pulled her around and ducked down to her level. “But, you let him kiss you.”
Snatching her face in both his hands, he hauled her up to steal her mouth again. Pressing her hard against the wall, he made no apology for the fervor of his mouth that devoured hers in a deep kiss that grew more intense as he slanted to get closer.
This was exactly the kind of insanity that she shouldn’t be getting involved with. This man was her boss. She’d be on this ship for little more than another three weeks and after that she’d never see him again.
He was so strong, so determined in his certainty. Swain knew where he belonged, knew where he was going and what he wanted from life and there was something alluring about that. Those attributes were almost as attractive as his determined arrogance. The stubbornness that bled from him betrayed how he’d never be swayed against his will.
Even the power of the ocean didn’t set him off his feet. Sassi struggled to keep her balance on deck, but Swain never flinched.
Raucous noise around the corner made the captain break their kiss and just as he turned toward the sound to tuck her at his back, Swing came around the corner with Fidget in tow.
“Hey, Captain!” Swing declared. “We got another hand going!”
Cowering behind him was wrong. She’d used his protection before, and she wasn’t sure he liked it when she did. Stepping out of the shelter of his body heat, away from his spine, Sassi put space between them. Swain reached back, seeking her out, but he didn’t turn, which gave her the opportunity to avoid his grip.
“Deal me out,” the captain said.
Sassi couldn’t let this affair happen, she couldn’t. Retreating from the men, she kept on going until she could sneak around the opposite corner and make her way to her cabin through the port entrance to the passageway.
She managed to get past the mess where Jockey and Foist were talking and into her room without facing anyone else.
“Shit,” she said to herself and began to strip off so she could slip into a cold shower.
Screwing with any man when Dario had her in his sights was crazy. Swain might be capable, but Dario had manpower on his side and the element of surprise.
Stuart had broken Karen’s heart because they couldn’t risk her getting hurt. Sassi couldn’t care about anyone, not now when their lives were in danger. She couldn’t be responsible for the downfall of a giant like Swain.
&n
bsp; Except as the water cascaded over her, she feared she already cared about him, and the Eros crew, enough that she’d already put them in danger.
TEN
Rolling the spice tin along the inside of her thumb and up the length of her index finger, Sassi stared out of the galley porthole toward the bow and the ocean beyond.
“Waif?” She kind of heard something, but was too lost in her daze to pull herself back to reality. “Sassi?”
Someone grabbed her shoulder and turned her around; she had to blink a few times to bring Swain into focus. She fixated on him for a couple of seconds before noticing Jockey seating himself in the mess.
Clearing her throat, she tried to remember what she’d been doing before drifting into her daze. Day eight on the water, lunch time, everyone had eaten except the captain and the first-mate.
“Oh,” she said. “I was supposed to bring you lunch in the wheelhouse, what are you doing down here?”
“That was nearly an hour ago,” Jockey called across the room.
Swain’s palm on her cheek redirected her attention to him. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head once, but her thoughts began to coast again when her eyes landed on his lips. “Only things that shouldn’t be.”
“Hmm,” he said in such a gruff tone she snapped out of her musing again. “As long as that’s all.” To her surprise, he brushed his thumb across her lips before he began to retreat. “Feed us, Waif, we’re hungry.”
Jockey was unfolding one of the newspapers that he’d got from the wooden slot between the back of the bench he was sitting on and the wall. The papers were more than a week old, but they were all the guys had.
Swain sat at the head of the table, exactly where he was supposed to, and she went about making their food. Although Sassi knew better than to get distracted, she’d thought about little except her kiss with the captain the night before last.
Sassi had always been a fan of kissing, but Swain’s kiss was unique; so forceful in its desire, so unapologetic and demanding. Somehow, he made her feel like the greatest treasure he could ever plunder. A smile curled her lips as she built the sandwiches and filled bowls with warm pasta. She’d never been kissed by a pirate, had never thought it was a possibility, and there she was about to serve lunch to one.
Sweet Seas Page 9