By lunchtime, Summer and Adam were sailing out of Poole Harbour, the sail of their forty-foot yacht billowing in the strong breeze as they passed Brownsea Island, heading towards the Solent. Adam was barefoot on a walnut deck warm from the sun, his mouth set in a line of concentration as he piloted the boat single-handedly.
‘Do you want to take the helm while I put a tack in?’ he called, taking Summer’s hand.
‘Me?’ she shouted over the cracking flap of the sail. ‘You don’t want me in charge of this thing, do you?’
‘I take full responsibility,’ said Adam, moving behind her and placing her hands on the big wheel.
Summer shut her eyes, enjoying Adam’s strong arms around her, not quite believing that only twelve hours earlier she had been trapped in a nightclub with Ricardo. But, if she had felt dreadful when she had got up that morning at Adam’s, the salty wind whistling through her ears seemed to have blown anything toxic out of her body.
‘Hard to starboard,’ said Adam, moving to the side, pulling hard on the rope for the headsail.
‘Argh! What do I do? What do I do?’ squealed Summer, as the boom swung towards them.
‘Don’t worry, you’re doing fine,’ smiled Adam, moving back behind her.
‘So is this boat yours then?’ she asked when they were back on a straight course. ‘You must be a pretty good sailor.’
‘She belongs to a friend of mine who lives on the Sandbanks over there,’ he said pointing to a spit of land behind them. Summer had heard of Sandbanks, of course. Her mother was constantly talking about all of the most exclusive places in the country to live.
‘But I do sail a lot. I have a house in Maine so I take a boat out whenever I’m there.’
‘You’re going to think I’m an idiot, but you can’t do all this tacking thing on that boat we were on in Monaco, can you?’ asked Summer. For some reason, she felt okay asking Adam questions like this; she felt safe with him.
Adam smiled and shook his head, reaching into an icebox for a cola.
‘No, The Pledge is a motor yacht, it doesn’t have a sail. It’s used more for corporate entertaining than actual sailing. I have a small yacht like this in Dark Harbour, but I’m having a sailing yacht built as we speak in a shipyard in Holland.’
‘What’s it like?’
Adam’s eyes glinted with passion and pleasure. ‘She’s not even half built, but already she takes my breath away. She’s twenty-five metres, a sloop-rigged sailing yacht based on the eighteenth-century French cutters, which just slide through the water, but with the best technology and material that we’ve got today. An aluminium hull, carbon-fibre mast and boom.’
Summer laughed. ‘She sounds beautiful.’
He nodded absent-mindedly out to sea. ‘I’d love to race her in the America’s Cup.’
‘It’s the world’s most expensive hobby,’ he shrugged. ‘Your yacht is just the start of it. There’s management, crew, transporting the boat all over the world; it’s a serious business. You’re looking at around twenty million pounds a year to compete seriously.’
‘Wow!’
Summer wondered how rich you had to be before you didn’t even have to think about your limitations. She was sure it wasn’t a good place to be. As Adam said, you had to have your dreams.
After an hour at sea, they sailed into Studland Bay. It was more sheltered and, without the wind of the open sea, the sun burnt down on their bodies.
Adam dropped the anchor as they bobbed a few hundred metres from shore. ‘Do you want to go on land? There’s a mooring close by.’
‘No, I like it here,’ she said softly.
She sounded calm, but her heart was racing. She knew she shouldn’t have come, but she wanted to be here more than anywhere else in the world. She still felt sick when she imagined Karin watching them, angry and betrayed, but they were having too much of a good time. Adam’s fingers felt too good on her skin when he touched her. He had saved her from Ricardo, and swept her away and made her feel alive and safe, sexy and interesting. And a hundred miles away from London, it was just the two of them on the boat, unable to escape from one other. Not wanting to, she thought, looking at him squinting in the sun.
He walked towards her and took her face in his hands. ‘I don’t want to go home yet, either,’ he whispered, pulling her in closer. And then they were kissing, pulling at each other’s clothes.
They stumbled down the stairs to the cabin, and Summer bumped her head on the low beam, giggling. He pulled off his T-shirt and then hers. There was a light scrub of dark hair on his tanned chest which tickled her breasts as he held her close. She licked his neck, his skin tasting of salt.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered, pushing her up onto the bed. He cupped his hand around her breasts, and circled her nipple, round and round until she gasped. Not thinking about anything except the need to feel and taste every inch of each other, they scrambled out of their clothes, his thick cock sliding through her wetness until they were locked together, their bodies coming together with a passion as strong and powerful as the sea. And when she came, the sweetest pulse rippling round her trembling body, she cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks, as she finally understood what the fuss of hot, passionate sex was all about.