Chapter Six
“I can’t believe you’re letting me steer your precious new baby,” she said, fifteen minutes later.
Burke stood right behind her, his body tightly aligned with hers, his knees pressed into the back of hers, cradling her backside between his hips. It was a miracle she could concentrate at all. But he was intent on keeping her relaxed, and for that she was eminently grateful. Staying calm while sitting in the chair hadn’t worked too well once they’d started moving, so he’d pulled her in front of him, placed her hands beneath his on the wheel, and kept his body in full contact with hers. The physical distraction worked for keeping her mind off her stomach, but considering the growing bulge she’d felt pressed against her backside, she thought it lucky they hadn’t rammed a half dozen other boats on their way out of the harbor.
He rested his chin next to her ear now. “It’s not like there’s anything for you to run into out here.”
Once around the small outcropping of rock and trees that marked the edge of the inlet, he helped her direct them toward two tiny atolls about a half mile out. So small, they were more like outcroppings of rock than anything, but beautiful in their desolate abandonment all the same.
“It’s just gorgeous out here,” she said.
He continued running his hands slowly up and down her arms, pressing his knees forward every time she started to lock up her own. His body framing hers kept her loose limbed and as relaxed as possible. It was strange, but as long as she was behind the wheel, and they were making steady forward progress, her stomach was fine. It was like driving a car, which she handled just fine. It was being a passenger she couldn’t stomach. Literally. The water was so calm, slicing through it wasn’t much different than it was winding her way through freeway traffic around the highways of L.A.
Of course, she knew it would be entirely different when they were under sail instead of motor. All the pitching and rocking, dipping side to side—she cut those thoughts off, focused instead on the stunning view. The rest of her attention was on the feel of Burke’s body cupping hers, so pliant and flexible, yet providing the rock steadiness she needed. “This is truly amazing.”
“The boat or the view?”
“Both. But I meant the thrill of driving her.”
He gripped her hips, pulled her back slightly, making her gasp as she realized just how aroused he was. “I know what you mean.”
She laughed, surprising herself with how at ease she felt, pushed so far outside her comfort zone. She credited all of that to Burke.
“Okay,” he said, covering her hands with his own once more. “Just around this outcropping. There.” He pointed past her shoulder, and she saw the narrow passageway between the two tiny islands. “We’re going to duck in between them, then slip inside the lagoon of the one on your right.” He helped her steer through the skinny passageway, and when they passed through the coral rock, she gasped at the lovely, perfect cove created by the two atolls.
Angling starboard, they slid carefully into the lagoon at the center of one of them. Deep, crystal clear turquoise water, white sandy strips of beach, completely shielded from the view of the rest of the world. It was like a little pocket of paradise inside an already exotic, perfect world.
Burke cut the engines and dropped anchor, parking them right in the deepest part of the almost enclosed inlet.
“It’s one of my favorite spots,” he told her.
She turned in his arms. “Is it, now? I can see where this would be a perfect place for . . . what was it you called it? Motion practice?”
He grinned easily at her teasing. “It’s perfect for fishing and snorkeling. The atolls are more coral than rock really.” He tugged her closer. “We’ll see how motion practice stacks up against that. You have a bathing suit tucked in that bag?”
“We’re going snorkeling?”
“If you want.” He dropped a kiss on the curve of her shoulder. “Later. Right now I have a different idea in mind. But it does involve getting wet.”
She could have told him just how wet she already was, but that gleam was in his eyes, the sparkle of fun and play that appeared to be such a natural part of him. Fun and play. Two concepts she’d admittedly had little in common with of late. “Okay, I’ll go change.”
As soon as she stepped out of the protective circle of his arms, she hadn’t gotten halfway to the galley before she was swaying and grabbing for the nearest handhold, her stomach swaying right along with her. She made a disgusted noise and paused, trying to get control of herself. “I was perfectly fine all the way out here,” she grumbled.
And then Burke was there. Big, warm hands smoothing down her sides. “Not as much rocking when you’re moving across the water like that. Come on, forget the suit. There’s no one around.” He took her hand and led her to the back deck, holding her steady but making direct progress all the way to the set of steps that led down each pontoon, directly into the water.
She gripped the railing. “Wait. We’re going in?”
“The water is warm. Don’t worry about your clothes, just come on in.” He slid in front of her, went down the steps first, then reached up for her hand. “You’ve trusted me this far.”
She took his hand and sighed as the warm water lapped at her ankles.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
“Like a fish,” she assured him, then made the plunge. Once free of the rocking boat, she felt instantly better, calmer. Controlling her own motion in the water was entirely different from being on something that controlled the motion for her. She slid through the warm water, following Burke’s languid, sure strokes, until they reached the shallow water near a sandbar.
“Careful of the coral,” he warned. “Don’t stop until you’re over the sandbar.” Once the water was shallow enough for them to stand, he stopped, reaching easily for her and pulling her into his arms. “How does someone who moves like a mermaid have such problems with seasickness?”
“It’s different. When it’s just me in the water, no problem. It’s the bobbing on something else on the water I have a hard time with.”
“Well,” he told her, “we’re going to fix that.”
“How? The boat is back there.”
“I want you to lie on your back, and float.”
She had no idea where he was going with this, but she did as he asked. Only when her body began bobbing with the gentle current did she realize he was emulating the bobbing of a boat, using her body as the vessel.
He stood next to her, one hand braced gently beneath her to keep her anchored. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” she told him.
“Stomach fine?”
“Yes, of course.”
He smoothed his free hand over her stomach, then down one leg, then the other. “That’s because you’re relaxed.”
She could have told him it was because she was in control of how the motion affected her, but at the moment she couldn’t think of anything else but his hands on her. She was too caught up in the sensations of the water lapping at her skin, and his wide palms running all over her body, to say much of anything.
“The human body is mostly made of water,” he told her, continuing his soothing, yet stirring strokes along her skin. “As long as you stay relaxed, your body will maintain the rhythm of the water, inside and out.”
Rhythm, she thought, humming a little breath of approval. Inside and out. In and out. Over and over. That was the kind of motion practice she could get excited about.
“As soon as that rhythm is thrown off, you have the inside and outside clashing against one another. It’s natural to tense up when you don’t feel right, thinking you can control queasiness by making your body as still as possible, but you’re only stilling the shell, not what’s rocking inside it. That’s exactly what upsets the rhythm.” He kept his hand running along her arm, her stomach, her legs.
She’d long since stopped thinking about relaxing or ever being sick again and was now praying only that his hands would move where she needed them most.
“Let yourself float like this on the boat, and you’ll be fine.”
And then he was lifting her from the water, pulling her effortlessly into his arms, and his mouth found hers. She wrapped her legs easily around his waist, growling in her throat at the rigid length of him that pressed so hard and tight between her thighs.
“You’re like some kind of siren song,” he said against her mouth. “Come on.” And then he was dragging her back into deeper water.
“Wait, what—”
“Lesson four,” he told her, and they began swimming back to the boat.
“I was rather liking lesson three,” she called out, but he was already pulling away.
They paddled up to the rear steps, and Burke climbed out first. “Grip the railing,” he instructed.
She wanted to be frustrated with his constant change ups, but as she pulled herself out of the water, he was pulling a huge terrycloth beach towel from a compartment tucked inside the rear deck. She’d thought he was going to hand it to her to dry off, but instead he climbed up on the wide mesh trampoline that stretched across the space between boat and pontoon. He was like a cat on the netting, perfectly balanced.
While she stood in the stairwell, feet still in the water, gripping the railing like it was her last lifeline. Surely he didn’t intend for her to climb out on that open-weave net. But then he was flicking out the towel, expertly knotting the little corner ties to the net before crawling across the mesh to the edge and beckoning to her with a curled finger.
“You must be joking,” she told him. “Five minutes of floating therapy is not going to cure me. And that—” She pointed to the towel and net.
“Is like a huge, gentle hammock.” He reached for her hand. “Come on. If you hate it, we’ll go right back in the water. Or we’ll take the dinghy to the beach and do some snorkeling. Whatever you want. Just come up here, give this a try.” He smiled. “Have I steered you wrong yet?”
Her body clamored for him still. Frustrated by the drawn-out foreplay, she was jumpy and edgy, though if she was being truthful, none of it had much to do with motion sickness at the moment. She really didn’t want to change that dynamic. But there was absolute promise in his eyes. So confident and sure. And then there was that hand he was offering, the one she wanted very badly to feel on her body again.
So she kept her gaze on his and reached for him.
As it turned out, the mesh was more solid than it looked and supported her weight without much give. Of course, she was on her hands and knees, crawling, so balance wasn’t really an issue. She sighed in relief when she reached the towel, rolling onto her back and letting the sun seep into her skin, praying she could handle this latest maneuver of his without embarrassing herself.
Burke knelt beside her on the blanket, but didn’t stretch out next to her. Blocking the sun with one hand, she peeked up at him. “Now what?”
He laughed. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”
“I was enthusiastic when we were docked. I was enthusiastic back there in the water. You know you could have had me right there.”
His eyes went dark, and she saw a tick in his jaw and realized that despite his fun and light demeanor, his need for her was every bit as tightly wound as her need for him. For some reason, that gave her a much needed edge, and though the desire didn’t lessen, her tension and nerves did somewhat.
“If I’d remembered these, we’d still be out there,” he told her, then pressed a square condom packet into her hand.
She blushed a little, but somehow what should have been an embarrassing or awkward moment wasn’t. If she were ever to imagine herself having wild, passionate sex with a virtual stranger—which she hadn’t—she’d have thought it would be one of those carried-away-in-the-heat-of-the-moment kind of things. But this had long since gone from “carried away” to “absolutely deliberate.” And the fact that they both accepted this and had no problem being direct about it was frankly even more stimulating. She took the condom, curled it into her palm. “And now? What exactly is lesson four?”
“Tuning your body with the rhythm of the water when it’s not in the water.”
“And we couldn’t have done this when we were inside, back at the dock?”
He shook his head. “Too sturdy, too confining. Out here is more flexible, easier to feel and see the water itself.”
“This oversized hammock was available back at the pier as well,” she reminded him.
Now he grinned and stretched out next to her. “I know, but I didn’t think you’d be all that fond of being naked in front of whoever happened to be on the docks this afternoon.”
Her eyebrows lifted, questioning his confidence, but the very idea that he planned to do just that provoked a definite yay response from the rest of her body. “Oh, so you think you’d have gotten me naked, do you?”
He rolled carefully over her, straddled her waist. “Let’s just say I had high hopes.”
She wanted to arch beneath him, feel his weight centered over her, pinning her down, keeping her steady, safe. That and she ached to have him inside her to the point of actual pain.
He leaned down over her, worked the knot in front of her shirt free, then pulled it up and off her arms in one smooth motion. Then, with her arms still stretched out over her head, his hands were on her breasts, and she gasped a soft moan as he peeled the wet fabric of her bra away and tossed it to one side. The sun immediately felt warm on her damp skin, but rather than touch her now bare and very hard nipples, he skimmed his body down hers, peeling her shorts and thong off as he went. She made no effort to stop him. His touch was so sure, his hands so warm and steady, she lifted and let him strip her without a whimper of protest. After all, this was exactly what she wanted.
Once her skin was bared to the sun and sky, she was amazed at how absolutely freeing it was. Never in her life had she done anything like this. It felt wonderful. On the one hand, she felt insignificant beneath the wide canopy of sky and vulnerable, out here in the middle of a smooth, deep pool of water. Yet when Burke moved his weight back to the straddle her hips and she saw his hunger for her written so boldly across his face, she felt inherently female and immeasurably powerful at the same time. It was heady, and it served only to fuel her need for him to greater heights.
He took the condom packet from her hands and tucked it in the waistband of the shorts he still wore. Then he took her hands and leaned over her, extending them farther above her head, past the edge of the towel, until her fingers tangled in the nylon cord that tied the trampoline to the framework of the boat.
“Hold on,” he told her. His gray-green eyes all but glittered out here in the sun, and she found herself willing to do absolutely anything he told her to do, as long as he fulfilled the promises she saw in them.
She curled her fingers into the webbing, and Burke slowly slid down her body. “Close your eyes,” he told her.
“But I’m rather liking the view,” she replied. Burke looking like a shining sun god, all burnished skin and bunching muscles. And, for the moment, he and all his godliness were completely and totally hers.
“Humor me.”
She arched a brow. “I would say I’ve done that and more.”
His smile grew to a grin. “And how’re you liking it so far?”
She could only laugh. And close her eyes.
He surprised her by shifting his weight off of her, but she kept her eyes closed, her arousal spiked by the idea of anticipating the unknown. She shivered when his voice whispered near her ear.
“Feel the heat of the sun.”
She nodded. “It’s incredible. Wonderful.”
“Let it feel like it’s soaking into you, through your skin. Concentrate on the warmth of it, seeping through your muscles, into your bones. Let it make your body pliant, languid.”
She could have told him she was already all those things, but the combination of the sun and his velvet murmuring in her ear felt pretty damn good. Lulling. So she let herself drift away.
She felt herself grow drowsy, but as she let herself go, she also began to feel the bob and flow of the boat, the gentle movement of the water beneath her. Instinctively, she tensed her abdomen, her legs.
“Shh,” he said, so completely in tune with her. Somehow that made her feel far more vulnerable than her nakedness. “Languid, pliant. Let the sun soak into every pore. Drift away, Kam. Just drift. Like you’re floating in the water. Let the motion roll through you, not over you.”
She took a slow breath, and released it even more slowly, focusing on letting the tension go with it. It was harder than she’d thought it would be. Partly because he had her very highly sensitized at the moment, and it bucked up against the instinct to fight the tightening in her gut by freezing up. Then she felt his hand stroke along the flank of her thigh, then up over her hip, along her rib cage. And just like that, the bad tension shuddered out of her. And the good tension rolled in to take its place.
She wanted to open her eyes, watch him watching her. But she knew that would bring in the visual aspect of the motion, the horizon. Better not to go there. Better still to just do what Burke said. And feel whatever it was he chose to make her feel. The visuals that idea brought with it were decidedly more fun. Anticipation sent delicious, pleasurable shivers skating over her sun-warmed skin.
“I wasn’t going to touch you,” he said, stretched out next to her, his hand still lightly stroking her skin.
“It soothes me. Smoothes me out.”
“I want to teach you how to do that on your own.”
“I guess I’ll need remedial training.” Her lips curved, but she kept her eyes closed, concentrated on the heat of the sun, the heat of the wide palm presently stroking her stomach. “Darn.”
He groaned a little, then nipped her earlobe. “You drive me crazy.”
“Then we’re even. Except next time I get to tie you up in the mesh.” She grinned when she felt his body twitch against her thigh. “My my.” The next instant she was gasping and arching like a finely tuned bow string when his hot mouth closed over her nipple with no warning. When his other hand covered her remaining bare breast, rubbing softly over her tight nipple, her responding moan was a low growl of stunned pleasure.
“Lesson over,” he said, his voice strained, a little rough. Then he slid his body over hers and down, leaving her breasts covered with his wide palms as his tongue trailed a direct line down the center of her torso.
Her fingers tightened in the mesh as she arched up to meet his seeking tongue. Between the heat of the sun and Burke’s extended foreplay, she could do nothing now but respond and respond fully. She’d never made love outdoors, certainly never splayed herself like this, like some kind of pagan sacrifice to the sun gods. The very notion was intoxicating, especially when she cast Burke in the role of sun god. Every touch further swamped her senses, electrified her every nerve ending.
As his hands teased and taunted, his tongue brought her slowly to the brink, before backing away, plunging deeply into her, then moving once again to where she was knotted with need. Driving her so close, so close. She sunk deeper and deeper into the waves of pleasure steadily washing over and through her, and slowly became aware, on some level, of the motion of the water beneath them. The rise of each gentle swell, the dip of each trough, and how Burke’s clever ministrations worked in absolute sync with them both. Up and down, faster, then slower, higher, then lower, he continued to wrench one exulting wave of pleasure after another from her, rushing her toward that seemingly unreachable horizon until she was whimpering with need, so close to begging. And would have, if she could have found her voice.
Finally, blessedly, he drove her and every last drop of cascading bliss up and over the edge. She arched and bucked, unaware that she, too, was now in complete sync with the rhythms of the sea. Her cries of absolute ecstasy were carried away on the gentle breeze that teased her oh-so-sensitive skin as his fingers and mouth left her. “Burke,” she said, half sob, half demand.
But he was already sliding out of his shorts, sliding on the condom. When she finally opened her eyes, she let go of the anchor of the mesh without a thought, instinctively reaching for the man who’d been the real anchor to her every need. He blocked the blinding rays, casting himself in a golden halo. Sun god, indeed.
She welcomed him into her arms and rose to meet his body. The weight of him on top of her, as he pushed fully into her, pinned her down tightly. She felt safe, secured. Anchored. As long as he was there, inside of her, filling her up, steadying her as she wrapped so completely around him.
He drove into her again, then when she met him, more forcefully, rocking them both. She lifted to meet every thrust, their motion so fluid and smooth and perfect, she felt she could drown in it, in him, and never miss the ability to breathe again.
She felt him gather, stroke deeper still. They were bucking wildly now, the up-and-down motion of the water serving only to lengthen every thrust. She clung to him, exulting in the sizzling pleasure rocketing through her, through him, willfully driving him higher, harder, faster. She could no longer comprehend a moment when she wouldn’t be in complete sync with him, with the rhythm of the water beneath them. Sun and sky, water and motion, heat and Burke, pumped into her, poured through her, filled her to a point beyond pleasure.
And when he came, she matched his shout of complete and utter vindication.