He’d abandoned his jeans and boxers and was standing in front of her in all his naked glory. She expected him to be lax and spent, but on the contrary, his erection stood at attention like the enduring soldier she knew it to be.
“I’m done hiding from you,” she countered.
“Good,” he said, taking her by the upper arm and pulling her flush to him. “Because now that I’ve found you, I’m not letting you go.”
6
WITH ANY OTHER WOMAN, Leo might have tried to hide how he was shaking, how perspiration had begun to form above his bottom lip and how breathing came with a heavy price. But not with Jessie. He needed her to know, needed her to see—needed her to accept how she rocked him to his core.
He released her only so he could open the door to the master stateroom and gesture her inside. She headed as far to the opposite wall as she could. The cabin was spacious by nautical standards, but not so large otherwise. From across the room, he watched her suckle her bottom lip with her teeth. He should have interpreted it as a sign of her anxiety. He should back off. But damn if all he could think about was her applying those straight white biters to parts of his body.
“Shouldn’t you be driving the boat or something?” she asked, crossing her arms tight across her chest.
“Yeah, I should,” he conceded, grabbing a pair of swim shorts out of a drawer near the door, but not putting them on. He had a raging erection and he wanted her to understand that they weren’t through. Not by a long shot. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to look around? See what exactly we have at our disposal. Get comfortable. Then we’ll … talk.”
She tilted her chin upward before speaking, which only emphasized her erect nipples beneath her peachy tank top. “I didn’t come on this excursion to be comfortable. Or to talk.”
His whole body tightened at the sound of her defiance and the flash of fire in her dark eyes. So she had thought this through and wasn’t acting purely on instinct. She was attempting to turn the tables on him—and so far, she was doing a damned solid job.
“Well, that’s good, then, because if comfort was what I wanted, I would have stayed as far away from you as humanly possible,” he said. “Yet here I am, holed up with you on the open water and still feeling the pressure of your hand on my dick.”
“Don’t be crude,” she admonished, but without much conviction.
He chuckled. Jessie was a lot of things, but a prude she was not.
“I’m just being honest. Maybe if you can manage the same, we’ll both get exactly what we came for.”
He left and shut the door behind him. He banged against the cabin wall as he hopped into his trunks, then went back up on deck. He wasn’t exactly floating on air. Despite the fact that she’d given him a hand job unlike any other, his body seemed weighted with lead. Or more accurately, heavy with the power Jessie held over him after all these years.
He still wanted her. He’d devised this entire excursion on that premise. He’d had no illusions about the fact that she owned him body, mind and soul. What he hadn’t expected, however, was for her to take advantage of her position of power so soon into the trip.
After releasing the wheel back to his command, he checked their location on the GPS system and corrected their course so they’d reach their destination: the relatively shallow water off a small protected island about an hour away, if he unfurled the sails. Suddenly desperate for something to do that would kill his focus on what Jessie had just done to him—and what he planned to do to her in return—he set to work. In no time, the mainsail billowed with what might seem like a soft breeze to anyone but a seasoned sailor. Soon they were listing slightly port and gliding over the water at just over six knots.
Not surprisingly, Jessie came up on deck a few minutes later. She’d wrapped herself in his yellow windbreaker and though she remained in the companionway, she tilted her head into the breeze so her hair whipped out behind her.
“I could have helped,” she said.
“I needed some time.”
She turned, holding her hair back while her dark eyes sought his. “I know the feeling.”
“I only took ten minutes, not ten years,” he shot back.
She groaned. “Are we really going to talk about this now?”
“When would be a better time, Jess? Because I’ve spent the last decade letting you set the timetable, allowing you to make all the rules. When you didn’t want me around, I wasn’t around. Then, when you had no choice but to hang out with me, I kept things cool and impersonal.”
“You call flirting with me constantly ‘cool and impersonal'?”
He bit the inside of his mouth, but his grin would not be squelched. “Can I help it if you’re impossible to resist?”
She sighed and took the last step out of the hatch. “Apparently, so are you.”
She took a turn around the deck and then settled atop the cabin roof, which was only about eight inches higher than the deck. She faced the bow and leaned back on her elbows so that all he could see of her was his bright yellow jacket, her hair flapping behind her and one bare knee drawn up to her body, taunting him with her tanned skin.
They sailed in silence until Leo reached his first planned stop, secured the sails and then dropped anchor. There were no other boats in the immediate area. The island, overgrown with mangroves and teeming with nesting birds, was off-limits and therefore wild with sound. The coastal shoreline, less than a half a mile away, was dark except for the glow of the moon against the sparkling white sand. Once Leo had the boat moored, the gentle rocking of the Gulf against the hull became soothing. He closed his eyes and allowed the water to lull him into a place of unsurpassed peace.
Until he heard Jessie unzipping his jacket.
Still sitting atop the cabin roof behind him, Jessie took her time removing the yellow material. Her skin glistened in the moonlight and, despite her natural olive skin tone, contrasted against her dark lingerie. She must have abandoned her clothes below. He ached at the lost opportunity to peel away that luscious peach top and tiny white skirt.
Not that he’d complain.
“Did you like how I stocked the boat?” he asked, his voice choked raw with lust.
She laughed and unfurled a ribbon of condoms from just inside the cup of her bra. “Kind of cocky on your part, to pack so many condoms and buy out the entire stock of the sex toy shop. Or do you have a constant supply so you can screw every girl you bring on board this boat?”
Her raunchy language didn’t shock him nearly as much as what he was about to admit out loud. “I’ve never brought any other woman on board The Sweetheart before. Not unless she was on my crew. And I make it a rule to never screw any of my crew.”
Still seated, Jessie leaned forward and spread her legs—not wide, so that the move was blatant and vulgar, but enough so she could lean forward on her elbows and give him a mindspinning view of her cleavage.
“But you’ll do me?”
He hadn’t realized he was shaking his head until he watched her expression turn from expectation to confusion. “Do you want me to ‘do you'?”
“Why do you think I’m sitting here in a black lace bra and thong? I remember what you like, Leo. I’ve dressed the part. I’m ready, willing and able. So let’s get this over with.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
For a split second, he was just as surprised by his response as she was.
“I’m