Authors: Celeste Anwar
He shook his head. “Women are supposed to know
these tings.”
Erin gave him a resentful glance and looked away
again. “Well, obviously I don’t.”
“You got ta see somethin’ to want it. Quit
hidin’.”
“I haven’t been hiding,” Erin retorted
irritably. “I just don’t feel comfortable walking up to people I don’t know
and trying to carry on a conversation with them.”
He grasped her arm and hauled her to her feet.
“You know me. If you let him ignore you, he will. You have to make it so’s he
cain’t ignore you.”
She wasn’t entirely comfortable, at first, even
around Tavian, but after a few days she became more so. With no other plan to
follow, she decided to take him up on his suggestion, though, and made it a
point to move about the ship more openly, stopping whenever she saw Tavian to
talk, whether he was with a group of the others or not. She found it was
easier each time and began to feel less uncomfortable and more able to actually
join the conversation in progress. Inevitably, whenever she joined any group,
Jesse left, but although she was disappointed at first, she realized fairly
quickly that Tavian had been right.
He did notice. Any time she nerved herself to
look around for Jesse, she discovered that he was watching--and he didn’t look
at all pleased about it, but at least he wasn’t unaware of her.
She’d just begun to think Tavian’s tactic might
actually work when they arrived at last at their destination.
Her first clue that they’d arrived was when the
ship stopped and set anchor. Merely curious at first, Erin moved to the
porthole of the main cabin and glanced around to see if she could see any
reason for the fact that they’d stopped. There wasn’t a sign of land, unless
one counted the hazy line on the horizon which might be land and might be
nothing more than a low lying cloud. She hadn’t heard anything to indicate the
ship’s engines had broken down. She couldn’t hear a lot of activity topside
either.
Her interest thoroughly aroused and excitement
beginning to hum just beneath the surface, Erin left the main cabin and went
topside. Tavian and Jesse were standing at the bow of the boat with
binoculars.
“What is it? Are we there?”
Jesse and Tavian both lowered their glasses and
turned to look at her. After a moment, Tavian nodded and departed as if he and
Jesse had exchanged some sort of telepathic communication.
“We’re close enough,” Jesse said finally. “We’ll
wait for dark before we go in.”
“I’m going with you,” Erin said, a little
breathless from the adrenaline pumping through her big time now.
“You’ll wait here.”
Erin gaped at him. “You aren’t serious! I need
to go with you to take care of the baby.”
Jesse frowned. “You’re human, not Lycan. You’ll
only slow us down.” Turning away from her, he lifted the glasses again.
Erin glared at his back.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t pick another
fight with him--or allow him to provoke her into a fight. She couldn’t hope to
make any sort of truce unless she could manage to speak more than a dozen words
with him without it turning into a battle of wills, or a shouting match.
She knew he was right. Jesse and the others were
capable of shifting, and as beasts they could move through the woods at least
twice as fast as a human could, maybe more, besides having far better night
vision.
She was already turning away when he caught her
arm. Surprised, she looked up at him questioningly.
“You’ll be safer here. My son needs his mother.
I don’t want anything to happen to you and I can’t be sure I can protect you if
there’s any shooting.”
Warmth flooded Erin, washing away the hurt and
anger almost instantly. Fear reared its ugly head, though, fear for Joshua if
he should be caught up in a gun battle, and for Jesse. “Do you think I’ll be
safer alone?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “You won’t be
alone. Billy Ray will stay to guard you and the boat, and also Kenneth and
Zack. They can take the yacht into deeper waters if necessary, but I don’t
think it will be. We won’t go in until its dark. Even if they pick up the
boat on their radar, they’ll probably just dismiss it as local fishermen.”
“What if you don’t come back?” Erin asked
shakily, swallowing against the hard knot threatening to form in her throat
from the moment she’d spoken the thought hovering in the back of her mind
aloud. A terrible sense of loss descended upon her. She could no more imagine
the many years lying before her with no hope of seeing Jesse and Joshua than
she could cease to breathe.
She knew then, without room for doubts, that
Tavian had been right. If she could not imagine life without Jesse she also
couldn’t deny to herself that she loved him.
“I will,” Jesse said implacably.
“You don’t that,” Erin whispered. “You can’t
promise me something that might be beyond your power.”
The grip on her arm loosened. Time seemed to
still. For many moments Erin was certain that Jesse would slip his hand up her
arm to cup her cheek. He seemed to sway infinitesimally closer, as if to
gather her to him and kiss her.
Near the stern of the boat, something fell,
jarring them both back into reality, spoiling the moment, though it might only
have been wishful thinking on her part. She would never know now for Jesse
merely dropped his hand and stepped back. “Billy Ray will know what to do,” he
said gruffly as he turned away and resumed his study of the distant horizon.
She stared at his broad back, fighting the urge
to move closer, to make the first move if he wouldn’t. The need to feel
herself cocooned in the warmth of his body, to have his arms wrapped tightly
around her and soak up the reassurance of his strength and life was nearly
overwhelming. Doubts of her welcome held her to the spot and finally she
merely turned away and fled below.
She found she couldn’t bear the confines of the
cabin, though. After pacing restlessly about the room like a caged animal for
perhaps an hour, watching the agonizingly slow progression of the sun toward
the horizon, she couldn’t stand it anymore and left the cabin, heading for the
galley.
It wasn’t her night to cook. Billy Ray didn’t
object to her abrupt appearance or her determination to help, however. After
pointing her toward a pile of vegetables waiting to be peeled, he returned his
attention to the meat he was preparing.
She had no idea what he planned to cook--some
Cajun dish, no doubt, that would scorch the tender skin of her mouth and set
her on fire--but she didn’t care so long as she had something to do. When
she’d peeled the potatoes and diced them, she scooped them into a colander and
rinsed them and then set them aside and started on the onions and peppers.
When her hands, arms, and shoulders began to
cramp, she shoved a stray lock of hair from her face, stretched to relieve the
ache and glanced out of the tiny porthole set in the galley bulkhead. They sun
was sinking into the sea, turning the water and sky into a fiery red-orange
glow.
Her stomach knotted.
They would probably wait until they’d eaten to
pull anchor.
Weary now, Erin finished the last of the cutting
and preparation and rinsed the vegetables, leaving them to drain in the sink.
Removing the apron she’d donned when she’d settled to work, she headed back to
the cabin. A hot shower relieved the cramping muscles and drained the last of
her tension. When she’d dried off, she merely wrapped a towel around her and
trudged back into the cabin, collapsing face first on the bunk.
The mattress dipped, rousing Erin sometime
later. Still groggy, she lay still, listening for the sounds of a storm that
might account for the rocking of the bunk. Instead, she heard the rustle of
fabric. The towel she’d wrapped around herself was flipped away. A hand,
large, warm, rough with calluses, skated up one thigh and then over her
buttocks.
Her heart seemed to stand still in her chest.
She tensed, waiting to see what he would do next.
She felt the heat of his breath along the cleft
of her ass moments before she felt the nip of his teeth along one cheek. Goose
bumps erupted, racing up her body and along her arms and legs.
She rolled onto her side, stared at Jesse,
crouched at the foot of the bunk, for several moments and lifted a hand to him
in invitation. Releasing a gusty sigh, he surged toward her, settling the
weight of his body along hers, twining one long leg around her and dragging her
lower body tightly against his.
His cock, hard and erect already, dug into her
belly. She arched against it, slipping an arm around his waist and cupping and
massaging his buttocks.
He was deliciously bare. A faint smile curled
her lips as she familiarized herself with his upper chest and neck, tracing a
path along his hard male breasts and upward to his throat with her mouth,
tongue, and the edge of her teeth while she explored his back with one hand,
feeling the rounded, puckered scars that dotted his flesh. She tried not to
think about that.
He’d expected a welcome.
She was ok with that, better than ok. If she’d
known all she had to do was sleep naked….
His lips beckoned. She teased the corners with
light kisses then nipped her way across his full lower lip. He sank his
fingers into her hair, cupping the back of her skull as he opened his mouth
over hers in a deep, scorching kiss. Pleasure erupted in her veins like
wildfire. His taste and scent invaded her senses like a heady drug as he
thrust his tongue into her mouth and raked it along hers. Heat washed over
her, made her skin tingle with acute sensation, keen awareness of the touch of
his flesh against hers.
She wrapped an arm around his neck, pressing her
breasts tightly against his chest. They swelled, growing heavy as her need
increased. Her nipples puckered into hard nubs.
Groaning, he broke the kiss, releasing the
fistful of hair he’d captured and stroked his hand down her back, catching one
of her thighs and dragging it across his hips. The head of his cock nudged
against her clit, evoking a riot of sensations. She undulated against it,
increasing the pressure, feeling her belly clench as a warm wetness bathed her
sex in anticipation of his possession. When he shifted and his cock slipped
along her cleft, however, she pulled slightly away.
She was determined this would be a night he
wouldn’t forget.
Pushing against his shoulders until he rolled
onto his back, she shifted over him.
He was staring at her quizzically when she lifted
her head to look at him. A smile curled her lips. “I read a hooker’s guide to
giving head once,” she murmured. “Want to see if I mastered it?”
His lips twitched. Without a word, he folded his
hands beneath his head.
Taking that as consent, Erin began to work her
way down his body with a slow thoroughness that left no part of him unexplored.
By the time she’d reached his cock, beads of sweat had broken from his pores
and his body twitched with feverish heat. Coming up on her knees, she bent
over his hips, wrapping one hand tightly around his shaft, stroking him from
the root to the tip over and over, first the under side and then the top,
taking care that she massaged every inch of his exquisitely sensitive shaft
thoroughly.
A sense of satisfaction filled her as his fingers
clenched on the sheets on either side of his hips, fisting and relaxing rhythmically.
His breath caught in his chest, was expelled harshly and sucked in again. His
belly quivered. The muscles all over his body tensed, trembled with his effort
to remain still and passive to her ministrations.
Heat flooded Erin. Her throat closed with an
unnamable thirst. She stared at the cock in her hands, resisting the urge to
cover it with her mouth and suck him.
Switching hands, she continued to stroke his cock
and began to gently massage his testicles. He jerked, his shoulders coming off
the bed. With an obvious effort, he lay back. His hands moved over her
shoulders, stroking her, and then clutched the sheets again.
Erin felt her belly clench. Her throat tightened
as she felt the heat of his need washing over her.
“
Chère
,” he muttered on a harsh breath.
“Shhh,” Erin murmured soothingly, leaning down at
last to place her mouth over his cock.
A harsh groan erupted from his throat. He went
rigid, began to thrash restlessly. His cock jerked in her mouth, as if he
would explode in that moment.