“Hmm,” he mumbled. “You taste good.”

  She was about to say, I taste salty, when he went on.

  “You always taste good.”

  The bass of his voice made her toes curl, and whatever molecules in her body weren’t yet on fire ignited and crackled happily alongside with the rest.

  Yeah, she could burn up for this man. She could throw her pride to the wind. Could lose herself in this moment and not even feel guilty about it, at least not tonight.

  She wiggled her backside against him. “Still got some energy somewhere?”

  He answered in a hum. “You give me energy.”

  She nodded. If they could somehow harness the heat coming off their bodies now, Serendipity wouldn’t need solar panels.

  Her back pressed into him in all the right places, and every atom in her body jumped up and down like the water in the kettle, just beginning to boil.

  “Might just put that coffee on hold,” she whispered, turning off the burner.

  He murmured in agreement and let his hands slide an inch lower, then slide back up. Like a cat, she arched against him, and he hesitated, deciding where to go. Her body was at war with itself, too, making impossible demands like begging his hands to cup her breasts while screaming for them to roam farther south at the same time.

  With Ryan, though, nothing was impossible. His left hand slid up and under her bra while his right plunged down, and she moaned in response. A tiny animal moan to tell him he was getting it just right.

  “Mia,” he murmured, cupping the soft flesh of her breast.

  A series of breathless kisses tickled her neck, and she raised her arms, folding them to his shoulders to get them out of the way. She rested her left leg on the step of the ladder, opening her core to him. He ran his left thumb over her nipple at exactly the same moment that the fingers of his right hand slid under the edge of her shorts and teased her folds.

  “Ryan,” she moaned.

  Coffee was definitely, definitely on hold. Maybe forever, if he managed to keep up that heavenly pressure over her clit.

  As he pressed down and circled her sex with his whole hand, the fabric of her shorts moved too, sending her higher and higher up the charts. The hard jut of his cock against the small of her back had her rubbing up and down his body. He worked her shirt up to roll and pinch her nipples, and if he kept that up, she’d come screaming like a kettle in no time.

  She wanted that. Wanted to come long and hot and hard, but she wanted to come with him. And Ryan, damn him, liked to stretch things out to marathon lengths, which she was just not up for tonight. He’d gotten her flying good and quick; it was time to do that to him, too.

  She turned in his arms and dove into a sloppy, soul-licking kiss that made his eyes go wide. She knew; she peeked. When his cock jerked against her stomach, she reached for it. Granted, with a lot less finesse than his own gentle, calculated touches of her body had shown, but Ryan didn’t seem to mind. He only protested when she let go.

  “Wait,” she mumbled, starting again.

  This time she slid her hand into his shorts and took him one finger at a time in a wide, loose grip. She didn’t have much choice but wide and loose because he was that big and thick. He put a hand over hers and helped her slide up and down at exactly the pace he liked. She went from the broad, throbbing hardness of his cock to the soft skin of his sac and back again, picturing the pleasure every hard inch of him would provide when he drove into her.

  Soon. Very soon, she wanted that to happen. Needed it to happen. Her day had been all about survival, and instinct was screaming to take the reins from her mind.

  With her free hand, she shoved his shorts lower. She kissed him at the same time and flattened her breasts against the wide expanse of his pecs. She ran her fingers over the tiny grooves in shoulder muscles piled in thick layers that rippled and heated under her touch.

  “Need to get rid of this,” she grunted, pulling his shirt up.

  “And this,” he added, working hers up the minute his arms were free.

  She folded around him the second she could, caught in a whirling, dizzying tornado she never wanted to escape. Pulling his face to hers with both hands, she pressed into another hungry kiss and consumed him. His skin was salty from their unplanned swim, just like hers, and rubbing against him ignited her like a struck match. She shimmied down, then scrubbed back up, making her nipples peak. She could practically smell the sulfur, see tiny threads of smoke rise from every long, hard scrape. If it hadn’t been for the steady sea breeze wafting in from the open cabin door, they might just have burst into flames.

  Something fluttered like a flag of surrender. Her bra, discarded to one side.

  She peeked up and found Ryan’s eyes burning into her like never before.

  Mine, they said. Mine.

  Mine, her body sang back as she explored the delicious curves of his rear. Mine.

  She’d heard a thousand hushed warnings when she set off for the Caribbean. To watch the wind, the waves, the tide. To be wary of reefs and robbers and sudden storms, and she’d scoffed them all away. But here they were, all those dangers, wrapped in one man. Ryan was the reef that caught her hull and held it fast; Ryan was the thief, and he was sweeping her away. Around the two of them were the wind, the waves, the tide — unstoppable forces of nature propelling them to hidden shores.

  But that was only the half of it. The other half was the thrill of surrendering to nature, because nature knew things no mind could grasp. Nature knew about man and woman and the comfort to be found in joining as one. Nature knew that a mind too tired to think could only be soothed by one thing.

  Serendipity nodded over the rippling water of the bay, which combined with another movement: Ryan, turning her so her back was to the chart table. He caged her in with his arms, leaning into her space. His wide hands gripped her ribs as his lips worked hers.

  “Closer,” she insisted, leaning against the solid wood and wrapping one leg around his waist. She still had her shorts on, but that didn’t stop her from grinding against his cock. “Closer, Ryan.” Her hands slid down his rear and pulled him in.

  “Mia.” His voice was husky.

  Her shorts and panties were the only things keeping them apart, but an onlooker might have overlooked that, the way his hips started thumping against hers.

  “God, Mia. You kill me,” he murmured. His eyes were at half-mast, his jaw clenched.

  “Kill you?”

  “In the best possible way,” he added, nuzzling her with his grizzly chin.

  He hitched her up enough for her left foot to leave the ground, and she snaked that leg up beside the other, making him groan her name again. “Mia.”

  No one said her name that way. Achy and needy and greedy, too.

  He kissed her neck and scraped his teeth against the bare skin, and she tipped her head back for more.

  “Lean back,” he whispered.

  “Back?”

  “I got you.”

  He slid his hands to her back and leaned in, pressing her toward the table.

  “Trust me,” he whispered.

  Trust him? An hour ago, she would have scoffed. Now, she closed her eyes and let him guide her back. Back and back until she thought she’d missed the table, but then it was there, thick and solid behind her shoulders.

  “Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?” he murmured, dropping his head to her breast.

  She didn’t get an answer out other than a husky moan. He consumed her, sucking in her nipple, letting it pop out, and tugging it with his lips while his hands scooped and molded the yielding flesh and his chin scraped her skin in deliciously rough strokes.

  Did I ever tell you how beautiful you make me feel? She tried, but the only sounds she managed were a series of moans and sighs. Topless on the chart table shouldn’t feel this good. Too bad she hadn’t shed her shorts before she got there.

  He thrust against her, and her whole body slid across the chart beneath her. She traveled across it, covering hundreds of miles of open water with one quick slide.

  Ryan pulled her hips closer, then pushed forward again, and there she went, skidding from the curve of Central America over to the Antilles. Colombia was under her rear, Jamaica under her right shoulder, and maybe if she let him screw her, hard and hot and searing the way her body begged for him to do, she’d end up with a Caribbean tattoo etched into her skin, complete with islands, lighthouses, and reefs.

  She giggled at the image and let her fingers tangle in his hair.

  His head popped up. “What?”

  “This,” she answered, grinning at him.

  His eyes flicked over her chest and down her belly. “What?”

  “You screwing me on my grandfather’s chart table.”

  His eyebrow jumped up, then curved into a wicked look. “Me about to screw you on your grandfather’s chart table, except for two things.” He pulled back a little and ran both hands up and down her belly, wrapping his fingers around her ribcage.

  “Except what?”

  He kissed her belly button, and she thrust her hips up.

  “Except you still have your shorts on.”

  “Easy to fix, officer.”

  He grinned, and her heart soared. God, a smile looked good on him, erasing the serious for a change.

  “That, and the table’s a little too high.”

  “Maybe you’re a little too low.”

  He silenced her with another thrust that rocked her bones.

  “I’m not saying it won’t work,” he said, taking on a cocky little drawl and thrusting again. “What I’m saying is…” He punctuated each phrase with a push of his hips that had her so close to orgasm, she could scream. “But…” He leaned over her and spoke right into her ear, “it won’t be just how you like it.”

  “It won’t?” she squeaked. Because what he was doing right now was definitely working for her.

  “Not hard enough,” he grunted, pushing her into the Atlantic again. His hands grasped her knees and hitched them higher around his waist. “Not deep enough.” His cock hammered at her entrance, but he was right. The angle was a little off, their alignment not quite right. “Not the way you need it right now.”

  “And you know just what I need?” she managed, trying to keep some semblance of control.

  He growled his answer. “I do, because I need the same thing.”

  She tried cocking an eyebrow, but it was hard to do vixen from flat on her back.

  He straightened, pulled her upright, and tilted his head toward the forward cabin.

  “Follow me,” he whispered, and the words sparked up and down her spine. “Follow me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  As it turned out, Ryan followed Mia, but that suited him just fine. Because the sight of her, beckoning him along the narrow hallway of the boat toward the front cabin, worked on more than just his cock. It worked on his soul.

  She wanted him. Needed him in a way that went beyond ascents from crazy depths and death-defying escapes and what they were about to do in that bunk tonight. She forgave him, even if he had a lot of apologizing left to do. Which he had a plan for, but that would come later, when the time was right.

  This part, this touching and feeling, he hadn’t been planning for. Hoping for, sure, but not planning, because he was flying by the seat of his pants, and miracle of miracles, not screwing up for a change. Maybe the moon was playing Cyrano, because he’d actually said a couple of things that came out right. Maybe there was poetry in the plain truth. She really was beautiful, and he really did need Mia more than his next breath of air.

  “Right this way, officer,” she cooed, waving him along.

  He grinned. Maybe he should have told her about his job earlier. This was kind of fun.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he rumbled, and that wasn’t a calculated effect at all. That was Mia, turning him upside down. Again.

  She was something, his mermaid-sailor-diving queen. So trim and toned, it would be easy to picture her body tapering into a tail. Her bare breasts were pert and tight, the nipples sweeping up at an angle that begged for his lips. He was already a goner, like he’d been from the very start.

  She stopped in the open doorway by the cabin and slid her hands down her sides, finally stripping out of those running shorts. Nice shorts, especially on Mia, but he’d seen enough of them that day. He’d seen enough of all the layers covering her up, in fact. His eyes followed as she slid the shorts down, inch by luscious inch, flipping every switch in him to full steam ahead.

  He stepped forward, closing the distance, and Mia stepped back into the cabin, opening the gap up again. One step forward for him, another step back for her. Forward. Back. He had to stoop because the ceiling was lower in the bow. She retreated right against the high captain’s bunk that took up the entire cabin and scooted onto it, butt first, legs following, knees apart. His cock twitched, taking in that view.

  “You kill me,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  “In the best possible way, right?”

  Even in the darkness of the cabin, he could see her eyes sparkle. The moonlight shone in through an overhead hatch, lighting different parts of her as she slid back. When her face retreated into the dimmer part of the cabin, the moonlight danced over her nipples. When she edged back, it shone on the checkerboard of her taut middle in a bold show of sheer feminine power. She was muscled inside, too, and the thought of her tight sheath clenching down over his cock…

  He’d been holding back, stretching the anticipation out, but something in him cracked, and suddenly he was prowling into that den of a cabin after her, climbing over her body in one quick move. He crushed his mouth to hers, swallowing her up. His chest squeezed against the soft pillow of her chest, his legs found their way between hers, and his cock honed in on home.

  “No condom,” he muttered, hoping to hell it didn’t matter. She was on the pill, and they had both checked out clean, so they’d taken to going without condoms in New York.

  “No problem,” she breathed, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Her fingers roamed, setting off sparks like a test sequence of every one of his nerves. “Ryan…”

  One little push, and he’d be in heaven, because she was wide open and slick and ready for him. A roaming finger told him as much, but he held back, using his last strand of self-restraint.

  “Ryan,” she moaned, shoving her hips up. “Don’t play with me.”

  “I’m not playing,” he grunted. “I want to be in you. Need to be in you, but I need this, too.”

  This was the sight of her, stretched willingly beneath him, ready to come undone. This was her eyes and her voice and her body, straining for him. This was the assurance that it wasn’t just about tonight.

  A thousand words backed up in his throat, but none of them had worked up the nerve to venture out first.

  “Mia…”

  She slipped her arms off his back and cupped his face with both hands, pulling him down slowly until they were nose-to-nose.

  “I get it, Ryan,” she whispered. “I get it.”

  He got stuck on his next breath because his heart and lungs were so busy tap-dancing that everything else went by the wayside for a second. Maybe the two of them didn’t need fist bumps or dolphin squeaks. Maybe they just needed to shut up and let that natural harmony that sprang out of nowhere do the talking, the way it always did when they got close.

  A good thing Mia kissed him then, because it helped loosen the choked-up feeling in his throat. When she let him go, she wriggled her hands overhead, a signal for him to pin them down, and arched her back, raising her body against his.

  He gave himself a mental shake. Right. Sex. He supposed to be fucking her, not admiring and loving and marveling at the crazy ideas she sent careening through his mind. Like having lots of Sunday mornings together and lots of weekend walks. A lifetime of them.

  “Ryan,” she breathed.

  He let himself admire for one more second. Then, with one smooth slide, he was in. In her; in heaven. Same thing.

  “Yes!” Her voice wavered as he plunged in.

  He slid good and deep and stayed rooted for a long minute, breathing her in. Then he withdrew all the way to her entrance, where the tip of his cock burned and begged and pleaded before he gave in and dipped back in.

  “Ryan…” Her fingers tightened around his.

  He found a rhythm, sliding in and out, faster and faster until even Mia was breathing in little pants and grunts that were a lot more caveman than elite swimmer. She hitched her feet higher until they were planted on the low ceiling so she could meet his strokes with little thrusts of her own.

  “That’s so good,” she breathed, twisting her head from side to side. “So good.”

  He was pretty sure that line had featured in his dreams during those lonely weeks they’d spent apart. He made that his quest: to see Mia writhing and moaning and totally undone, all because of him. And if it meant he’d also be writhing and moaning and coming totally undone, well, that was just fine, because this was one of those win-win deals where everyone came out ahead.

  When she clenched her inner muscles around him, he just about howled. Just about let it all go right there, but he managed to channel it into an urgent series of sharp thrusts that built on each other until he was hammering both of them right up to the blurry edge of pleasure and pain.

  Mia threw her head to the side and cried out his name, God’s name, and a whole lot of other gratifying sounds. He rode an out of control wave that built and built until there was no holding back. His balls pinched just as Mia contracted under him.

  “Yes!” she cried, clutching his shoulders, squeezing inside.

  He was going, going, gone, possibly making a few caveman noises himself. He shook, he spilled, he sighed, and then sank down over her, totally spent.

  He huffed and puffed into her neck for an eternity, stroking her collarbone, murmuring something unintelligible in her ear, or her chest, or whatever part that was pillowing his head. It didn’t seem to matter, what with him floating next to her in a glowing neon bubble of bliss. His limbs were warm and leaden and tired in a satisfyingly boneless way. His arms felt thick, his thoughts muddled. Time slowed down along with his breath until even that didn’t matter any more. There was just her, warm and soft and snuggly, and him.