She should feel guilty; she knew that. If the positions had been reversed she’d have been mortified. But strangely she didn’t. No harm had been committed. He didn’t know that she’d been watching him or that he’d just fulfilled a particularly potent fantasy of hers—so potent she’d put it in a book!—and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him!
But she would use it.
Late at night when a day of crafting sensual tension or a torrid love scene left her restless and achy and the dictates of her body would not be ignored, a naked Rick bathed in shower spray and moonbeams would come in handy.
Very handy indeed.
Vasco examined the milky white perfection of Lady Mary’s hand. He cradled it in the palm of his much bigger, much darker one and admired the contrast for a moment. This was what they’d look like in his bed, their limbs entwined, their stomachs pressed together—coconut and coffee.
He stroked his thumb down the length of her index finger where the long slither of wood had embedded itself and let it drift across her palm. He heard the slight intake of her breath and felt her resistance to his hold.
He looked up into her emerald eyes. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he murmured.
Mary swallowed. They were seated, her knees primly together beneath her skirts, his legs spread wide in that lord-of-all-he-surveyed way of his, bracketing hers. The fabric of his breeches pulled taut across his thighs as he leaned in over her hand, his head perilously close to her cleavage.
‘It really just needs a pair of tweezers,’ she said, trying to pull her hand back. He resisted and she resigned herself to the unsettling heat of his touch.
Vasco smiled at her, her pink mouth a tempting bow before him. ‘I think I can do better than that.’
His voice was low and silky and Mary felt it in places that she’d only recently, thanks to him, become aware of. Her green gaze locked with the startling blue of his as he raised her finger to his mouth and sucked it inside.
Vasco watched surprise pucker her mouth into a cute little O shape as her pupils dilated. Her breathing was loud in the space between them as she lowered her gaze to where his mouth tasted her. He felt a half-hearted attempt to pull away again but countered it by laving her finger with long strokes of his tongue.
Her whimper went straight to his groin.
Mary felt the throb ease as Vasco ministered to her wound in this most unusual fashion. Her gaze returned to his, finding him watching her with something in those mesmerising eyes she couldn’t fathom. She didn’t know what it was but she did know she’d seen it there before.
And it was both dangerous and enticing.
Still holding her gaze, Vasco slowly withdrew his lips, his teeth seeking and finding the rough end of the splinter burrowed in at the tip. He nipped at it until he held it firmly, then slowly eased it out, her glistening finger slipping from his mouth altogether. For a moment he held the liberated splinter between his teeth, then turned his head and spat it on the floor.
He smiled as he turned back to face her. ‘That’s better,’ he murmured.
Mary couldn’t move. Her finger or anything else for that matter. She just sat there, hand still in his, finger moist from his ministrations, staring at his mouth. A mouth that had turned her insides to jelly.
‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, belatedly remembering her manners.
Vasco lowered his head to her finger again, and pressed a gentle lingering kiss to the exit wound.
He grinned. ‘My pleasure.’
Mary felt a sudden urge to call for smelling salts.
After a restless sleep Stella wasn’t in any hurry to look Rick in the eye for the first time since her voyeurism of last night. She’d gone straight to her quarters after her little peeping Tom episode, thus avoiding him altogether.
But she couldn’t stay in her cabin for ever and it wasn’t as if he knew that she’d spied on him. All she had to do was not blush and stammer when she greeted him and pretty soon the awkwardness would pass.
The memory would be emblazoned on her frontal lobe for ever but the awkwardness would pass!
‘Hey,’ she said to Rick as she wandered into the galley fifteen minutes later. He was sitting at the dining table poring over charts. Fully clothed. She looked away as he looked up at her.
Rick forced himself not to smile like a Cheshire cat, but just give a normal everyday hey kind of a smile. Which was kind of difficult when greeted with another pair of brief shorts and some kind of strapless shirt, leaving her shoulders bare and her cleavage...enhanced.
‘Morning,’ he said. You saucy little pervert in barely any clothes. ‘Sleep well?’
He assumed she’d had a pretty fitful sleep if that damn bell jingling was anything to go by.
Stella steeled herself to look at him again and gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Fine,’ she murmured.
Rick stifled a smile as she looked away. Liar. Good, now they were even. Between the damn book, that silly little bell and an array of teeny tiny clothes, sleep had become a rare commodity.
‘You were in bed early last night,’ he mused, because he just couldn’t resist teasing her a little as she had done over their flirting bet last night. ‘Everything okay?’
Stella’s breath hitched as she popped two pieces of bread in the toaster. ‘Fine,’ she replied, her gaze planted firmly on the job at hand.
Rick suppressed a chuckle at her monosyllabic replies. He’d have loved to tease her some more, hell he could have done it all day, but the weather wasn’t the best out there and they should be getting under way.
He picked up his plate and glass and headed towards the galley, squeezing behind her to get to the sink. He felt her stiffen a little as he caught a whiff of browning toast and coconut. Her hair sat in a messy ponytail on top of her head, leaving her neck exposed, and he had the craziest urge to slip his arms around her waist and nuzzle into it.
He stepped away from the temptation—teasing her was one thing, acting as if they’d set up house was another. He placed his plate in the sink and downed the last of his orange juice in one gulp. ‘It’s going to be a bit choppy out there today so I’ll get us under way,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ Stella said again, keeping rigidly still until he’d safely disappeared up the stairs. When the toast popped thirty seconds later she realised she’d been staring out of the porthole thinking about him naked.
Oh, brother! Would she ever be able to act normally around him again?
As it turned out Rick was fully engaged in keeping control of the boat in the worsening swell so there was no time for conversation, awkward or otherwise. The sky was grey and the wind was brisk, keeping him on his toes. It was far from dangerous but it did require his attention.
She sat up front and worked on her laptop for a bit, but trying to type with the horizon undulating drunkenly played havoc with her equilibrium and wasn’t very productive.
