Page 105 of Salt Kiss
“Gonna come, honey,” I mutter, and she arches against me.
“Inside me,” she begs, as if there were any other thing I’d rather do. “Inside.”
I release with a grunt, spurting ropes of heat into her, biting her neck from behind before I tear myself away, not wanting to leave any marks, any trace of this.
Or rather,wantingto but knowing it’s a terrible idea.
I come until my balls are drained, my craving soothed temporarily by the snug channel inside her body, and then I slip out and replace my dick with my fingers, giving her two and the heel of my hand to ride, one of her favorite ways to come.
She curls in the water as she does, convulsing around my hand, her thighs closed tight, and I keep her pinned against my chest, growling at every single pulse she gives me. “Fuck, you’re so sexy,” I praise. “You make me so hard. You make me feral. I want to fuck you every single moment of the day. I don’t know how I’m gonna stop—”
My voice falls quiet as her body gives up the last of its pleasure, and we just stay there for a moment. My fingers are still inside her as she turns in my arms and wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist.
“I don’t know how I’m going to stop either,” she confesses, her voice a husky melody over the waterfall, and feeling something vital inside me tear open, I grab my newly hard erection and slide it inside.
We screw facing each other, my hands on her hips, moving her up and down on my dick as easily as I’d move a toy or my own hand, and we don’t say a word as we stroke ourselves to our next climax.
What else is there to say?
We don’t know how we’re going to stop.
I’m obsessed with maps.
Specifically the map in the bridge with the blinking dot showing the yacht and how far away it is from Manhattan. Every morning, I meet with Captain Duval on the bridge, and my eyes are fixed on the screens in front of the bridge windows, watching as we pull ever closer to shore.
“Should be tomorrow afternoon,” she says confidently. “The forecast is clear and we’ll be approaching well away from the shipping lanes, so it’ll only be noncommercial boat traffic to worry about. An easy final leg. Is Ms. Laurence ready?”
I glance over to the captain and am relieved to see that her expression betrays no suspicion, no subtext. As constantly as Isolde and I have fucked, there’s no erasing my years as a soldier, my experience as a bodyguard. I’ve been careful, discreet, sure that any time we’re together, we’re not raising conjecture. Making sure we still give the appearance of pursuing our own interests and recreation, all the things we did before, on the first half of the trip.
I’m almost disappointed at how adept I am at deception.
And Isolde thought I was a good man.
“She’s known this day was coming and made all her preparations. And I’m excited to be on solid land again,” I add. I speak as much truth as possible, since lying aloud is still hard for me.
Which is oddly relieving. At least there are traces of my morality left still.
I give the map one last look, let the captain know that I’ll be ready to deliver Isolde to Mark tomorrow, and go to the basketball court. I take shots until my arms hurt and sweat drips into my eyes, and then I go to my room to shower and change.
Afterward, I stand at my room’s balcony and watch the waves move under the afternoon sky.
The ocean is endless. There is no way to make sense of where you are, no terrain association, no dead reckoning. It’s just a vast, blue bruise that defies logic, at least without the sun or stars, without panels of screens, without satellites and GPS transponders. On its own, it’s the opposite of a place.
It’s no place.
And here it felt like I could be no one—for the last week, I’ve been no one. Not a bodyguard, not a man with morals.
Not a man still in love with Mark Trevena.
Tomorrow, that changes. Tomorrow, we will see the shore, and we will anchor, and we will take the tender to the marina.
We will be back ina place. A place where I am no longer no one.
I brace my hands on the railing and hang my head between my shoulders, breathing in the cool, wet air.
The door to the balcony next to mine slides open, and I don’t need to look up to know it’s Isolde. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her come to her own railing, her hair in a white-gold braid.
“You didn’t come to the dojo this morning,” she says.
