Swept Away 2 (7 page)

By the time Kyle appears a few hours later to take over the watch, Ethan and I are on the trampoline, sitting shoulder to shoulder, talking about tacos. Specifically, about the best taco stand in LA. I say it’s Tito’s Tacos, but Ethan claims that place offers the most unauthentic Mexican food in the city. He rattles off a few that he likes downtown, but he’s wrong. Tito’s was where my dad used to take me when I was a little girl, and it’ll always be the best taco place in the world for me, hands-down.

We both feel the trampoline dip under someone’s weight, and we turn to see Kyle coming toward us. His face is blank, fortunately. I don’t want to deal with his jealousy—whatever it is—right now.

Ethan touches my shoulder. “You’re tired.”

“A little.” Actually, I’m exhausted. My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds. It’s been a hell of a day.

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’ll be all right. It’s only two hours.”

He hesitates. “Okay. But I’m walking you down. And you’ll be sleeping in my cabin, not yours. Open the hatch. I’m going to spend the rest of my watch on deck next to it, so I’ll be able to see and hear you if you need me.” As he stands and reaches down to help me up, he says to Kyle, “I’ll be right back.”

Kyle acknowledges this with a grunt.

Ethan follows me down into the port-side hull, searching my cabin area, then his, and a weird sort of giddiness tickles at my chest because he’s checking out the area like he’s a cop. His protectiveness is so endearing. In any other circumstance, I’d throw my arms around him and kiss him senseless. But when he walks out of the bathroom area and gestures me inside, his expression is serious. “Go on in. It’s safe.”

Brushing my teeth, I consider Nalani’s role in this—and if she even has one. Nalani does have a reason to hate me, but even so, the slick on the deck happened before Kyle made his crazy confession.

Unless she knew Kyle was in love with me before that…

No way. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but for 99.99 percent, or more, of the population, it’s not enough to make a person want to murder the object of their jealousy. Nalani has always struck me as sane and competent and fair, so it just doesn’t add up.

Truth is, I don’t want to think Nalani is capable of something like this. I really, really don’t want to. I
can’t
.

Which turns the focus straight back onto Mick. Who doesn’t have a motive like Nalani does, but there’s something about him…

I finish brushing my teeth and join Ethan, who’s in his cabin. “All ready?” His gaze rakes me up and down, making me feel naked, even though I’m wearing my pajamas—soft, pinstriped cotton shorts, and a matching button-up shirt.

The way his eyes focus on me is so hot, the instinctual, cavewoman part of me starts insisting I drag him into the bed and have my wicked way with him. Instead, I smile. “Yes.”

I climb in when he turns down the covers. Leaning over me, he gives me a kiss good-night that’s so long and so erotic, I’m panting before he pulls back. He gazes down at me, smirking. He knows exactly what he’s done to me.

“Look at you,” I murmur. “So smug.”

“I just like you there in my bed,” he says. “Your eyes shining and your cheeks flushed and your hair haloing your face like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. Or so sexy.”

“Mmmm…” I close my eyes for a moment as his words wash over me.

He reaches over and unlatches the hatch over the bed and pushes up the Plexiglas until it’s cracked open. A soft, tropical breeze instantly washes through the cabin.

“Good night,” he murmurs. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. But if you need me, I’ll be right up there”—he gestures to the hatch—“watching over you.”

He gives me a chaste kiss on my cheek and then he’s gone, back up on deck to serve the remainder of his watch time with Kyle.

I wrap the covers around me. After a few minutes, there’s a
tap tap
on the Plexiglas overhead, and Ethan’s fingers drop down through the crack. I reach up until our fingertips touch briefly. Then, smiling, I lower my hand and curl up on my side. The bed smells like Ethan, clean and masculine. I feel safe with him watching over me like this, and it only takes a few minutes before the motion of the boat rocks me to sleep.

It seems like just a few moments later when I awaken in a foggy haze of comfort, a warm body pressing against my back.
Ethan
, I think contentedly. “Is it three already?” I murmur, my voice heavy with sleep.

“Mmm-hmm.”

He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me to him, my butt to his groin. We’re spooning, and I’ve never felt anything as delicious as Ethan pressed to my backside. I wiggle, growing more alert by the second as awareness of his body against mine crawls through me.

His erection presses against my bottom—a long, hard rod. I moan softly and move, rubbing myself against him, earning a mirroring groan from him. His hand moves up under my pajama top, his palm sliding up the bare skin of my sternum, then cupping my breast.

He strokes me, passing his fingers over my nipple again and again, squeezing gently until the sensations are too strong, and I roll over in his arms and press my lips to his.

The kiss lasts for several minutes, swallowing me whole. There’s nothing else but Ethan and his wicked mouth and his hands all over me, touching my sensitized skin everywhere he can reach.

His stubble scrapes against my cheek as he turns me onto my back. I gaze up at his face, but darkness cloaks him. He’s just a shadow in the dimness, but his eyes glint as they watch me intently. My hands dive under his shirt, feeling the ridges of the muscles in his abs and chest. He’s gorgeous and perfect, even in the dark.

He kisses me again, his body pressed against mine, one of his legs on the outside of mine. I feel boxed in, enclosed, but not imprisoned. I feel completely safe here with his weight on me, cocooned in a warm haze of desire and longing, and the strength and protectiveness that is Ethan.

“I want to be inside you so bad,” he whispers roughly.

“Yes,” I say. I’ve been ready for this for days.

He heaves out a sigh. “I want to…so damn bad. I want to make you mine, Tara. But I can’t. We can’t. Not until we get to Hawaii.”

My hips buck up against him in an immediate denial. “Why?”

My hands go still on his chest. His muscles are tense beneath my palm, almost quivering with restrained masculine energy.

“No condom. I didn’t expect… I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

I groan. I’m so out of my mind for him, the lack of a condom wouldn’t have even registered if we’d had sex. Thank God one of us held on to sense.

“I knew I hadn’t packed any. I thought I might have had one or two buried in my luggage, but no.”

“You checked?”

“I checked.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm down my raging, reckless libido. At this moment, there’s no doubt in my mind why accidental babies happen. I’d be willing to take the risk right now, just to feel him inside me, my desire for him is so strong.

He rubs himself against my thigh and makes a strangled noise deep in his throat. He’s so hard, it must be painful for him.

“I’m clean, and I know you are too. It’s not disease I’m worried about…but…you’re not on the pill, are you?”

He sounds so hopeful, I would have laughed under any other circumstance. But right now, sexual frustration is so painful, seeing the humor in anything seems impossible.

Of course he’s right. There’s no reason for me to be on the pill. “No, I’m not.”

“Shit,” he groans, pressing his forehead to mine. “Damn it.”

“We could borrow one from Kyle—” I start, then flinch, first at my choice of words—“borrow,” as if we’d return it afterward—and then at the idea. Although, right now, I’d almost be willing to risk the look on Kyle’s face if I asked him for a condom.
Almost.

Then a lightbulb blinks on in my head. “Or maybe I could steal one,” I say eagerly.

I would do it, and without any guilt either. Over the years, Kyle has stolen tons of stuff from me, including my—
used
—toothbrush once when he stayed over at my apartment. When we were juniors in high school, he stole an issue of a teen magazine featuring a “bikini extravaganza!” that he told me he jacked off to while flipping pages and lusting over the models.

I remember covering my ears and telling him to
shut up, shut up, shut up!
when he told me this, but Kyle has always taken a special kind of pleasure in shocking me.

I wouldn’t feel guilty about stealing from him. I would feel guilty because if he found out about it, it would hurt him.

I’m not going to do that to Kyle. Even though I want Ethan to make love to me more than my next breath.

I sigh and sag back into the mattress. “Never mind.”

“Right.” Ethan’s chest rises, pressing against mine as he inhales. “I’m damn tempted to use the withdrawal method.”

“Do it.” It’s irresponsible, but at this moment, I honestly don’t care.

He makes a sound that sounds like a long, low growl. “I can’t. We can’t risk it. You know we can’t.”

He’s right, but I still want to pound my fist against the wall in frustration. “Being a responsible adult is highly overrated,” I grumble.

He laughs softly. “It is.” Then he kisses me again, long and sweet and languid. And after a few minutes, I’m so ready for more, my panties are drenched.

“I’m going to make you come, though,” Ethan murmurs, then the tip of his tongue trails over the shell of my ear.

A sigh of pleasure…and relief…slips out of me. Because if I don’t come, and soon, I just might lose my mind once and for all. Or crawl out of my skin. Or both.

“I’m going to make you come every night until we get to Honolulu. And when we get there, I’m going to make love to you until neither of us can move a muscle. Then we’re going to sleep and do it all over again when we wake up.”

“Sounds like heaven,” I whisper.

Three nights of him giving me pleasure—and I intend to repay the favor—and of building anticipation to the main event.

I can do that.

In a way, three nights sounds like forever though, when desire pulses so strongly throughout my body. “People used to wait until they were married before they had sex,” I point out, more to myself than to him. Reassuring myself that abstinence is an acceptable course of action to take.

His puff of laughter washes over my neck. “Some still do.”

“Then we shouldn’t complain, right?”

“I’m complaining,” he says quietly. “All those people who wait for sex aren’t with you, Tara. They’re not inhaling your sweetness right now, they’re not touching your soft skin. They didn’t watch you almost…” He breaks off, then he continues, his breath whispering over my skin. “They didn’t watch what happened this morning, and they don’t know how I feel about you. They can’t have any fucking clue how…how much…” His voice shakes, then dies away altogether.

“Ethan…” I whisper. My body stills, overwhelmed by the emotion brimming in his words. How can he treat me as if he cares like this while at the same time so openly stating that it’ll be over once we get back to LA?

How can he say he’s no good for me when being with him feels so good? Better than I’ve ever felt before. He’s wrong about that. He’s got to be wrong.

He kisses me, cutting off the words brimming inside me, then he moves down my body and back up, lifting my shirt off as he travels upward, giving him access to my breasts. He takes full advantage, kissing, suckling, until the pleasure overwhelms me. Every inch of skin on my chest has been claimed by his mouth, and my hands fist in his soft hair, holding him against me.

He moves downward again, but his hands stay on my breasts, kneading and stroking, but then he tugs my pajama shorts and panties down, sliding them off my legs, trailing kisses in their wake. He gets rid of them, then presses my legs apart gently. He kisses the sensitive skin on the inside of my knee, then licks his way up my thigh over part of my scar until his mouth latches on to my sex.

He doesn’t use his fingers this time, just his mouth—wet and hot and thorough. He flicks my clit, teases me, suckles me. The sensations are so intense, they border on the ridge between pleasure and pain. My body squirms, telling me it can’t take this onslaught of sensation, but his hands clamp over the fronts of my thighs, pinning me in place, forcing me to take it. And I do…and it’s so,
so
good.

Soon, I’m completely lost. All the strange events of the day melt away, leaving me nothing but a slave to the sensation Ethan wreaks on my body. My fingers and toes curl, and whimpers burst from my throat with every painfully blissful stroke of his talented tongue.

Every muscle in my entire body is strung taut, only to grow even tighter as he continues his assault.

I’m so primed, so ready for him, it doesn’t take long. He seems to know exactly how to get me where I need to go.

“I can’t,” I whisper. “I…I can’t.”

He doesn’t respond with words. He only tightens his fingers over my thighs as if to tell me that yes, I can, and he’s here with me.

Just when I open my mouth to beg him to stop, I tumble over the edge, exploding into a thousand shimmering pieces of pleasure. I’m flying, floating for long moments, before drifting back down. The pieces fuse back together until I’m myself again, and Ethan is still between my legs, his mouth gentle now as he presses kisses to the sensitive folds between my legs, drawing out every last shudder and pulse until I really can’t stand it a second longer.

He seems to know I’ve reached my limit, and he releases me and moves back up my body, pausing for a few seconds at my breast, where he licks and nuzzles my nipple before rising up to press a kiss to my lips.

I’m a languid, boneless mass, collecting hardly enough strength to kiss him back.

“Go to sleep, Tara,” he murmurs, settling beside me.

His words are like a splash of cool water over me, and I’m suddenly wide awake. I turn my head toward him, my lips curling wickedly. “I don’t think so.” I push him to his back and straddle him, bending down to kiss him. “Your turn,” I murmur against the softness of his lips.