Will had lashed himself to the helm with a rope. And the dynamometer banged off the stops, indicating they were sometimes rolling well over thirty degrees.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
It felt like they were stuck inside some sort of diabolical mashup of a carnival ride and a washing machine. And his only solace was knowing that if the boat was going to fall apart, it probably would’ve already done so.
There was no longer any pattern to the waves. They seemed to come from all directions. Brady got seasick, barfing up his lunch against the far wall. And the catamaran, which had been double anchored and visible off their starboard side, was now nowhere to be seen.
“God, help us!” Brady cried.
Will figured his friend’s plea was useless. The god of the bible, the one they’d been raised to believe in, made way for the ocean gods at times like these.
And if the ocean gods want us,Will thought desperately,the ocean gods will take us. And there’s not a damn thing any of us can do to stop them.
Chapter 10
4:53 PM...
The eyewall was upon them.
Winds that’d been raging against the house were now battering it with everything they had. Thecrashof a nearby palm tree as it lost its battle to hang on sounded above the cacophony of the furious gale. The storm surge slapped at the floorboards on the lower level, and from the direction of Uncle John’s bedroom, Dana Levine’s whispered words, “Heaven help us,” echoed down the hall.
Cami registered none of it.
All she saw was Doc’s hungry green eyes. All she felt was his warm breath as he gently cupped her face, leaned forward, and kissed one eyelid, then the other. All she smelled was his clean, mountain man scent when he peppered her face with delicious nips until he once again stopped with his lips hovering a bare inch above hers.
“Cami.” Her name sounded like a prayer in his mouth.
And then, all she tasted was him when he finally,finallykissed her.
A fluttery sensation winged through her chest as he took her mouth with more care, more softness than she could have imagined. Once again, the word that drifted through her brain wascherished.
She’d never known anyone who could so thoroughly combine sweet with sexy. Who could call to her heart at the same time he stoked her libido.
Before she knew it, she’d sunk into him. Melted against him. Luxuriating in the touch of his warm lips, in the slick glide of his tongue, in the soft groan he breathed into her mouth when she matched him stroke for stroke.
It was the kind of kiss seen in the movies, where the main characters get completely lost in each other. The kind of kiss poets wrote about, where two people became one by the simple act of melding their mouths. The kind of kiss songwriters sang about, where even the beat and melody felt like the thrust and parry of eager, hungry tongues.
Cami had been thirteen years old the first time she’d given a boy permission to taste her lips. In the last row of The UA Theater, Dario De Luca had leaned over during a showing ofBlue Crushand planted one on her.
When she said planted, she meantplanted. It’d been rough and clumsy and more than a little slobbery. Her watermelon-flavored Lip Smackers lip gloss had smeared across Dario’s mouth. And she’d tasted on his tongue the spaghetti he’d had for dinner mixed with the Jujyfruits he’d bought at the concession stand.
Looking back, she was surprised that first kiss hadn’t put her off the activity altogether. But, thankfully, things had improved after that. Although, there was a difference betweenimprovementandperfection.
In her experience, most men, even the ones who were good kissers, benefited from a little instruction. A little subtle direction on how much pressure to apply. How much tongue to insert. Howlittlespit should be swapped.
She was always pragmatic about the process since, to her way of thinking, good kissers were like good wine. They got better with age and the more times she sampled them.
But Doc? Oh, Doc needed no guidance. He was already a top-shelf Cabernet. Delicious and complex. No need to stick him back in the cellar to mature. The man was at his peak.
And he’d managed to catch her off guard. Because after all the buildup between them, she’d expected him to pounce. Attack. Devour. But his kiss was incredibly tender. Andthorough.
He seemed intent on sampling every inch of her lips, every part of her tongue, all the space inside her mouth.
This,she thought.This was what it was like the first night we met.
In all the months since then, she’d convinced herself she’d imagined his skill. Convinced herself she’d been too tipsy and that what she’d perceived as perfection was simply a case of impaired judgment.
But no. He was everything she remembered.
