They were getting pummeled by rain that was coming down in proverbial sheets with no intention of stopping, white-topped waves that were climbing higher by the minute, and sharp gusts of wind that blew it all together in great geysers of water leaping and spraying all around them.
Clearly this was the wrong time to think about how good Dan felt behind her or how close his arm was to her breast or that the erection hard against her bottom was every bit as impressive as it had felt in her hand. Yet despite the tumult swirling around her, the flush of desire—all right,lust—was hitting her hard. He was turning her on. Big-time.
In the cocoon of his coat and body heat, she was warm and soft and inexplicably relaxed for a castaway at sea in a leaky boat in a monsoon. Well, maybe the storm wasn’t quite that bad, but it was definitely not the time to be thinking about sex. Really raunchy sex. Really hot sex. Sex like what she’d only imagined.
But if the sensations turning her liquid every time her bottom rode up against him were any indication, she’d definitely been missing out in the doggy-style category. She could too easily imagine him bending her forward against the wheel, lifting her hips to him, and sinking that thick column inside her. And the thrusts. She could definitely imagine thethrusts. Every time the boat lurched over a wave and came down hard, she felt the slam of him behind her, sending a reverberation of need through her bones. She was hot and achy and more turned on than she’d ever been in her life. Which given their circumstances was pure crazy sauce.
Maybe she was imagining it all a little too well, because as they rode over the next wave, and the motion carried her hips back, she might have arched her back a little and made a sound that was suspiciously like a moan.
He stiffened behind her, growing so taut the muscles in his chest and arms seemed to turn to steel. Hello, Mr. Six-Pack—or Eight-Pack. Unless she wanted to turn around and count them—which she kind of did—the exact number of rigid bands would remain a mystery. Her back felt even hotter—like sitting in front of a furnace that had just been stoked. Which admittedly she might have just done.
What was she doing? Grinding against a guy she barely knew like a teenager when they were in danger of disappearing under the next wave or sinking in a deflated boat?
Cheeks aflame with mortified heat, she tried to pull away, but he caught her with one of those rock-hard arms and pulled her back in tight. “Don’t. I want you right here.”
His voice so close to her ear sent shivers down her spine. Sure, that was it. It wasn’t the sensual promise in his words. He was feeling it, too. He liked it. He wanted her.
Was that what she wanted? Sex with a stranger? Even if he was a really hot stranger?
Suddenly she realized what this must look like. She was acting like a sex-starved porn star in a really bad movie—Perfect Sex Storm, maybe? She didn’t even know who he was. A half hour ago she thought he could be a serial killer.
No, she’d never thought that. There was something about this guy that she’d trusted from the beginning, and that was making her come up with ridiculous scenarios to try to talk herself out of doing so. Her mind was telling her not to be an idiot again—that she had no reason to trust him—but her gut was telling her something else.
“Listen to your gut,”her father had always said. But how could she do that when that gut had just been so wrong?
Naive.Of all the things Dan had said to her earlier in his no-sugarcoat, cut-right-to-the-heart-of-it lambasting, that had probably been the most stinging.
Because it was true. But it was also because naive seemed to be used too often as a synonym for “stupid.” Which it shouldn’t be. She just didn’t think like that. She didn’t look for treachery behind every corner. She didn’t see bad people; she saw good. Did that sometimes get her in trouble? Yes. But she didn’t want to see the world as the dark place that he obviously did.
Maybe she should have asked Julien a few more questions, and certainly gotten to know him a little better before embarking on an adventure like this, but there hadn’t been any sign that he’d been involved with a terrorist organization like OPF. He’d been acting strangely, and she hadn’t liked Jean Paul, but she hadn’t missed something. He’d deceived her plain and simple.
But hard-eyed cynics like Dan—or her father—had a way of making her feel bad for not assuming the worst of people and treating everyone as if they were a suspect.
She didn’t see how they could live their lives like that. Or didn’t live in her father’s case, when the anger, unhappiness, and ugliness got to be too much, even for a superhero.
She didn’t want that kind of dark in her life. She’d stayed away from men like Dan her whole life. Why now was she forgetting that?
He must have sensed the change in her. “You all right?”
His voice brought her back from the memories. She nodded.
“Good. I’m going to need your help. The swell is getting worse. I don’t want to take my eyes off the waves for too long, so you’re going to have to use the compass and keep us headed in the right direction.”
Her father had tried to teach her the basics of navigating with a map and compass, but she’d never really gotten the hang of it—and she certainly had never tried on the ocean. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. If he needed her to do this, she would. “All right.”
“Good girl.”
She’d get annoyed with him later for that little bit of paternalistic sexism. “Dan?”
He paused a moment before responding. “Yep?”
“Is it really bad?”
If she hadn’t been sitting so close to him, she wouldn’t have felt the slight hesitation that answered her question. Yes, it was bad.
“You don’t need to be scared, Annie. I got this, okay?”
Strangely she believed him. If anyone was capable of getting them out of this, she’d put her money on him. “Okay.”
