“Show me,” I whisper back, and Caleb’s nostrils flare. I stare into the stormy depths of his blue eyes as he pushes himselfinside me, slowly, so I can feel every inch of him. Some sensible voice in the back of my head tells me to keep it that way—to move slowly. To savor every second of this. But I’ve waited far too long to listen.
I grab his arms with such ferocity I might leave bruises, whispering his name as he drives deeper, his gaze turning feral. There is nothing patient about our movements, nothing controlled. He fights for my touch like a drowning man fighting for air: heavy, desperate, insatiable. I feel like I’m about to explode. I push him sideways until I’m straddling him and he reaches up and cups my breasts in both hands, running his thumb in circles over my nipples until I’m dizzy with pleasure. I grind into him and he moans so loudly, I have to smack a hand over his mouth to keep us from being heard.
He bites my fingers while I wrap my other hand into his hair.
“Oh fuck,” he breathes as I rock back and forth. His eyes close as he tilts his head backwards, exposing the pulsing veins of his neck. Any thoughts of fear or doubt are drowned out by the rightness of it: the pure electricity crackling between us that’s been building since the moment we met.
I lean back and he slips his hand between us, using his fingers to bring me to the brink of orgasm. Our breaths come shallow and hot as we move against each other, fighting for more. Two ships lost in the same storm.
“Slow down,” he whispers into my skin. “You’re gonna make me come.”
“I—” I fight to get the words out. But they don’t come. Instead, a wave of pure pleasure rolls through me that washes any hope of speech from my throat. I bite my lip to keep from crying out as he sends me into oblivion, my body shattering into a thousand tiny pieces of girl. It’s all he needs to let go, too. He pulls down on my hips with his free hand, burying himself deep inside me as he cries out so quietly I can barely hear himover the pounding of blood in my ears. We stay like that for seconds, for an eternity, the lightning flashing back and forth between us until it fades out. Then I collapse onto his chest and grip him tightly, wrapping my arms and legs around his sweat-glistening body.
For a few moments, we just lie there, breathing. I don’t want to let go.
Eventually, Caleb’s hand unthreads from my mess of hair and he holds my head back and kisses me, slowly. The kind of kiss that is somehowmore. The kind that saysI see you.
I slide off of him and into the tangled white sheets, nuzzling my head into his chest.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, his breath slowing as he pulls me to him, smoothing my hair back and bringing his lips to the top of my head.
I grab hold of his hand like I’m a balloon that’s liable to float away.
“Do all your guests get this kind of treatment?” I ask dreamily.
His lip cocks.
“Only the knotty ones.”
I snort involuntarily.
“Is that a… boat pun?” I roll over onto my side so I’m facing him dead on. “Captain Caleb, devotee of all things grave and serious, just made aboat pun?”
“I told you, you have a strange effect on me,” he says. “If I start telling dad jokes, you can really start to worry.”
I wrap myself up in his warm body and pull him close. I want to feel every configuration of him: his arms around me. My legs draped over his thighs. One thing I know for sure is that now I have him, the last thing I want to do is go to sleep.
“Would you do something for me?” he asks after a few moments, hitting me with the killer lopsided smile that got me into this mess in the first place.
“As long as it doesn’t involve leaving this bed.”
Caleb laughs before leaning over to his nightstand and opening the drawer. The absence of him, even for a second, feels wrong. When he comes back to me, he’s holding a shabby lined notebook and a ballpoint pen in his hand.
“Draw me,” he says, but it’s more a plea than a command.
“Now?”
“When I’m happy,” he says, and my chest swells a little. “Not all frustrated and closed off like last time.”
“Caleb…”
I look at him skeptically, but the characteristically earnest expression on his face tells me he’s not joking. I remember the resolute way his jaw set when he returned my sketchbook, and wonder how much seeing that portrait affected him. Maybe Caleb is a much bigger softie than I’ve given him credit for.
I take the notebook from him and flip past some shoddily scrawled notes to an empty page. Ballpoint has never been my medium of choice, but the subject is too good to pass up. I feel the pang of shame at my own abilities rising as the pen touches down, but Caleb’s hand on my arm squashes it almost immediately. I can do this.
I trace out his contoured form on paper: the muscled shoulder that holds him up, his mussed hair, the delicious corners of his lips. The man that comes to life beneath my pen is not the rigid Captain who yelled at me for jumping off the stern, nor is he the flirtatious runner I first met on the beach. He’s unguarded. He is vulnerable and kind. And right now, despite all my best attempts to push him away, Caleb is totally, unbelievably mine.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said earlier,” I tell him as I draw. “About me being free to do anything I want. What I’d do if I had no limitations.”
