Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Rory

Three weeks into the job and I still had not learned how to keep Kian Ashcroft on the deck where he belonged. The night dive was supposed to be simple.

Drop, hook the last two crates, come up. Then a support line snapped somewhere above us and the debris field started folding in on itself like a fist closing, and I heard him grunt once through the comm before the whole mess shifted and I lost sight of his light.

I went after him without thinking about clearance or protocol or the fact that Talia was going to murder me when we got back. I found him pinned at the shoulder by a bent strut, kicking hard, and I got both hands in the front of his wetsuit and hauled until something gave and we went tumbling up through black water that did not care if we made it.

I should have shoved him off. I had shoved men off for less. My hands came up to his chest instead and stayed there, fingers curled in the zipper of his wetsuit, and neither of us moved away. The boat rolled under our feet. Rain hit the porthole. His breath was on my mouth.

“This is a bad idea,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then back up.”

He did not. I did not make him. The first kiss was not gentle. I made a sound I did not plan on and he swallowed it, tilting his head, one hand leaving the wall to catch the back of my neck like he thought I might still run.

I did not run. I bit his lower lip and he made a noise that went straight down my spine.

“Rory,” he said against my mouth.

“Do not say my name like that.”

“Like what.”

“Like this is allowed.”

He kissed me again anyway, slower that time, and I let him, which was the first real mistake of the night. My hands found the zipper and dragged it down his chest because the wetsuit was in the way and I wanted it gone. He laughed once into the kiss, shaky.

“You were just yelling at me.”

“I am still yelling at me,” I said. “Keep up.”

He got my zipper next. The air in the cabin was warmer than the water and still not warm enough. The suit peeled off my shoulders and hung at my waist and his eyes dropped and came back up like he had been caught looking, except he did not stop looking. I should have covered myself. I put my hands in his hair instead and pulled his mouth down to my throat.

“This does not mean anything,” I said.

“Okay.”

“I am serious.”

“I heard you.”

My nipples went tight under his hands and he made a low sound and ducked his head and put his mouth on me.

“Kian.”

“Tell me to stop.”

I did not. His tongue was hot. He sucked and I grabbed his hair harder than I needed to, and he took that as yes, because it was. He switched sides and I swore under my breath and he smiled against my skin like he had won something. I dragged his face back up and kissed him to wipe that look off, messy, teeth, the taste of salt still in both our mouths.

“We should not,” I said, and my voice did not sound like a person who meant it.

“I know.”

“Then why are your hands still on me.”

“Because you have not moved them.”

I moved them. Down. Over the hard plane of his stomach, over the wetsuit bunched at his hips, and I felt him through the neoprene, already hard, and his whole body went still for a second like he had not expected me to go there. I squeezed once, just to see his face change, and it did. His forehead dropped to mine.

“Rory.”

“You can still walk out.”

“I am not walking out, fuck I’m gonna get crucified for fucking a kid.”

“I’m not a kid.” He said raising his head.

“Okay… if you insist on that.”

“I mean it!!!”

“Just go ahead pleaseee..”

I got the rest of his suit down and he kicked free of it, clumsy, almost falling into me, and then it was just him and the thin layer of my own suit still around my hips and the fact that the bunk behind us was too narrow for two people who had any sense. He kissed me again while his hand slid down my stomach and under the neoprene and I stopped breathing when his fingers found me. I was already wet. I could feel it and I knew he could feel it and there was no way to pretend the water was responsible for that.

He went still.

“Is this okay.”

“Do not ask me that like I am going to give you a speech.”

“I am asking because I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” I said, and it came out rough. “Yes. Keep going.”

He did. Slow, like he had all night, two fingers sliding through me, not pushing in yet, just learning the shape of me while I held onto his shoulders and tried not to make a sound. I failed. He found the spot that made my knee give and I grabbed the wall behind me and he watched my face like it was the only thing in the room worth looking at.

“You are shaking.”

“It is cold.”

“It is not cold.”

“Shut up.”

He smiled again, smaller, and slid one finger inside me. I dropped my head against his shoulder and breathed into his neck. He added a second when I pushed down onto his hand, and the sound I made then was not one I wanted anyone on this boat to hear. His thumb stayed on my clit and he worked me like he had thought about this, which I did not want to think about, and my hips started moving without my permission.

“Kian. Wait.”

He froze. “Too much.”

“No. Just. Wait.”

I reached between us and wrapped my hand around him. He was thick, hot, already wet at the tip, and his breath punched out of him like I had hit him. I stroked once, slow, base to head, and his hand inside me stuttered.

“You do not play fair,” he said.

“I never said I did.”

I kept my hand on him and he kept his hand on me and we stood there against the wall like two people who had forgotten how doors worked. I could feel him twitch in my grip every time I tightened. I could feel myself clench around his fingers every time he curled them. It was stupid. It was the worst idea I had had since I jumped off my own tug in a storm. I did not stop.

He pulled his hand out of me and I made a noise of protest I was going to deny later. He got the rest of my suit off and then there was nothing left between us. He put his hands on my ass and lifted and I wrapped my legs around him because the alternative was falling, and he carried me the three steps to the bunk and laid me down like the ceiling was too low for standing anymore.

“God,” he said into my mouth.

“Do not.”

“Do not what.”

“Do not make this sound like a prayer.”

Every time he notched against me I thought he would push in and every time he did not, like he was waiting for me to do it for him.

“Rory.”

“What.”

“Look at me.”

I did. His eyes were dark. There was rain still in his hair. He looked twenty two and too much and exactly like the thing I had spent ten years building a company to avoid.

“If you tell me to stop I will stop,” he said.

“I know.”

“Are you telling me to stop.”

I shook my head. I reached between us and put him where he needed to be and he pushed in on a breath that left both of us. Slow. Too slow. I felt every inch and I hated how much I wanted the rest of it. He bottomed out and stayed there, forehead on mine, shaking.

“Move,” I said.

He moved. The first few strokes were careful, like he was afraid of the bunk or of me or of the fact that this was happening at all. He thrust and I met him and the bunk hit the wall in a rhythm I hoped the crew could not hear over the rain. His mouth found my throat again. My hands were in his hair, on his back, on the cheap pillow, anywhere that would hold.

“This is just tonight,” I said, and it came out broken.

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

He changed the angle and I saw white for a second. I came first, suddenly, grabbing at him, a sound I swallowed against his shoulder. His mouth went up to my breast and he took it in like he had been starving and then he followed not long after, buried deep, my name in his mouth even though I had told him not to say it like that.

We did not talk much after that. He shifted so he would not crush me. I let him keep an arm across my waist because the bunk did not give us a choice.

Sleep took him fast, the way it takes people who have not learned yet that mornings always collect.

I lay there longer, listening to the rain ease off, feeling him warm against my back, telling myself it was the dive and the adrenaline and the three weeks of looking at his mouth when I should have been looking at the charts.

I woke in the gray before dawn and the first thing I saw was his face. Soft. Mouth open a little. One hand still loose on the sheet near my hip. Twenty two. Younger than two of my deckhands. Younger than the version of me who had stood in a different room ten years ago and said yes to a different Ashcroft.

I dressed in the dark. Wetsuit half zipped, boots, jacket. I left him the blanket. On deck the air was thin and the water was the color of old tin. I stood at the rail and drank coffee that had gone bitter in the pot and tried to put my face back on.

He found me twenty minutes later. Hair smashed on one side, shirt on backward, still soft with sleep. He came up beside me and reached for my hand like that was a thing we did now.

I pulled it back.

“That did not happen,” I said.

He blinked. “What.”

“Last night. It did not happen. You got caught up in a bad night. You are a kid. I should not have let it go that far.”

He stood there with his hand still half out and I watched something in his face shut like a door. Not loud. Just closed. The warmth went out of his mouth first, then his eyes.

“A kid,” he said.

“Kian.”

“No. I heard you.”

He dropped his hand. He looked at the water instead of me. I wanted to take it back and I wanted him to stay shut and I wanted a third thing I did not have a name for.

The radio on my belt crackled. Dispatch, then the dock, then a voice I had not heard in ten years and would have known in a hurricane.

“Vance Maritime, this is Damian Ashcroft. I need your captain on this channel. Now.”