Page 29 of Second Time Around
“I’ll give you a little boost,” Will said, a roguish twinkle in his eyes.
“Yeah, thanks.” She unstrapped and handed him her sandals, along with her clutch, all of which he tossed onto the cockpit’s cushioned bench. She stood carefully, bracing her legs as he held the ladder with one hand and her elbow with the other. She took a deep breath, grabbed the ladder, and waited for the skiff to ride up a wave before thrusting her foot onto the first step. Will’s hand shifted to her bottom and he gave her a lift so powerful that she practically flew up the ladder.
Her step down on the deck wasn’t graceful, but somehow she plunked onto the bench without ripping her dress or twisting her ankle.
Will was there beside her almost immediately, bending to retrieve her handbag. “Sorry, I didn’t think through the whole tight skirt angle. Are you all right?”
“I’m a little worried about getting back in the skiff, but for now I’m fine.” She heard the skiff’s engine grumble away from the sailboat.
Now that they were alone on the boat, Kyra was frozen by a sudden shyness. Back at the barn, Will’s mouth and hands had stopped her from thinking, but the fog of arousal had dissipated on the journey to the boat.
“Are we sailing somewhere?” she asked, glancing around to avoid looking at Will.
“No, we’ve got all the privacy we need right here.” He slid open the door—no, it was called a hatch, she remembered—that led into the interior cabin. “More steps but these aren’t moving. Much,” he said, slanting a smile over his shoulder. Something in her face or posture must have alerted him to her change of mood because he came back to hold out both his hands, palms up. When she placed hers in them, he pulled her upright to stand, an inch or so of space between them. “I want you. Very much,” he said. “But you can say no. No harm, no foul.”
He wanted her. A bald statement, but somehow it made her heart squeeze. His eyes burned greener than the grass at his parents’ farm and the fire in them reignited the desire in her veins.
Yet she found it hard to answer him with her own words, so she fell back on their quote swapping. “‘In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty.’”
She had expected him to respond with another line from Shakespeare, but he let go of her hands and swept his arms around her, holding her against him from knee to shoulder. He bent and found her lips in a kiss that sent tendrils of need curling through her. Her shyness evaporated like dew in July, and she wound her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. When he released her lips, his face was tight with desire. “Not so sweet-and-twenty,” he said. “More like dirty-and-thirty-something.”
A laugh rasped up from deep in her throat. He touched his lips to the hollow at the base of her neck, almost as though he wanted to kiss the source of the sound. She felt it as a bolt of lightning straight to her breasts.
He kept his arm around her waist and walked toward the open hatch. “No more delays then,” he said. “I’ll go first.”
He ran lightly down the few steps and pivoted, reaching toward her. She leaned in to take his hands but he seized her waist and lifted her down, letting her slide along his body until her feet touched the floor. She let out a long sigh at how wonderful he felt against her.
“Hold that thought,” he said, flipping open a storage compartment to pull out a couple of plaid comforters. Tossing them on one of the built-in benches, he fiddled with something under the cushion of another bench so that it extended out over the galley table, making a capacious bed.
Kyra laid the comforters out while Will opened a porthole, creating a delicious cross breeze of tangy sea air.
As he came up to her, she laid her palm on his chest, holding him at a distance. “Fair warning: if you fall asleep on me again, I will finish without you.”
“Sleep is the farthest thing from my mind right now,” he said, his fingers drifting up her bare arms in delicious, exploring strokes. She could feel the tiny hairs on her skin dance and tingle.
“This time we start with you,” she said.
“A gentleman is taught that ladies should go—or come—first.” His voice was a slow pour of seduction.
She lifted her hands to the first button on his shirt and flicked it open. “I didn’t say anything about coming. I just want to see you naked.”
The hiss of his inhale was audible in the boat’s enclosed cabin. He toed off his loafers and gave her a heavy-lidded smile. “A gentleman is also taught that he should do everything in his power to make a lady’s wishes come true.” He started to unbuckle his belt, but Kyra grabbed his hands.
“The lady wishes to undress you herself.” She might only have this one chance to enjoy his body, and she planned to savor it.
“As long as the wish is reciprocal, the gentleman is willing, although a bit impatient.” He let his hands fall to his sides.
Kyra finished unbuttoning his shirt, yanking the tails out of his waistband and dragging the shirt down his arms before tossing it across the cabin. Now she sucked in a long breath because he was more than she expected. The lanky college boy’s body had been transformed into the muscle and sinew of a man who exuded control over himself and those around him. It was a heady experience to have all that leashed power at her command.
She ran one fingertip over the swell of muscle that joined his neck to his shoulder, then trailed back along the sharp edge of his clavicle. His skin was warm and smooth as silk until she reached the center of his chest where a patch of gilded hair tickled her fingers.
“You’re doing this to torture me,” he said, his voice tight.
She smiled up into his eyes. “I’m doing this because I didn’t get to ten years ago.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold, but it’s having the opposite effect on me,” he said, cupping a hand over her backside and pulling her against him to feel his erection.
The delicious ache inside her turned to a furnace of need. But she wasn’t going to rush this ... yet. “Does a gentleman hurry a lady?”
