The Devil and the Deep

CHAPTER EIGHT



RICK froze as he stared down at her, her right hand supporting her injured left arm, her teeth sunken into her bottom lip, plump and moist from his ravaging. He was dazed for a moment, trying to compute what had brought an abrupt end to the passion.

Trying to compute what the hell had happened in the first place.

‘I’m fine,’ Stella said, breathing hard through clenched teeth as the jarring settled. She could see his bewilderment and something else, a slow dawning that seemed to closely resemble horror.

No, no, no.

‘Just give me a moment,’ she scrambled to assure him as she watched his blue gaze lose its drugged lustre and slowly recoil from her. ‘Now.’ She smiled up at him, the pain in her left arm easing as she slipped her good hand onto his shoulder. ‘Where were we?’

Rick shook his head to clear the remnants of a very powerful buzz. What the hell? He groaned as he collapsed back against the deck.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said to the sky, blind to the beauty of the celestial display.

‘Rick,’ she assured him again, brushing a finger against his hand, ‘it’s fine.’

‘Oh, my God,’ he repeated, moving his hand to his face, covering his eyes and shaking his head from side to side. ‘What have I done?’

‘Rick—’

‘No.’ He vaulted upright, then sprang to his feet. ‘No, Stella,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘This is...crazy.’

Stella blinked at his vehemence. It had been shocking and surprising and unexpected. Not to mention unbelievably good.

But crazy?

She sat up gingerly. Obviously this wasn’t going any further and she couldn’t have this conversation with him towering over her reclined body.

‘Why?’

Rick stared at her as her calm response filled him with complicated angst. ‘Because,’ he spluttered, ‘you’re Stella and I’m Rick and we—’ he pointed back and forth between the two of them ‘—don’t do this.’

‘We made a kiss a stake in your flirting dare,’ she pointed out.

And as far as Stella was concerned it was the best first kiss ever. A kiss that had obliterated Dale’s best for eternity. A kiss that would surely ruin her for all other kisses.

Rick shook his head vehemently. ‘Not this kind of kiss.’ He’d thought about how it might go down and it hadn’t been anything like this. It had been slow, sweet, controlled.

And they’d both been vertical.

‘Why not?’ She wasn’t sixteen any more. Did he think she’d be satisfied with something chaste?

He blanched at her simple query. ‘How about twenty-plus years of friendship? Or a legal document with both our signatures on that states we own a company together? Your father, for crying out loud.’

Stella frowned. ‘My father?’

‘Yes,’ Rick fumed.

‘My father?’

Rick nodded. ‘He warned me off.’

‘My father warned you off?’

Rick hadn’t been forthcoming about what Nathan had said to him that day and, with the slight impression that she too had somehow let her father down, she hadn’t pursued it.

He glared at her incredulous expression. ‘Well, not in so many words, no. But every crew member he employed knew you were off-limits, Stel. Nathan didn’t want anyone messing with his little girl.’

It took her a moment to process that. Would Rick have made a move a long time ago had her father not been all Neanderthal about his daughter?

She’d known there was an undercurrent between them as teenagers but it had all ended abruptly that day and she’d figured it was for the best.

But maybe Rick had always pondered the what-ifs too?

Stella used her right hand to push up from the deck, wincing slightly. ‘Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a little girl any more, Rick. And my father is dead.’

Rick’s gaze dropped involuntarily to her boob tube. ‘Yeah.’ He grimaced as he returned his gaze to her face. ‘I noticed.’

Stella laughed at his forlorn reply. ‘I got breasts, sorry.’

He looked at them again. ‘Yes, you did. It was simpler when you didn’t.’

She frowned. ‘I’ve had them for a long time, Rick—what changed this time?’

He looked at her. That damn book. Pleasure Hunt. Thanks to Nathan and years of platonic childhood memories he’d managed to keep perspective in his dealings with Stella.

Until the book.

But his perspective was currently shot to hell.

‘The moonlight?’ he lied. He somehow didn’t think she’d approve of him using her book for his own ends. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess it’s never been an issue before. We’ve never been alone before. Not like this.’

She thought about it. ‘You’re right, I don’t think we have.’

They looked at each other for a long moment. ‘I think we’d regret it, Stel. In the long run. We have all these great memories of growing up together. Summer holidays on the Persephone. Bringing up Spanish coins from the ocean floor. Playing mermaid and pirate.’

Although perhaps that wasn’t the best memory to bring up now...

‘And when I look at you, that’s what I see—how you and your father embraced me as part of the family. They are such fond memories, Stel. They mean a lot to me. I don’t want to ruin them by giving in to this...crazy thing. It wouldn’t be the same between us any more no matter how hard we tried. And I like what we have.’

Stella knew he was making sense but, right now, she liked what they’d been having five minutes ago more. She could still feel the surge of blood tingle through her breasts and between her thighs. Just the bob of the boat was almost enough to push piano-wire-taut muscles into delicious rapture.

God, why was he so bloody gallant? She’d probably only needed another minute or so and she would have been well satisfied. Embarrassed for sure. But not going off to bed with her hormones still raging and bitching at her to boot.

Well, if she had to sit on her hands the next few weeks and pretend that he hadn’t almost made her come with just a kiss, then she was damned if she was going to play fair.

‘Fine,’ she huffed, pushing past him, heading for her cabin. ‘Glad I packed my vibrator after all.’

Rick blinked. ‘You brought a vibrator?’ Hell, she owned a vibrator?

She stopped and turned. ‘I’m a grown woman, Rick. I have needs.’ She turned and continued on her way.

Rick shut his eyes on a silent groan as a particularly graphic image entered his head. ‘Not helping, Stel,’ he called after her, his gaze transfixed by the swing of her hips.

She smiled over her shoulder at him. ‘Sweet dreams.’

* * *

Rick did not have a good night.

Every time Stella’s bell jingled he strained to hear. What, he wasn’t sure. A sigh? A moan? Those soft whimpery noises she made at the back of her throat?

Oh, God, those soft whimpery noises were not conducive to sleep.

And what if he had heard them? Would it make it any easier lying alone on the moral high ground knowing she was getting off? Knowing that he could have been in there with her, helping out?

Kissing her more.

Touching her more.

No!

It was hard now but at the end of the voyage and for the rest of the years to come, they’d be glad they were sensible. Glad they hadn’t gone past the point of no return.

Maybe one day they’d even laugh about it.

Maybe.

* * *

Rick got the boat under way by eight the next morning. Stella hadn’t put in an appearance and sitting around thinking about all the reasons she might be sleeping late, including a bone-deep sexual satisfaction, was not improving his mood.

It was another glorious day and losing himself in the familiar routine of setting sail seemed like a better alternative than wondering what mischief Nathan’s daughter had got up to between the sheets last night.

And it worked to a degree. Until Stella came on deck an hour later.

In a micro bikini.

He stared at her open-mouthed, pleased for the camouflage of his sunglasses. Two tiny triangles barely contained the swell of her breasts and the pants, high on her leg and low on her front, had two tempting little bows at the side keeping them from falling off altogether.

‘Morning,’ she said airily as she drew level with him, her laptop, some coconut sunscreen and a towel in hand. A smile on her face. ‘What a magnificent day,’ she murmured, inhaling the sea air deep into her lungs, feeling it resonate with her spirit.

Rick watched as her chest expanded, straining the fabric of her bikini top to indecent proportions. Lord, was she trying to give him a heart attack?

‘Sleep well?’ he asked, his neutral tone almost killing him.

Stella sighed as the air rushed out of her lungs. ‘Like a baby,’ she purred.

She hadn’t, of course. How could she sleep with a fire ravaging every erogenous zone she owned and quite a few she hadn’t even known existed?

She’d barely slept a wink.

Perhaps she should have helped herself as she’d led Rick to believe but, after their near miss, she’d wanted strong male arms and a warm solid chest, not just her and Mr Buzzy.

‘How’s your arm?’ he asked politely.

‘Good.’ She nodded. It was the first morning it hadn’t ached when she woke and the bruising was nearly all faded. She could even move it the full range, if a little gingerly. ‘I reckon I can hit my word count today.’

‘Better get started, then,’ he prompted, desperate to get her coconut aroma and bare shoulder out of his direct line of vision.

Stella nodded, knowing it was best to get away from him yet strangely reluctant to do so. It was as if some tropical fever had her in its grip and he was both the cause and the antidote.

‘I might catch some rays first, before the sun gets too hot.’

Of course. Why didn’t she just roll around in some jelly while she was at it?

‘Yell if you need a hand,’ she murmured as she pushed past him, heading for the bow.

He watched her sexy sashay from behind his glasses. Yell if you need a hand.

* * *

Stella sun-baked for the first two hours. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was playing at but it seemed to have something to do with goading a reaction out of Rick. After all, if he was really that into her, he surely wouldn’t be able to ignore her best attempts at extreme flirting?

She shifted, she wiggled, she lay on her back, she rolled over, she sat up, she applied liberal amounts of sunscreen, she even retied the bows.

She got nothing.

Last night had obviously been some sort of anomaly for Rick. A mad moment when a balmy night and the moonshine had affected his judgement. This morning he seemed completely indifferent to her. Nothing like the man who had kissed her as if it were his last day on earth.

Nothing like the guy she’d known for ever either—quick to laugh and eager to share his joy of the ocean. He looked like a robot at the wheel, sunglasses on, scanning the horizon for who knew what. The meaning of life? They’d passed several islands in the distance and they’d slipped by without so much as a land ahoy and a finger point.

It was already weird between them and nothing had happened.

Well...nothing much anyway.

She gave up trying eventually and drifted off to sleep, exhausted after her long night of tossing and turning. But later she knew she was going to have to make amends. Get things back on track.

Because, one way or another, she needed him in her life. And if that meant going to her grave without carnal knowledge of one Riccardo Granville, then so be it.

* * *

After a day of watching Stella prance around in a bikini, it was a relief to finally drop anchor and go below deck. He had a shower. A very cold shower. And lectured himself on the same things he’d lectured himself about all last night.

This was Stella. Nathan’s daughter. His old, old friend and business partner.

And no one had ever died from sexual frustration.

By the time he got out of the shower he’d almost convinced himself, then his gaze fell on Pleasure Hunt and he was lost again. He picked it up to where it was open. The scene where Vasco fed Lady Mary slices of ripe pear jumped out at him. The scene had been rich with visualisation and Rick had almost been able to smell the sweet pear juice that had trekked down Mary’s chin and Vasco had lapped up with his kisses.

Rick shut it for his own sanity. He let his fingers linger over the raised gold lettering of her name. How could he reconcile the Stella Mills who’d written the sexy historical with the Stella Mills he’d known practically all of his life?

How could he ever think of her as sweet and innocent again when he’d been privy to her erotic prose?

When he’d been the subject of that erotic prose?

When the taste of her mouth was imprinted onto his?

He meant what he’d said last night. But he’d never thought it would be so hard. He’d never been obsessed by a woman before. Sure, he’d had his usual teenage infatuations and spent some exciting shore leave with some very generous women, but none had played on his mind like this. None had moved into his brain and taken over.

Stella was fast becoming an obsession.

The question was would the obsession end when they went their separate ways? Or was he destined to wonder for ever?

He shoved the book under his pillow.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Although if he had any sense he’d take it above deck and hurl it into the ocean. But it was Diana’s so he couldn’t.

At least that was what he told himself anyway.

* * *

Stella was throwing a line in over the side when Rick reappeared half an hour later. He looked sublimely sexy in his shirt, regulation boardies and bare feet. God knew why—it wasn’t as if he were wearing Armani or Ralph Lauren. But there was something about the way he wore them that oozed a special mix of charisma and wonderful outdoorsy sexuality.

‘Thought we’d have some fish tonight,’ she said.

Rick nodded. She’d put a button-up throw on over her bikini a long time ago but it was as if he had X-ray vision suddenly and it was still all he could see. ‘I’ll set up the grill.’

An hour later the sky was just starting to blush a velvety pink as they sat on deck and ate their fish with the potatoes that Rick had also fried on the grill. A gentle breeze caressed Stella’s neck, lifting the tendrils that had escaped her messily constructed bun. The ocean lapped gently at the hull.

‘Did you get your word count done?’ Rick asked after they’d been eating in silent contemplation for most of the meal.

Stella nodded, grateful for the conversation. She was excruciatingly aware that they’d been avoiding any mention of what happened last night, which seemed kind of ridiculous sitting together and sharing a meal. ‘Just over three thousand words today.’

He took a deep swallow of his beer. ‘Is that your usual quota?’

She nodded again. ‘I try to do three k a day. Some days—’ she grimaced ‘—that’s easier to achieve than others.’

‘Why’s that?’ he asked. ‘Surely you just sit there until you reach your goal.’

Stella shook her head at him—such a boy. ‘Well, it doesn’t really work that way unfortunately.’

He gave her a blank look and she knew she was going to have to explain it to this goal-orientated male.

‘It’s like diving for lost treasure. Sometimes coins are just lying on the ocean floor ready to scoop up, other times they’re locked in chests, which are trapped in impossible-to-reach pockets within an aged, treacherous, waterlogged wreck. They’re there...you can see them...but they’re tantalisingly out of reach. The muse is like that. Some days she comes out to play and the words flow and other days...’ She shrugged. ‘It feels like every word is locked away in a chest just out of my reach.’

Rick wondered how quickly some of the Pleasure Hunt scenes flowed before stopping himself. ‘I don’t know,’ he joked to cover the errant thoughts. ‘You arty types.’

Stella laughed. ‘Sorry, I suppose that did sound a bit pretentious.’

From her it had sounded just right. ‘Not at all,’ he dismissed with a smile. ‘Do some scenes flow better than others?’ The question slipped out unfiltered and couldn’t be recalled.

Stella looked away. The sex scenes in Pleasure Hunt had flowed like a gushing tap. Years of feverish fantasies let loose had informed the scenes to embarrassing accuracy. She looked away from the piercing intensity of his gaze.

‘No, not really,’ she lied, standing to clear the plates. ‘They can all be as easy or as difficult as each other.’ She balanced the plates a little awkwardly, mindful of her injury and thankful for the calm ocean.

‘Here, let me take them,’ Rick said as he stood.

She shook her head. ‘No way, you cooked, plus you’ve been waiting on me for days. The arm’s heaps better so just sit.’ Rick sat and she smiled. ‘You want another beer?’

He nodded. ‘Sure, why not?’ Maybe if he was a little cut he’d go straight to sleep.

Stella seemed to take a while. He could hear her banging around down below deck as the sun gradually set above, the evening sky slowly speckling with stars. It felt oddly domesticated and a deep spring of contentment welled inside him, bringing him to his feet.

He frowned as he prowled restlessly around the deck. The boards felt good beneath his bare feet.

His deck, his boat, his ocean.

These were the things that brought him contentment. Not some woman clattering around in his kitchen.

That never made him feel content.

In fact it usually made him want to get away fast. Ditch the chick at the nearest port and sail himself far away. Get back to his true mistress—the ocean.

Like Nathan. Like his father.

But here he was, nonetheless, on the ocean, sharing it with probably the only woman who truly understood the pull of such a demanding mistress.

The tinkle of her bell alerted him to her presence and he turned to see her walking towards him, holding the necks of two beers in one hand and a plate holding two mangoes, a knife and a cloth in the other.

‘I’m having a mango,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted one or not.’ She handed him his beer as she sat on the deck, facing the horizon lotus-style, balancing the plate on her crossed knees.

Rick nodded, taking one as he sat beside her. Not too close. ‘Sure, thanks. I’ll eat mine after the beer.’

Stella raised the large pungent fruit to her face. It was warm against her cheek and she inhaled deeply. It smelled sweet and wild like forbidden berries and exotic like balmy tropical islands.

‘Mmm, that smells good,’ she murmured. ‘The whole galley smells of them suddenly.’

Rick nodded. He’d noticed earlier when he’d gone below but he didn’t want to look at her getting all breathy and orgasmic over anything other than him, so he hung his head back and kept his eyes firmly trained on the sky.

Stella placed the mango on the plate, salivating at the thought of the sweet, warm fruit sliding against her palate. She cut into the soft flesh, a pearl of juice beaded around the incision as the strong aroma wafted out to envelop her in its heady fragrance.

She was conscious of Rick beside her not saying anything. Conscious of what happened between them last night when they’d been on this deck. Conscious that it had sat large between them all day, screwing with their usual effortless dynamic. Normally by now Rick would be talking about the stars or prattling on about Inigo and The Mermaid.

Instead they sat in silence as they had done for most of their meal.

Stella took a deep breath as she picked up one mango cheek and scored the flesh. They couldn’t go on like this. ‘About last night...’

Rick’s breath seized in his lungs momentarily and he took a moment before looking at her, taking a swallow of beer to calm himself. ‘What about last night?’

Stella didn’t dare look at him. The weight of his gaze was intimidating enough. ‘You were right,’ she said, scoring the other cheek. ‘We would regret crossing the line. I’m sorry I made it difficult for you.’

Rick swallowed as she picked up a scored mango cheek, inverted it and used her tongue and teeth to liberate a cube of the soft pungent flesh. ‘Yes,’ he said faintly, trying not to think of the pear scene in Pleasure Hunt he’d not long been skimming.

Stella would have sighed as the fruit zinged along her tastebuds if the topic of conversation weren’t so damn serious. She turned to face him as she sucked another cube of mango into her mouth and savoured it. ‘I mean, of course it would be awkward between us and would negate all the good memories we’ve ever made.’

She bit into another perfectly square piece of mango flesh.

Rick heard the soft squelch go right to his groin. He zeroed in on her mouth, which glistened with ripe juice. His fingers tightened around the beer bottle. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, not really even listening, his reasoning dissolving into a red haze as her mouth and tongue slowly devoured the fruit.

Vasco had fed Lady Mary, taunting her with slithers of pear, inching them closer, stroking them against her moist lips, watching her as she sucked them inside her mouth, her gaze not leaving his face.

He itched to pick the mango up and re-enact the scene. Cut off thin slices and feed them to Stella one by one. Watch her pupils dilate and her breath become shallow just as Lady Mary’s had.

Maybe even hear that whimper again at the back of her throat. The whimper that was all Stella.

Stella’s breath hitched as Rick’s eyes seemed to suddenly glitter like moonbeams on sapphires. She swallowed her mouthful of mango but juice escaped to her lips and she ran her tongue around them to capture the errant moisture.

Rick shut his eyes and groaned as all his noble intentions from last night faded to black with each revolution of her tongue. ‘Stella,’ he murmured, his eyelids fluttering open to find her staring at him.

Stella blinked at the ache in his voice. Had he edged closer? Or had she? She looked at his mouth, remembered how it had felt against hers. How it had been so much better than she’d ever fantasised. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered, mango forgotten.

Rick nodded, his gaze fixed on her mouth, inching his own closer to hers, drawn to her as if she were a homing beacon, his heart rate pulsing to the beat of the sea. ‘Certifiable.’

Stella felt his pull as a physical force, which seemed only fitting beneath a canopy of stars with the rhythm of the ocean lulling away the insanity of it all. ‘What about the memories, Rick?’

Her voice was low and husky in the quiet of the night as she tried to hang onto the one thing that made sense between them, even though her pulse coursed like an ocean squall through every inch of her body.

Suddenly her mouth felt dry.

So dry.

As if she’d been drinking sea water for days and, not only was her thirst unquenchable, it was sending her slowly mad. She swallowed and licked her lips to ease the dry, parched feeling.

Rick’s pupils dilated as her tongue darted out. ‘Screw ’em,’ he muttered as his final shard of resistance melted away. ‘Let’s make better ones.’

R-rated ones.

And he closed the distance between them, capturing her mouth. There was a moment, ever so brief, when she could have pulled away, could have protested and he would have been capable of letting it slide. But when she opened to him instantly on a deep-in-his-bones moan the moment passed in a blink of an eye and her mango and coconut essence wrapped him in a sticky web of desire that was impossible to break free of.

Even if he wanted to.

Which he didn’t.

His heart crashed in his chest, his breath sawed in and out. Her hands crept around his neck and she made that noise at the back of her throat and somehow, some way, he had her on the deck, her breasts pressed against his chest, her hand shoved in his hair.

Where his beer or her mango had ended up he didn’t know and he didn’t care. All he knew was she smelled like paradise and felt like every erotic dream he’d ever had, and when she moaned into his mouth her desire tasted sweet like mango and he wanted to devour every drop.

He was hard and needy and something in his head insisted that he touch every inch of her, smell every inch of her, know every inch of her.

His hand drifted south to the wild flutter at the base of her throat and she moaned. It moved further to the top button of her wrap, where the swell of her breast was emphasised by the taut fabric of her bikini top, and she gasped.

It fanned down over her ribs and came to rest on the gentle rise of her belly and she arched her back and undulated her stomach and sighed, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

Rick pulled away, breathing hard. Her face was soft and full of wonder. If he were an egotist he might even have called it rapture.

‘Let’s go to my cabin,’ he murmured, kissing her eyes and the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth.

Stella opened her lashes, seeing nothing but Rick’s face crowned by about a million stars—when had they come out?

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I want it here, on the deck, beneath the stars.’

She’d wanted to write a similar scene with Vasco and Mary but she’d known that it wouldn’t have been possible in the middle of the ocean with a boat full of pirates in the eighteenth century.

But now she got to live the fantasy for real and she wasn’t going to have it any other way.

He nuzzled her temple, her ear, her neck. ‘Kinky,’ he murmured as his hand found its way beneath the hem of her throw to trace patterns on her bare abdomen. The same abdomen that had taunted him all day with its cute little perky belly button.

Stella almost moaned out loud as the buzzing of his lips seemed to stroke other places. Lower places. ‘Not into kinky?’ she asked, smiling against his mouth as his lips brushed hers.

Rick chuckled as his mouth inched down her throat. ‘Kinky is my middle name,’ he said as his hand crept inexorably north.

‘Really?’ Stella said as the possibilities swirled around her mind in a sexual kaleidoscope.

‘Really,’ he repeated as he pushed her shirt up, pulled aside one bikini bra cup, exposing her breast totally to his view. He smiled as she gasped and the nipple puckered beneath his scrutiny. He stared at it fascinated as his hand groped beside her until he found what he was looking for.

Stella was in a sexual haze so heady she doubted even an undersea earthquake could have shifted her. The way he looked at her nipple as if it were his own private property was utterly mesmerising.

This was Rick. Her Rick. Not a fantasy. Not Vasco Ramirez.

Riccardo Granville.

He raised his hand above her chest and it took a few seconds for her to focus on what he was doing, and even then it wasn’t until the warm sticky mango juice dripped onto her nipple that his actions registered.

But by then he’d lowered his mouth to it and she’d gasped and arched her back and she knew she was totally lost.

Just as Lady Mary had been.