She opened fully under me, and I sank into her, stroking the roof of her mouth, savoring every tiny sound she made and returning to whatever would have her make it again.
She kissed me back as if she’d been just as starved for it as I was, arching against me, pressing her soft breasts against my chest, and I was instantly as hard as the railing behind her. I kissed her like she was the oxygen I’d been missing, breathing in everything about her until my heartbeat finally steadied, then slammed.
The world didn’t tilt off its axis—it finally came back to normal, as if everything had been out of whack until this very moment.
I didn’t hold myself back like I did with those small kisses in Nepal. I let her know exactly how badly I wanted her. She gasped when my hand slid north, skimming the soft skin under her halter top. Her stomach quivered with her shaky inhale of breath, but she never stopped, only tightened her grip in my hair.
Fuck, I could kiss this woman every minute for the rest of my life. Kissing her didn’t only involve my mouth; she awakened every nerve in my body, not just the ones she touched.
My thumb stroked higher, coming just under her bra, and she pushed forward. I rode the line between absolute pleasure and supreme need, my body remembering all too well how perfect it felt to be inside her, the way she came apart under my hands and dragged me with her.
“Landon,” she whispered, straining against me to stand taller.
I grasped her ass with both my hands and lifted her until her legs wrapped around my waist, and then I moved us to lean her against the partition so the railing didn’t dig into her back.
She rocked against me, and I groaned, realizing how close she was and how very little fabric separated us. Our kiss deepened, and it took every ounce of concentration I had not to take her farther, to move my hands the few inches it would take to slip my finger under her shorts.
So instead, I kissed her like there was nothing beyond that, relearned every curve of her mouth, and breathed every gasp, tasted every sigh.
“Rach? You in here?” Leah’s voice hit me like a bucket of ice water, and I broke our kiss.
“Yeah?” Rachel asked, resting her forehead against mine as her heartbeat hammered, echoing mine.
“Oh. Oh!” Leah said as she walked onto the deck. “Okay. Well, your mom is on Skype.” The last sentence sounded farther away. She must have gone back inside after catching us.
“Shit,” Rachel swore.
At her first wiggle, I let her down, every inch of her body scalding its imprint into my hands before she hit the ground. I couldn’t speak—too tied into knots that I knew only she could undo.
“We’ll talk later?” Rachel asked, and a surge of pride went through me that she was a little wobbly on her feet.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice gravelly and almost unrecognizable.
She nodded and ran out to the take her mother’s call.
I turned and grasped the railing, looking out over the skyline of Jakarta. One fucking kiss and I was damn near destroyed. It had taught me two things: the first was that our chemistry was still powerful enough to destroy all reason.
The second: one crook of her finger and I would still go running. She owned me.
Chapter Twenty
Rachel
Jakarta
“I don’t understand why it took you this long, or why I had to call you,” Mom said, her blue eyes wide with hurt.
For that moment, I wished our connection was a little shittier.
“Mom, I told you. We only have good internet in port, and I’ve been a little busy. Our port days are our busiest because we have shore excursions, and I still have to study and stuff.” I tried my best to appease her.
She sighed, her shoulders brushing her dark brown hair that was streaked with silver. “I just worry.”
“I know,” I said softly. “But I’m okay. I’m better than okay. I’ve already done so many amazing things.”
Her eyes lit up as I told her about the safer things: the hang gliding in Sri Lanka, the elephants I’d seen there, the majesty of the Taj Mahal, and the trek through Nepal.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t realize you were going into Nepal.”
“It was a last-minute trip I couldn’t say no to. Seriously, Mom, I can’t believe half the things I’m seeing. In a couple of days we’re headed to see a tribe in New Guinea.”
She smiled. “It all sounds amazing.”
“It really is.” In that moment, I wished my heart could reach through the screen. She was always overprotective—they both were—but I knew how hard it had been for them to adopt me, how tedious the process had been, and how badly they’d wanted a child of their own.
Of course she was going to worry.
“How is Leah?”
“She’s…” In love with someone you despise. “She’s great.”
“Well, she looked great when she popped in. Who was the blonde who answered?”
“Penna. She’s my roommate, too.”
“Oh, I thought it was just you and Leah…” The door opened behind her, and she clapped her hands. “Stan! Look who’s online.”
At least that saved me from telling her that Leah had moved in with Pax. I wasn’t sure what she’d hate more—the implication of premarital sex or that I was on a ship with Wilder.
My father dropped his briefcase in the hall and ran over to the computer, hunching down next to Mom. “There’s my girl! How are you, sweet pea?”
“I’m good,” I promised. “How is everything there?”
They didn’t even look at each other, which struck me as odd.
“Good,” Dad answered.
“Fine,” Mom added in.
“Uh, okay,” I said, my eyes narrowing as I leaned my elbows on our dining room table. “Did something happen?”
“No, not at all,” Dad promised, loosening his tie. “We just miss you. When do you get home for Christmas?”
“I fly in the fifteenth, and then I have about two weeks.”
“Good. We can’t wait to see you,” Mom said.
“Oh, I need a favor, if you guys get a second?”
“Absolutely, what’s up?” Dad asked.
“Will you peek through my records? I’m looking for my adoption stuff for a class paper.”
He stiffened, and Mom’s eyes widened. “Why would you want those? What kind of class paper is this?” Mom asked.
I took a deep breath and kept my voice off the defensive. My adoption was such a sore spot for them, like they were ashamed that they couldn’t conceive on their own—ashamed that they’d needed a baby to solve the problems in their marriage back then.
Maybe they didn’t realize I knew that, but my aunts had big mouths.
But hey, they were still together, so I guess I did my job well.
“I’m taking this Cultures of the Pacific class, and we’re doing research papers. I want to do mine on adoptions in Korea. I figured since that’s the country with the second highest number of adoptions, it would be good.”
“Why not do China?” Mom asked.
I blinked. “Because I wasn’t adopted from China.”