Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(37)
It didn’t take long. After eighteen months he’d gotten pretty good at this, at jacking himself off while imagining it was her hand on him, her mouth around him, her tongue laving over his heated head… And now that he actually knew the shape of her? The taste of her? Well, he might’ve just set some sort of world record. In a matter of seconds, his shaft pulsed in his fist, his balls going all tight and tingly. And then he was clenching his jaw against the deep groan rumbling at the back of his throat while he poured his unquenched desire for Olivia into the waiting clump of toilet paper.
Afterward, he stood there, his lungs working like bellows, his brain buzzing, the remnants of his orgasm making him shiver. When he managed to regain some control, he cleaned himself up and took a nice, long gander at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. “Christ, man. You’re way too old to be doin’ this.”
As he pushed out of the head to make his way upstairs, he knew no truer words had ever been spoken. But Olivia made him feel young again. Like everything was new and exciting and fresh. Like the world was his oyster, and he was poised on the brink of discovering…something. Something precious and rare. Something…
Come on, now! he chided himself as he took the stairs two at a time. Next thing you know, you’ll be writing poetry about her!
She walks in beauty like the night
Of terrorist-laden climes and mortar-filled skies…
Yessir, Lord Byron had nothing on him.
*
1:21 p.m.…
Bran dropped the binoculars he’d been using to glass the seas in front of them when he heard Leo’s heavy footsteps pounding up the metal stairs. Turning, he had to suppress a grin when Leo joined them, his best friend’s expression all There! Are you happy now?
Bran winked at his former commanding officer because he knew it would piss him off. And, sure as shit, right on cue, Leo flipped him the bird.
He rolled in his lips, turning back to listen to Olivia’s end of the conversation. It seemed she and her supervisor were debating their options on what to do now that the contractors appeared to be delayed for God only knew how long.
Clusterf*ck. That’s what this was turning out to be. Although, without a doubt, it would all be worth it if Leo got the opportunity to finish what he started with Olivia down in that galley. Even though Bran wasn’t totally in agreement with Wolf’s assessment that all Leo needed in order to pull a Father Karras and exorcize Olivia from his system was a nice, long f*ck-a-thon, he figured it was best if Leo at least gave it the ol’ college try.
“Okay. I’ll call you back after I talk to the guys, and let you know what we decide,” Olivia said, signing off with her boss and turning her back on the bay of windows that made up three sides of the pilothouse. Bran knew the instant she realized Leo had joined them, because she flushed prettily and unconsciously caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
Huh. Would you look at that? If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it, but Olivia Mortier looked…well…coy. And when he turned to see Leo smoldering at the woman—there was really no other word for it—he didn’t even attempt to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.
The way those two were mooning over each other reminded him of when he was six years old and his mother took him to the rundown movie theater in the South Ward to watch a re-showing of the classic Disney film Bambi—one of the few times he could remember his father allowing her out of the house. Besides the fact that he had bawled his eyes out when Bambi’s mother died, the only other thing Bran distinctly remembered from the film was when the old owl explained to Bambi, Thumper, and Flower why the animals acted so funny in the springtime. “Twitterpated,” the condition was called. And he figured that summed up Leo and Olivia in one succinct word.
Thankfully, the way he understood it, being twitterpated was a passing phase. Once the mating instinct was satisfied, both parties were free to go their separate ways. Let’s hope…
“So, what’s up?” Leo asked Olivia, folding his arms over the back of the captain’s chair Wolf was currently occupying.
“Apparently the A-Team…uh…” She shook her head. “That’s what Morales and I were calling the apprehension team.”
“You guys sure go for the obvious when it comes to code names, don’t you?” Wolf snorted, causing Olivia to pull a face.
“This isn’t an official”—she made the quote marks with her fingers—“operation. So, we figured the simpler we kept things, the better.” Wolf opened his mouth, but she was quick to cut him off. “And, yes. I know this has since turned into a shitstorm of complexity, but I swear to you it started out as nothing much more than a Sunday picnic.”
Bran glanced at the faces around him, reading the varying levels of disbelief. Once again the word “clusterf*ck” whispered through his head.
“Anyway,” she continued, choosing to ignore their cynical expressions, “apparently they hit something in the water, and it bent the hell out of the propeller on one of their two outboard engines. They have an extra prop with them, but it’ll take some time to switch out the old for the new.”
“And in the meantime?” he asked. “Do we go dead in the water or do we carry on to…the package?” He couldn’t help but stress the last two words, especially when doing so caused Olivia’s whole face to flatten.