The Wrong Gentleman(49)

I gave her a quick, sharp smack on the bottom. “Stand up.”

She jumped to her feet like she’d get a prize if she moved fast enough. Maybe she would.

I stood and shooed her under the spray. “Turn around, hands flat on the marble, legs apart.” I grabbed a condom from beside the sink and rolled it over my cock, admiring the way Skylar pushed out her arse, desperate for what was next.

“Are you going to frisk me?”

I chuckled. “Maybe.” Standing behind her as close as I could, I swept my hands down her stomach to her pussy. Despite the water, the silky wetness between her legs gave away how ready she was.

Without any teasing or preamble, I pushed into her as far as I would go.

“Fuck,” she cried out. “It’s so deep.”

“Always,” I replied, sweeping my fingers across her pussy, finding her clitoris and circling before she grabbed my wrist.

“If you do that, I’m going to come right away. I want to feel you inside me.”

I growled and released her, grabbing her shoulder instead as I began to fuck her.

“Jesus, yes,” she whimpered.

I tried to concentrate on the shapes her wet hair made against her back, because if I focused on her breathy, desperate sounds, if I noticed the way her skin yielded under my fingers or the way her muscles tightened around my cock, I’d be gone.

As if I wasn’t already.

“Landon.” She turned her head toward me. “I want to see you. I want to see the way you look at me. Like I’m everything to you.”

I pulled out and backed up against the wall, guiding her toward me.

“I want to see your eyes when you come,” she said. “It’s my favorite thing.”

Jesus, this girl was my fucking kryptonite. So sweet and vulnerable underneath all the confident drive.

I lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around me as I plunged back into her. She gasped, clinging to my shoulders as I drove into her, pressing her back against the wall. I slowed at the change in angle so I didn’t go off like a bomb.

“You’re so beautiful, Skylar.” I choked out my confession. It wasn’t what she looked like that made her attractive. It was everything I’d found out about her since I met her. All the effort she’d put into today. The fact that she’d shared such a special place with me. It was everything wrapped up in this perfect, blonde package that was pulling me closer and closer to the edge of something I’d never felt before.

She kissed me on the corner of my mouth and then trailed her tongue along the seam of my lips before kissing the other side. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear as she wrapped her arms around my neck. “Thank you so much.”

Her back arched, and she pushed against me as I crashed into her, our rhythms perfectly matched.

We both wanted the same thing when we were together like this.

Pleasure.

Release.

Each other.





Twenty-Seven





Skylar


I flicked through the pages of the contract that Captain Brookes had presented me with—three more years on the Sapphire. It was good money, the basic salary more than I’d ever made and a guaranteed tip, which never happened. It meant security and certainty, and I should be more excited, yet I was anything but. All I could think about was my conversation with Landon on the beach and whether he’d been correct. Could passion, in the right circumstances, be a good thing?

August crashed out of the bathroom.

“Do you love yachting?” I asked her, glancing around at the cupboard that we called a bedroom. “Is it your passion?”

She fiddled with the towel wrapped tightly around her. “I feel passionately about the money. Does that count?”

I shrugged. I felt the same, but I couldn’t shake what Landon had said to me. I’d gone through my life avoiding passion. I associated passion with anger, rage, and violence—a lack of control. But I’d never heard Landon even raise his voice, and I bet he’d never lost control ever in his life. Yet he was passionate about the army. Even now I could see the devotion to his old career in his eyes when he spoke about it.

“If you could do anything, what would it be?” I asked. “I’m guessing, not a yacht stewardess.”

She pulled out a pair of panties from the drawer. “I have no idea,” she said. “What’s with all the questions?”

“I’ve just been thinking. I chose yachting out of necessity. Not because I wanted to see the world or that I loved cleaning and organizing.”

“You are good at it though.”

I smiled as August did her own version of an Irish jig to try to get her underwear on without dropping her towel. “Should I be doing a job I love instead of yachting? I’m not sure. I’m not the kind of person who needs to feel strongly about their job, am I? I’m not passionate.” I’d spent my entire adult life trying to avoid becoming my father. I’d never thought that maybe the pendulum had swung too far the other way.

“Of course you are,” August said.

I slouched back against the wall. All these years avoiding anything that was remotely passionate, trying to be Miss Slow and Steady, the tortoise and not the hare, but maybe there was something more.

“If you really don’t like yachting,” August said. “Why don’t you save this season’s tips and go and do something you do feel passionate about.”