Chapter 16
I start with a kiss, and I can’t say that’s easy to do while smiling, but Calum makes me so happy I can’t help it. My tongue slides where we fit so well together, my arms locked around his neck, and I’ve lost count of how often we’ve done this.
Today I lose track of time completely.
We kiss for so long that I’m out of breath when I finally break off and see something else I’ve lost count of.
How often has Calum stripped bare in this cabin?
It doesn’t matter, I’m still not tired of this view, even if watching him get naked makes me clumsy.
He steadies me so I don’t stumble. He also saves one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever been given by catching the egg candler before it can hit the floor and shatter into pieces.
Nothing will save me from the same outcome if he keeps looking at me like I deserve each heart his mother sent me.
I don’t know how that line of emojis left the screen of his phone to wrap my ribs this tightly. All I know is that my chest aches at his low-pitched order. “Careful.”
I said the same thing to him the last time we were on our way to getting sexual. That warning was to save him from crushing a bauble in his pocket. It’s too late for him to give me the same instruction.
I can’t be careful around him. Won’t even try.
I’ve got no chill for this Trelawney. No limits and zero boundaries.
All I want is more time than he has left in London.
Fuck one more week. Or even the rest of December.
Twelve more months could topple one after another and it still wouldn’t be enough.
I don’t know when that happened.
Can’t make myself care either if it was when he first held that egg up between his thumb and finger or if it was when he kept going back for one more hug with Penny.
Maybe it started in a bathroom hallway where we sealed a hopeless deal under green leaves and white berries.
I’m pretty sure it solidified on the last ice rink a little girl might ever get to see clearly enough to skate on.
All that really matters is that he undresses for me in a cabin that was cold before he made it warm and cosy. And that’s where he pauses, his eyebrows rising in a silent challenge.
Your turn, Juno.
I get busy then. Not with my zips or buttons. And not with digging out the lube we used once already. I get busy storing away the sight of him for when . . .
Undressing is better than thinking about time limits.
I do it so fast my cock bounces when I finally fall backwards onto the mattress, and this time, Calum doesn’t save me. He stands at the edge of the bed, looming and large. I like that almost as much as seeing his cock is hard for me already.
“Two out of ten for grace.” He tilts his head, considering, one hand wrapped around his dick to give it a slow stroke while judging my performance. “Ten out of ten for enthusiasm.”
I love this look on him, full of teasing humour, even if I do have to drag my gaze from the motion of his fist to see it.
Looking into his eyes is worth it.
They’re so warm.
Only an opponent could mistake them for something cooler. Happiness radiates from him, his flush a reminder of the pink proof of life he got up extra early to deliver. Now he looks at me like I’m equally special.
“So fucking pretty.”
That fist around his dick picks up speed, and I know he already fixed my cabin heater, but fuck me, I’m suddenly hot all over. The temperature increases when he lets go of his dick and drops onto the bed to brace one-handed above me and give me something else I didn’t know I needed this December.
Calum lets me take his weight. His body is a crushing blanket, and I can’t breathe, but I also can’t make myself care about inhaling or exhaling.
Right now, all I want is this full-body contact with a man who hits first and asks questions never, but who also just got teary with me over an unborn duckling.
I’m covered by someone the media labels as fierce. Kissed by the player who put the Ho in hockey. And it’s that Ho who gets physical with me until I’m voiceless in both French or English.
My brain scrambles, and not only due to ratcheting arousal that pulls all my blood south. I can’t think, full stop. Don’t have enough air in my lungs to speak, even if I could string words together, until he shifts position.
He rolls so I’m on top. Then I do suck in greedy lungfuls of air like I once did after his brother hauled me out of the English Channel.
I’m extra grateful today for Reece. And for a video I didn’t know would go viral. It’s the reason we’re here in a rapidly emptying marina—and it is emptying fast now.
I hear so. Engines fire up close by, other crews heading home to get their Christmas started, which would normally make me wish for La Rochelle so badly.
Today, I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world but here with this Trelawney.
I can’t dress that up to be pretty like Calum just called me. It’s ugly how much I want him. Or wild, like my bone-deep need to touch him. I can’t fight it. Don’t even want to, so I explore everything spread out beneath me.
At least, I start to.
Calum grabs one of my hands, dragging it away from the base of his throat, where his usually steady pulse now skips and flutters.
He steers my palm on the kind of journey we’ve made up and down the Thames so often together.
Calum guides my palm over the swell of pecs built by years of training.
His obliques bump underneath my fingers like we’ve bumped over boat wakes.
Most mortals have some softness to their bellies.
His is a shield, a wall built by genetics before experts trained in extra layers of toughness.
Under my palm, Calum quivers.
His breath stutters, which could be hesitation about us banging. I’ll be his first for that too, but his dick seems to reach for my touch, and I have no problem with taking over this exploration. Today, he can have every single thing on his wish list.
“Yeah?”
That growl fits his online image. His face tells another story—his truth—and I don’t need more daylight to see it.
I feel the heat of his flush when I lean down to kiss him again.
The lobe of his ear is scorching. It’s also as soft as velvet, but doesn’t that describe someone who knelt on ice to share all his senses with a kid who might lose what is left of her vision?
“Oui,” I tell him, and I mean it. “Anything you want is good with me.”
That scores me a strangled sound, as if my hand had never left his throat.
“Anything?” Calum finds my dick, perhaps checking if I’m on board with us going further than we have already. His hand coming away damp and glistening must clue him in to my own truth. I’m more than on board after he licks that dampness and smiles.
That’s what I should lock away to remember when he’s on the far side of the Atlantic. He tops that deeply sexual moment by asking a rough-sounding question.
“What if . . .” His smile flickers. I can’t blame that on my boat’s electrical wiring. This flicker is him getting honest. “What if I wanted you to do me?” His lips quirk upwards, but his eyes tell me his whole story.
I wouldn’t have known how to read him ahead of this Christmas season. I’ve learned his silent language frame by frame, no need for him to say a single word for me to translate what this means. He goes ahead and tells me out loud. “If that’s something you’d even want to do.”
He wouldn’t ask anyone but me to do him. He hasn’t ever before and won’t get another chance once he leaves London. He’ll fly back to the States to get back on a public treadmill that will reward him with cup rings and trophies for his bruises.
A long line of hearts sent from Cornwall doesn’t only knot around my ribs.
They wrap a present I can give him, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been harder.
“If I’d even want to?” My insides slide, hot and liquid, with how much I want to.
I start to tell him so.
Something else slips out first.
“That torture session you’ve been called back for.
” I touch his lips, no need for him to unzip them.
“I don’t need to know the details.” I bet we both visualise the three letters standing for non-disclosure in his contract.
I also visualise the building across the river.
The workout with his brother Patrick was at a different location, but I picture similar exertion.
“Will your call back involve a physical exam?”
Calum nods briefly. “Head to toe.”
“And you passing that exam with flying colours is important to your club?”
“It’s important to me,” he tells me hoarsely. Calum nods again more firmly to confirm it. He also fists my dick, and I had just thought that I’ve never been harder. Right now, I’ve also never been closer to saying fuck it, but he does need to hear this.
“Then you might want to hold off.” I dip my head to make sure he hears me. “Because it can be a lot.” I find his ear for an even quieter whispered promise. “As soon as we’re both done for the day, I’ll bang you like a drum. Until then, how about you show me how you’d want me to do it?”
He smiles again then, and this one doesn’t fade.
It also makes our next kiss wet and messy.
I don’t know when he let go of my dick to fumble in the drawer beside my bunk for lube.
I reach over too, and the condom I find hits him square in the face, but that’s good—we’re back where we started, happy like when proof of a duckling’s life lit my cabin.
His smile only fades when I’m flat on my back again with him kneeling between my spread legs.
This shift in his expression isn’t due to nerves or doubt.
It’s pure concentration.