Chapter 28
NICK
The outboard motor of the Icarus’s tender fades into silence as we watch Rusty cut a pale line across the dark bay.
He didn't linger. A firm handshake and congratulations, a quick reassurance that we’re securely anchored and safe for the night, and then he was gone.
Now it’s just Avery and me, finally alone, standing at the rail under the moon and stars.
My wife.
The gold band is foreign on my finger, yet it feels right.
I glance beside me, drinking in the sight of my bride.
The loose fall of her pale hair is luminescent in the gathering darkness, the pearls at her throat gleaming faintly against her creamy skin.
Her sundress skims her curves in the warm breeze, making her look like an angel. My angel.
I married this woman. Thirty minutes ago, on the deck of the boat that's been the backdrop for more than one important turning point in our life together, Avery became my wife.
She turns to meet my gaze. Her cheeks are still damp, her smile unguarded.
Her palm slides into mine. Her fingers thread through my fingers, her touch light as she strokes the raised ridges of scar tissue on my right hand.
She doesn't flinch from those scars. Never has.
She holds my hand tighter in spite of them. Because of them.
"Take me to bed, Nick." Her voice is quiet. Steady. "I want my husband to take me to bed."
“With pleasure.”
I bring her hand to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles, to the gold band that marks her as mine, and then I lead her toward the companionway.
Below deck, the cabin is dim, lit only by the amber glow of a single lamp I left on hours ago and the wash of starlight through the portholes.
The berth takes up most of the space, expansive for a yacht, dressed in crisp linens.
The faint rock of the boat is hypnotic, a rhythm that brings Avery up against me as we stand together in the quiet.
I capture her face in my palms and bring her close for my kiss.
Her lips part, welcoming the sweep of my tongue.
The urge to have her beneath me, to lose myself inside her, is strong.
But I don’t want to rush this night. We’ve made love countless times, but this is the first time I’ve claimed her as my wife.
My hands find the hem of her sundress where it brushes her thighs, and I gather the fabric slowly, drawing it upward over the curve of her hips, her waist, her breasts.
She lifts her arms and the dress clears her head, her blonde hair spilling back over her shoulders in a wave of gold.
I let the cotton fall somewhere behind me.
Beneath it, she’s wearing a white bikini from our swim this afternoon.
If I thought the red was hot yesterday, tonight the innocent looking white ignites a hunger in me I can barely hold.
The strings and small triangles barely contain her.
The pearl choker rests against her collarbone, the diamond infinity symbol catching lamplight between the twin strands.
The combination of pearls and bare skin and the flush rising across her chest makes my cock throb hard behind the linen of my pants.
I trace the line of one pearl strand with my fingertip, following it from the hollow of her throat to where the clasp rests at her nape. "This stays on tonight."
She smiles up at me, a sexy curve of her kiss-swollen lips.
I reach out and untie the strings at her neck first, then the ones at her back, letting the top fall away. Her breasts are full and perfect, nipples already taut. I lower my mouth to one, drawing it between my lips with a slow pull that makes her gasp.
“Nick…”
Holding the weight of her other breast in my hand, I circle my thumb over her nipple, loving how it tightens even further under my touch. She moans softly, arching into me.
I skim my hands down her sternum. Along her delicate ribs. To the flat plane of her stomach, where I let my touch linger, an acknowledgment of what's growing there, before I continue lower.
The bikini bottoms come off with a tug of both strings.
She's bare now except for the pearls and the ring.
A surge of possessiveness fills me as I gaze at her beauty, satisfied to see her dressed in a gift few other men could afford, and a simple gold band that proclaims her as belonging to me alone.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous. My wife.” I ease her back onto the berth, her head finding the pillows, her hair spreading across white linen.
I move onto the mattress with her, kneeling between her legs. She opens for me without being asked, her thighs parting, and the scent of her arousal is enough to make my hands unsteady. Her pussy glistens for me, already wet with need.
"I have wanted to taste you all goddamn day." My voice has gone rough, stripped raw by the hours of restraint that started when she wrapped her legs around me in the water this afternoon and I had to remind myself that Rusty was twenty feet away. "Spread wider for me. Let me look at you."
She does as I command, and I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, dragging my lips over the tender skin there, teeth grazing just enough to draw a sharp inhale from her. Then I'm where I want to be.
The first stroke of my tongue through her folds draws a sound from her throat that goes straight to my cock. She's so sweet and hot, her tender flesh searing my mouth. I flatten my tongue and lick her folds with a slow, deliberate pressure that has her hips lifting off the mattress.
"Oh, God—"
"I know, baby." I seal my mouth over her clit and suck, then ease off, reading her body with knowledge learned over countless nights like this.
I know the way her thighs tremble when I've found the right rhythm, the way her breathing fractures when I push her close to the edge.
I slide two fingers inside her, curling them forward, and she clenches around me so tight that the thought of what she'll feel like around my cock nearly undoes my patience.
She's close. Her hand finds my hair, gripping hard, and her hips roll against my mouth in desperate, uneven movements.
I pull back. She makes a sound of protest that I swallow with a kiss as I rise over her, my mouth wet with her taste.
She grabs at my shirt, yanking the linen off my shoulders with an urgency that sends a bolt of heat through my gut.
My pants follow, hastily shoved down my hips, then kicked off the rest of the way.
My cock springs free, hard and aching, and her hand wraps around me immediately, her grip firm enough to drag a groan out of me.
"Sit up," she breathes against my jaw. "I want to be on top of you."
I love hearing the demand in my wife’s voice. As much as I like to direct things in bed, nothing inflames me more than knowing Avery needs my body with the same urgency that I need hers.
I settle back against the angled headboard, the pillows braced behind me, and she swings one leg over my hips, straddling me.
Face to face now, with her knees pressing into the mattress on either side of my thighs, her hands braced on my shoulders, the pearls hanging between us.
The position puts us eye to eye, breath to breath, and there is nowhere to hide from each other here. No angle that allows distance.
Just the way I like it. I grip her hip in one hand, my shaft in the other, then guide her to me.
The head of my cock notches against her entrance.
Wet, delicious heat. She sinks onto me in a slow slide that takes me to the root, her pussy stretching around my thickness.
The sensation of her tightness, the slick grip of her body taking all of me, punches the air from my lungs.
"Fuck." The word is barely a whisper. My forehead drops against hers. My hands shake on her hips. "You feel… Christ, Avery. You feel so fucking good."
She rolls her hips. The slow, grinding motion drives me deeper, and my fingers dig into her skin as every nerve ending in my body lights up at once.
She sets the pace, unhurried at first, savoring, her body rising and falling in a rhythm that matches the gentle rock of the yacht beneath us.
I let her lead. Let her take what she needs.
My hands slide from her hips to her thighs, up the curve of her waist, and she shivers at the trail of my fingers over her ribs.
"You look like a goddess riding me. I love being fucked by my wife.
" It's the second time I've said it tonight and it registers with even more power now, with my cock buried deep inside her, her body wrapped around mine as she bounces atop me.
My voice cracks on the last word and I don't care.
Let it crack. Let her hear what she does to me. "Say it back. Tell me you're mine."
"I'm yours." No hesitation. Her pace quickens, her breath coming shorter. "I'm your wife, Nick. I love fucking my husband."
My hand spans her lower belly, and I hold her gaze as I plant my palm over the place where our child is becoming.
She covers my hand with hers, her eyes bright, and the press of our joined hands against her skin while she rides my cock is sacred and filthy and so intensely real that my vision blurs for a second.
"I need you to fuck me harder." The words come from somewhere primal, somewhere that has nothing to do with thought. "I need to feel you come on me like this."
“Yes.” She braces her hands on my chest, fingertips pressing against the muscle, and her hips snap faster.
The wet sound of her body taking my cock fills the cabin, and I grip her ass with both hands and thrust up to meet her, driving deep on every downstroke.
She cries out, her head tipping back, the pearls swaying against her throat.
The sight of her, skin flushed, mouth open, riding me with abandon while wearing the necklace I fastened around her throat before I made her my wife, is going to be seared into my memory until I die.