Chapter Thirty
CHARTER CONFESSIONAL
CLOSE QUARTERS
GISELLA DíAZ: DECKHAND/STEWARDESS
PRODUCER
Are you okay after all the craziness last night?
GISELLA
It wasn’t that crazy. Deck team had a pretty great day, I think. It was the interior going off the rails.
PRODUCER
You aren’t shaken up by the fight between the guests or Maria going overboard?
GISELLA
I’m not shaken by much these days.
PRODUCER
What did you think of Ember jumping in to save—
GISELLA
Oh, por favor. Are we really going to make this a thing? She saw someone go overboard so she jumped in. Any one of us would have done the same, it’s really not the big heroic act she’s trying to make it out to be.
PRODUCER
So, you didn’t see Maria go overboard?
Gisella pauses.
GISELLA
Of course not. Why, did someone say I did? I was helping Palmer with the drifting vessel situation. He can vouch for me.
PRODUCER
No one said anything.
GISELLA
Oh. Okay, good. Because I didn’t see.
PRODUCER
But you don’t think what Ember did was brave?
GISELLA
?Crees que la voy a aplaudir? I’m not giving any kind of praise to the girl who pretended to be my friend while she was hooking up with my boyfriend.
PRODUCER
Finn claims you two broke up before he and Ember reconnected.
Gisella crosses legs, uncrosses them, stands.
GISELLA
Well, we didn’t.
PRODUCER
He also said you—
GISELLA
Haven’t you learned by now that everything out of that man’s mouth is a lie? I have to get to work.
Gisella exits.
Finn didn’t waste a second.
The blanket abandoned on deck, he grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the aft companionway, ducking low to avoid the mounted camera fixed to the overhead beam.
I barely stifled a laugh as I followed, breath catching when we passed the bar — where Bernard’s voice floated out in a lazy hum, just a few steps away from spotting us.
Finn pressed his finger to his lips, then grinned like a kid up to no good as we crept past, shoulders brushing, our footsteps featherlight on the teak flooring.
We slipped through the service corridor, navigating narrow passageways that twisted around guest cabins and crew storage closets. When we crept down a second set of stairs that was steeper and narrower, a shortcut used mostly by engineers, my stomach cartwheeled.
Every step we took felt like peeling away another layer of logic.
The air grew warmer the deeper we went, thicker — charged with the scent of grease and diesel, mechanical heat and metal.
When we reached the heavy, steel door marked ENGINE ROOM – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, I was panting.
“Finn, we can’t,” I said on a laugh, glancing at the warning sticker plastered below the handle. But my body buzzed in anticipation.
And I knew Finn was wordlessly refuting my argument when he smirked and twisted the handle, pulling me inside.
The door clanged shut behind us.
Instantly, we were engulfed in a low, bone-deep rumble — the hum of the engines reverberating through the floor and walls.
Everything vibrated, the sensation embedding itself in my chest and ears.
It mirrored the way I felt inside, and as if the room provided cover for it, my desire ramped up, need coursing through me like wildfire.
The space was tight but not cramped. Pipes lined the walls like tangled veins, wrapped in insulation and marked with colored tape to signify their purpose — fuel, coolant, seawater.
Massive engines sat in the center of the room like sleeping beasts, humming with restrained power, their housing gleaming with silver bolts and oil-slicked shadows.
Overhead, fluorescent lights flickered against metal grates and hanging tool racks, casting hard-edged shadows along the bulkheads.
A rolling mechanic’s stool rested beside a workbench cluttered with rags and wrenches. A fire extinguisher was strapped into its holster near the back wall, beside a metal locker used for spare parts. The air was stifling — warm, stale, metallic.
Heat was already sticking to me like humid night air, and it only fueled me more.
I turned to Finn, half-laughing, half-scolding, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He grinned, tapping his ear. Can’t hear you, that motion said.
I rolled my eyes, laughing louder this time, confident that the sound would be drowned out by the machines. My blacks still clung to my skin, the fabric damp from my time overboard, and I watched Finn’s gaze heat as he dragged it along every curve my wet dress hugged.
His nostrils flared, igniting the flame inside me more.
His apron was half-discarded, the neck strap undone, and the fabric slung low across his hips.
His chef’s jacket was unbuttoned just enough to expose the gleam of sweat at his collarbone, the rise and fall of his chest mirroring my own labored breathing.
His sleeves were shoved up to his elbows, forearms corded with tension, hands flexing like he wasn’t sure what to do with them now that he had me alone.
There was something devastating about the way he wore the aftermath — sweat slick on his brow, flour smudged across his chest, his bandaged hand a reminder of the way this night had burned us both. Somehow, the mess only made him hotter.
He took a tentative step and then another, time slowing as his hands reached for me. He framed my face, thumbs hooking at my jaw as his fingers curled into my damp hair. One tilt of his hands and my neck was arched for him. One flick of his tongue wetting his lips and then his mouth covered mine.
I inhaled the kiss, the steam, the tantalizing feeling that we could get caught at any moment. Finn pulled at my hair tie, gently unfastening it until my hair fell in a damp mess of frizzy waves. Then, his fingertips were on my scalp, hands fisting my hair as he let out a guttural groan.
Those hands were rough and certain, that mouth confident and sure. There was no hesitation, even though we were breaking every rule in the book. The heat of him, of the room, of everything had me struggling to catch my breath as I melted into him.
When I started unfastening the buttons of his chef’s jacket, he broke the kiss to watch me, his mouth curling. He leaned in, lips brushing the shell of my ear.
“No cameras here,” he said, his voice barely audible over the engine’s growl. “No crew. Just us.”
I didn’t have time to react before I felt him gather the hem of my dress, hiking the wet fabric up with determined hands. Goosebumps paraded over my thighs as I hooked my arms around his neck.
“We have to be quick,” I warned, panting, my palms braced against his chest.
He grinned, and when he bit down gently on my neck, just below my jaw, I let out a moan just because I knew I could.
“Challenge accepted.”
There was no use trying to talk after that.
We could barely hear each other, anyway, and we didn’t have time to whisper sweet nothings.
In that moment, I needed him — on me, around me, inside me.
Any centimeter of distance was too much, and I climbed him with a yearning that didn’t need words to translate.
My grip fastened around his neck, one leg hiking up as he backed me into a machine humming with lights and switches. A glass case covered those switches, serving as our headboard as Finn pressed into me and kissed me harder.
One of his hands held my ass firmly as the other fought with his belt.
I reached between us and tugged my thong to the side, enough to give him access.
And there I was, torn again between the desire to slow down and savor every taste of him and the need to satisfy the ache between my legs immediately, to claw at his back until he gave me what I wanted.
But we were playing a risky game, sneaking away during shift and while the charter guests were still awake. Everyone might assume I was taking a break to gather myself, but that break would only be allowed for so long before Captain Gary would expect me to get back to work — and so would my team.
So as soon as Finn wrenched down his zipper, I helped him maneuver his briefs, both of us groaning when I wrapped my hand around his cock and pulled him free.
I spat on my hand, smoothed it over him, and lined him up at my entrance.
I was already wet. It was so fucking hot, the desperate need we couldn’t control, the way we were playing with fire and risking it all because we couldn’t stand one more second of not being together.
Finn moved my hand out of the way once his crown was notched inside me, and then his hands found my waist and he slammed it home. I arched off the glass and dug my nails into his neck, his back, crying out as he withdrew and slid in again — just as hard, just as deep.
It was a wild frenzy of hands and mouths, of gasps and groans, the hum of the engines drowning out the sound and somehow amplifying it, too.
I stretched to accommodate him more and more with each thrust, and Finn kept the pressure of his body against mine, rocking my hips so my clit found the perfect friction.
Last night, I’d been suspended in disbelief. I couldn’t wrap my head around how I’d ended up in bed with Finn after everything that had happened between us, after months of whatever games we’d been playing.
But tonight, all I felt was how inevitable we were.
He was mine. I was his. Every flex inside me reminded me how my heart and body and mind and soul belonged to him.
There was every reason for us to stop this before it even had the chance to start when it all went to hell this morning. I could have run away. I tried to, but Finn wouldn’t let me. He saw how afraid I was and how I wanted to hide away before I even realized what it was, and he held me through it.
He didn’t walk away from me, even though that would have been the easiest thing to do.
He chose me even when he knew the whole world would judge him for it.
And I chose him, too.
Cameras, production team, crew, and world be damned.
Our skin was sweat-slicked and hot, Finn’s forehead pressed to mine as he pushed inside me again and again. His hand wrapped around my neck and held me to him, his mouth bruising mine as his grip tightened just enough to make me sigh and whimper and beg for more.
It was all encompassing, the buzzing of the room and the electricity coursing through Finn straight into me. Every nerve in my body was tuned into where he touched me and kissed me and fucked me. Nothing else mattered. There was no past and no future.
It was just us, right here, right now, forever, unending.
I came in a slow build of shocking numbness, fire licking at my ribs until I combusted.
I let myself cry out Finn’s name, let him swallow that sound with a punishing kiss as he groaned out his own release.
But he didn’t stop. We both moaned at the feel of him sliding in and out with ease now, knowing it was his cum providing that extra lubrication.
And that spawned us right into round two.
Finn gripped my ass in his hands, my legs wrapping around him as he carried us over to the rolling engineer stool. He sank down in it with me in his lap, and then his fingertips ran through the line of my ass and dipped to where we were still connected.
“Fuck.” I saw his mouth form the word more than I heard it, and my eyelids fluttered at the sensation of him rubbing the wetness between us, coating his shaft with it before he’d fill me again. He held his slick fingers out for me to taste, a moan rumbling through him when I sucked them clean.
And then his hands were on my ass and helping me ride.
I tilted my hips forward, catching that pressure against my clit with every rock.
I was already so sensitive from my first release that I was a trembling, whimpering mess.
Finn let me set the pace, content to enjoy the show, his gaze devouring every twitch of my muscles, every pant that left my lips.
His hands roamed up my back, then down again, thumbs tracing reverent circles over the curve of my ass before gliding inward, gripping my hips to guide me deeper.
I rocked harder, then softer, chasing that edge but not quite tumbling over it. Something shifted between us — the urgency still there, still pulsing like electricity beneath our skin, but the desperation gave way to something deeper.
I swore I felt his heartbeat mirroring mine as Finn leaned in, brushing a strand of damp hair behind my ear before cupping my face in both hands. His thumbs stroked my cheeks as I moved on top of him, our foreheads pressed together, breath mingling in the heat between us.
His kiss came softer this time — no bite, no hunger. Just slow, aching devotion. That kiss was an impenetrable steel beam in a storm. It was an anchor grounding us to the moment.
“I’ve got you, Firefly,” he mouthed against my lips, too quiet to hear over the engines but I felt every syllable. “I always will.”
I winced, not because the words hurt, but because I couldn’t articulate what it meant to hear them.
I sat fully on him before grinding in a slow circle, shivering when his forehead fell to my shoulder.
Then his lips were on me, kissing and climbing until I grabbed his face in my hands and forced him to look at me.
I didn’t need him to say more. I saw it in the shadow and light playing on his skin, felt it in the way he held me like I was something worth fighting for.
The world outside this engine room didn’t matter.
Not the cameras, the whispers, the reputation I’d be handing over when this aired. Not my past. Not his.
We had one more charter to survive and then we could walk away from all of this and build something new.
Together.
I moved again — slower, deeper — and he breathed my name like a vow.
There was still sweat between us, still tension, still friction and heat and the ache of release building again. But now, those sensations surrendered to the deeper emotions within.
Trust.
Forgiveness.
Love.
And I knew, from that moment on, it was us against the world.