Chapter 16
16
Toorin
“Coming,” I told Darwin, not at all ready to leave my bed and a man so thoroughly in need of an orgasm.
Returning the favor would have to wait. With the storm turning back on itself, we’d need all hands on deck. Well… almost all hands.
A wave hit the hull, nearly knocking me out of my bunk, reminding me we weren’t as far out of danger as I had hoped.
Marc moved to climb out of bed, but I held a hand to the center of his chest. “Stay.”
It was part command, but mostly plea. I couldn’t divide my attention between navigating the storm and making sure Marc stayed safe. He would have to learn to sail, but not today.
“I want to help.”
I pressed a firm kiss to his lips, wanting to pour myself into it, but the deck beneath my bare feet rocked, and I didn’t have that kind of time. My crew needed me.
“You can help by staying here. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to get bad, but no matter what, don’t leave this cabin. Are we clear?”
He sat up, and I let him. “Be careful?” He sounded as if it wasn’t a given.
With a finger, I stroked the side of his cheek, the tenderness in his eyes nearly bringing tears to mine. “You worried about me?”
“I am. I don’t think I’m done with you yet.”
From a cupboard, I pulled out a flotation device. It wasn’t much more than circles of cork strung together that he could hold onto in an emergency.
I handed it to him. “I’m not nearly done with you either.”
I didn’t kiss him again because I didn’t know if I could stop if I did. Instead, I cleaned myself up the best I could with the damp rag I found on the floor. I pulled on my dry clothes, even though I knew it was only a matter of time before they were waterlogged.
At the door, I glanced over my shoulder. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I strode through and closed the cabin door behind me.
I would have locked him in to keep him safe if I wouldn’t be putting him in more danger were the Lark to capsize, or stars forbid, sink.
The Lark fell into a trough, and wind-whipped water sprayed me when I cleared the cabin, cold as ice. I wanted to crawl back into my warm birth and get lost in a man I had no business getting close to.
From handhold to handhold, I worked my way to the helm. I should have been thinking about the seas, about the wind, about the only sail we had unfurled. I should have been thinking about my crew. Many things needed my attention, but I only thought about the journey ahead and what that would mean if we could bring the doctor back to Toonu. Would I survive the second surgery?
And—more importantly now—would he ?
I staggered up to the helm and put a hand on the wheel. Bodie didn’t let go. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he asked, “You alright?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Instead of answering, he pointed toward the solid sheet of rain that now nearly surrounded us. Bodie already had us turned into the waves. This direction wouldn’t get us any closer to the port in Turtle Bay, but none of that mattered if we didn’t survive the storm. “We need you here. With us. Not…” He let the sentence drop, his gaze hitting my cabin before returning to me.
He was right. But that’s what made him a partner I could trust. I shook off my thoughts of Marc and whatever was developing between us. “I’m here.”
Bodie clapped me on the shoulder and released his grip on the wheel. “I hope his dick is worth it.”
“Bugger off.”
Bodie grinned and hollered to Darwin, the wind snatching the words out of his mouth.
The seas raged for the rest of the day and into the night, and the rain poured down in cold, heavy sheets that cut visibility to nearly zero. Even the sail blurred ahead of me. We were sailing blind. From the heading reading and that innate feeling in my gut, we should have been safely in the deeper waters of the IP, but without the stars above to guide us, we could sail into treacherous waters.
The only thing we had going for us was that the sheer vastness of the IP meant chances were slim we’d run into another boat, especially in this weather.
Slim, but not zero .
The storm lay behind us as the inky blackness of the dead of night shifted to lighter shades of gray before dawn, and the hull rocked gently into the waves instead of plunging and heaving.
I hung onto the wheel, an arm slung between the grips because I’d nearly lost all the strength in my hands, and it was easier to let the wheel hold me up than my wobbly legs.
Darwin, Bodie, and Lyric had all had their turn at the helm, but the Lark was my responsibility. Besides Bodie’s misgivings about the attention I’d given Marc, I took that responsibility seriously.
These were my people. In the usually harsh, sometimes cruel, always unforgiving landscape of our world, when it came down to it, my crew was all that mattered.
Steam rose from the galley chimney, and my stomach turned on itself. We hadn’t eaten since before we’d sailed into the first outer band of the squall. At that point, I could have eaten a sturgeon whole.
The doors to the galley opened, and Juniper came out with a steaming mug in her hand. She was as damp and bedraggled as the rest of us, but she had a smile for me.
I took the mug from her hand. “Thanks.”
“Lyric said he’d have some food ready in a bit.”
In the budding light, Bodie climbed onto the foredeck, calculating our position. It could take us days to get back on our previous course.
Bodie called out the heading adjustment. Before I could steer toward the corrected course, Juniper asked, “Can I do it?”
I straightened. “You think you know how?”
“How hard can it be? You blokes have managed not to put us into the rocks yet.” She turned a small circle. As far as we could see, there was only water, water, and, of course, more water. “I can manage.”
With her size, she couldn’t have steered through the storm, but in the time she’d been with us, I’d learned not to underestimate her. There were times during the night it had taken three of us at the helm to keep our bow pointed into the waves. Now, she could easily manage the gentle swells. If she wanted to stay on the ship, she’d have to learn to take her turn at the helm. Now was as good a time as any.
I stepped back and made room for her at the wheel. I pointed to the compass, but the needle had stuck. I smacked it with my palm, and the needle jiggled and settled. “Steer to 120 degrees. Watch for rogue waves hitting us broadside.”
She rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
I wrapped my arm around her neck and pressed a smacking kiss to her temple. She must have liked it because she didn’t pull her blade on me. “Just don’t get us killed.”
Marcelis
After five days of sailing, I wasn’t much of a seaman. We’d been pushed so far off course during the storm that we’d been tacking our way toward the coastline with the mild breeze for two days.
Tacking. Look at me using sailing terms. Maybe my time on the Lark was rubbing off on me more than I’d thought.
Though as much as I’d tried to earn my keep on the boat, every time I tried to do something, Bodie came along and did it himself. So I helped Lyric in the galley as much as possible or washed the clothes and set them out to dry. Something. Anything to not feel useless.
And as much as Toorin had the final say in what happened on the Lark, he didn’t reprimand Bodie for his treatment of me, which, to be fair, probably would have made his distaste of me worse than it already was.
Snug in Toorin’s bunk, I curled against him the same way I’d had since we’d been sharing his bunk, sleepy since I’d stayed awake all night to make sure Toorin’s heart didn’t stop in his sleep.
Our speed shifted, subtle but there. I noticed the decrease a second or two before Toorin. I secretly prided myself in that even though Toorin had been at a disadvantage because he’d been asleep.
His eyes opened, and he moved to sit up about the same time Bodie shouted an order from what must have been the helm.
“They’re dropping anchor,” Toorin said as I wrapped my legs more tightly around his. He’d have to work for it if he wanted to get out of bed.
Dawn hadn’t broken, so he had at least another hour before he needed to relieve Bodie from his watch. And besides, was there that much of a rush to get on deck if we were anchoring? Toorin did way more than his fair share on the Lark. It wouldn’t hurt to steal what little time we had left.
“They can drop the sails and anchor without you. Can they not? Stay. With me.”
Toorin quit his ineffective struggle to rise, and the smile he gifted me nearly made my heart seize. Had anyone ever looked at me like that?
The tackles and pulleys creaked and squeaked as the ropes—or should I say sheets?—lowered the sails. The Lark settled into the calm water, and our wake caught up with us and rolled under the Lark from stern to bow.
At the bow, a long length of chain rattled through the windlass. Toorin settled back into bed, wrapping his strong arms around me and pulling me into him.
He kissed the cap of my shoulder, his voice gruff and gravely from sleep the way I’d quickly grown to love. “I like having a reason to stay in bed. I could get used to it.”
He broke eye contact after that as if he wanted to take those last words back… but he didn’t. The words hovered in the air, unanswered because what in the stars was I supposed to say to that? Me, too?
The sweet words sat on the tip of my tongue until they went stale, then bitter. Toorin didn’t mean what he’d said the way it sounded—like we had a forever.
Because we didn’t.
All we had was whatever was brewing between us. Something that had a definite expiration date. Did Toorin like me? Yeah, I genuinely thought he did. But even if we both survived Toorin getting his heart back, it wasn’t like he’d have a use for me after that. He would have gotten what he needed—no, what he deserved— and I’d… I’d…
“Hey. Where did you go?”
I shook off the melancholy thoughts as the anchor caught and the bow swung into the wind. There would be plenty of time to revisit them later, even though living with a bum heart my entire life, I knew more than most that later wasn’t a guarantee.
Scrunching my fingers through the hair on Toorin’s chest that I’d grown so inexplicably fond of, I said, “I’m here.”
Those fingers trailed through the hair, bumped over his ribs, down to the point of his hip, descending to the thatch of coarse hair at the apex of his thighs. “I’m right here.”
Toorin hissed in a breath, and his hips bucked toward me even though I had yet to touch his glorious cock, keeping us both on edge, waiting for the contact. The semi I’d had most of the night became a full-blown hard-on. These days, it took little more than one suggestive look from Toorin to get me that way.
Moon and mars, I’d miss this man when he no longer had need of me.
Before I could put my hand on him, he rolled on top of me and settled between my legs, his cock rubbing against mine. I felt a pinch in my sternum as his weight settled on me, but the mild pain was fleeting.
“Fuck,” Toorin said as he ground against me. My head fell back, and he buried his face in my neck. His teeth scored my skin, and I wanted more. “I can’t get enough of you.”
Then his lips found mine, his tongue sliding and thrusting into my mouth. I knew what he wanted because I wanted it, too.
I wanted to feel the burn, the stretch, the slide, the friction. I wanted him to fill me. It had been a while since I’d been with a man that way, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know what I wanted.
My hands went to his muscular ass, and I snugged him tighter against me, my belly already slick with a delicious mix of precum from both of us. Lungs burning, I broke the kiss. “Fuck me.” The words came out between heavy breaths as we got air.
Toorin stilled, his hands cupping my head as he braced himself on his forearms. The first light of dawn peeked through the porthole. His face remained in dark shadows, but his eyes… he looked like he wanted to devour me, and there was no way I’d tell him no.
“Is that a command?” his words drifted to me on a hoarse whisper.
“Command. Wish. Hope. As long as you’re in me, you can take it however you want.”
He dropped his head to my chest.
What was wrong? Was he trying to find a way to let me down? Should I have kept my mouth shut? I couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with taking most of Toorin’s weight.
As the chancellor’s spawn, I’d never made demands of the men I’d had assignations with. I did my best to listen, to please them because I feared I’d be taking advantage of them with the inevitable power differential of my position. So, I’d never ever asked for what I wanted.
Until now.
I squeezed his ass. “Say something. If you don’t want—”
He raised his head. “I want. It’s not that. I’m afraid I won’t last ten seconds buried inside you.”
“I’m willing to risk the disappointment.”
Toorin laughed. In my mind, that could have gone one of two ways, with the other him not reading my dry humor and taking my words to heart. He reached across me and pulled a small, corked container out of a little drawer tucked beside the bunk. I don’t know the original purpose for the drawer, but I didn’t think it was for lube.
He sat back on his heels, one hand stroking my inner thigh as he pulled the cork out with his teeth and spat it across the cabin.
“I didn’t know they had lube on the fringe.”
He poured a trickle into his hand. “One thing you’ll learn about those of us on the fringe. We’re resourceful.”
A corner of my upper lip curled upward on its own. “Don’t tell me… It’s made from camels.”
Toorin chuckled. A singularly sexy sound that made my skin break out in gooseflesh. “Yes.”
“What part?”
He slathered it onto his hard cock. “Trust me. You don’t want to know. But it is one of the few things from camels that doesn’t smell like them if that’s any better.”
“I’m not sure that it is.”
Toorin braced himself with one hand beside my head and kissed me until I almost forgot what we were talking about. He finally pulled away, his warm breath heating my skin. “Do you trust me?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t hesitate. I wasn’t sure how I knew I did, but it was the truth.
His other hand went between my legs, his slick fingers skimming from the backside of my balls all the way to my hole. I almost swallowed my tongue.
There was that chuckle of Toorin’s again. I pulled him in for another kiss, nipping and sucking and showing him exactly what I wanted him to do to me with my tongue.
His fingers circled my rim, and I bore down against them. I wanted them in me. Now. “ Toorin …”
I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. He must have read my scattered, unintelligible thoughts because the next words out of his mouth were, “I’ve got you.”
I opened my eyes and gazed up at him. Did he mean that the way it sounded? His eyes locked on mine, and whatever doubts I had vanished.
“I’ve got you,” he said again.
He pressed one finger inside and swiped his warm tongue across my nipple. All I did was groan. “More.”
Ever so slowly, Toorin worked me until he eased another finger in beside the first, my dick leaking precum and slicking my abdomen. Toorin licked his way down the center of my torso, leaving a warm trail to cool in its wake.
I knew where he was headed and couldn’t wait for him to get there. He licked a swath across my precum-slicked abdomen, getting a good taste of me. My hips arched, and then I sank onto his fingers, filling me more. But it wasn’t enough. And as much as I wanted his hot mouth on me, I wanted him in me more.
Pushing him up, I said, “Toorin, if you don’t—”
With no viable threat, I cut myself off. By his ridiculously saucy grin, I didn’t have to finish the sentence.
Toorin withdrew his fingers and settled between my legs, lining himself up with my hole. He gripped his cock at the base and squeezed my thigh. “You ready?”
“More than.”
I expected him to look down, to stare at his cock as it disappeared inside me. Instead, his eyes stayed focused on mine, and with the intensity, it was all I could do not to look away.
The head of his cock breached the outer ring, and I blew out a breath, trying to relax. He wasn’t the biggest man I’d ever been with, but he was more than big enough for me.
He pulled back a fraction and pushed in again, sinking in deeper this time, his eyes intense, almost reverent. A reverence I didn’t think I deserved, but I couldn’t deny how it made me feel—like I was the only man in the world who mattered to him. That I was the only man who could make him feel the way I did.
I had to be reading more into it than was there. Right?
It wasn’t love.
It couldn’t be.
But it was something .