Chapter 6
6
Skulking along the passageways, Kelsey arrived at Ari’s door exactly ten minutes later. She’d lifted her hand to knock but noticed it had been chocked open, so she pushed. Stepping inside, she was aware of two things instantly: the soft warm glow of the room and Ari standing at the end of the bed.
He was still fully dressed in the dark suit pants and graphite dress shirt he’d worn to dinner. The tie and jacket had come off, his sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows, but that was as far as his disrobing had gone.
‘I thought you might change your mind,’ he said, his eyes roving hot and rough over her body, picking up where they’d left off at the Aphrodite Lounge.
Kelsey shook her head, cleared her throat of the building huskiness. This whole thing might be crazy but, like Ari, she was having problems resisting. ‘You promised me a shower.’
‘I did.’
‘I’d like to get wet now.’
He gestured in the direction of the bathroom. ‘Wet is good.’ A slight smile added to the intense obsidian of his gaze, and Kelsey felt it right between her legs.
Yeah… she didn’t need a shower for that.
Kelsey contemplated crossing the distance and kissing him, but she didn’t need a degree in human sexual interaction to know where that would lead.
And she really needed a shower. She stank of booze and bar nuts.
Without another word she turned and, kicking off her pumps as she went, disappeared into the bathroom. Quickly divesting herself of her clothes, she glanced at the mirror. Her green eyes glittered with what looked very much like anticipation.
‘You are going to hell,’ she mouthed to her reflection. It didn’t reply, just stared back at her, very decidedly smug.
Kelsey leaned into the shower recess and flicked on the taps, adjusting them to the perfect degree of lukewarm. She looked over her shoulder. No Ari…
She frowned. She’d expected him to follow.
Kelsey took a step to the doorway to find him pouring himself a whisky. She placed her hands high on the door jamb as she caught his eye.
‘Is there a reason you’re still out here?’
His gaze took a slow tour of her body, lingering on all her good bits and causing quite the ruckus. The flare of his nostrils was intensely gratifying.
His gaze travelled back to her face. ‘Not a lot of room in that shower.’
He made a good point. The cubicles weren’t huge and Ari was a big guy, but she was willing to test the boundaries of the restricted space. ‘I think we could manage it. Why don’t you come wash my back and we’ll see?’
He placed his glass on the table. ‘Your wish is my command.’
She watched as he shucked his clothes in record time and fuck if he didn’t look like a genie. Her own personal back washing, foot rubbing, well-endowed genie. All six-plus feet of him, gloriously naked, his cock out and proud in front. The ruckus in her good bits became a meltdown.
‘I’ll get the soap,’ she said, a tad breathless as she turned away and stepped into the cubicle.
Warm water sluiced over her neck and shoulders as she reached for the bottle of liquid soap on the shelf attached to the wall. But then Ari’s hand was sliding over the top of hers and his other hand was sliding onto her hip and his lips were sliding onto her neck and Kelsey’s pulse doubled.
His front pressed into her back – hot and hard – and the granite of his cock pressed into the cleft of her buttocks as he pumped soap into his hand. Kelsey arched against him, one hand moving to anchor around his neck, the other dipping behind to grab a buttock.
‘This is a great view,’ he muttered near her ear as he angled her away from the direct spray, his soapy hand gliding onto her stomach.
Kelsey’s abs clenched at the touch. ‘That’s not my back.’
‘Patience,’ he whispered, his hand circling her belly button. ‘I’ll get there.’
Kelsey moaned and arched some more as the muscles behind her navel undulated in wanton bliss. He was right. It was a fucking fantastic view.
Mesmerising.
His big hand looked even more bronzed on her pale flesh as it moved in slow circles, making bubbles and lighting fires in its wake. She watched as it moved slowly north and moaned as his other hand joined the action, both of them sliding onto her breasts, spreading bubbles in tandem.
She cried out as long fingers worked her slippery nipples into two taut peaks, giving a twist at each end for an added zing.
‘You want me to stop and do your back?’ he asked, his breathing heavy in her ear.
Kelsey gave a half laugh. ‘If you stop I’ll kill you.’
His low chuckle slid down her spine and undulated through the muscles deep inside her belly. She never wanted this to stop. She never wanted to get out of this shower. She wanted to say in here with him forever, giving and taking pleasure until the day she died.
No work, no money issues, no mother facing an ever-darkening world. No outside problems. Just him and her in this shower. In this cabin.
It was all the crazy but, right here, right now, nothing mattered other than Ari and what he was doing to her body.
‘I think you’re going to want some of this too,’ he muttered, one hand heading south.
Kelsey protested the loss of nipple action for the two seconds it took for Ari’s fingers to find her clitoris and then her objections were lost in a tsunami of sensation and the deep, sonorous moan that slipped unchecked from her lips.
‘Oh, you really like that,’ he said, licking down her neck.
‘Stop and I’ll really kill you.’
He didn’t stop. He just stroked her clit over and over – firmly and deftly. His mouth was hot on her neck and his whiskers rasped like sandpaper as the fingers on her breast continued to tease with similar precision.
It was as if he knew her body. Or was, at least, attuned to its rhythms – sensitive to every moan, every wriggle, every back arch. Responsive to every nuance.
She’d been with men who were good in bed – knew the bases and were just as keen to give as they were to take. Guys who were more than happy to follow instructions when they weren’t quite hitting the mark.
But Ari?
This shit seemed intuitive. He anticipated better than any man she’d ever known. It was like he was two paces ahead, giving her exactly what she needed, before she even knew she needed it.
Like sliding one finger, then two, inside her and pinching her nipple, taking her slow simmer to an instant boil, everything coiling tight for long seconds then flying loose.
Kelsey cried out, clamping down hard on his ass as she drowned in a hot wave of pleasure. Every nerve, every muscle, every cell lit up with it as she was sucked into the undertow gasping for air and drenched down to her bones.
She slumped against him as the climax dissipated and he eased his fingers from between her legs. Her hand slid from his ass and her arm around his neck went limp, and she was thankful for the powerful support of his quads as her knees threatened to buckle.
‘Time to rinse,’ he whispered in her ear, easing them around a little.
The hard spray from the shower hit her front and she gasped, her eyelids flying open. It wasn’t cold but her skin was excruciatingly sensitive. The spray stung her nipples in a good way, and even the bubbles sliding off her body felt like tiny tongues lapping at her skin. For the love of all that was holy, how was she still so aroused ?
When she could barely stand?
She must have whimpered because he shushed her and whispered, ‘It’s okay, shhh, I know. I’m not done yet.’
Then he slid from behind her, his cock still a rod of honed steel, the head flushed with arousal. He eased her back until her shoulder blades hit the tiles, and dropped to his knees, his mouth pressing hot kisses to her belly, along the crease where abdomen met leg, and over the tops of her thighs.
Kelsey glanced down. The sight of him kneeling before her made her legs even weaker. As did the proximity of his mouth to her pussy. She ploughed her hand through his hair and gave a tug, and those black eyes locked on hers.
‘I’m not sure I can handle any more just now.’ Her clit was always extraordinarily sensitive post orgasm.
‘You can’t handle a foot rub?’ he asked with faux innocence.
Kelsey quirked an eyebrow. ‘My feet are a lot lower than that.’
He grinned. ‘Nothing wrong with spreading a little joy on the way down, is there?’ He pressed a kiss to her belly button. ‘You can stop me if it’s too much.’
And then his hand was sliding onto the back of a thigh and lifting her leg, placing it over his shoulder until her heel grazed the centre of his back, opening her right up to him.
‘ Theé ,’ he muttered, his gaze fixed on her pussy as his other hand slid onto her ass.
He leaned in then, putting his mouth over her, the flat of his tongue finding her clit in one long slow lick that had her gasping. More long slow licks followed, a technique that was somehow both a balm to the poor tortured nub and a hot, throbbing stimulus even more potent than his finger.
Kelsey moaned, her ass cheeks clenching at the first pull of her approaching orgasm. Her pulse, barely recovered from last time, kicked into overdrive. What the hell?
She was going again ? This never happened. But she was, going again . And she was going fast.
How could she be building so damn quickly when his tongue was moving so maddeningly slow? The rapid approach of her orgasm was so out of step with the unhurried pace of his tongue it was a turn on all on its own, a delicious kind of confusion.
The man was a freak.
He lifted his head, grinning up at her. ‘How are you handling it? You need me to stop yet?’
Kelsey was in no state to humour him. She just grabbed the back of his head and jammed his face back into her pussy. His muffled laughter gave way to the hot stroke of his tongue and the almost instantaneous firing of a thousand tiny pulses, darting straight from her clit.
They travelled to her inner thighs, then her outer thighs. To her pelvis and on to her belly button. Gathering speed and strength and momentum until the climax fired off in one long contraction, rolling from her clit to her nipples.
‘ Ari! ’
It was shorter than the last orgasm but more intense as Kelsey’s hand twisted hard in his hair and her heel dug into his flesh. He was probably going to end up with a bruise in the centre of his back and a massive bald patch, but if she was inflicting any pain, he didn’t complain. He just kept swiping the flat of his tongue against her clit until the climax spun away.
‘Stop,’ she panted, yanking on his hair, wrenching him away, her head falling back against the tiles. ‘Enough.’
Kelsey watched him through half-closed lids as he rose like freaking Poseidon from the sea, all hard and male and potent as fuck. He had that smug kind of look she’d seen on her own face earlier, and she gave a half laugh because words weren’t currently possible. Her eyes were working fine though and she watched, enthralled, as he ducked his head under the spray, water sluicing over his face and down his body.
‘You have an extremely dextrous tongue,’ she said, finally coherent enough to speak.
He grinned but shook his head. ‘I’m a little rusty.’
Kelsey blinked. Rusty? Why was a guy, who was clearly a freak between the sheets, rusty? And if this was him rusty , how wrecked would she have been with his oral superpowers fully oiled?
Before she could reply, he flicked off the taps and reached for her, sliding an arm under her legs and one around her back, picking her up with ease. Kelsey might have objected had her legs not been jelly. But they were, so she looped her arms around his neck instead.
‘What now?’
‘I still have one more condom,’ he said and strode from the shower.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Ari lay boneless in the aftermath, Kelsey’s legs intertwined with his, her tousled hair spread out on his chest. He slid a hand onto her hip, hitching her closer as his thumb stroked lazy swirls on the rounded flank of her upper thigh.
‘I bet you couldn’t do that again if you tried,’ she said, propping her chin on his chest, her husky vibrato ruffling the air around his body.
Ari grinned. ‘Sure I can. You might need to give me a second to recover.’
She laughed and it was light and happy and filled all the spaces inside him that had been so desolate for so long and it was nice being with her like this, lying in the aftermath all slow and lazy and thoroughly sated, idly touching, stroking.
He felt a resurgence of the guilt that had plagued him these past days, but it was quickly swallowed up by a sense of revelation. Who knew that he could feel this way again? That he could be intimate in this way – perhaps an even deeper form of intimacy than sex – with somebody else?
Ari honestly didn’t know what to do with such a thought. It belonged in the hot mess of emotions that Kelsey had stirred up since they’d met.
‘That move has a high degree of difficulty,’ she said, her voice low and lazy as she traced circles on his collarbone. ‘You practise that often?’
Ari’s hand stopped its stroking. ‘Are you fishing, Ms Armitage?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘I’m letting you know my best friend also works on this ship. She can castrate a steer in ten seconds flat and I will send her to this cabin if you tell me you’re using me to screw around on someone.’
Ari laughed – God, how long had it been since he’d laughed like this? – despite the abhorrence of her cheating implication.
He was a one-woman guy, always had been.
‘You can tell your friend to stand down. There’s nobody.’
Nobody . The thought was hardly new but it was sobering. Up until this cruise, Ari hadn’t particularly cared. He hadn’t looked outside his shell in three years.
Meeting Kelsey had him reassessing everything.
‘Right answer,’ she said, that cupid’s bow stretching out as the smile spread across her face. Her finger stroked down his chin and along his jaw line, the faint rasp of his whiskers loud in the night.
‘I had a wife…’
Her finger stopped in its tracks, the bow relaxed back to its usual fullness. She blinked. So did Ari. What the hell? He hadn’t planned on saying that at all .
It had just… slipped out.
Ari didn’t talk about Talia. He’d tried, in the beginning, but his family had discouraged it because it caused him distress. They’d thought it healthier to look forward, not back. So he’d stopped trying.
Hell, he’d barely opened up to his therapist about her.
But he hadn’t moved forward. He’d talked to her in his head instead, shutting everyone out. Just him and her, holding her close that way.
‘Okay.’
Ari liked that she wasn’t battering him with questions or freaking out. That she was waiting for him to direct the conversation. ‘She died. Three years ago. In a car accident. She was thirty.’
Her gaze searched his and Ari watched as realisation dawned across her face. ‘The one you were in. That causes your migraines?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She slid her hand onto his cheek, her fingers brushing his hairline. ‘So very sorry. That’s a truly shit thing to happen.’
Ari stared at her for a few seconds, taken aback by her unusual condolences. And then, much to his surprise, a big bubble of laughter rose in his chest and found its way out his mouth.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ She leaned back a little, her cheeks turning pink, her brows crinkling in consternation. ‘That wasn’t very respectful, was it? I never really know what to say.’
‘No.’ Ari shook his head. ‘It’s perfect. I’ve heard so many well-meaning platitudes this past three years I want to scream. People telling me that “there’s a reason for everything” and “at least she didn’t suffer” or that “God needed another angel in heaven”.’
He shook his head. He knew people were as much at a loss over something to say as Kelsey, but he’d rather they said nothing at all than something trite. He slid his hands onto her face, cupping her cheeks. ‘It was shit and you have no idea how good it is to hear somebody say that.’ Ari was glad he’d gone with the strange urge to open up. ‘You clearly have a gift with words,’ he teased, wanting to dissolve the frown knitting her brows together.
She gave him a crooked smile. ‘Oh yeah. I should definitely open my own condolence card company.’
He laughed. ‘Let me know if you ever need an investor.’
And then he kissed her, savouring her mouth for long, drugging moments. The scent of his soap on her skin and the feel of her breasts squashed against his chest was a dizzying combination.
He wanted this woman. Forbidden or not. Morally ambiguous or not. Risky or not. It made no sense. It just was.
But she broke away, the bow of her upper lip wet and a little swollen from his passion. ‘Is that what you meant earlier?’ she asked. ‘About being rusty?’
‘Yeah. There hasn’t been anyone else.’
‘Since she died? For three years?’
He nodded. The thought of being with anyone else after Talia had been about as exciting as a kick to the balls. ‘Are you freaking out?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I’m… impressed.’
‘By the period of celibacy?’
‘Yes. And’ – she smiled – ‘your still-impressive skills. You’re like a wizard or something.’
He laughed as she slid her leg over him and pushed herself up, straddling his hips. She was glorious astride him like this, her hair in disarray, her skin pale against the swarthier tone of his, her rose-tipped breasts full and round and bouncy.
Gathering her hair to the side, she leaned in to kiss him and Ari met her halfway, raising his head off the pillow, kissing her quick and hard. She moaned as he stroked his tongue against hers and desire flowed like quicksilver through his veins and flooded his groin, his cock stiffening in an instant.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured against his mouth as she rubbed herself up and down his length. ‘You brought your magic wand, I see.’
He chuckled, his hands stroking down her back to her ass, holding her tight against him. ‘What self-respecting wizard leaves home without it?’
She ground a little harder, moaning in a way that went straight to his testicles. ‘It’s indefatigable, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Ari muttered, dropping a chain of kisses from the side of her mouth to her ear. After three years of celibacy, his cock had returned with impressive vigour. ‘Unfortunately for it, I’m out of condoms.’
Ari hadn’t thought to secure more. Because they weren’t supposed to be doing this again.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered, dropping her head to the side. ‘The poor thing.’
‘He’s very sad,’ Ari murmured, nuzzling down her neck, his tongue licking against the pulse fluttering in her throat.
‘Maybe I can kiss him better?’
Ari’s groin tightened. ‘I’m sure he’d enjoy that.’
He kissed her then, hard and deep one more time before Kelsey broke away and moved determinedly south . Down his throat, buzzing her lips and flicking her tongue over his nipples, licking around his belly button, tracing the trail of hair heading south from his navel all the way down to the root of his cock.
Ari groaned as she grabbed hold around the base and planted a string of kisses the length of his shaft all the way to the tip. When she reached the flushed taut crown, she licked at the bead of liquid that had formed at the slit and Ari’s hands bunched in the sheets.
The urge to thrust up, to push himself into her mouth, rode him like the devil. He wanted to see her lips stretched around him, he wanted to feel the head of his cock pushing into the soft give at the back of her throat, and he wanted to lock gazes with her as she sucked and released every inch of him.
But he didn’t. Because most of all he wanted to prolong this connection. Not just the wet suck of her mouth but the intimacy of the act. When he’d gone to that other woman’s room so long ago, he’d wanted two things – to forget and for it to be over.
It was different with Kelsey. He wanted to remember every moment and he never wanted it to end.
Ari didn’t know how he was going to feel about this time when it was all over – he expected it wasn’t going to be pretty – but right now he felt alive, and that felt good.
Slowly – oh so slowly – her mouth sunk down over his taut, aching girth, wet and hot and so fucking good , he almost went blind with the flare of light bursting across his retina. It was pure torture to stay still, not to place his hand on the back of her head and thrust.
Ari’s balls tightened and the nerves at the base of his spine sparked and lit up like a circuit board. He groaned as her cheeks hollowed out on the upstroke, his hands tightening in the sheets as she sucked good and hard. Pausing at the head, she swirled her tongue around and around, lingering each time on the underside, flicking back and forth against the ridge of skin before completing another full rotation and doing it again.
Theé! She was the devil!
He grunted as her tongue relented its maddening flick and she plunged her mouth down his shaft once more, their gazes locking. Kelsey’s big green eyes stared at him through strands of her hair as he bottomed out and her throat worked to accommodate him, moving convulsively, moisture glistening at the corners of her mouth as she held him there for interminable seconds.
Christe! Her mouth was pure, wicked sin.
She half gasped, half gagged as she finally withdrew. But not fully; she spent long moments torturing the taut aching crown again, her eyes fixed on his, the muscles in his ass clamped tight as wheel nuts. She dallied mercilessly, stoking the spreading heat in his belly before heading south again, taking him all the way to the back, swallowing convulsively again, humming her desire as she held.
The low guttural sound vibrated right through his testicles and they pulled even tighter as cool fingers dragged up the centre of his ball sack, cupping and squeezing. The sensation was like throwing rocket fuel on the fire of his arousal and Ari groaned, praying for strength.
‘ Theé dóse mou dynami .’
Pulling off him, one hand still firmly at the base of his cock, Kelsey’s mouth found his balls. The wet heat was a shocking contrast to her cool fingers and Ari’s hips bucked involuntarily. When she sucked first one and then the other in her mouth, the muscles of his ass locked so tight he was pretty sure he was going to need some kind of intravenous medication to relax them again.
Ari closed his eyes as she rolled them in the hot cavern of her mouth and saw stars – tiny, white pinpricks of light bursting into supernovas as her tongue savoured them like they were the finest damn truffles in the land. His heart beat like it never had before, and there was a tightness in his chest that made him breathless and restless all at once. Lightning forked up his spine and sizzled along nerve endings.
She made him want to cuss and buck and grind. She made him want to split his skin. She made him want to give in to the desperate urge to let go.
Just when Ari felt certain he couldn’t contain his orgasm any longer, Kelsey’s tongue trekked from his balls to the crown again and sunk down. But she didn’t play around this time. She didn’t tease or do clever things with her tongue. She just sucked him – all the way down and all the way up, applying just the right amount of suction.
And as his climax rushed out from his groin and wrung through the muscles of his ass and thighs and belly, Ari couldn’t keep his hands still any longer – he had to touch. His fingers slid into her hair, glorying at the silky strands as he cupped her head, crying out as the first jet of come roared from his balls straight into the wet, willing heat of her mouth.
She moaned as her throat worked to hold him deep and swallow at the same time, the sound sinking hot talons into his ass. And then her hand closed tight around his balls and flaming arrows of lust let fly, finding their marks with pinpoint precision.
Ari’s body was one giant throb. His abdomen pulsed, his groin pulsed, the thick, fat vein at his neck pulsed. The mad flutter at his temples was loud in his ears. His entire body trembled to the hard drumbeat of his heart.
And then it was over, the climax ebbing and finally stealing away, leaving him spent and ravaged, his breathing heavy as Kelsey planted tiny kisses from the soft, vulnerable skin of his groin to the dip of his belly button, to the flat brown discs of his nipples.
Reaching his throat, she nuzzled her way along the ridge of his trachea before anchoring her bent elbow snug in his armpit and propping her head on her hand. She quirked an eyebrow. ‘Does he feel better now?’
Ari chuckled, his hand sliding up her back, under the golden strands of her hair to her shoulder. ‘I think it’s fair to say he feels fucking fantastic.’
She smiled. ‘Then my work here is done.’