Chapter Eleven #3
“It’s perhaps my most recurring nightmare,” Phylis said slowly, not sure why now and why he was the right person to say this to, but utterly sure that he was. “An anchor, around my ankles. Keeping me in one place.”
“One place might be nice. If it was with the right person.”
Heat billowed across her shoulders and up her neck as Phylis refused to look at the man who had spoken. “Perhaps. But I’ll never know. I told you before, and I meant it—I’m married to the sea. I don’t think I could ever settle in a life on shore.”
Silence fell between them, and she had expected it to prickle, but somehow, it was nice. Pleasant. Right, that they rowed gently and precisely in tune, their bodies responding to shifting changes in pace. As though this were…meant to be.
“You know,” Michael said happily as they started to row back toward the dock that was currently a speck in the distance, “I think I could get used to this.”
Phylis grinned. “What, rowing? Tell me that tomorrow after your shoulders have seized up.”
“No, not rowing—sailing. Ocean dwelling,” he said happily, his cheeks red with the effort and his brow red from the sun. “It’s just… I don’t know. Being out here, being a part of nature, part of the world… It’s like I’ve never known myself to exist in this way.”
Now he was sounding a little sun-mazed. “‘Exist in this way’?”
“For someone else.”
Phylis inhaled sharply as Michael’s warm gaze met hers. “What—What do you mean?”
“Well…” said Michael placidly as he pulled back on the oar as though had been born to it.
“All my life, I’ve been part of a family and part of London Society—or Bath, or Brighton on the rare occasion we’re there…
and I haven’t been necessary. I’ve never been needed; I’ve never contributed. Do you know?”
In all honestly, she wasn’t sure if she did know. “But your family—I mean, your mother and sister seem very fond of you.”
“Oh. Fond.” Michael shrugged as he pulled his oar back, the simple splash of the movement familiar and comforting to Phylis’s ear. “Yes, fond. Inordinately fond. But they haven’t… I mean, I haven’t mattered. I haven’t done anything that anyone required of me because there wasn’t anything to do.”
Phylis was just about following this. Truth be told, it had been a long time since she had rowed for such a period of time, and she was starting to wonder if her shoulders would be complaining in the morning.
Her companion sighed as the dock came closer and closer. “I’m not explaining this well. Look, here are the two of us, you and me.”
Warning signals were blaring in Phylis’s mind, but she could not think what on earth they were trying to warn her about. “Yes?”
“And we’re working together. Look.” Michael halted his rowing just for one pull, and Phylis lurched as the ship twisted, her oar the only one moving the boat for one moment before he dipped his oar back into the water, and they continued their journey back to the docks. “Without you, I can’t get anywhere.”
“Yes,” said Phylis slowly, trying not to think about the way her pulse had skipped a beat at his words. “But without you, I can’t…”
It was a mistake to turn. A mistake to look at him this close, their shoulders pressed together, his lips mere inches from her own.
It was a mistake to look deep into those blue eyes and see not just the ocean, but a whole world of Michael that she wanted to know. Needed to know. Needed, in a way that Phylis had never quite been able to understand.
She swallowed. Oh, you scuttlebutt.
“And I’m going to kiss you now,” said Michael quietly, his arms unmoving.
So were hers. Phylis hadn’t even noticed she’d stopped rowing. “You are?”
He nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. “Oh, yes, I am.”
It was exactly how she had imagined it, and yet so much more. The salt on his lips, the pressure of them, the way he tilted her head with a hand and Phylis whimpered at the intensity of the pleasure that poured through her.
The heat, the salt, the aching need between her thighs, the way his tongue slowly slid across the crease of her lips silently begging for entrance—and who was she to deny him, this man who had surprised her at every turn?
Phylis knew she was losing herself, melting into this man, this storm that had blown into her life and showed no signs of stopping, and it was all she could do not to mewl with elation as bliss poured through her body and his tongue tangled with her own.
And then it was over.
And the sun was too bright, and her oar almost slipped through Phylis’s fingers as she blinked at the man, who was beaming.
“I’ve wanted to do that,” Michael murmured, his voice hardly audible over the growing volume of the docks as the tide brought them closer, “for a long, long time.”
Phylis swallowed and knew she should not say the words she was about to say. “And I’ve wanted you to.”
“Then why the devil haven’t you let me?” came his murmured question.
And she smiled, and knew she was in trouble, and knew that when the day came for the Dreamer to take her away from this man, she would cry and cry. “Because you never tried.”