Chapter Five #2
“This isn’t a tampered regulator. These are people with rifles.”
“I noticed. I was there.” I set my plate down. “You want to bench me.”
“I want to keep you alive.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.” I pushed a breath out.
The old heat was climbing my throat, the same heat I’d felt every time someone with authority told me to step back from my own work for my own good.
“I didn’t spend every dollar I have to find that wreck and then give it to someone else because it got dangerous.
Dangerous is the whole point. If it weren’t dangerous, some university lab would’ve found it a decade ago. ”
His jaw tightened. The muscle at his temple jumped.
“I’m going back on the water tomorrow,” I said. “You can come with me or you can watch me go alone. But I’m going.”
We stared at each other across the remains of dinner. The creek moved beneath us. A night heron called from somewhere in the marsh, sharp and solitary.
He didn’t answer. He picked up his plate and took it inside, and I heard water running in the kitchen. I’d pushed too hard, or he had, or we’d both been right and that was the problem with two stubborn people who cared about the same thing from different angles.
I cleaned the grill. Scraped the grate, closed the vents, covered it. A five-minute task that gave me ten minutes of not having to figure out what I was feeling.
I was feeling too much. That was the thing.
HE WAS ON THE DOCK when I came back. Leaning against the railing, facing the creek, the marsh stretching dark and silver under a moon two days past full. The air was thick with heat that hadn’t broken, salt and honeysuckle and the green-mud smell of the tidal flats at low tide.
I walked up behind him and put my hand flat on his back. He went still under my palm, the muscles taut, and I felt him exhale.
“I shouldn’t have said you were benching me,” I said.
“I’m sorry I tried to.”
“You were scared.”
He turned. In the moonlight his face was planes and shadow, and he looked at me and held.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
The honesty of it undid me. This man who’d stood between me and rifles without flinching, telling me he’d been afraid. Not of them. Of losing me.
I kissed him.
Gentle and fierce and grateful, all of it at once, everything the day had put in me. The triumph of the wreck, the terror of the guns, the fight, the shrimp on the grill, his face when he’d said yeah, I was. I pressed him back against the railing and kissed him until we were both breathing hard.
“Sit down,” I said.
He looked at me. The moonlight caught the question in his expression.
“On the dock. Sit.”
He sat. Back against the railing post, legs stretched out on the planking. I straddled his lap and his hands went to my hips, steadying, and I took his face in both hands and kissed him again.
“My turn,” I said against his mouth. “Tonight, I lead.”
His grip tightened on my hips. “Yes, ma’am.”
I pulled his shirt over his head and ran my hands down his chest. The scars under my fingers, the dense muscle, the heat of him in the night air.
I kissed the scars at his collarbone because they were part of him and I wanted every part.
His breath hitched. I kissed lower, his sternum, the flat plane of his stomach, and his head tipped back to the post.
“Marley.” Rough. A warning or an invitation, and I wanted both.
I freed his cock from his shorts and stroked him, my other hand braced on his shoulder. He was hard and thick in my grip, and the sound he made when I tightened my fist went straight through me. I shifted down, knees on the planking, and took him in my mouth.
The wood was rough under my knees and I didn’t care.
I took him deep, tongue flat on the underside, and his hips flexed up.
His fingers slid into my hair, gripping without guiding.
I set the pace. Slow, then faster, then slow again, learning the rhythm that made his breathing ragged and his fists clench at his sides.
“Fuck.” His voice cracked. “Your mouth. I can’t—”
I pulled off. Looked up at him. He was wrecked above me, chest heaving, eyes dark, every line of his body taut with the effort of holding still.
“Don’t move,” I said.
I stood and pulled my tank top off, unclipped my bikini top, stepped out of my shorts. The night air hit bare skin, salt-heavy and close, and the moonlight turned the water behind me to beaten silver. I stood on that dock and let him look at me.
“You’re—” He swallowed. Couldn’t finish.
“I know.” I started to drop back over him, but his hands caught my hips.
“Not yet.” His voice was low, rough. “My turn first.”
He pulled me toward him and down, guiding me to sit on the dock’s edge, my back against the railing post he’d been leaning on. The planking was warm under me, sun-soaked wood still holding the day’s heat. He knelt between my legs and looked up at me with an expression that made my pulse stutter.
“You said you lead tonight.” His thumbs traced unhurried circles on my inner thighs, pushing them wider. “Lead. Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth.” My voice came out raw. “Now.”
He bent his head and pressed his lips to my inner thigh, stubble dragging on sensitive skin. Kissed higher, his breath hot, taking his time, and I fisted his hair and pulled him where I needed him.
He gave me exactly what I asked for. His tongue flat on my clit, firm and deliberate, and my head dropped back against the post. The stars blurred above me. He slid two fingers inside me and curled, and my hips bucked off the dock.
“Fuck—right there—”
He stayed there. Focused, relentless, reading every shift and sound the way he read a current.
His fingers worked a rhythm inside me while his tongue circled my clit, and the orgasm built fast, pulled tight from everywhere at once.
I came with my thighs shaking on either side of his head and the marsh ringing with the sound I made, loud and broken and mine.
He gentled but didn’t pull away. His tongue softened, eased me down, his free hand steady on my hip. I was still trembling when he kissed the crease of my thigh, my stomach, the hollow below my ribs. He looked up.
“Come here,” I breathed.
I pulled him up and kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth, and the intimacy of it sent heat rolling through me all over again.
I pushed on his chest until he was back against the opposite post, sat himself down, and I straddled his lap.
My knees hit the planking on either side of his hips, and a cleat caught my shin. “Ow. Shit. Hold on.”
He laughed. A real laugh, low and startled, that shook through him and into me. “Smooth.”
“Shut up.” I shifted my knee off the cleat, bracing on his shoulders, and we were both laughing, my forehead pressed to his, his arms around me, the absurdity of trying to do this on a dock that had clearly been designed without any of this in mind.
“We could go inside,” he offered.
“We could not.” I settled into his lap, his cock between us, and rolled my hips. The laughter died in his throat, replaced by a groan that resonated in my chest.
I reached down and guided him inside me. The fullness pulled a sound from me that carried over the water. I didn’t muffle it. We were outside, the marsh was dark, the only witnesses were the frogs and the tide, and I did not care.
I rode him. Slow at first, finding the angle, my hands on his shoulders, his palms gripping my hips.
The dock creaked beneath us with each roll of my body.
Stars above. Salt air on my skin. The current moving under the pilings, and the heat of him inside me, and I set every pace because tonight I was taking what I wanted.
“You feel incredible.” His voice had gone to gravel. His thumbs dug into my hipbones. “Marley—”
He shifted beneath me, rolling his hips up at an angle that hit deep, and the pleasure spiked so hard my vision blurred.
I’d been leading. Setting every pace. Holding the reins because that was what I did — controlled the dive, controlled the timeline, controlled how close anyone got.
But his hips kept their rhythm and his body met mine.
I felt the moment my grip on the pace started slipping, the rhythm turning ragged, my breath coming apart.
The old reflex said hold on, stay in charge, don’t let go —
I let go.
I dropped my forehead to his and stopped trying to drive.
Let my body follow his instead. Let him set the angle, the depth, the tempo, his hips rolling up into me while I trembled above him.
The surrender terrified me and the terror broke something loose and what flooded through was so much bigger than control had ever been.
“I’ve got you,” he said against my mouth. Low. Certain. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
I shattered. My whole body clenching around him, my nails biting into his shoulders, a cry torn out of me that I couldn’t shape into words. The orgasm rolled through me in waves that left me gasping, and I let it take me, let him hold me through it, let myself be held.
He didn’t stop. His rhythm slowed, softened, rebuilding while I was still shaking. His lips found my breast, tongue circling my nipple, teeth grazing, and the next one built on the back of the first — slower, deeper, pulling from somewhere underneath my ribs.
“Stay with me.” His breath warm on my skin. “Right here. Don’t close your eyes.”
I kept them open. Watched his face while the next one built, and the intimacy of that, his eyes holding mine with nowhere to hide, was more than I could hold.
I came apart with my face buried in his neck, his arms tight around me, his voice low in my ear saying my name.
The pleasure broke through every wall I had left and I let it. I let it.
I cupped his jaw. Kissed him, tasting salt and both of us.
“Your turn.” I rolled my hips and tightened around him. “Come for me.”