Chapter Fourteen
Cillian
Never have I wanted to get someone underneath me more.
Or pinned against a palm tree. I was so close to dragging Jules into the jungle, my heart’s still pumping with the idea of it.
Seán saw how close I was to losing it when he intervened.
He’s walking me towards the water, the group left behind in the treeline.
Jules is bracketed by Mary and Charles, Mathieu trying to reassure him.
His glare prickles hot against the back of my neck.
Seán clears his throat.
“Something to say?” I ask.
“Nothing in particular. Just”—Seán makes a broad gesture to our surroundings—“you know.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I thought you were straight.”
“I am.”
He lets it sit with me. I shrug. “We were fighting.”
Seán scoffs. “Maybe to everyone else you looked pissed, but I’ve seen you angry. It certainly doesn’t look like that.”
We reach the water. It’s warm against my feet, barely a wave disturbing the surface. The sky is clear, not a cloud in sight, and there’s no breeze. Jules picked the best day for it, and it’s like he read my mind. I had planned to bring it up with Seán today.
“Is there something in particular you want to say?” I ask.
Seán has never had much to say about my dating life.
I’ve been booted out of half a dozen relationships and come crawling back to his couch many times, but he’s never asked for details.
The only time he mentioned anything was when we were doing a mountaineering course in France.
The woman in charge—Camelia—controlled us all like we were soldiers in the army.
Seán warned me what would happen if I did my usual routine of getting into a relationship and fucking it all up once we hit the sheets.
Ah.
“I’m not going to sleep with him and”—I mimic his broad gesture—“piss him off while we’re trapped on an island together.”
“Very kind of you. That’s much better than sleeping with him and pissing him off in other circumstances.”
“You know what I mean.”
“He’s my friend,” Seán says. “I’m not sure any of them will want to see my face again after this, and I can only imagine that my start-up is done for…” His shoulders slump. My irritation softens.
“It was a freak weather event, Seán. And I know everyone’s looking a little scruffy, but we’re all okay.
” Except Seán, whose shoulder is still unusable, and Mary, who’s got more wrong with her ankle than a sprain.
Jules mentioned Mathieu losing weight, but Jules has dropped the most of anyone.
“Given the circumstances,” I add. We could have had fatalities.
Seán picks at his sling. “Even if we get back and it’s ruled an accident, I’m not sure if this is what I want to do with my life.
Every course we took was about being responsible for people’s safety, and I thought I understood what that meant.
But now I really get it. It’s more pressure than I realised. ”
“Seán, these trips are meant to be about making sure nobody goes overboard and teaching them how to snorkel. We’re not survivalists.
But yes, I agree, I didn’t realise the true weight of our responsibility until this trip either.
” It’s heavy and stifling and makes it hard to breathe.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have someone who knows that responsibility doing trips?
Better than someone who never learned that lesson.
You can think about it all later, once we’re rescued.
I’m sure your dad will have good advice. ”
I look behind me.
“I’m going to go before Jules slips away from Mary.” I double-check the straps on my life jacket. I hate swimming in them, but it will help preserve my energy. Which, if there’s a current that pulls me away from shore, I’m going to need. I know there’s risk to this, but I’m strong.
“You know the only reason I’m letting you go instead of me is—”
“Even if your shoulder was in good shape, I wouldn’t let you,” I reply. “No more than I’d let Jules make that swim.”
“I’m in charge,” Seán points out.
Our eyes meet.
“I’m in charge of safety,” I say.
“You’re so full of it sometimes.”
“It’s what you hired me for.”
“You can be so stubborn.” Seán shakes his head. “Be careful, alright?”
“Of course.”
I step into the water. “See you in five.”
The beach slopes gently down until I’m past my depth, and then I’m swimming. I pace myself, keeping a close eye on my progress. There’s a slight, constant drag to one side, but I can compensate for it.
Roughly half a kilometre later, I’m at the yacht, my shoulders burning.
The water is clear enough that I can see I was right in my guess. The yacht is lodged into a shelf. I circle. The hull is cracked open. There’s no chance it’ll ever float again. Since it made it through a few days of a storm, I’m guessing—hoping—that it’s stable.
“If you boost me—”
I yelp and jerk around in a slosh of water. Floating an arm’s length away is Jules. Jules. “You cannot be serious,” I growl.
Never has a man looked less repentant.
He turns his attention to the yacht. “Or we can just climb up from the front. Do you think our weight might destabilise it if we do that, Mr Safety Expert?”
Jules swims past me. I follow him, swimming, then climbing up the slick boards, holding the side rail for balance. There’s a tilt to the yacht; only a third of the deck is dry. Jules walks around the cabin, getting to the top part—the back end of the yacht—that is sticking up.
He has one of the life jackets on. His mop of blond hair is stuck to his forehead and temples. He turns that unrepentant look on me as I catch up with him. “We had an agreement,” Jules reminds me.
I catch his arm, get a firm hold of his jaw, and push him with my body into the cabin wall. I bring my mouth down on his, kissing him hard.
Jules gasps in surprise. Hands shoot up to clutch my sides, fingers curling into my wet shirt. I bend my neck to get the angle I want and get my tongue into his mouth.
Jules trembles, the surprised tension sinking out of him.
He goes pliant in my arms. He tips back his head to better meet my mouth, murmurs something incomprehensible, and kisses me back.
The life jackets act as an infuriating barrier, and I rip through the straps on Jules’s first, then mine, without ever breaking the kiss.
I drop them and press flush against him, grinding my cock into his abdomen. I shove my thigh between his legs. He’s hard too.
When his hands start shaking, I break the kiss, letting him gasp in ragged breaths.
“Such a shorty,” I mutter as I rub against him. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with you?” Seizing him by the hips, I turn him around, crowding him against the wall again, humping him through our shorts. Jules groans as if he’s the one rubbing his cock against an ass.
“Do we need a stepladder?” I trail rough, nipping kisses across his neck. “How am I going to get my cock into you otherwise?”
Jules shudders.
His jaw is in my hand again, and I’m turning him, leaning in, taking his mouth in another punishing kiss.
“Ow.”
The word shocks straight through me. I jerk back, letting go of Jules as if he’s the live wire causing the harm. He’s leaning against the wall with his back to me, torso heaving, head down-turned, rubbing his neck with trembling fingers.
The comedown happens disastrously fast. Self-disgust squashes down my sizzling arousal with enough force to leave me winded.
“Did I hurt your neck?” I reach out but catch myself just before touching him.
Of course I hurt his fucking neck. I manhandled and shoved him against the wall, and he’s injured.
I am such a fucking loser. I should be locked up.
“Is there any heat?” My voice comes out rough. “Do you mind if I check?”
“Hm? What? Oh, no.” Jules turns a murky gaze my way. His pupils are blown out. He looks like he did that night with Mathieu in the club hallway, except I know for a fact he’s not drunk. And his body’s all…slack. Expression soft and expectant.
I loathe myself for the way my cock jerks in response.
Right about now is usually when my girlfriends become exes.
I also loathe myself for the way my gaze travels down Jules’s body, finding the outline of his hard cock obvious in his wet shorts.
When I drag my gaze back up, he’s looking at his palm.
It’s red.
My arousal vanishes.
“Let me see.” I catch his wrist and tilt his hand to the sunlight. There’s a gash in the meaty part of his thumb.
“I grabbed the edge of the window frame. I didn’t realise it was sharp,” Jules explains. He hisses when I prod around it. It doesn’t look deep. I check the sharp piece of plastic and sigh in relief to find it sticking out of the frame only a centimetre.
“It looks shallow. Let me see if the first aid kit is still here. Put your life jacket back on. You shouldn’t take it off when we’re out here.” I briskly retrieve it from the ground and guide Jules back into it.
The murkiness fades from his gaze. “Don’t give out to me when you are the one who took them off.”
“Well.” There’s no reasonable reply for that. “Say no next time.”
Before Jules can give me a rightful rebuttal, I open the door to the main cabin.
I’m relieved to see only about a foot of it is submerged.
However, almost everything is in that one foot of water.
The bright red med kit is nestled in its case on the wall.
The glass front is a spiderweb of cracks, but the canvas bag, as I pull it out, is in excellent shape.
Even if it got a dousing in water, everything inside is in plastic wrap anyway.
The yacht doesn’t shift under our combined weight, and by the time I have Jules’s hand cleaned and wrapped, I think that it’s stable. I put my life jacket on anyway to be safe.
I climb up and look in from the top. The cockpit is crushed. I couldn’t see that from the shore. The equipment is either in pieces or gone. The radio is one of the things missing. The emergency beacon is crushed inside its bracket. It never deployed.
“There’s still a chance that the emergency satellite phone is here somewhere,” I call down to Jules. “It’ll be in a bright orange case, and it’s kept in the…the… Give me a second to remember.” I should know this off the top of my head.
“Under the seats in the cabin,” Jules calls back. “I was paying attention to Seán’s safety brief. Who should I call?” He steps out onto the deck, a grey phone already in hand. “The coast guard or just the emergency line? I think emergency line.”
Before I can get a word in, Jules has the device against his ear.
“Hello?” Jules says. “Can I get an English speaker?”
I jump down.
In hindsight, I’m incredibly stupid. I should have climbed down step by step and settled myself onto the decking, soft as a feather. My landing makes the decking bounce. The decking that is heavily tilted one way and slippery.
Jules is in the middle of taking a step, coming towards me.
The deck bounces under his foot. He slips.
I lunge for him. Jules throws out a hand to break his fall, while the one with the phone shoots up into the air. The jolt of hitting the deck knocks it from his hand. The satellite phone strikes the exposed steel edge of the missing winch mount. It shatters.