Chapter 2 — First Courtesy
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Elias was already gone when she woke. The dent of him was still warm. On the locker he had left a note in the block print he used for log entries: DAWN WATCH. GREEN AT FIRST LIGHT. DIDN'T WANT TO WAKE YOU. LOVE.
The love was real. That was the problem.
Mara dressed in yesterday's yellow and nothing under it.
The cotton remembered her shape. She stood in the companionway long enough to hear the boat: engine, water, a pan in the galley, her husband somewhere above talking to a horizon that talked back in light.
No one in the passage. The unlocked hatch was forward and down, the first mate's, but the light under the chart-room door was the one that pulled.
She opened it without knocking.
Cole had a parallel ruler in one hand and a pencil in the other and the look of a man who had not expected company and was not going to pretend otherwise.
The chart table took most of the little room.
The door behind her did not latch unless you made it.
She left it half-open on purpose. Air moved.
The corridor stayed empty and could stop being empty at any second.
"You're up early, Mrs. Harlan."
"Mara."
He set the pencil down. "Mara."
She crossed the two steps the room allowed and took his wrist and put his hand on her, high on the inside of her thigh, then higher, under the dress, onto bare wet heat. No speech. His palm was callused. He made a sound that was almost a laugh and not kind.
"All right," she said.
He turned her by the hips and bent her over the table in one motion, as if she were a hatch that needed dogging.
Charts under her cheek, the paper cool, a compass rose against her mouth.
He rucked the dress to her waist. For a second he only looked.
She felt that look the way she had felt it on deck, except now there was nothing between it and her.
"Christ." His thumb opened her. "You've been like this."
"Yes."
He pushed two fingers into her, slow, testing, then not slow. She bit the chart. The pencil rolled and clicked against a mug. Cole put his other hand over her mouth, not gentle, and leaned down until his mouth was at her ear.
"Door's open," he said. "You wanted that. You make a noise he can hear from the wheel, I stop. You understand me?"
She nodded against his palm. He smelled like pencil lead and sleep and the metallic ghost of the rail. When he took his fingers out they shone. He wiped them on the inside of her dress like he was marking inventory.
Belt. Zip. The blunt heat of him against her, not asking.
He pushed in on one long stroke that dragged a sound out of her he had to catch with his hand.
She was soaked and still it was a lot; he bottomed against her and stayed there, breathing through his teeth, giving her the second she needed and not a second more.
Then he fucked her.
Not the sweet startled way Elias did it when she woke him.
Not a conversation. Cole held her down by the mouth and the back of the neck and used her in short hard drives that made the table hop and the mug walk toward the fiddle rail.
The boat rolled and put her onto him deeper and he grunted like that had been the point.
Paper wrinkled under her hip. Ink smeared.
She drooled into the crease of his palm and he did not take the hand away.
Footsteps in the passage. Both of them went still with him buried in her.
The footsteps passed the half-open door, paused—Nia's voice, faint, asking the empty companionway if anyone had seen the spare kettle—and went on toward the galley.
Cole's laugh was silent against her spine.
He started moving again before the footsteps had died, meaner for the interruption, and Mara came on the table with his hand sealing her mouth and her eyes wet and a sound that never made it out of her throat.
He didn't stop.
He hooked an arm under her hips and hauled her back onto him and kept the pace through the clench, talking now, low, filthy, almost conversational. "That's what you came down here for. Say it." He lifted the hand an inch.
"Yes."
"Louder than that and I gag you with my belt. Quieter." He put the hand back. "You're going to walk up to him with my come in you and tell him you needed air. That's the deal. That's courtesy."
She nodded. He drove in hard enough to lift her onto her toes. The smear on the chart was hers, a dark comma across a sounding. Her dress was rucked and already marked where his wet fingers had been. The door stood open on the lit passage like a dare.
Cole's rhythm broke. He pulled out, dragged the head of his cock up the cleft of her ass, then shoved back into her cunt and came with his mouth open against her shoulder, a harsh punched breath, filling her in hot pulses she could feel.
He stayed in her through it, hand still on her mouth, the other bruising her hip against the table edge.
When he finally eased out, it ran down her thigh in a thick line and spotted the deck plate between her feet.
He used the hem of her dress to wipe himself. Then he used it on her, two lazy passes that did not clean so much as spread. He dropped the fabric. He zipped.
Mara stayed bent a moment longer, cheek on the ruined chart, pulse in her teeth again.
When she stood, her knees had the new-colt give of a woman who had been properly used.
The yellow cotton clung to the wet patch at the small of her back and the darker one between her legs. She smoothed it once. It did nothing.
Cole was already picking up the pencil. He looked at the smear across the sounding and left it.
"You going to be a problem?" he asked.
"No."
"Good. Go be air." He glanced at her mouth, at the red his hand had made. "And Mara. Next time you come through a door like that, you get on your knees first. I like to start a watch clean."
She almost laughed. It came out as breath. "Is that a rule?"
"It is now."
She stepped into the passage. The boat rolled, friendly. From the galley, bacon. From above, Elias's voice lifting on a story about dolphins, already, at this hour, as if the world had arranged itself for him.
Mara climbed to the wheelhouse with come cooling on her thigh and the taste of paper in her mouth.
He was where he always was. Cap shoved back. One button too far. The sea in his face like a lover who had shown up on time.
"There you are. I was going to fetch you. Look—" He pointed with his whole arm, delighted. Off the bow a pod was running the wake, pale sides flashing. "Lucky girl. They only do that when she's in a good mood. Come here. You have to see the way they cut."
She came. He pulled her in against his side with the clean affection of a man who had missed her for an hour and thought an hour was the longest hunger on the boat. He kissed her hair. He did not kiss her mouth. He did not look down.
"You're warm," he said. "See? I told you the morning would put color on you."
"You told me."
"Feel that." He took her hand and put it on the wheel beside his, the wood humming. "She's singing. I could do this until I died. I could do this after." He laughed at himself, easy, unashamed. "Don't tell the men I talk like that. They already think I married a body of water."
"You did," Mara said.
He squeezed her, proud of the joke he thought they were sharing, and pointed again as a dolphin broke and slapped down.
"My lucky girl," he said, and this time he did mean her, in the vague generous way he meant weather and coffee and a true heading.
His other hand rested at her waist, an inch above the bruise Cole's fingers had already started to map on her hip.
He did not notice the heat coming off her.
He did not notice the dark spot blooming through yellow cotton where she was still dripping into the dress.
Mara watched the dolphins because he wanted her to. They were beautiful. The sea was beautiful. Her husband was beautiful in the particular way of men who have never had to look back.
"I needed air," she said.
"That's my girl. Always did have sense." He let her go to mark something on a scrap of paper. "Coffee's in the thermos if Nia hasn't stolen it. We'll have a long easy day if this wind holds. I want you on deck for the light. Wear that dress. It makes the whole boat look like a holiday."
"I'll wear it."
She went down before the next kiss could miss her cheek.
On the working deck the day had started without her.
Tate was washing down. Ben had a cigarette behind his ear and a look that bounced off her and then came back, brief, smelling something he could not name.
Lila saw the walk before she saw the dress: that careful, opened gait.
Lila's glance was a file note. She said nothing.
Nia, in the galley hatch, held out a mug. "You look like you fell in."
"Chart room," Mara said.
Nia's eyebrows went up and then down, a woman revising a menu. "Sit if you want. Or don't."
Mara did not sit. She took the coffee forward and drank it standing at the rail where she had stood yesterday, the same yellow, the same wind, everything under the dress different. The wet patch dried in the salt air and stayed visible anyway, a watermark. She left it.
An hour later she heard them through the engine-room grate.
Ruiz first, the cheerful wrench of his voice. "You're late on the log."
Cole, flat: "Busy."
A pause that had weight.
"The wife?"
Two words, and the look that went with them even from where she stood, even without seeing his face.
"She's available."
Ruiz laughed once, not loud. A tool rang against steel. "Does he know?"
"He knows the heading."
"That's a no."
"That's a no that won't become a yes. You want a turn, you wait until he's on the wheel and you don't leave marks he can see from the bow. She's not stupid. Neither are you."
Another pause. Ruiz, milder: "She come to you?"
"She put my hand on it." Cole's voice had the same unhurried mean it had had over the table. "Door was open. She'll come again. Pass it how you want. I'm not writing a memo."
"Christ." Fond, already. "Captain's courtesy."
"Don't call it that where he can hear you being clever."
"Wouldn't dream." The wrench again. "When?"
"You figure it out. She's in the yellow. She's not wearing anything under it. You can see that from here."
Mara, at the rail, did not turn around. Heat went through her in a slow dirty roll that had nothing to do with sun. Available. A word like a hatch undogged. She put her hand on the rail and felt the bruise answer on her hip, deep and good.
Above, Elias laughed at something the water had done.
She stayed where she was and let the dress do what thin cotton does when a whole boat has been told the truth.
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First rule is down: knees first next time. Ruiz has the word. Elias has the dolphins.