Chapter 17
Alice
Isit up the moment the engine cuts off.
We’re not in the harbor anymore.
The moment Emily agreed to my plan, albeit very reluctantly, I boarded the boat and made my way down to the small quarters beneath the cockpit.
The space is barely big enough for a mounted cot beneath a slanted, metal roof, but I climbed into it anyway.
The motion sickness medication didn’t put me to sleep, but it did make me drowsy enough to lie down and contemplate my decisions.
Emily’s right. This is a bad idea. To be honest, it doesn’t even make a ton of sense. She could take me out here, do what I asked, and still be working for my father or Ilya. This doesn’t prove anything.
But for some delusional reason, I believe that this shared vulnerability is the one space we can see through each other’s deception. That when she’s teaching me to live, and I’m teaching her to be brave, we’re the most honest versions of ourselves.
The berth creaks under my weight as I shift, clutching the threadbare blanket covering me and listening to my fluttering heart.
My pulse is heavy and cruel, making my skin overheated and sensitive.
Beneath the anger, guilt, and shame, there’s a steady current of desire.
Logic dictates that I should be most concerned with Emily’s motivations, and if she is a threat to my safety.
But my heart, or some less reasonable organ, wants her to prove that she’s the one person who I can trust to both control me and set me free.
I take more deep breaths, not fighting the adrenaline but letting it consume me. I know she’s out there, waiting for me. The boat isn’t big. Soon enough, she’ll have her hands on me…
I have to duck my head when I swing my feet off the bed, feeling the bite of the frame through the thin mattress I was resting on.
Metal is cold under my toes, and my exposed skin prickles with goosebumps as I stand.
I tossed my tennis shoes under the cot when I laid down, and there’s no point in putting them back on.
This is the most reckless thing I’ve ever done.
And it doesn’t scare me one bit.
I climb up the short steps into the cockpit, placing a steadying hand on the railing when a rough wave hits the side of the boat. I didn’t expect the sea to be so unruly today, but I didn’t exactly check the conditions before I committed to this plan. At least I made sure a storm wasn’t coming.
The moon is waning but it’s still bright, the crescent hanging in the sky among thousands of stars. The lack of light pollution in this area means you can see the cloud of the Milky Way overhead, stretching across the sky like a beautiful scar.
I don’t see Emily, and this boat isn’t big enough to really hide on.
I pad toward the bow, my bare feet nearly silent against the floor as I step up onto the ledge, putting the railing at waist height.
Leaning over the metal bars, I stare into the ink-black water, watching the rippling reflection of the stars above.
It’s one endless loop, sea and sky unbroken in their reflection of each other.
I don’t hear her coming.
One moment I’m bent at the waist, watching Jupiter’s reflection bob on the ocean’s surface, and the next her body is behind mine.
Her hand is over my mouth instantaneously, muffling the scream that’s absorbed by her skin.
My heart trips over itself, my instincts demanding I move, fight, get free.
But she has me trapped between the railing and her body, warm and strong and soft as she wraps her free arm around my waist, pulling me tightly to her.
It has to mean something that I’m still not afraid.
“Careful, Pecas,” she whispers, dragging her mouth and teeth and tongue against the sensitive skin behind my ear. I feel like I’m being warmed from the inside out with her supporting me as I writhe under her grip. “Don’t want to fall overboard.”
She pushes my upper half further over the railing, her hips pinning mine securely. The hand that was over my mouth is now between my shoulder blades, shoving me toward the darkness of the sea so my ass lifts against her pelvis.
“You want to scream?” she asks, her tone not at all what I was expecting.
It’s not cruel or demanding, it’s gentle, inquisitive, caring.
Like we’re sitting on this same boat in the middle of the day, and she’s asking me about my childhood pets again.
“I told you once before, Alice. No one can hear you out here except me. Don’t be shy. ”
I wish I could scream. Instead, a desperate whimper escapes my lips as she slides her free hand up the front of my shirt, palming one of my breasts in her hand.
“What do you say if you want to stop?” She asks, holding her body still, waiting to give me more. I turn my head over my shoulder to witness her watching me, her face almost tinted blue in the moonlight. She doesn’t look afraid. She looks like she…
“Медуза,” I reply. It’s an admission of my deception and hers.
Her eyes flash, and quicker than I thought possible, she wraps my hair around her hand and pulls me upright, so I’m pressed against her chest again.
I rock against her, this time not in struggle, but chasing the carnal need to be near her, to have her inside me, fucking me, giving and taking everything she wants and needs.
“It’s so strange, Pecas,” she mutters into my neck, her hand travelling down my stomach to dip under the waistband of my jeans. “The way you pronounce that, it sounds like medusa. Do you know what the Spanish word for jellyfish is?”
Even if I had the capacity for conscious thought, I wouldn’t know what to say. She’s telling me I could have lied. There was a believable excuse for my slip up, and I didn’t even know it existed.
One-handed, she undoes the button of my jeans and drags the zipper down.
“Such a coincidence, the tongues of our father’s homelands would share this word.”
She slides her hand beneath my underwear, dragging her fingers against my clit and to my entrance. I’m absolutely soaked, evidenced by the lewd noises created when she cups my pussy and barely presses her middle finger inside me.
She’s using our lies and deception to fuel the tension between us, to feed this lust and need, and it’s working.
“So wet for me, pretty girl,” she murmurs, pulling my hair even harder so my head snaps back against her shoulder as she fucks me deeper.
It’s already too much. The feeling of her body against mine, supporting me while I melt around her like wax near a flame. Her ragged breaths as she gets turned on just by touching me. The way she presses the heel of her hand against my clit each time she pumps into me.
“I’m gonna…” I choke out, the words cutting off as she fucks me faster, forcing me closer and closer to the edge of my orgasm.
“Over and over, Pecas,” she swears, her teeth nipping at the skin of my neck. “I’m going to teach you all the ways your body wants to be used. And I won’t stop until you physically can’t take any more, and maybe not even then. Now come for me.”
Like her command was all I needed, the orgasm rips through me, my pussy clenching on her fingers as every muscle in my body contracts. I don’t muffle my cries, letting the darkness surrounding us consume every wave of pleasure.
The orgasm hasn’t even completely ebbed before she pulls her fingers out of me and holds them to my lips.
“Open.”
For a moment I hesitate, the euphoria clearing and self-doubt stirring. When I don’t respond quickly enough, she grips my chin and forces my mouth open.
“Just like that,” she praises tenderly, even though I didn’t do what she asked.
She pauses, giving me a minute to safe out, but that is the absolute last thing on my mind.
Before I met Emily, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I had recognized that I was turned on.
But even including all the times since she started teaching me what it feels like to want and be wanted, nothing has been so explicitly erotic as taking her fingers into my mouth and tasting my own pleasure on her skin.
When her fingers are clean, and her pupils are blown to the size of saucers, Emily manipulates my body so my back is against the railing. And I let her, because it feels so good to have her hands on me, to be able to trust her, even though I shouldn’t.
“On the floor,” she commands, and my body follows her direction with ease. I preen internally when she smiles as my ass hits the ground, my jeans shucked low across my hips so the metal of the railing bites coldly into my lower back.
All the soft afterglow, the hazy post-orgasmic peace, disappears immediately when she pulls a length of rope from where it’s tucked into the back of her pants.
“Emily…” I say cautiously as she kneels in front of me, brushing my hair behind my ears so she can see my face.
“I need you restrained, Pecas,” she coos, taking one of my hands in hers and gently stroking my wrist, right where I can imagine that rope. “So you can’t pull away when I show you how good I can make you feel.”
It feels impossible to be this turned on again, but my nipples are tight and sensitive against the fabric of my tank top, and all the remnants of drowsiness from the medication are gone.
Emily wraps the rope in loose, intricate loops around my wrist, the nylon tightening against my skin when she pulls my arm up over my head.
“Relax your arms, and it will loosen,” she instructs, looking down and winking at me as she ties the other end of the rope to the top bar of the railing. Looking this sexy while having complete control over my body should be a criminal offense. “Pull against it, and it will tighten.”
“Is it dangerous?” I ask, my question earnest even though my tone is soaked in lust. Emily slips her hand into her back pocket and pulls out what look like medical shears.