All Hands Below (3 page)

“See you tomorrow, then. Oh, and Evangeline?” Maisy peered at her from her open door. “Thanks for being my friend. Be careful, and don’t hop into bed with any strangers tonight. Wait till tomorrow.”

Evangeline’s cheeks warmed. “Get your outrageous self into your stateroom!” She shooed the other woman inside.

With a shake of her head, Evangeline strolled off on her merry way, just as the upbeat holiday bells of
All I Want For Christmas Is You
began clanging joyfully through the ship’s PA system.

High on the excitement of the holidays and a Christmas hope that her wishes for the New Year would come true, she hummed and broke out in a shuffle, slide, and strut. Shaking her ass and snapping her fingers, she danced her way down the corridor in her high heels.

“Well, well, well,” drawled a deep voice from the depths of the interior hall. It slid down her back, warm as butterscotch. “We meet again.”

Evangeline jerked to a standstill, then spun around.

The engineer’s appearance in regular clothes made breathing downright difficult all of a sudden. His physique dazzled in black pleated twill slacks and a short-sleeved cotton shirt with black, cobalt blue, and bottle green geometric patterns that clung to granite-packed shoulders.

Three top buttons were left carelessly undone and the golden skin showing hinted at a smooth-shaven chest.

He stopped in front of her, a true work of man-art. Crisp, intelligent eyes lasered down at her with interest, and her fingers itched to glide through the satin gleam of his hair.

“Nice to see you enjoying yourself. How are you?”

“Since we met thirty minutes ago? Fine,” she fluttered out.

His gaze drifted along her body with unhindered appreciation. “Good.”

Perspiration sprouted along her forehead.

He tucked his lower lip between his white teeth and studied her from beneath an inky sweep of lashes. “Are you busy?”

Yes, I am. Standing around drooling all over you.

“Are you?” she countered.

He smiled in a sure and lazy way, as if he knew she wanted to give him the most wet and wicked fuck of his life. Pure lady lust creamed her already damp panties.

“Never too busy for you.” He glanced at his watch. “Could I talk you into a private bridge tour? I could introduce you to the captain.”

A private bridge tour?
A “private” tour had landed her in the bowels of the ship’s engine room.

A private bridge tour. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more and should be
last
on her to-do list with him. But she couldn’t help it. She loved the excitement of being around his charismatic, stud-muffiny self.

“The captain?” she asked, stalling for time before she walked away from him. Again.

“Yes, the captain. The guy who drives this boat. So,” those insanely long lashes of his flickered, “how about it?”

“How about
‘no.’
I have had enough private tours of the Sea Sapphire, thank you very much.”

He laughed, and the smile in his eyes kindled to a deeper glow. “I’ll be seeing you very soon then, Evangeline…” He lifted a tantalizing brow.

“Spencer,” she said, prompted by his interest in her last name, but not prepared to put stock in it. “And what did you say your name was?” she asked him pertly.

“Liam Rossi, at your service, pretty one.”

“Well, Liam Rossi-at-your-service.” She stepped closer and whispered in his ear, “You’ll be seeing me again. But not if I see you first.”

Evangeline gave him wide berth as she strode off in the opposite direction, and smiled when his masculine chuckle trailed after her down the corridor.

****

Wreathed in a swirl of fog left by late night rains, Evangeline couldn’t make out the ocean beyond the rail.

A drizzle of rain misted across her shoulders and dampened the now deserted decks. Passengers had taken refuge in the ship’s nightclubs or casinos, or turned in for the night. Everyone but her.

She closed her eyes and hummed along with the melody of a guitar being strummed somewhere in the distance, happy to be on this cruise despite its disappointing start.

As for the sexy engineer? Well, he’d opted off her holiday wish list.

No harm done, but after her last run-in with him, she’d needed a distraction. She thought she’d find one at the nearest disco, and she was right. It didn’t take long for the single men to notice her at the bar. She flirted, danced, and graciously resisted drink offers, opting to sip her own glass of wine at leisure.

Training a sober eye on the people around her—without a steady flow of alcohol going to her head—allowed her to watch prospective suitors get shit-faced, red-faced, and obnoxious. Not qualities she cared for in potential baby-daddies, so she excused herself and left the club for a breath of air.

Alone with her thoughts, she immersed herself in the mist’s sultriness. The dampness of the night felt far more enjoyable than being pawed at by drunken strangers.

A desirable stranger occupied her thoughts. She wondered what that luscious man-cake might be up to… He’d be asleep by now, possibly. But would he be alone?

Alerted to approaching footsteps, she glanced over her shoulder. Two eye-catching males, one of them her tablemate at dinner, strolled past with their arms wrapped around each other. She watched them walk by.

Gay choir—1.

Evangeline—0.

Who knew how long she remained on deck, moping over her pitiful scorecard, until a deep and lazy drawl hummed over her body. There was no mistaking its owner. No sir.

“And just like a dream…here you are.”

Evangeline turned as the engineer stepped forward and filled the space next to her, closer than he should be given the open spaces all around her.

The smell of his body had lingered in her head all night long. The come-kiss-me gleam in his eyes, his angular cheekbones and sensually sculpted mouth bathing in the moon’s glow made her wonder if she dreamt him up.

She should leave. Yet the thought of being alone with him filled her with such intense sexual energy, running off was the last thing on her mind!

“May I join you?”

“Yes. Of course.” Her pulse ratcheted up several beats as she faced him. Shivers twisted down her spine, an effect of the smile curving his lips rather than the steel railing pressed against her naked back.

“There’s a rule on this ship,” he murmured. “A beautiful woman should never be under the moonlight all by herself.” He trailed his fingertips down her arm.

Evangeline gulped in an excited breath. Her nipples peaked under her gown, recognizing a most sensual invitation.

Dismissing the danger she faced between him and the moonlight, she leaned closer to him, to those lips that harbored the scent of after dinner mints. This conversation was nothing like the one they’d parted to earlier, and she was eager to draw on it. “I must be a little rule breaker.”

The stroke of his fingertips turned into an appreciative squeeze. “You could make an exception to your rules tonight.”

“Maybe. That would depend on the prize.”

“Oh, I think you’d like this one.” He reached out and cupped her cheek, then leaned in and pressed warm lips to hers.

His lips sampled hers, tasting each curve with heated fervor and, when he pulled her lower lip between his teeth for the softest of bites, his mouth turned her body into a smoking furnace.

A sweet ache coiled beneath her belly button. Robert may have been capable of stirring her needs, but Liam Rossi ignited a wildfire.

His free hand stroked her nipple through the velvet of her gown and, as his fingertip circled the halo of her areola, she sighed, closed her eyes, and simmered in the sexual adrenaline pumping through her blood.

He broke the link of their mouths to nuzzle at her neck.

“Let me savor you, Evie,” he coaxed softly. “Let my tongue taste what I’m sure is a honeyed clit, hmm?”

His words… His mouth! How thrilling it felt, nibbling her throat. Her imagination ran loose, knowing how good he’d be at nibbling her
all
over. Why not? They knew where the other stood. And a little sexy something to take the edge off her hunger would do her a world of good.

An orgasm was one of the reasons she’d boarded the Sea Sapphire, after all. Not the most important reason, but she’d yet to set her sights on someone new, and a gorgeous man asking to lick her pussy in the moonlight deserved only one answer.

“Ooh, yes.
Please…
”

The velvet strips covering each breast were tugged aside, flaunting her nipples to the damp night. She wasn’t sure who’d been the one to do away with the barriers. Nor did she care.

Not when he gently gripped her heavy breasts, squeezed them, cradled their weight in his elegant hands, and aimed their rosy tops at his mouth.

Not when he pulled each of her nipples into his mouth and licked and kissed them intimately. The exquisite suckle of his mouth on her breasts, the lateness of the hour, and the isolated deck created an erotic cocktail that stirred her senses.

So much polish in his technique
, she thought, aroused to see his saliva varnishing the tips of her breasts to a wet, rosy shimmer.

He tilted his gaze up to meet hers. “Should I stop?”

Stop? This night
must
end with this man fucking me! Determined to make it happen, she shook her head.

He straightened and dove for her lips.

Strong hands cupped her ass. Slowly he ground his pelvis against the mound of wetness between her legs. Evangeline’s lips parted, and she spread her thighs as the hearty length of his shaft rubbed at and demanded access to the slicked tunnel of her body.

His tongue traced the contours of her mouth, then dipped inside to spread her lips apart.

Dazed, Evangeline twined her arms along the rails as he ravished her mouth with his tongue. Her skin flamed with wild delight as he shifted, then dappled kisses down her body, her stomach, her hips—each caress stroked by his breath.

Sinking to his knees, he pushed her dress up her thighs and glimpsed her red bikini panties, a silk strip covering her mound.

“Very nice.” He kissed her rounded flesh. The lips enveloping her bikini-waxed slit had her dragging in a stunned breath from the force of his lusty aggression.

She squirmed, eager for more. With expert ease, he dragged the silk halfway down her thighs and buried his face in her pussy. She whimpered. Her thighs trembled.

“Mmm.” His mouth hummed against her clit just before he split her thick, wet lips open with both thumbs and planted his mouth on that pink swollen bud.

Evangeline tucked in her lower lip and bit down, her mind in chaos from the delicious kiss of his lips and tongue playing intimately on her pleasure knot.

“Ahh, yes…suck it! Suck my clit…” She crooned her approval of his tongue sweeping across the landscape of her pussy and, when he tugged one pudgy lip inside his mouth, she whimpered.

After devastating her labia with sucks and nibbles, his tongue crested over and against her clit like a tiny set of waves. She plowed her fingers in his hair.

The sounds falling from her lips turned into breathy little pants when he angled his head between her thighs and muscled his tongue up inside her dewy tunnel.

“You are so
good
,” she breathed out in a heady whisper, watching his dark head move with sensuous abandon between her legs.

Alluring sounds hummed from his throat as he feasted on her. The enthusiasm of his tongue swizzling inside and around her walls told her how much he loved her taste. With her dress thrust apart, her breasts tumbled free and were draped in a moonlit glow.

They bounced softly as Liam’s head shifted between her thighs, allowing his mouth to mate with her pussy in ways she’d never imagined. Spirals of anticipation held her hostage to the pressure coiling deep in her belly.

When he withdrew his tongue, she nearly fainted. Emptiness throbbed where his tongue had vacated.

“Don’t stop, Liam,” she panted, but her plea was cut short when he blew a raspberry directly on her clit.

Her mind reeled. Sensitive nerve-fibers fielded the erotic signals being thrown at her. Of being filled with his tongue, then emptied, then having her clit tickled, blown on, buzzed on, before he resumed his tonguing exploration of her aching core.

“Too good. You are just too good,” she gasped as she ground her mons against his face.

She felt his smile curve against her thighs. He ravished her clit with another intimate kiss before sliding his tongue back into her cunt. In and out…

His thumbs kept her pussy lips peeled apart and, when one of them flipped at her bud ever so softly, Evangeline fought back a scream. Her head tipped back. A rush of ecstasy demanded her mind and body’s surrender to the erotic motion of being tongue-fucked by this irresistible man.

She lost herself in the fingers twirling through her trim. When he channeled his tongue into lapping at her clit like his own personal lollipop, he flung her into an unruly orgasm that tore feral breaths of rapture from her lips.

Her thoughts splintered with the force of her release. She stiffened, and her knees locked to keep herself from collapsing on his tongue.

Pleasure billowed throughout her body where his mouth was fastened, where his tongue darted and licked around her turgid knot. Where his mouth pulled and glided around her folds as her thighs tensed and quivered against his cheeks.

“Mmm. Heaven!” Evangeline clutched the railing with a white-knuckled grip. She moaned, her thoughts soaking up the pleasure opiates that rendered them useless, useless and happy to give way to her body’s instincts.

She rocked her hips to increase her clit’s friction against the brushstrokes of Liam’s tongue. The pulling suckle of his mouth as he enjoyed her texture and flavors added exquisite dimension to the tremors that dazzled her body and sparkled throughout her limbs.