CHAPTER SIX - CHRISTINE
I caught him with a girl once.
Danny, I mean.
We were staying in downtown Reykjavik for a few weeks waiting on new passports to come in from Copenhagen. We had this skinny, blue townhouse with a top-floor terrace, which was my favorite part.
I was… I dunno. Seventeen? Maybe? We’d just finished a job in the Southern Hemisphere and decided, hey, we’ve never been to Iceland, why not lie low there for a little bit?
So that’s what we did.
Alec was gone, mostly. I don’t even know if he was really in Iceland the whole time because he’d disappear for several days, then come back, then leave again.
But Danny was there.
This was during summer break from school and it was relatively warm and I was trying to practice some parkour moves that I’d seen these guys doing in England a few months earlier.
So I was clinging to the side of the severely-pitched roof when Danny came home that night with a woman.
It was about three in the morning. Though the sun was still hanging low on the horizon in what’s called “the white night.”
Which I sorta loved. Both the fact that the sun refused to set and the name for the phenomenon.
It was weird and I wasn’t used to the light, so I had a hard time sleeping those few weeks we were in Reykjavik.
Anyway, Danny came home with this beautiful Icelandic girl. Just picture it in your head for a moment…
Right. That’s what she looked like.
Pretty much the opposite of Christine from Dirty City, America.
So of course, I hated her immediately. Not even because she was so blonde, and blue-eyed, and beautiful—but mostly just because she had Danny’s full attention.
They were kissing in the kitchen. The townhouse was four stories tall and I’d claimed the top floor as my bedroom, so I’m going to assume that Danny figured I was sleeping or far enough away that he didn’t need to worry about me hearing them.
But I scaled my way down the side of the house, plopped silently onto the patio in the back garden, and peeked through the window to spy on them.
He had her pushed face first up against a wall. Her hands were pressed against it, arms and fingers spread wide, and he was fucking her from behind as he pulled her hair with such force, her neck was bending back in a weird way that momentarily made me forget that I was watching him fuck and made me worry that he was gonna kill her by accident.
Because, by this time in our little round-the-world adventure with Alec, he’d killed plenty of people.
As had I.
I’d had sex plenty of times too. That boy in New Zealand was my first back when I was fifteen but there were lots of them since. And they were all older than me by years. Like Danny’s age.
I guess I have a type.
But they’d never fucked me like this.
And he had this look on his face like he wanted to kill her. And the window was open so even though they were trying to be quiet, I could hear him murmuring things as he pressed his face up against her ear.
Dirty things. Angry things.
And I kept thinking, Why is he so angry?
But he wasn’t angry. I get that now that I’m older. He’s just… that kind of lover.
I’m thinking about this now, lying here in bed in the cabin on the yacht, because I just had sex with him like that.
Sorta rough. And not at all like the sex we had with Alec months earlier.
I’m not complaining. I kinda like it rough. It’s just… I’d forgotten about the night I caught him in Reykjavik. I’d forgotten that he had secrets.
All this time I figured I knew Danny. Knew everything there was to really know about Danny. Sure, we’d been apart for a few years and he’s done all kinds of things I didn’t know about—like the motorcycles and that Brasil asshole. But building motorcycles is just something he does and Brasil is just someone he knows.
So it had slipped my mind that there were private parts to Danny I’d never poked before. Deep parts inside him, maybe beyond the blue parts—maybe more like purple parts or red parts—that I had no clue about.
It unsettles me.
And it unsettles me more that I’m awake and he’s not in bed beside me like he was when I fell asleep.
And that’s the moment I realize we’re moving. We’re no longer docked at the marina in Hilo.
Catamarans are famous for their relatively smooth ride, so I’m not surprised that I didn’t notice we were moving. But now that I’m awake and aware, I can hear that the low rumble of the engine is different than it was earlier.
After we’d finished fucking in the shower Danny put on a pair of cargo shorts and went to start the water maker. We wasted a lot of water for the shower sex. So I fell asleep to the rumble of the engine because that’s how we run our water maker.
Still, it’s yet another example of something catching me by surprise.
I should’ve noticed these things. So now I’m wondering… what else did I miss?
I swing my legs out of bed and get up. Search for something to wear, find one of those white sleeveless t-shirts Danny likes to wear in a pile of clean clothes on the nearest chair, and tug it over me.
Funny how it fits him so different than it fits me. My breasts fill out the top but the part below my breasts flutters all the way down past my hips. Then I fish out a fresh pair of panties from the pile as well.
Upstairs it’s very quiet. Just the sound of the engine and that subtle creaking boats have.
When I get up top I can see the control station next to the kitchen, but he’s not there. He’ll be on the upper deck, sitting in the captain’s chair. So I walk past the living area to the stairs and go up.
His back is to me, bare and browned from these past few months in the tropics. His hair blonder and longer than it was when we left the States.
This is the old him, I realize. The one I knew.
And yet it’s not.
“Did I wake you?” he asks, without turning.
“No, not really. I just noticed the engine,” I lie.
“Figured we should get a move on.” He swivels the chair so he can side-eye me, his profile backlit against the glow of an approaching rising sun. “But it would be nice to know where we’re going.”
I huff out some air in a half laugh. “Only you would start a trip across the Pacific Ocean with no destination in mind.”
“I figured LA. Am I wrong?”
“No,” I say, stepping lightly across the teak floorboards toward him. He swivels the rest of the way toward me, arms opening as I approach. I accept his invitation and climb into his lap, acutely aware of just how sexy this man is.
We bump foreheads and he pulls my long hair out of the way so he can look up at me.
“Aren’t you gonna ask more questions?” I say.
“Funny,” he says. “I was just about to say the same thing to you.”
Oh. Yeah. I bet he was. Well, why not? “So…”
“Yeah,” he says.
“And…”
“Yup.”
I laugh, I can’t help it. “Mind-reader much?”
He shrugs. “Did you not like it?”
“I loved it,” I say.
“Any more questions?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Good. Now it’s my turn. Where the fuck is Alec?”
I consider this, trying to decide how to answer that question. “We’re gonna go to LA, then get on a plane and head to London.”
“Oh,” he says.
I nod. “Yeah.”
We’re both smiling now. Caught up in the shorthand two people have when they know each other so well, words almost aren’t necessary.
Except… we don’t really know each other, do we?
And even though there are a billion questions hanging in the air between us right now, and even though we’ve made up our own answers for all of them, we’re never going to ask or answer those questions.
He places his hands on the top of my thighs, sliding them up and under my shirt until he’s palming my breasts.
I close my eyes and think…
Maybe we’ll get stuck on ocean time?
Maybe it’s not so bad to be two?
He pinches my nipples. Hard. And I suck in a breath. I feel the heat stirring inside me. The throbbing that begins between my legs.
We both know how we’re going to spend the next week.
It’s going to be sex, and eating, and maybe some swimming if we want to drag this trip out a little longer.
But one thing we will not do is talk about the questions.
I don’t know how I know this. Call it intuition. Or maybe I’m just picking up the obvious leftovers from the non-existent conversation we just had? Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part.
Who knows?
Who cares?
Because I’m right.
Because he lifts the t-shirt over my head and tosses it aside.
Because he lowers his lips to my breasts and begins to nibble.
Because he slips a finger between my legs, pulls my panties aside, and plays with my clit.
Who cares?
I have him, like this, all to myself, the good and the bad… and I’m gonna enjoy the fuck out of it for as long as I can.
I smile at his face, which has a blueish tint to it from the reflection of the GPS screen. I can almost see the maps in his eyes. All the places he can go. All the possibilities.
That’s why he likes maps. He’s always needed to be heading somewhere.
“Stop thinking,” he says, still playing with me with one hand, while the other pops the button on his cargo shirts and drags down his zipper.
So I do.
Him. And me. Alone.
And it’s not like I don’t still want Alec, because I do. And I know he does too. But until last night I’ve never had Danny’s full attention the way that Icelandic girl did back in Reykjavik.
He stands up, taking me with him, and I automatically wrap my legs around his middle as he carries me over to the teak table and sets me down. Pushes me backwards with fingertips pressing against my clavicles.
I grin at him as I lower myself.
He doesn’t even wait to appreciate the grin. Just slips his hands under my knees, lifts my legs up and places his mouth on my pussy. His eyes are open, locked on mine until the flicking of his tongue feels too good to hold his gaze and I close them, shutting out the world.
He hits my sweet spot and I close my legs against the sides of his head on instinct. His beard is just a little too scratchy so it rubs against the inside of my upper thighs, but I don’t care. I grab fistfuls of his too-long, too-blond hair, and push him deeper.
He responds by gripping the underside of my thighs. Pressing his thumbs into my flesh like he wants to leave marks.
I think he will.
There will be bruises tomorrow. But I don’t care.
And just as I think that, he pushes me, my back sliding on the smooth teak. And when my eyelids flutter open, he has that look again. That gleam, or sparkle, or hint of red or purple lurking behind the blue of his eyes.
He’s jacking off as I watch. And then he leans over, all the way over me, and kisses my mouth. But at the same time his free hand takes my hand and brings it up over my head until it bumps up against the railing that surrounds the u-shape of the seating area around the table.
“Grab on to that,” he says.
I do.
“Both hands,” he clarifies.
I reach my other arm up, grab the cold metal, and grip it tight.
“Now,” he says in his new, not-blue voice. “Do not let go. No matter what.”