The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,44

Nathan’s daughter and hadn’t had breasts and hips. Now he was Vasco Ramirez, Nathan was dead and she had breasts, hips and a lot of other bits in between.

She bent her head forward, just as Lady Mary had done and he obliged, caressing her hairline, drifting his thumbs over her nape, going lower, kneading his fingers into the muscles of her neck and lower still to her shoulders.

‘Mmm,’ she groaned. ‘That feels good.’

She couldn’t help herself, it just tumbled out. Because it did feel good, it felt so damn good everywhere she wanted to turn around and French him as she almost had all those years ago, and decades of being buddies and business partners and all those other consequences be damned.

Rick swallowed. ‘That’s because you’re so tense,’ he said lightly, feeling pretty damn tense himself but working on the knots in her neck muscles until he had them all ironed out because she kept making these little gurgly noises at the back of her throat that he could really become addicted to.

By the time they were gone and he’d forced himself to turn on the spray he had an erection that could have been used on Vasco’s pirate ship as the plank for prisoners to walk to their doom upon.

For his own sanity, he tried to make the conditioning process much faster but pretty much failed. She had her hands stuffed between her thighs and he spent the whole time wondering if she really was just holding her sarong in place or maybe easing a little ache down there.

His imaginings had gone from lathering her breasts to his head disappearing between those amazing thighs and he was fit to burst when he left her, hair brushed and drying off, in the sunshine.

‘Thank you,’ she called after his disappearing back.

Rick gave her a wave, not turning around because he looked perfectly indecent at the moment and probably would be for quite a while with her squirmy, back-archy thing imprinted on his retinas. ‘My pleasure,’ he murmured quietly to himself as he descended below deck as quickly as his legs would carry him.

* * *

At midnight Rick gave up trying to sleep and trudged up to the deck to lie under the stars for a while. They’d always had a calming effect and he needed that badly at the moment, when his body was raging with undiluted lust and no amount of diversion tactics seemed to be working.

The ocean was still and the night almost silent as he made his way to the middle of the deck. He could barely feel the bob of the boat beneath his back and his breath was loud in his head. The waning moon threw a narrow beam of light on the surface of the gently rippling water as it fought for space in the crowded sky.

He lay with his knees bent and took a deep steadying breath.

Now, this made sense.

Stella and what happened to him every time he looked at her didn’t make sense at all.

But this—the ocean—did.

This was like coming home.

He remembered turning up at Dartmouth at the age of fifteen, a rucksack on his back and four pounds in his pocket. He’d hitched from London the previous day. Nathan had looked at him from the deck of the Persephone and said, ‘Sophia’s been on the phone to me.’

He’d looked at Nathan with mutiny in his eyes. He’d loved his grandmother, but she hadn’t understood that the ocean ran in his veins. She’d wanted him to study hard and go to university and all he’d wanted was a sea breeze in his hair. He’d chafed against her bonds. Cut classes. Flunked out.

‘I’m not going back. This is where I belong.’

Nathan had looked at him for long moments. ‘It’s not the glamorous life it seems on summer break or from your father’s grandiose sea stories, Rick. You should be in school.’

He’d shaken his head. He’d always known from Nathan’s quiet restraint that his father’s embellishments were romantic sentimentality and that there wasn’t a lot of romance or sentiment in salvaging. He’d learned early it was ninety-nine per cent grunt, one per cent glory. ‘I should be here. The business is half mine.’

They’d both known that Rick didn’t legally inherit until he was of age but Nathan hadn’t called him on it.

‘That it is. But are you man enough?’

Rick had nodded his head firmly. ‘Yes, sir.’

Nathan had crossed his arms. ‘You come on board, you answer to me.’

‘Aye, aye, captain.’

‘And you finish school.’ Nathan had