The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,58

torn between freaking out and ringing Andy Willis to tell him I’ve seen your boobs.’

Stella laughed, letting her hand fall to the mattress. Andy Willis had been Rick’s best friend when he’d been eleven and had spent a couple of weeks one summer on the Persephone with them. He’d also had a massive crush on Stella.

Rick frowned down at her. ‘It’s not funny, Stella.’

Stella sobered, finding his pout irresistible. She lifted her head to kiss it away. He resisted until she tugged on his bottom lip with her teeth and soothed it with her tongue. She smiled when he groaned and kissed her back.

She pulled away when they were both breathing hard, smoothing his brow with her thumb.

‘You’re not eleven any more, Rick. What’s happened with us has taken us both by surprise so I don’t have a plan for this either. But do we really need one?’

She remembered what Diana had said—you’re going to be on that boat with him for long periods of time where there’ll be nothing to do. She’d rejected it then as an impossibility but, after last night, maybe Diana had a point.

‘You and I both know that we live two very different lives and also know through the bitter experience of two broken families that they’re practically mutually exclusive. But for the next little while we’re on this boat together—alone—and we’re both single and of age and if last night is any yardstick, we’re pretty damn good together. Can’t that be our plan?’

Rick thought it sounded like possibly the best ever plan he’d heard. But could things really be that simple between the two of them? If he shut his eyes he could hear Nathan telling him how special Stella was, what she deserved out of life. And what she didn’t.

‘I don’t know, Stel, maybe your father was right—’

Stella shook her head vigorously, interrupting him, annoyed that her father had meddled to the extent he had. She’d always wondered why none of her father’s crew had ever spent much time with her once she’d grown breasts and now she knew.

‘No, he was wrong. About a lot of things but especially this. I understand, Rick. You’re like him. I get it. The ocean runs in your veins and the sea is your mistress blah blah.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘And I want marriage and one day babies and for the father of those babies to be around full time. I know all that. But that’s not what this is. We’re not talking marriage and happily-ever-afters here, Rick. We’re talking a couple of weeks of hot, sweaty, sandy, frolicking-in-tropical-lagoons sex.’

Rick shut his eyes against the images she evoked as his hard-on voted yes. But...he looked down at her, her blonde hair spread out on the pillow around her, her lovely face so, so familiar...could a woman who immersed herself in happily-ever-afters ever settle for less?

‘And then what? We just go back to being friends?’

Stella shrugged. ‘Sure. It’s not like we see each other much these days, Rick. What...two or three times a year? Probably even less now that Dad’s not around. Hell, it’ll probably be another year or so before I next see you.’

Rick had to admit she made a good point. ‘That’s true,’ he murmured.

Stella smiled, her hand making its way back to where the sheet still bulged interestingly. ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

Rick dropped his head to nuzzle along her collarbone. ‘It certainly makes sense.’

Her hand dipped under the sheet and she hit pay dirt. Rick swore in Spanish, and she smiled, recognising the word he had taught her when she’d been twelve years old. She wrapped her palm around his girth and revelled in the silky hard length of him and the way he shuddered against her.

She stretched languorously, her free hand slipping under the pillow, grabbing a fistful of sheet as Rick claimed a nipple, sucking it into the heat of his mouth, lashing it with hot wet swipes of his tongue.

Her hand nudged something and it took her lust-drunk brain a moment to ascertain it was a book. Without thinking she pulled it out and looked at it.

The cover of Pleasure Hunt stared back at her.

She said a choice swear word of her own, snagging Rick’s attention.

‘Ah...’ he said warily.

‘You’ve read this?’

She frowned as he collapsed back on the mattress and nodded, her worst fears confirmed. She’d wondered when they’d first had that conversation about her writing process if he’d read it, but his comments had set her