Chapter 4

4

" S tone?!" Tinsley yells from below deck where she disappeared to about an hour ago. I think she's making dinner, though she didn't say. It's been her way of earning her keep. After she cooked breakfast yesterday, she also made dinner and seemed put out when I made breakfast this morning, though all that talk about no carbs went out the window when I set croissants with raspberry jam before her. She devoured them and moaned her way through so loudly and with so much pleasure on her face that I had to leave before I made her come just to prove I could do a better job of getting those noises out of her than the croissants could.

It was a problem.

"Yes?" I call back, locking the sails down and getting ready to drop anchor for a bit. I have to figure out the weather and what I want to do next if Grand Bahama Island isn't an option anymore, and I wouldn't mind a little dinner and maybe a swim.

"Did we stop or am I hallucinating?"

I chuckle. "You're hallucinating."

"Such a dick," I hear her grumble before her voice climbs again. "I was going to tell you dinner is ready, but now you don't deserve my awesome food."

My stomach growls reflexively. I missed lunch because I was busy navigating us and going over weather charts, so now I'm starving.

"Yes, we stopped."

"Oh, gee, wow, thanks for the real-time update there, sir . Or wait, that's a no-no word, right? How about I call you captain?"

God, she's such a brat. I fucking love it and can't stand it. I've ignored her for about thirty-six hours now. Not so easily done when we're the only two people on this boat and there are only so many places you can be on it. She's given me space, and I've given her space all the while I've covertly watched her. Just trying to figure her out a bit is the excuse I've given myself, but it's like she's a magnet for my brain and eyes.

And my stupid dick.

She plays guitar and sings along and writes stuff down in a notebook, and she's taken to the ocean so well with not even a hint of seasickness despite how much the boat is moving. I need to cut her some slack. These issues are my own, not hers, and I need to get over them. It's a simple attraction and nothing more.

"Do you want to eat dinner up here tonight?"

I don't know why I ask. We haven't sat down and had a meal together yet. We've been totally separate, in adjacent spaces, or even in the same room but doing other things and not talking. This is fire I'm playing with, but it's as if with all this water surrounding me, I feel as though I can't get burned. Or more like I know what that fire is, and I can look at it and even admire it, but I won't get too close and I sure as hell won't touch it.

"Umm. Like together? "

I smile and rub my jaw as I stare out at the endless ocean and the sun that's just starting to go down. We'll have another hour and a half at least of light, even after the sun descends, and I can already tell tonight's sunset is going to be incredible. It's my favorite time of day out here, other than dawn. Everything gets slow and quiet, and the stars start to peek out.

"Only if you want to. You went to all that trouble to make…" I trail off, letting her fill in the blank.

Her head pops up through the opening leading from the companionway and she looks around until she spots me. She had been hiding just inside, though I could see her from this angle.

She gives me a smile, her lavender eyes catching the sun just right, and I swear, she's a fucking siren, angelic voice and all, only I have no interest in jumping to my death for her.

"I made burrito bowls with ground chicken, black beans, veggies, and cauliflower rice. It's one of my favorite meals."

"Cauliflower rice?" I question, scrunching my nose. "Sounds awful."

"It's good. Trust me. You won't notice the difference. I promise, you'll love it. I'm trying to get you to keep me on board, not throw me off, remember?"

"You mean the way you did to me?"

She laughs and points her finger at me. "Right. Exactly like that. Only the opposite. If that makes sense."

"I won't throw you off, Little Rose. At least not out here in the middle of nowhere with no land in sight." I hold in my smirk, but I can feel it starting to slip when her jaw goes slack at my last comment, and her gaze flashes wildly to the ocean. "Why do you seem nervous?"

She bites her lip and throws her hands up. "I don't know." She laughs in a self-deprecating way. "I'm jumpy, and I want you to like my dinner. I honestly contemplated making more croissants because I could eat those all day and orgasm over them accordingly, but I figured since you missed lunch, you needed protein."

I choke on nothing. Jesus hell, this woman is going to be the death of me. She's talking about orgasms, and I definitely got a glimpse of that this morning with the croissants, and the fact that I can easily close my eyes and picture her naked?—

Shit, don't close your eyes!

My jaw clenches and I throw her a dangerous look. "Comments about orgasms go into the previous articles of this ship along with shirts and bras."

She tilts her head in a placating way. "Aw, poor Stone. So easily riled up. Fine. No more orgasms, food, or otherwise. But will you eat the burrito bowl, or should I make you something else?"

Damn, she is jumpy and seriously anxious for me not to throw her off or hate her or whatever this is that has her willing to make me something else. I may be an asshole, but I'd never be that much of an asshole.

"The burrito bowl sounds great. Do you want a margarita to go with it?" I sure as hell could use a drink.

Her eyes light up like that's the best idea I've ever had. "Absolutely! I'll get the food. You get the drinks." She spins around, her dark hair flying behind her, and excitedly scurries below deck. For someone whose life is at a bit of a crossroads, and she was admittedly a hot minute from a breakdown, she rebounds fast. Or maybe it's this freedom making her this buoyant, though it's clear she doesn't have her bearings around me yet.

That makes two of us.

Other than my guilt at keeping this from Forest, and everyone else for that matter, it shouldn't be this difficult. I shouldn't be reacting to her the way I have been. I shouldn't need to keep my distance, and I shouldn't be watching her regardless of that. I can't explain it. It's more than simply being stuck on a boat with her or getting a flash of her tits and pussy when her towel dropped.

I don't know where it came from—this weird sort of infatuation I have with her—but fuck me, I need it to stop.

I follow her down into the galley, mix up a pitcher of margaritas, and bring it along with some glasses and ice up top. The air is warm, and the wind is gentle, at least for now. The boat is anchored tight, giving us a slight rocking, but it's otherwise steady. It's a perfect evening to eat topside and watch the sun sink into the ocean.

Tinsley carries two good-sized bowls of food, and I have to admit, it smells and looks good. She's a better chef than I thought she'd be for a Hollywood princess, but then again, I'm discovering there are a lot of things about her that surprise me.

She sits down, and I pour each of us a drink, and for a moment, we're silent, both staring west toward the giant fireball in the sky as it makes its descent to greet the dark blue ocean.

"Boston or LA?" I ask as I take my first bite. It's seriously fucking fantastic. She wasn't kidding, and though I can tell that the cauliflower isn't actual rice, it's pretty decent too.

"Boston," she answers quickly and then her head snaps back to me as if that answer surprised her. She takes a sip of her drink, licks her lips, and then digs into her food. "Yeah, I guess Boston," she says after a contemplative moment. "I like fall. I like seasons. I like that my family is there, and I miss them and wish I saw them more often, even if they're a bit overbearing at times. LA is tough."

"Because of what's going on with you right now?" I press when she leaves it at that.

She shrugs as she continues to eat. "I guess. I don't know anymore. Not much feels right at the moment, but I suppose that's what I'm working on. What about you? You're a Fritz. Boston is your bloodline. Do you ever think about going somewhere else? "

I shake my head automatically. "No. Not ever. I mean, maybe because of the whole Fritz thing, but like you said, it's my bloodline." I take another bite and point to the bowl with my fork as I chew. "This is really good."

"Ha!" She does a little victory dance in her seat, complete with jazz hands. I make a show of rolling my eyes at her, but she plows right past that. "I knew you'd like it. I won't even gloat about it."

"You mean more than you're doing now?"

She's still dancing, and I dip my fingers into my water glass and flick the cold drops at her.

"Ah! Okay, stop. No more gloating." She wipes her face where I got her. "How long can you stay on this boat without needing to stop?"

"Depends," I answer as I chew. "If it's fully stocked the way it is now and I don't need a lot of engine time, a couple of weeks. I've never gone that long or even attempted it though. This will be my longest stay on her."

"Are we going to talk about that yet? Why you're out here."

My glass meets my lips and I take a few hearty gulps. "After dinner did you want to go for a swim?"

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, annoyed that I won't give her my sad tale of woe when she's given me hers, but I don't care. My mess is my own to figure out, and frankly, I don't want to see it in her eyes when I tell her about the boy. The pity or the you get out what you put in expression that I'll find there. It'll make me sick, and right now, I'm barely getting by. I'm trying to work on this. Both of those will throw me over the edge.

"Can we swim out here? It's not dangerous?"

"Nah. We'll stay close to the boat but it's pretty safe, and we'll do it when it's still light out."

"Okay. Let's finish up. No bikini, right?"

I chuckle and shake my head. "Do you own anything else? "

She grins. "Nope. But I'll pick the one that covers the most."

If that's the one that covers the most, I'd hate to see the one that covers the least. I'm forcing myself not to look. I truly am. And for the most part, I'm succeeding. Even as she finishes the rest of her margarita and I finish mine, only to realize we finished the pitcher.

"I'm the queen of the world!" she yells from the bow pulpit, her arms stretched out wide though we're not sailing into the wind.

"I thought I was Jack, and you were Rose," I quip.

She turns her head and shoots me a raised eyebrow. "I thought you never saw the movie."

"I never said that. I just didn't get the immediate reference in the water."

"Oh? Who did you see it with?" Her eyebrows bounce suggestively.

I move in behind her the way Jack did with Rose in the movie. I don't touch her. I don't dare do that, but I stand behind her, and her arms launch wide again while mine do the same behind hers.

"I saw it with Katy, Keegan, Kenna, Wren, Mason, and Vander. Katy was obsessed with that movie for a solid month, and she made us all watch it. Owen somehow got out of it, lucky bastard that he was. Is it weird that your people are my people, and my people are your people, and yet no one else on the planet knows we're out here but us?"

"Weird? Maybe. Does it bother me? A bit, yeah."

She falls quiet for a moment before her hands meet the railing. "They can't know, Stone."

I sigh. "I know they can't." Without another word about it, I swing myself over the side and dive straight into the ocean. And fuck is it cold out here. She thought the marina was cold, that has nothing on the open Atlantic, even in the Bahamas.

I burst up through and push salty water and wet hair away from my face so I can look up and see her. I squint against the remains of the sun as it reflects off the hull of the boat.

Her jaw is slack, and her eyes are wide with terror. "Oh my god! That was terrifying! Don't do that again."

"What? It's the same drop as in the marina. The water's just deeper, and I dove instead of doing a half-assed backflip. I've done it dozens of times."

She shakes her head. "I don't remember you doing that last time we were on this boat."

"You mean when Mason and I got drunk together and we both did it?"

"I never saw that."

No. She was too busy fighting with Forest below deck.

"Are you coming in?" I ask instead of mentioning that. I can't say his name to her. I don't know why. If anything, I should. His name is a reminder of just how off-limits this girl is to me. But I think that's why I can't do it either.

What I'm doing here with her is wrong. The way I can't stop looking at her is wrong. Thinking about Forest only makes me feel more like shit for that, and since feeling like shit is all I've been doing lately, I don't want more of it.

I'm helping her. She needs this. That's all this is, and all there is to it.

Forest doesn't have to enter into that. Neither does anyone else.

"I'm not jumping again. I may be a little tipsy from the margaritas, but I'm lacking the sleep gummy, so my inhibitions are still intact. I'll meet you in the back."

She jogs aft, and I swim that way to meet her. The transom is down, and she easily slips into the water from it. We don't talk much. We simply swim and watch the sunset, and when it's fully down, we climb back onboard and go our separate ways. Her to the front of the boat with her guitar, and me lying on the sundeck, staring up at the stars and listening to her sing and play.

And part of me can't help but wonder, could anything be more perfect than this?