“Don’t be silly. I was too busy performing my shipboard duties to even notice that you’d gone.”
He hummed. “Are you serious?” Suddenly her answer mattered more than it should.
He relaxed when she turned serious. “More than anything,” she admitted as she reached for him.
He inhaled sharply as her tiny hands closed around him. “You’re not holding on to the anchor chain,” he scolded.
“I only have two hands, and I can’t hold you in one. You’re very big Alexei.”
He laughed and kissed her, and then he couldn’t wait any longer and plunged deep.
~o0o~
Sex in the sea wasn’t just possible, it was incredible, Amber disco
vered, and poignant too, in a way she couldn’t quite identify. Alexei was an amazing lover and she’d missed him, but there was something more between them now, a closeness that hadn’t been there before. There was always part of him that held back, but not today. Today it felt as if he’d missed her as much as she’d missed him. Sex was always incredible with Alexei because he understood her body so well, but this time it seemed to bring them dangerously close. The expression in his eyes was a compelling mix of confidence and concentration, intimacy and concern, as if his entire world had been tuned to pleasing her.
“I can’t hold on—”
“And why should you?” he murmured.
Taking her buttocks in a firm grip, he increased the pace the way she needed him to, working her rhythmically and quickly until she flew past the point of no return.
Wailing and bucking as the pleasure waves washed over her, she created a small tsunami all her own as she thrust her hips wildly back and forth to claim a long and powerful release.
“Better?” he murmured as she clung to him, groaning softly with contentment.
“Getting there,” she teased.
“Have you got the strength to swim back to the ship?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’ll swim at your side to make sure you’re safe.”
Dipping his head, Alexei kissed her again, and then he helped her to put on her bikini. When she was ready, he urged her in front of him. “I’ve got something to show you on the boat.”
“Something else?” She turned in the water, smiling, to say this. For a moment, their stares met and held in a complete oneness, and then she splashed him, he laughed, and they swam away.
~o0o~
Alexei lifted her out of the water onto the swim deck of the yacht. “You look like a mermaid,” he remarked as she wrung the water from her hair. “Except for the great legs,” he conceded, thumbing his stubble as he picked up one of the fluffy blue-and-white-striped deck towels to swaddle her in.
“What’s this?” she said, feeling something in the folds and picking it out.
“It’s just a small gift that caught my eye as I was walking past one of the hawkers in the dock. No expense spared,” he teased as she pulled out the small felt mouse.
“For me?” Amber’s face was wreathed in smiles. “You bought this for me?”
“It is Christmas.”
“I didn’t expect anything.”
That was just the point, he thought. And now he felt bad, because anyone would think the small gift had come from Tiffany’s.
“I love it,” she assured him, hugging it close.
He frowned. “Do you?”