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  He knelt, breathing heavily, my body trembling finely beneath him before slowly, almost reluctantly he withdrew from my body, discarding the condom in the wastebasket in the cupboard. He stretched out beside Cutter and me and held out his arms.

  “Give her here…” he said gently and Cutter turned on his side and I slipped gently into Reaver’s arms. I still didn’t feel like I was capable of forming coherent thought and I was completely okay with that.

  “You doing okay Doll?” Reaver asked me, kissing gently every bare inch of skin close enough for his mouth to reach.

  I gave a slight little blissful moan and Cutter laughed, stripping the condom from himself. I was a mess below the waist and so was he, moisture from my body glistening along his smooth tan skin.

  “She’s more than good I think,” he said and Reaver chuckled.

  “Hold her, I’ll be back in a minute,” Cutter said, scooting to the edge of the bed and letting himself out into the narrow passageway.

  “I love you, Baby,” Reaver breathed into my ear and I struggled through my lethargy to cuddle closer to him. I managed to twist so I could lay my head on his chest.

  “Thank you…” I breathed.

  “For what, hmm?” he asked.

  “For loving me… I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you too,” I murmured. He kissed my forehead and I honestly don’t remember anything else after that. They exhausted me just so well.

  Chapter 11

  Reaver…

  “She out?” Cutter asked me when he returned. I was pretty sure he had rinsed off in the shower and he had a couple of wet wash cloths in his hands. He handed me one.

  “Yeah. Mission accomplished I think,” I said and cleaned myself up, which granted there wasn’t much for me to do on that front. He gently wiped Hayden down watching for any signs of discomfort or that he was causing her to stir but she was just so much dead weight in my arms, against my chest.

  She felt so incredibly good there too. Deeply unconscious, sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted.

  “We wore her out,” he observed with a smile. I kissed her hair absently. Cutter snorted.

  “I’ve never seen anything like you two,” he said, smoothing a hand up and down Hayden’s body in a tender touch. Lightning flickered outside but the storm was dying down, moving off from over us. I watched the light cast deeper shadows under her eyes, making her skin glow with an ethereal light.

  “Your connection, your energy…” he sighed, “I would kill to have a woman look at me the way yours looks at you.” He kissed the back of her shoulder and I smiled at the reverent gesture.

  “Thanks man,” I said softly and he choked on a laugh.

  “Thank you, both of you, for letting me join you. That had to have been one of the most profound sexual experiences of my life.” He propped his head on his hand and continued his idle caressing. I didn’t mind. Hayden deserved all the love and gentleness she could get. I sighed.

  “What was that for man?” Cutter asked me.

  “Ahhh,” I made a slightly frustrated noise and sighed again. I had a sudden wish that he were Trig, but Trig was hours away and working… besides, Cutter had earned a bit of my confidence. He might have a decent bit of advice, who knew?

  “I’m not always like that… with women, I’m afraid I’m gonna break it. Scare her away with how intense I can be…” I confessed.

  “Mind if I make an observation brother?” he said and I nodded that he should go ahead.

  “Your little woman is pretty fucking fearless,” he said and I frowned. I mean I got what he was saying, Hayden was fearless in a lot of ways but maybe he was picking something up I wasn’t.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, wanting to hear what he had to say.

  “Not only was this her first threesome, her first time even trying anal and not only did she let us? She let us double penetrate her too, all without batting an eye? C’mon man, how many girls you know like that? That wouldn’t freak or have any misgivings?” I was silent for long moments, listening to the thrum of the falling rain on the ship’s deck overhead while I contemplated his words. “I think she trusts you,” he said after I’d been silent too long. “More ‘n that, I think she would follow you to the ends of the earth if you’d only just ask her.” He said and placed another reverent kiss on her shoulder. She shifted slightly in her sleep and we both went predator still so as not to wake her.

  We looked at each other over Hayden’s body, her shoulder gently rising and falling as she drew breath. When I was sure I wouldn’t wake her I spoke.

  “I hear you,” I said but I didn’t know what to do with it. I closed my eyes and he shifted restlessly on the other side of my girl.

  “Hope she’s not sore in the morning,” he said and I smiled.

  “Still a little unsatisfied?” I asked and he smiled at me.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I don’t swing that way or I’d help you out,” I commented. He laughed a little but didn’t comment back. Hayden shifted and sighed out.

  “Baby?” I asked softly to see if she was awake.

  “Mmm…” she sort of replied.

  “You awake L’il Bit?” Cutter asked quietly. Her steady breathing was her only reply.

  “Shit out of luck,” he grunted and I smiled.

  “You never know, she might be game in the morning,” I commented dryly. He sighed and it was a wistful sound.

  “I could be so lucky,” he muttered and lay back, he still idly touched Hayden who let out a contented sigh. I held her body close in the curve of my own and closed my eyes, a bit touchy about really sleeping with Cutter nearby. I didn’t think we’d have a problem but I really needed to trust someone to be at ease sleeping around them. The fact that Hayden could get up and move around a room I was sleeping in without waking me was a testament to how I felt about her.

  I laid a gentle kiss against her forehead. She’d been incredible, so open and trusting as I’d made love to her, and without a doubt that’s what I’d done. I’d poured every ounce of my heart and soul into loving her body. The world around us falling away until it’d been just me and her and the quicksilver coursing through our veins, passing between us where our bodies touched.

  Cutter settled, his hand resting on the swell of her shapely hip and I settled too, but while he closed his eyes mine remained wide open, drinking in her face in the dim light. I had a feeling I’d be up before either of them in the morning despite lying awake longer.

  I fell into a light sleep to the sound of Hayden’s even breath, the distant thunder and thrumming rain, jolting awake a few times in the night, mostly whenever Hayden moved or Cutter did. I kept replaying the feel of being deep inside her lithe small body over and over in my head when I’d wake. I was looking forward to making love to her again, though next time we wouldn’t have anyone else but us. The final time I woke up the sun was streaming through the two portholes in the bed cubby and Cutter was sitting up, gazing at the fall of light across Hayden’s nude form.

  “She’s fucking spectacular,” he murmured.

  “Yeah she is,” I agreed, smiling slightly a little uneasy that he’d been awake while I’d slept on. Old ghosts trying to fight their way free of the vault inside my head.

  I hadn’t been a heavy sleeper since I was a young kid. Not since Rick, getting piss drunk and pissed off about one thing or another, started coming into my room to drag me out of bed to put a beating on me. Which I guess was still preferable to what’d been happening to Shells a few trailers over. I fought to swallow the bitter memories down. The bright clean Florida sunshine pouring through the two round windows in the room helped with that, so did the fact that the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen remained resolutely in my arms.

  “C’mon man, let’s let her sleep. I wanna take you guys out. You can help me cast lines.” He slid off the bed and pulled on his shorts out in the hall. It sounded good to me so I eased out from under Hayden who shifted to get more comfortable. She w
as still dead to the world, though the shadows under her eyes were less than they’d been last night. She was getting some good rest finally.

  I pulled on my shorts, checking for the knives in them, reassured they were there I turned in time to see Cutter lay an orange tee shirt out on the bed for Hayden to use when she got up. He handed me my cut, shrugged into his own and picked up Haden’s discarded clothing from the night before, folding it neatly and leaving it on the small couch in the living area of the ship.

  I found my sunglasses in our borrowed beach bag while he did it and he pulled a pair off a rack of ‘em by the door and put them on his face before we went up and out into the bright sun. Even with the lenses on my face my eyes watered from the bright light.

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked once my vision had cleared.

  “Take this,” he said and handed me a length of rope. He went up by the wheel and turned a key, the boat’s deck rumbling faintly beneath my feet. The man ran around and leapt over things like some kind of monkey, unhooking this, unravelling that. Finally he jumped off the side and landed on the dock with a hard thump. He unhooked ropes from the dock and threw them up to me where I caught them and coiled them.

  Before I knew it he was up at the wheel again and talking into a radio. A voice squawked, indistinct through the other end and Cutter laughed and spoke into it again before setting us to moving. I worried vaguely that we were going to wake Hayden but she seemed to slumber on.

  It barely took any time at all for Cutter to get us out onto the open water. I’d joined him up at the wheel and sat on a bench made for it behind him and to the side as he navigated us out of the marina and watched everything he was doing with an open curiosity. I’d never been on a boat like his before, just small motor boats on the lake back home and a rowboat or two when we were on lake runs to set up the sniping targets and even that had been more ‘n a minute ago.

  “What do you think?” he asked me as he killed the engine.

  “She’s beautiful, that’s for sure,” I said.

  “Yeah she’s a grand lady. Restored her myself. You should have seen her when I first got my hands on her,” he said ruefully.

  “Bad shape?” I asked as he set about unhooking the sails.

  “The worst man. She was about to be scrapped but I just couldn’t let it happen. I saw so much promise in her… She was just as busted up as me and I wasn’t ready to give up on either of us,” he confessed and it was such an extreme pronouncement it left me frowning and trying to figure out how to ask.

  “You ex-military?” I asked, noting some of the tattoos high up on the swell of his shoulder. One was a tattered American flag and below that a row of numbers.

  “Naw man, once a Marine always a Marine,” he said with pride. My eyebrows went up.

  “Shit man, no wonder I like you. My best friend Trig was a Marine Corps sniper, one of our prospects was his partner over there,” I said.

  “No shit!?” Cutter asked raising the sails, he stopped.

  “Here you do this,” he said. I took over the cranks, aping what he’d done.

  “What unit your buddy serve in?” he asked. We traded information and he gave a choked laugh.

  “Shit, me an’ your boy pounded some of the same sand over there,” he said and nodded to himself.

  “You know, we got our summer lake run comin’ up in about three weeks. It’s around four hours south of us, about half way four, maybe five hours for you guys. If you can do it you should come join us,” I said.

  “You got the authority to be invitin’ folks to something like that?” he asked. I pointed to my Treasurer’s patch.

  “I’m solid on our council of five,” I said, “Besides that, we got another crew, the Suicide Kings coming down with us this round. You wouldn’t happen to have any beef with ‘em would you?” I asked.

  “Now why would you ask a thing like that?” he asked me, the sails began to fill with the light wind, unfurling and snapping full under the bright blue sky. I looked up and watched the canvas fill a little impressed that I’d help make it happen.

  “They’re off to a rocky start,” I said, and told him about last fall and how one of their young buck punk ass members had shot Irish, our VP’s girl, in the leg during the course of trying to rob the coffee stand she worked at. He gave a low whistle.

  “Damn. You handle it?” he asked.

  “Naw I was mostly out of that one. The Suicide Kings handled it themselves. Shot him back and put him out of their club on bad terms. They didn’t even want to fuck with us.” I felt a nasty smile curve my lips. Our reputation from the bad ol’ days still served us pretty well. The thing was, even though we’d gone straight, even gone further than that, atoning for and righting some past wrongs under the radar… we held true to that old reputation. We weren’t afraid to get violent and get nasty to protect what was ours. Especially now with people like Sunshine, and Shells, Irish and my doll Hayden under the club’s umbrella.

  “Yeah the way I hear it you fuckers don’t play,” he said with a grunt and steered us across the waves

  “No we do not,” I agreed. We were silent for a few moments.

  “Where we headed anyways? I asked. Cutter grinned.

  “Sweet spot for some free diving and snorkeling. Killer Scallops nearby too as long as you don’t have any moral qualms about poaching,” he said and I snorted.

  “You gonna eat it?” I asked.

  “Yep and you are too,” he said grinning.

  “Then nope,” I said and smiled back. We were out on the water for a good hour before he looked around us and nodded. An island was nearby, it didn’t look like it had anybody livin’ on it, too small for that but there were some darker scars on the sand, and I realized they were charred piles of wood, so big enough to party on apparently.

  “This is it,” he declared and took down the sails, dropping anchor. I looked around us and over the side of the boat. The water was crisp and so fuckin’ clear you could see the bottom. It was shallow where we were at and I asked,

  “How are we not touching bottom?”

  Cutter chuckled, “There’s a good fifteen or twenty feet under us, don’t worry.”

  He moved around the boat and stripped off his cut, hanging it off a hook set in the mast. He opened a hatch on the deck and pulled out swimmer’s fins, a mask and snorkel.

  “I’m going in,” he said and I watched as he pulled out a wicked looking dive knife in an oddball sort of sheath, the nylon straps too short to my eye. He saw me eye fucking his knife and grinned. He handed it to me while he pulled out a mesh bag and a belt full of what looked like weights. I slid the knife out of its sheath. The hilt had a good weight to it and the blade was strong and wicked sharp.

  “That’s not too shabby.” I commented.

  “One hundred percent titanium blade, double locking sheath, the serrated edge is a built in line cutter. We use the knob at the end here to bang on tanks…” Cutter rattled off the different specs for the knife, I was just impressed. If I had one of these I’d never have to swim without a knife again which would be kind of nice. I didn’t know why I’d never thought of it before. He wound down on what was quickly becoming a sales pitch and he strapped the knife to his lower leg along the outside. The strapping on the sheath suddenly made a whole lot more sense. I nodded impressed.

  “Where can I get me one of these?” I asked. Cutter grinned.

  “I’ve got one below decks still in the package if you don’t mind blue on black for the handle,” he told me.

  “Hell no, sounds good to me. I’ll buy it off yah.”

  “No, consider it my gift to you. Not many dudes as gifted with a knife as you are. Consider it something to remember your time in Florida by.” He strapped on the weight belt and put on the mask, leaving it high on his forehead like a pair of glasses. His glasses he handed me.

  “Be back in a bit Bro,” he said and fitted the mask in place, he carried his flippers over to the edge of the boat and jumped in
the water. I propped a foot on the edge and leaned over.

  “Shit! Can you toss me the bag?” he asked.

  “Yeah!” I went back and picked up the nylon mesh bag and returned to the edge of the deck, he was already treading water, flippers in place, mask over his eyes and nose.

  “Cool thanks!” he said as I tossed the bag down to him. He clipped it to his belt and put the snorkel in his mouth and with a thumbs up he disappeared under the crystalline waters and made for the bottom.

  I sat down and gazed out over the water, letting the gentle lap against the side of the boat, the rustle of the canvas in the breeze and the cry of the sea birds nearby filter across my senses. It was warm and it was rare that I got these quiet moments to myself. I felt almost as calm as I ever had thanks in part to the environment but mostly thanks to Hayden who I think still slept below deck.

  Hayden. I couldn’t stop the smile from curving my lips. I smoothed my hair down in front and bowed my head, watching Cutter swim along the bottom, indistinct through the glassy waters. A little over a year ago Hayden had been this dynamic powerhouse of a woman. A force to be reckoned with, a fierce glint in her light green eyes. Then the more time her ass-bag fiancé spent away from home the more uncertain she’d become. I wanted that fierce little woman back. I wanted her to fight back, I wanted to take the hurt and replace it with pissed and I just… I just didn’t know how to do that for her.

  A splash. Cutter surfaced.

  “You good!?” I called down to him.

  “Yeah!” he called back, replaced the snorkel in his mouth, took a visible deep breath and kicked his way back to the bottom. I continued my silent introspection and gazed out over the cool aquamarine waters. I took a deep cleansing breath and let it out slow.