Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance (22 page)

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he said. “I want you to remember I didn’t ever lie to you. I just didn’t volunteer everything.”

Chapter 20

“Just tell me, please.” I wriggled closer, because I was scared to hear whatever came next.

“I’m not who you and your family assumed I was. Yes, I’m a surfer and a sailor, and for a while I was a drifter, but that’s not the whole story. During that time I met you in Saint Thomas, I was at a crossroads. I was trying to figure out what I wanted from life. I was fleeing a lot of things and working out some grief. Because, you see, my parents died.”

I turned to him, pressing my face to the triangle of warm skin I’d uncovered as I’d begun unbuttoning his shirt. Just his presence was melting me like wax, and I kissed his chest. “I’m so sorry. How long ago was it?”

“Three years. They died in a plane crash. Their private jet. The rings we’re wearing? They were old ones they’d upgraded. That’s why I had them at all.”

I lifted my head. “Private jet?”

He nodded. “The
Maid
is my boat. Lisa’s house in Cliffside is my house. I’m actually annoyingly wealthy.”

I felt my eyes bug out. “And you were going to tell me when?”

“Now was always when I’d planned to tell you. After we were married. Because I wanted you to choose me for me.”

I had begun scooting away, and now my butt came up against the portholes. “You were worried I’d marry you for your money?” I snorted, feeling betrayed and insulted—and a tiny bit guilty, too, because I
had
judged him and I
had
wrestled with my goals and decided to pick him anyway.

Realizing I needn’t have worried about it made me mad. So did the fact that he’d thought it would be a major factor in whether or not I chose to be with him.

It was a factor, but not a major one. More bothersome to me had always been that Rafe wanted me to make such a big commitment with so little to go on and at such a young age.

Rafe was still trying to explain. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was sick of the burden of being the only son of two powerful people with too much money. I loved my parents very much, but the pressure of managing everything after they died was just too much for me, I guess, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to live their lifestyle, the lifestyle I’d been groomed for. So I farmed the companies out to management and took the
Maid
out on a trip around the world. Everywhere I went, I challenged myself to survive without my family’s money. I went into each port wearing just the clothes on my back. I found work and made friends and got by, and along the way I began to find peace. I had a few trusty crewmates who’ve been with me forever who knew who I was; and, of course, Lisa knows.”

I crawled to the edge of the bed and went and poured us each another glass of champagne. I handed him his and settled my back against a porthole. “Lisa. I thought she was a friend. I was so naive.”

“Well, you were, but adorably so. And like I told you in San Francisco, she was my friend first. I wasn’t deliberately hiding anything. I knew there were clues about me, but I decided to let the whole thing play out, let you make your assumptions about me and work through them on your own. I’d been burned by women who wanted Rafe McCallum the Third. Not for who I am—as you said so well, surfer, sailor, drifter, art lover.” He lifted the flute in a little toast and we both sipped. “No, they wanted the position. The money. I was so devastated after Mom and Dad died that I didn’t trust myself not to fall prey to someone pretending to love me. So I started my quest.” He spun the fragile glass’s stem. “I know how young you are, that you have lots of ideas about your life and how it will go. And I didn’t want to mess up that process. At the same time, the minute I met you that evening in Saint Thomas, everything changed for me.”

I eyed him though the bubbles. “I can’t believe you let me think the things I thought about you.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought of you as a pirate. Dangerous and poor.”

“It turns out I am a bit of a pirate.” Rafe set his glass aside. “I know a treasure when I see one, and I’ll do anything to get it.”

He crawled over to me and plucked the glass out of my hand, draining the last sip of champagne. “Do you have any more questions?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“What?” He opened the robe and set his lips on the fluttering pulse at the base of my neck.

“What is your degree in?”

“Business administration.”

“Of course,” I said. “But I bet you wanted to major in art history.” I’d never forget his passion as he’d explained the modern period to me at the DeYoung. He raised his head and those dark blue eyes blazed down at me.

“You know me so well already.”

“You could go back to school with me. And major in art history this time.” I pulled his shirt off with hands clumsy with eagerness. “I want to see all of you.”

“And I want to see those undies I had Lisa pick out.”

I yanked my old robe closed. “Lisa saw this outfit?”

“I had her order the dress custom-made. She swiped some of your clothes for measurements. And I told her to pick out all the incidentals.”

“When was this?”

“During spring break I told her I was going to marry you, and I had her start working on it.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’d be embarrassed if she weren’t three thousand miles away.”

He opened the robe and stared at my breasts in the lacy ivory cups. He was down to his dress slacks, and I let him peel the robe off of me and work his magic with his stroking hands, nipping teeth, busy tongue. I warmed and melted, heating up beside him, my own hands sliding hungrily over the hard planes of his chest, the sensitive nubs of his nipples, the bands of muscle around his belly and back.

I finally pushed his big, hard shoulder and climbed astride him, and he moaned as he played with the straps of the lingerie and the innocent ruffle on the G-string.

“I think it’s time for your pants to go,” I said. I undid them and slid them and his boxers off.

The Captain was at full attention, and once again he gave me pause.

“Don’t worry. We’ll go as slow as you need,” Rafe said, rolling me to the side. “Let’s get this underwear off you.”

I hid my face in his neck, suddenly shy, as he unclipped the stockings and peeled them and the G-string away. Only my bra was left now, and he spent some time on my breasts, teasing and licking, finally sucking them hard so I cried out and arched against him.

“Yes!” I said. “Do it! Just do it!”

He laughed. “Not sure the crew heard that, love. A little louder.” He sucked the other breast, and the sound I made was somewhere between a moan and a shout.

And still he didn’t do it. No, he tortured me with pleasure, with mini orgasms, with total worship of my body until I thought he could stick a cannon in me and I’d do nothing but yell with happiness.

After my second orgasm with him kneeling between my thighs, I looked up and took his face in my hands. “Please, Rafe, I want you. All of you. I’m not afraid. I’m in all the way. No seat belts.”

“Well, there is the condom. It’s a kind of seat belt,” he said with that wicked grin, and I even found the sight of him rolling on the condom sexy. I was in no mood by then for half measures, and I sat up and grabbed his hips and pulled him down toward my throbbing, aching center.

He tried to go slow. I know he did. But I’ve always been of the yank-the-Band-Aid-off-quick school. I thrust my hips up hard as soon as I felt that suspicious fullness at my entrance, and he slid in, filling me with a not-unpleasant sensation that felt both new and completely familiar.

There was some sort of resistance; he wasn’t going in any farther, and I’d begun to feel a terrible burning sensation. “So tight,” he moaned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You already are,” I said, and used my arms to yank him down so he fell onto and into me, all the way to the hilt.

It was way more painful than the romance novels had led me to expect.

Tears welled instantly as burning turned to stabbing, accompanied by an uncomfortable fullness that felt like an invasion. I went utterly still and rigid.

I shut my eyes and the tears rolled out and down my cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Ruby. It’ll get better.” He moved tentatively and the resistance was gone, but the burning wasn’t, and he moved and moved and groaned suddenly, arching his back and pumping into me.

I’d gone stiff and frozen with the sudden and unexpected pain long moments ago, and the minute I knew he was done, I heaved him off and ran for the tiny head, sitting on the toilet, where I was sure my uterus was going to come sliding out in a welter of gore. I crossed my arms over my aching pelvic area and waited for death.

“Ruby? Ruby!” He pounded on the door in alarm.

“It hurts so much,” I sobbed. “What a total drag! I can’t believe I got married for this!”

A startled silence on the other side of the door.

I continued my rant. “That totally sucked. It was way worse than Shellie told me. K-Y jelly, my ass!”

“It’s only the one time that it hurts, love,” he said, as if speaking to a nursery-school child.

I wiped. Sure enough, blood. Lots of it. I threw open the door and held up the toilet paper. “See that? I’m wounded. Like, really wounded.”

He blanched a bit. “That is a lot of blood. I’ve read it’s different for different women. Some have hardly any pain; some have…”

“The hymen from hell,” I finished. I threw the toilet paper away and flushed. I made a pad of toilet paper and stuffed it against my sore parts. “I feel so cheated. I am not in a hurry to do that again anytime soon. And to think I used to like the Captain.”

The tops of his ears were red as Rafe drew my stiff, outraged body into his arms. “I’m sure it’s going to get better with time.”

“More champagne,” I said.

I ended up finishing the bottle and puking with drunken seasickness as the mellow waves we’d been going through turned to heavy seas.

Rafe administered first aid and left me sleeping off the disappointment of my first time in a fuzz of Dramamine and alcohol, seasick wristbands in place.

Chapter 21

I woke up in what must have been late afternoon with the seasickness blessedly abated, though the seas had not gotten smoother. I could tell we were under sail now, though, because the thrum of the engines had ceased. I turned on my side and looked out the row of portholes, enjoying the splash of the waves, the sweep of ocean and sky—and some green coastline, too.

I wanted to go right topside and see all I could see, try to get Rafe to tell me where we were going—but I realized I needed a little time alone to reflect on all that had happened.

Only a day ago, I’d been saying goodbye to my roommate and best friend.

And Sam, too. I felt a pang for how things had ended.

And now I was married and sailing away on a yacht, married to a man whom I knew so well, so intimately in some ways—but whose full name I’d heard for the first time when it was spoken by Captain Huskins during our five-minute wedding.

A man who wasn’t poor after all, but certainly was dangerous—to any sense of control I might have had over my own life.

And the sex! The sex I’d been so excited about, so thrilled to finally have—had been horrible. Literally one of the most painful, disappointing moments of my life.

I sat up gingerly. I was wearing my yellow terry-cloth robe and a pair of big white granny panties with a frayed elastic waistband Rafe had handed me from my suitcase, panties I wished not even my mom would have seen.

I thought of how Rafe had tried to check me out with the first-aid kit right after. My bruised lady parts were packed with toilet paper, all we’d been able to come up with to deal with the ongoing leakage. I’d been drunk by then and mean with disappointment.

“You can’t put a Band-Aid on it, Rafe,” I’d said. “And nothing you say or do could make that anything but the worst sexual experience ever.”

I put my hands up against my hot cheeks in mortification at my awful words. I was a terrible person. He’d really tried hard to make it as good as it could be; I just had to hope, like virgins everywhere with hymens from hell, that it would be better next time.

The cabin was large and luxuriously appointed, with built-in cabinetry and the little wet bar we’d already used. While I was sleeping, Rafe had tidied everything, hanging up my wedding dress in the closet. He’d even unpacked my disreputable suitcase and filled two drawers with my clothes.

I really didn’t deserve this guy. I couldn’t wait to go up above deck and apologize. I dressed in jeans, my Northeastern hoodie, socks, and those preppy boat shoes that I was finally, actually wearing on a boat.

I realized as I headed up the steep, ladderlike stairs, that I was going to have to see the crew now, and they’d have no doubt what we were getting up to in that forward cabin. After all, I’d been seen for five minutes during the ceremony, then disappeared into the front cabin, where things had been noisy for some hours.

I felt like everything was written on my face, and I pulled my hood up over my head and skulked through the galley without looking up.