Page 27 of Kai
No maybes. Only yeses. Do you copy, K-man?
The mental back and forth pissed me off. I took it out on the mango.Clank, clank, clank.My knife hit the chopping block with excessive force. I’d seen Cece at her worst yesterday. I’d also seen her at her best. She was strong and yet vulnerable, a beautiful contradiction. For a guy who thrived on mindfulness and craved serenity, she was also a disruption.
When the mango was in pieces, I moved on to the pineapple. I grabbed it by the crown and chopped it off in one vicious blow, powered by a heavy hand.
Don’t lose your Zen, dude. The gods know you’ve worked hard to get it.
I slowed my knife and peeled and then cut the pineapple into small, even chunks. The rhythmic strokes restored order to my thoughts. I’d always chosen my battles carefully—place,time, weather, terrain. Once I committed, I fought to win. But this was different. This felt dangerous to my soul.
And yet the light I’d spotted in Cece’s eyes when we kissed had been nothing short of striking. She affected me in ways I didn’t understand.
Heads up, Marine. You better make sure you’re not turning water into flames. What if, after listening to Thena and Missy, this connection you’re feeling is all in your head?
Nah,I had enough self-awareness to know the attraction was there for me. But what about her?
Did I have a chance in hell of getting through her defenses? Had she felt our connection as keenly as I had? Did she want to explore me as I wanted to explore her?
My hand froze, and the knife hovered above the fruit. I put the knife down.Well, shit. There was only one way to move forward, to answer all my questions, and to prove to myself that, after years of work, I was indeed ready. Getting closer to Cece Astor was the fastest course to finding out what this was all about. I was too curious not to engage, too attracted to her to ignore the warning in my gut, too determined to overcome my past.
I was ready.
Was she?
Chapter Ten
Cece
I woke to what sounded like waves lapping at the hull of a boat. A beam of sunlight streaming through a gap in the curtains made me blink. The double bed was firm but cozy beneath me. Plush pillows cradled my head, and sheets rustled against my bare legs, soft and silky.
I took in the blond wood paneling surrounding me on all sides. My senses delighted in the calm that pervaded the space. A delicious scent drifted in the air, making my stomach growl. For a moment, I didn’t recognize the place. This was not my tiny Spartan bedroom at the lighthouse. I jolted up in bed.
Where the hell was I?
Memories of last night crashed over me. Kai King, the fine specimen of a male that had shown up unexpectedly. The attack on the lighthouse. The fight. The moment my martial arts training had paid off with dividends. The kisses. Oh. My. God.I’dkissedhim!
Shit.
Covering my face with my hands, I fell back onto the pillows. It had all happened too fast, and yet the memory of his caresses woke my body to delicious sensations. As I squeezed my legs, I couldn’t deny the dampness between my thighs.
After the kissing came the daring escape. The sea and the wild waves. The pungent taste of salt lingered in my throat. I remembered the journey, and also the man, standing beneath the moonlight like a sea god. And finally, the sight of that sleek, beautiful catamaran floating at anchor under the light of a full moon.
As we approached the boat, small blue lights came on, illuminating two flights of stairs at each side of the stern. They led past the boat’s toy platform to the back deck. With help from Kai, I’d crawled up those stairs and collapsed, too tired to move.
I had blurry memories of Kai dropping his gear before he lifted me from the floor, propped me up on a chair, and fed me something. Hot soup, I think. He made me drink water as well. I wish I could say that it’d been enough to make me functional, but yeah, no, by then, I was done.
I remembered him carrying me to a bedroom—I mean, a berth—that’s what they called bedrooms on a boat, right? I recalled the sound of a shower going and then…
“Oh, hell.”
He’d taken off my wetsuit and clothes, then sat me on the bench while he rinsed me with the shower’s hose. He’d soaped me, washed my hair, and combed through the conditioner. Even now, the memory of his touch gliding over my body sizzled beneath my skin. He’d handled me with great care. All the while, I’d sat there like a slug, half asleep and catatonic.
Me. Catatonic.
Only the ocean could drain me so.
At one point, when I looked up, I caught a blurry glimpse of him unzipping his wetsuit, sliding his muscular arms out of the sleeves, and folding the neoprene down to his waist. His broad chest hovered over me like pure temptation. Not that I was in any condition to ogle, but his bronzed, smooth skin stretched over a slab of cut muscles that confirmed his body’s perfection.
A pair of small nipples also taunted my fingers. I wanted to roll them between my fingertips right before I slid my hands down his middle, traced the lines that formed the grid of his stomach, and followed the “V” that got lost in his wetsuit. Had I had the strength, I would’ve reached out to explore all of him.
