Page 33 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
Chapter 6
Rebel’s mystery man? Pop star Rebel Cayne was seen on the arm of a suave, charismatic male who is decidedly not her more taciturn mate, Winter. Is Rebel looking to swap one Cayne for another?
-Tal Tattler
Marigold
Boats sucked. They sucked big time. All those romantic stories about mastering the waves, enjoying the sea spray in your face as the wind carries you off to a new adventure?
Lies. Dirty, filthy lies.
The boat rolled up and down. It tipped from side to side, and each time Mari was convinced that she would be dumped into the water. No, the ocean. She’d never been more than knee-deep in the ocean. It freaked her out too much. Funky things lived in the ocean, way down in the cold dark depths, things that evolution forgot for good reason.
The boat was so small and the ocean huge. Fine, it wasn’t a tiny sailboat, not that she had a frame of reference. It had seating and a deck at the front—bow?—and even a hatch to a covered room below deck. And they were within sight of the coast, so they weren’t traversing deep waters. Still. Not a fan.
The sail swung about—she had no idea what the proper term was—and the entire ship tilted dramatically to the right as it changed direction. Mari screamed and clutched at the railing. If they capsized, she didn’t want to be caught under the awful sailboat, but she didn’t want to casually fall overboard into the sea.
This was torture.
“I’m so sorry I was a bad person in a past life. I’m trying to be good. I am,” she muttered under her breath.
The boat lurched down. She breathed a sigh of relief, then it lurched in the opposite direction.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted into the wind.
Fine, maybe she didn’t always try to be a good person. Maybe she felt prickly and less than nice, but why did she have to be nice? She didn’t steal or hurt people. If the universe was punishing her for a bad attitude, it could go screw itself. She had a nice big crystal the universe could shove up its behind too.
The boat returned to an even keel. She breathed a sigh of relief, but her hand didn’t relax its grip on the railing. No way.
A wave crested the side, dousing her in a cold splash. Saltwater went up her nose and in her mouth. She coughed and sputtered, convinced death by drowning was imminent. Her chest felt tight. She couldn’t catch her breath. Wet, the life preserver weighed her down like it would drag her to the bottom of the sea. She coughed again, gasping for air.
Another wave.
She scrambled back from the railing and headed for the hatch to take her below deck. In her haste, she slammed into a solid body. Yes, she screamed and maybe she was crying in panic because sailing was literally the worst. She could happily sit in a spaceship for ages, sailing the stars with only a thin shell of high-density carbon between her and the vacuum of space, but the ocean could go fuck itself.
“You are well,” Winter said. “It’s just a little water.”
Showed what he knew. It was a whole freaking ocean of water.
“Can we go back?” she asked, voice trembling.
“We’re an hour from port.” His arms rubbed her arms, warming her. The gesture was almost tender and filled with concern. “Can you not swim? You should not have come aboard if you cannot.”
Ah. There was the prickly bastard she knew and, err, not loved but barely tolerated.
“I can,” she said defensively. In pools, but the point held. She could swim. The ocean was so big and strange. “I’ve never been on a sailboat.”
“Yes, so you said.”
The boat leaned to one side.
She gasped and clung to him tighter. Winter was a solid fixed point, a safe point. Did she think the ocean was merely strange? It was violent. That’s how it was in all the films. Wooden vessels were smashed to pieces on rocks and by giant squids, and they sank all the freaking time. You know what you crashed against in space? Nothing, because space was a vacuum. The amount of empty nothingness between objects was so vast that it took willful negligence to hit anything.
“Come with me,” he said, taking her hands in his. He walked backward, leading her step by step down to the lower deck.
He settled her onto a padded bench in what was a tiny room with built-in U-shaped seating and drew the curtain shut over the window. “Stay,” he ordered. “I’ll be back momentarily.”
The interior was orderly. The surfaces were clear. The cushions were fixed to the benches. It had to be tidy, she supposed, if the ship kept tilting back and forth.
