Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

mother at all. “I can’t leave Nick.”
     
    Which made him feel like a baby. He stiffened and said, “I’m fine.
    I’m going to Danny’s this afternoon anyway.”
     
    “No, you are not,” his mother said, and she still sounded like herself, that flat voice she got when she was serious about something. “You are not leaving the restaurant.”
     
    Which was so unfair, because she wasn’t stuck here all day.
     
    “I can keep an eye on him,” Margred said.
     
    Like Nonna wasn’t enough. Like Nick needed two babysitters, for crying out loud. And that made him so mad that even when Dylan asked if he wanted to come, Nick said no.
     
    He was sorry about it afterward, though.
     
    Boy, was he sorry.
     
    202
     

Sixteen
     
    DYLAN HAD INVITED HER OUT ON HIS BOAT to have sex.
     
    Regina knew it, accepted it, had planned for it. This time, she resolved, she would not be at a disadvantage. This time she wasn’t drunk or hurt, cold or in need of comfort.
     
    She stepped onto the cutter’s deck armed with a picnic lunch and her best red underwear, ready to take the battle to her lover’s home turf.
     
    Dylan raised his eyebrows at the picnic basket, but he didn’t say anything until she had wobbled to a seat on the cockpit bench.
     
    “This was supposed to be a break for you,” he said as he eased his craft away from the dock.
     
    “It is,” she assured him.
     
    “Then why the basket?”
     
    Regina rested her arms along the warm trim of the bow and tilted back her head to watch him work the lines. He’d stripped off his shirt; his body was long and lean and golden. Watching the sleek play of muscles under his skin, the competence of those long-fingered hands, she felt something inside her flutter and rise with the sails.
     
    “I wanted to feed you,” she said. “I haven’t yet.”
     
    The sails flapped and snapped like sheets on a back-yard line.
     
    Dylan adjusted them, pulling them taut, before he folded himself onto the seat beside her and gripped the rudder. “You feed me all the time.”
     
    “You eat at the restaurant all the time. It’s not the same. I wanted to cook for you. It’s what I do.”
     
    “Feed people.”
     
    203
    She shrugged. “Pretty much.”
     
    “Take care of them.”
     
    She met his gaze. The wind ruffled his dark hair, obscuring his face, making his expression harder than ever to read. Steady, Regina. “Yes.”
     
    “I don’t need someone to take care of me,” he said.
     
    Maybe not. But if they were going to have any kind of equal relationship, any relationship at all, he needed to see her as something more than a poor human female who got herself knocked up and kidnapped. Someone more than a victim.
     
    She cocked her chin. “You only say that because you haven’t experienced the full range of my amazing powers in the kitchen,” she told him. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
     
    He glanced from the open hatch where he’d stowed the basket to her red-painted toes. His gaze trailed up her skinny jeans to her eyes. Her mouth. “I take it I’m about to find out?”
     
    The air between them hummed with sexual challenge.
     
    Warmth uncurled in the pit of her stomach. “Yep.”
     
    “I can hardly wait,” Dylan murmured.
     
    Regina had planned a leisurely seduction, a slow siege on his senses, an assault on his heart. She hadn’t counted on the building anticipation that was itself seduction, that made foreplay unnecessary. Heat poured over the deck like sunlight, like honey, heavy and golden, thick and sweet. She breathed it in and felt desire rise in her like sap, flowing through her veins. By the time Dylan dropped the sails and anchor, she was melting inside.
     
    She surveyed the empty rocks, the short, deserted dock, the shielding trees along the shore. Private. Perfect.
     
    Dylan turned his head, a glint in his eyes. “Ready to eat?”
     
    She flashed him a grin. “Yes.”
     
    204
    His gaze narrowed, but he turned obediently enough to retrieve the picnic basket from the hatch.
     
    She was on him in an instant, her arms sliding around his waist, their bodies bumping, her busy fingers yanking at his belt. She pressed her breasts against his back— lovely warm skin, long, smooth muscle— and felt him harden in surprise as he caught her hands.
     
    She nipped his ear.
     
    “Regina.” Her name was an explosion of laughter and lust. His breath hissed as her fingers found him. He turned in her arms.