Rick had Kate's back pressed against the wall in the hallway, his hands beneath the hem of her shirt at the bare of her back, the door to the condo within sight yet too distant an end to hold his need of her in check for even one more second.
They'd finished at the park, spent most of the ride back in the taxi pawing at one another, unruffled by the amused eye of their driver, who, upon arrival, had wished them a pleasant evening with an audible wink, but the appetizer hadn't been enough. He could only wonder now, having had her, having been gifted the splendor that was her body, if any amount of her would ever be enough to slake the hunger she'd ignited. Such was the exquisite agony just two days with her had bestowed.
With his relentless mouth, he took fresh aim at her neck, a supreme challenge of her knees' will, and with a fistful of his hair, she tugged him back. "You're never going to be able to stay at this place again if you keep doing that. Open the door." Without breaking eye contact, she reached into the pocket of his shorts with her free hand for his key, teased his hardness with a graze and a knowing nip of her bottom lip. "And you certainly can't do anything with that out here."
Rick grunted in protest, planted his lips firmly against hers, and shuffled the final few steps with Kate in hand.
"This stupid place has too many rules. Next time, I'm staying on the boat." He pushed open the door, allowed her first entry.
"Which boat would that be?" she asked with a chuckle.
He tossed his key over her shoulder and onto the counter with a clank. "So, what, you just had your hand in my pants, but you won't put me up for a couple of nights? It doesn't seem like that math adds up."
Kate pivoted and grabbed him at the waist. "Me plus joke equals are you sure your friend, Javi, is the whiner of your little trio?" She gave a listen and a quick glance around. "Speaking of, it doesn't sound like anyone's here. You want to take me into the bedroom so I can put my hands other places before we order food?"
Without a peep, Rick wrapped his arms around her thighs and carted her off to his room, kicked the door closed behind them. In a matter of minutes, their clothes were in a pile by the foot of the bed, her naked body straddling his, her hands carrying out her promise.
"I've loved every minute of this day," Rick trailed off into a searing kiss. "I still can't believe you did that for me." His fingers slid up the length of her thighs, his thumb gently teasing her at their junction. "I want to do something for you."
"You are," she murmured, rolling her hips in silent plea for more. Reaching down, she took him in hand, held him where she needed him, and welcomed him inside. Like a flipped switch, with the slightest of moans escaping her lips, he began to move.
"That's not what I…Fuck, you feel so good," he surrendered in the same breath, his grip on her firm but his head floating.
The ecstasy in his utterance was like oxygen to a flame, and Kate rocked harder still, laboring to silence her mind, but she couldn't escape it. Within hours he'd be gone, plucked from her world as swiftly as he'd fallen into it, and though they were there in that bed together still, as connected as two could be, it was like her body knew, like it already hurt for what only his had ever given, and with that looming absence sought to take from him everything it could.
"Look at me," Rick whispered through the hair that tumbled across his face when she arched and nestled her head into his shoulder. "I want to see you, Kate." That he managed to get the words out at all surprised him, that she acquiesced, even more so. "I won't let you disappear. I won't let you disappear."
In her eyes he saw the wet of tears, in his heart he felt them, and as her warmth pulsed around him with her release, as her hastened breaths evolved into sighs, he, too, let go, cradling her in his arms as they came down as one.
Kate slowly stretched her legs out behind her, the sting of her muscles eliciting not pain but titillation in the wake of their effort. It was moments of quiet, and then finally her voice, soft and unguarded. "No one's ever made me feel like this." Her fingertips wandered his chest in aimless swirls and loops. "What am I supposed to do with it when you go?"
He angled for her forehead, let his lips linger. "As a man who always has all the answers…" He paused deliberately, waited for the twitch of her body that accompanied her giggle. "It's not easy for me to admit I find myself without one. A thousand miles doesn't exactly make for easy dating-not that I'm any less of a handful from down the block," he added with a squeeze.
"Oh, you're definitely more than a handful," she replied, her tone suggesting one thing more than another.
Two could play at that word game.
"Keep stroking my ego like this and you'll never get rid of me. See what I did there? I mean, not that you ever could get rid of me. I am going to be writing a new character based on you."
She popped straight up onto her elbow. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't say it like it's my fault. You're the beautiful one with the awesome pad anchored in paradise. I was thinking about a pair of treasure hunters-a fictional you and an incredibly handsome cohort like myself-who get thrown together by fate and have to battle pirates for sunken gold and jewels." Kate said nothing but the hush was deafening. "Come on. That's great stuff. I could do a whole series with that."
"Is that what the 'parrots' thing was about? Wait, don't answer that. I don't even want to know."
"The parrots are when it's going to get really good." A hand landed at her shoulder blade. "Get back down here. You don't have to worry. I'm just playing with it in my head right now. You'll have full approval of all things Bambi when the time comes, I promise."
"Bambi?"
"I'm just kidding. Kiss me."
Kate flicked him in the ribs. "Forget it. You don't deserve a kiss."
"That's true most of the time, and yet look how far it's gotten me." He trailed a finger between her breasts. "And this is only the beginning." Again she stilled. "I'm sorry I don't have the answers, Kate. I know you want them, and I know I want to try to find them with you, not without you, whatever that has to look like." He pressed another kiss to her head, reached for his phone on the nightstand. "You don't need to say anything. Let's order some food and eat it naked."
She didn't. They did.
xxxx
Rick had been back in New York just over a month, and Kate still couldn't shake the effect of him. He'd called. He'd emailed. He'd sent text messages. He'd made it impossible for her to box it all up and hide it away as though it'd never been, as though he hadn't taken her heart in his hands and warmed it from the cold. But he had. He'd shifted her course, a daunting reality absent charts to guide her.
The dock master at the marina had phoned her that afternoon while she was out on the water with clients and had requested a call back, learning, when she got back to him, of a package addressed to her that'd been delivered to his office.
She found instructions handwritten along the back flap that she wasn't to open it without first talking to its sender, the return address labeled 'Mr. Bucket List' eliciting a smile as she sat in her cabin and dialed his number.
"Did you do what I asked," Rick answered knowing the mailing had landed and the reason for the call, "or did you cheat?"
"Because of the two of us, I'm the one who doesn't understand directions?"
"Fair point." He felt terribly nervous, had to actively work to conceal it. "Miss me?"
He always asked. Her response was always the same. And it was always a lie of gargantuan proportion.
"No."
"Guess I'll just have to keep asking then."
Kate traced her finger along the envelope's edge, imagined his had been there, too, and was surprised by how sexy she found the notion.
"What'd you do, send me some 8x10s from the internet of you shirtless?"
"I'd rather you have the real thing. Go ahead and open it."
It was big and Rick knew that. It was big and bold and presumptuous, but that was what she'd inspired. All he wanted was to find a pathway to time, and a chance to show her how real it could be. How real it already was.
She peeled at the fold's seal until it gave, pulled out a small stack of papers with a photograph attached to the top by a clip. It was of a dock she didn't recognize, unoccupied and labeled with a painted number.
"What is this?" she asked with only a cursory glance at the documents.
"Okay, here goes," he said and pushed out a breath. "All I think about is you, Kate. I know what we said to each other when I left, that we'd wait, that we'd see, but that was all bullshit. What happened between us that weekend was supposed to happen, and you felt it, too, and I know that boat is your sanctuary, I understand that, but this is me asking for a little bit of time to make you see that I can be a safe place for you, too, if you'll let me."
She was reading more closely as he spoke and realized what it was he'd done.
"You got me a boat slip in Brooklyn?"
"I didn't do anything crazy. It's just a 30-day rental, with an option, and it doesn't kick in for almost two weeks. I hoped that would be enough time for you to rearrange whatever you had to. I thought I might even fly down and help you make the trip up. We've already seen it's too dangerous for you to be out on the water without me."
"But you didn't do anything crazy?" Kate said with a nudge in her voice.
"The only crazy thing I did was to get on that plane home and leave the most amazing-though clumsy-woman in the world behind. You still sound devastated, by the way."
Her mind was swirling. She had nothing to hide behind, no job she needed, no family, no bond with the island she'd roped her boat to, and he knew all of it. He knew what the only thing standing between them really was.
"Honestly, I kinda wanted you to leave," she replied in jest. "You were starting to cramp my style."
"That's one of my new favorite pastimes, actually. Maybe if I ask real nice, you'll let me come aboard and cramp it some more, maybe use my cramping prowess to convince you to sail away with me."
Kate sprang up like a rocket. "Are you…?" She flew to the stairs and up on deck, found Rick standing on the dock below. "You're here," she said into the phone absent need of it.
"You noticed." He stuffed his phone away. "It was kind of a special delivery. I thought I should bring it down here myself, rope an innocent man into my scheme."
She climbed down to the dock and they came together. "Still couldn't figure out how to send mail to a boat, huh?"
"With all the thinking about you, I didn't have time to Google." Rick reached a hand around behind him, plucked one of his own paperbacks from his back pocket. "As promised, Captain. I even autographed it for you, included a naughty limerick about a gal with a boat."
Kate swiped it from his hand and then rushed him like a bull, seizing his mouth and nearly toppling them both to the ground. For minutes they danced the dance of reunited lovers, their bodies fixed, unwilling to part without intervention, which came, finally, in the form of a raucous boat motor turned over from somewhere nearby.
"You did miss me," he said instantly lost in her eyes, and she offered no denial, instead drew her fingers softly down his cheek. "It's okay to be scared, Kate, but be scared with me, not of me. Let me be the thing you hold on to."
She smiled a modest smile. "It's called a life ring," she teased. "You really need to work on your boating lingo, Popeye. Maybe Bambi can help you with that."
"Oh, I bet Bambi can help me with a lot of things."
Kate clutched the fabric of his shirt snug in her fingers. "Hey," she said, after a pause and markedly thoughtful, "second question?" Rick nodded, immediately recognizing where she'd gone. "Do your mysteries have happy endings?"
He leaned in, touched his lips to hers. "Spoilers aren't really my style. Hope is, though, and I've got an entire shelf of those at home," he said tapping the book she held. "Come to New York and find out."
Sidestepping her, he moved for the boat and made his way up on deck, Popeye's theme song floating through the air on his puckered lips, just as it had that first day, only now with design.
"Christ, we're going to need so much Dramamine," Kate mumbled trailing behind.
XX
Love them. Love you.
