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She swallowed, then glanced toward the burst of laughter that came from the galley.
“Um…” She tried not to ogle as she looked back at him. “Good night.”
“Hey,” he whispered, and cajoled her closer with a jerk of his head.
“What?” She glanced again to the top of the stairs, judging whether anyone saw her cross into his cabin.
He kept the door open, but slid his arm around her waist and drew her tight against his nearly naked frame as he planted a long, hungry kiss on her.
By the time he let her breathe, he was hard, and she was ready to whimper with desire.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he confessed against her mouth.
“Me, too.” She ran her thumb under his waistband, then cupped his erection through the soft jersey.
He buried a groan in the side of her neck and shot his hand under the back of her shirt.
Another shout of laughter had them reluctantly pulling apart.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” He wryly nodded at the tented front of his shorts.
“Think about me while you fall asleep.” She gave a saucy shrug and started to turn away.
He yanked her back and snagged her gaze. “Are you going to be thinking about me whileyoufall asleep?”
“I did last night.”
“Come on, Cloe,” he breathed as though she’d punched him in the gut. He caught the back of her neck, kissed her once more, hard, then released her. “That’s really fucking hot. And I will. So you’d better.” He patted her ass to send her across into her own cabin.
She did. And imagining him stroking himself to orgasm made hers so powerful, she had to bite back a throaty groan.
She could barely look him in the eye the next morning, especially when he wore such an air of knowing smugness.
“I can’t believe this is our last day,” Stefan said as he slumped onto a stool at the island and helped himself to a strip of bacon.
“It went fast, didn’t it?”
He nodded glumly. Then he told her another story about the bears they’d seen on the river in Bella Coola.
Thankfully, they came upon a pod of orcas on their way to Namu, which also cheered him up.
Namu was another chance to meet up with theStorm Front. This time it was theStorm Front’s first day and theStorm Ridge’s last. Johnny and Wayne would take the guests ashore for a walking tour, telling them about the area’s history from the shell middens and other evidence of early hunter-gatherers through its thriving cannery days to its demise into another ghost town after salmon stocks collapsed.
The guests were searching out shoes and something to wear against the spitting rain when Cloe zipped her Raven’s Cove windbreaker and stepped onto the deck with Johnny.
Trystan slowed the engine as they drifted past the skeleton of an old dock, its rickety boards covered in such thick moss, small bushes had begun to grow from it, almost like a garland. A long low building that might have been a rooming house, judging by its many doors, stood upright at one end, but slumped into the ground more and more toward the other end, like a derailed train. Another had a façade that had become nothing but pick-up-sticks, exposing the interior like an open dollhouse.
Jutting out into the harbor was a collection of industrial buildings that must have been the cannery. They were rusted by the splash of salt water and had holes torn here and there by the wind.
“I wish I could go on the tour with you,” Cloe said. “I have to hang back to make lunch. What will I miss?”
“It’s kind of a downer, to be honest,” Johnny confided. “My grandfather has great stories about bringing his family here for the summer. People would come from all over to fish or work in the cannery. Now it’s just an environmental disaster with a bill for cleanup that’s so big, no one wants to touch it.”
“Oof. That’s sad.”
“It is. And people hate having their vacation interrupted by reality, but how else do you get them to give a shit about this planet? It’s the only one we have. Am I the only person who realizes that?”
She gave him an upside-down smile of sympathy.
