Page 40 of Shipwrecked

“Do we need a stepladder?” I trail rough, nipping kisses across his neck. “How am I going to get my cock into you otherwise?”

Jules shudders.

His jaw is in my hand again, and I’m turning him, leaning in, taking his mouth in another punishing kiss.

“Ow.”

The word shocks straight through me. I jerk back, letting go of Jules as if he’s the live wire causing the harm. He’s leaning against the wall with his back to me, torso heaving, head down-turned, rubbing his neck with trembling fingers.

The comedown happens disastrously fast. Self-disgust squashes down my sizzling arousal with enough force to leave me winded.

“Did I hurt your neck?” I reach out but catch myself just before touching him. Of course I hurt his fucking neck. I manhandled and shoved him against the wall, and he’s injured. I am such a fucking loser. I should be locked up. “Is there any heat?” My voice comes out rough. “Do you mind if I check?”

“Hm? What? Oh, no.” Jules turns a murky gaze my way. His pupils are blown out. He looks like he did that night with Mathieu in the club hallway, except I know for a fact he’s not drunk. And his body’s all…slack. Expression soft and expectant.

I loathe myself for the way my cock jerks in response. Right about now is usually when my girlfriends become exes. I also loathe myself for the way my gaze travels down Jules’s body, finding the outline of his hard cock obvious in his wet shorts. When I drag my gaze back up, he’s looking at his palm.

It’s red.

My arousal vanishes.

“Let me see.” I catch his wrist and tilt his hand to the sunlight. There’s a gash in the meaty part of his thumb.

“I grabbed the edge of the window frame. I didn’t realise it was sharp,” Jules explains. He hisses when I prod around it. It doesn’t look deep. I check the sharp piece of plastic and sigh in relief to find it sticking out of the frame only a centimetre.

“It looks shallow. Let me see if the first aid kit is still here. Put your life jacket back on. You shouldn’t take it off when we’re out here.” I briskly retrieve it from the ground and guide Jules back into it.

The murkiness fades from his gaze. “Don’t give out to me when you are the one who took them off.”

“Well.” There’s no reasonable reply for that. “Say no next time.”

Before Jules can give me a rightful rebuttal, I open the door to the main cabin. I’m relieved to see only about a foot of it is submerged. However, almost everything is in that one foot of water. The bright red med kit is nestled in its case on the wall. The glass front is a spiderweb of cracks, but the canvas bag, as I pull it out, is in excellent shape. Even if it got a dousing in water, everything inside is in plastic wrap anyway.

The yacht doesn’t shift under our combined weight, and by the time I have Jules’s hand cleaned and wrapped, I think that it’s stable. I put my life jacket on anyway to be safe.

I climb up and look in from the top. The cockpit is crushed. I couldn’t see that from the shore. The equipment is either in pieces or gone. The radio is one of the things missing. The emergency beacon is crushed inside its bracket. It never deployed.

“There’s still a chance that the emergency satellite phone is here somewhere,” I call down to Jules. “It’ll be in a bright orange case, and it’s kept in the…the… Give me a second to remember.” I should know this off the top of my head.

“Under the seats in the cabin,” Jules calls back. “I was paying attention to Seán’s safety brief. Who should I call?” He steps out onto the deck, a grey phone already in hand. “The coast guard or just the emergency line? I think emergency line.”

Before I can get a word in, Jules has the device against his ear.

“Hello?” Jules says. “Can I get an English speaker?”

I jump down.

In hindsight, I’m incredibly stupid. I should have climbed down step by step and settled myself onto the decking, soft as a feather. My landing makes the decking bounce. The decking that is heavily tilted one way and slippery.

Jules is in the middle of taking a step, coming towards me.

The deck bounces under his foot. He slips.

I lunge for him. Jules throws out a hand to break his fall, while the one with the phone shoots up into the air. The jolt of hitting the deck knocks it from his hand. The satellite phone strikes the exposed steel edge of the missing winch mount. It shatters.

Chapter Fifteen

Jules