He Divorced Me at His Ship's Christening, So I Held the Ship novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Mirror

The bathtub in Ruel's little house in Roseville was an old claw-footed thing, deep enough to sit in with your knees up.

By ten that night I was sitting in it between his thighs, with my back against his chest.

The water was hot and smelled of the lavender my aunt had pressed into my hands at the door.

His arms were around me, wet and warm, and his chin rested on my shoulder.

"Thirty days," I said.

"I know," Ruel said.

"The yard has been my father's since before I was born."

"I know, Captain," he said.

"They have a letter and a lawyer and a bulldozer."

I stared at the faucet.

"I have three old boats and a hundred and forty families asking for work."

"You have a fuel dock across the water."

I turned my head.

"The tuna fleet's," he said. "I spoke to the old man with the mustache after the toasts."

"What did he say?"

"The Portuguese club has a berth with six slips, a shed and a gravel lot. Nobody's used it since the cannery closed," he said.

"He said that?"

"He said your father kept half those captains in work." His mouth moved against my hair.

"He said the club would sooner see the bay drained than see you sleeping under a bridge."

I could not speak.

I put my head back against his shoulder, and the water slopped against the sides of the tub.

He kissed my temple and said nothing at all.

His hands moved under the water.

They slid over my ribs and up to my breasts, big and slow and unhurried.

He cupped them and ran his thumbs over my nipples until I hissed.

"Ruel."

"Let me," he said.

"I'm trying to be sad."

"You can be sad afterward." His lips found my ear. "You can be anything you want afterward."

One hand slid down my stomach, under the water, between my legs.

He found my clit with his middle finger and circled it.

He was so light that I felt it more as heat than as touch.

I let my knees fall wide against the cool porcelain.

"Slow ahead," he murmured.

I laughed in spite of myself.

"You say that to every woman."

"Only to the ones who hold the lines."

His finger kept moving, round and round.

A second slid inside me, and a third joined it.

The water rocked.

I reached back and put my hand in his wet hair and let him hold the whole weight of me.

I came the first time quickly, with a low unsteady cry that rang off the tile.

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