He Divorced Me at His Ship's Christening, So I Held the Ship novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Chart Table

In the wheelhouse he takes her on the chart table and again at the helm, and at dawn Anselmo warns that Clarissa is at the gate with a check.

The wheelhouse door banged shut behind us, and I had his shirt open before the latch caught.

The only light came from the dock lamps through the salt-fogged glass.

It laid yellow bars across his chest.

He was broad through the shoulders and lean at the waist.

An old scar ran under his ribs, and a dark line of hair ran down to his belt.

I put my mouth on the scar.

Ruel's breath went out of him in a hard push.

"Captain," he said.

"Say it like you want me."

His hand closed in my hair and tipped my head back.

"Come here and let me show you."

He kissed me against the helm console, with the brass wheel digging into my spine.

His tongue was slow and thorough in my mouth.

I got the zipper of the blue dress down myself.

He peeled it off my shoulders and let it fall around my feet.

Then he stood back and looked at me, in nothing but my bra on my father's boat.

I am not thin, and I have never been shy about it.

But nobody had looked at me for fourteen months.

"Look at you," he said, and his voice was not level anymore.

"Is that good or bad?"

"It's very good." He took my bra by the clasp and undid it with two fingers. "It's a long way past good."

My breasts came free into his hands, heavy and aching.

He thumbed both nipples until they were hard and I was arching into him.

"Ruel."

"I know."

He lowered his head and took one in his mouth, sucking slow, then hard.

My knees went soft.

He caught me under the arms and lifted me.

He set me on the wide chart table, and the tide book slid off the edge.

"Lie back."

I lay back on the cold laminate, my hair spilled across a navigation chart of the bay.

Ruel went down on his knees on the wheelhouse floor.

He pulled my legs over his shoulders and kissed the inside of my thigh, once, slowly.

"Tell me if it's too much."

"It won't be," I said. "Please."

He put his mouth on me.

Everything in my body folded toward that one place.

His tongue went flat and slow, then pointed.

He circled my clit, dropped lower, and came back, and he groaned against me, low and hungry.

I had one hand in his hair and one flat on the chart.

My heels were hooked on his back.

"Oh God," I said. "There."

"Here?"

"Yes. Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping." His voice vibrated against me. "Let go for me. I've got you."

He slid two fingers back inside and curled them where he had found the spot in the shed.

He sucked my clit between his lips.

I came so fast it frightened me.

My back came up off the table.

A cry I didn't recognize went up the wheelhouse and out through the open window onto the water.

He did not let up.

He held me through it with his mouth, easing me down.

Then, without a pause, he took me up again, slower this time.

I was begging him in half words before he was done.

"Ruel, I need you. I need you in me, please."

He lifted his head.

His mouth was wet, and his eyes were dark and fixed on mine.

"Say that again."

"I need your cock inside me," I said.

"Good girl."

I had not known I wanted to be told that.

I sat up and pulled him up by the belt.

I fumbled the buckle open while he kicked off his boots.

He was big, thick and already leaking at the tip when I wrapped my hand around him.

He swore once, low and short.

"Easy," he said through his teeth. "Captain, I am not going to last if you do that."

"Then don't let me."

He took my wrist off him, gently, and kissed the inside of it.

Then he gripped my hips and pulled me to the edge of the table.

"Hold on to me."

I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He guided himself to my entrance and pushed the head in, slowly.

He stopped there, shaking.

"Don't you dare be careful," I said.

He laughed once, breathless.

Then he gave me the rest of it in one long stroke.

I felt him go all the way, stretching me full, and my head fell back on the chart.

"Fuck," Ruel said into my neck. "You're so tight."

"You're so big."

"Take it. That's it. Take all of it."

He drew back and pushed in again, and the table slid a little on its bolts.

He set a rhythm, deep and even.

He ground against me on every thrust, so that my clit rubbed on the base of him.

I met every one.

"There you are," he said. "Look at you moving."

I couldn't speak.

I had my nails in his back and my mouth open on his shoulder.

Every stroke was a word I was too far gone to say.

"Harder," I finally managed.

He gave me harder.

The whole boat rocked on its lines, a small slow roll that answered each thrust.

I thought, distantly, of my father.

Then I didn't think of anything.

"Come on," Ruel said. "You're almost there. Slow ahead."

"Don't say that."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because it works."

He laughed again.

Then he reached between us and rubbed my clit with two fingers, quick and certain, while he slammed into me.

I broke apart around his cock.

I clenched on him in long hard pulses, and I heard him curse softly into my hair.

He did not stop.

"One more," he said. "Give me one more, Captain."

"I can't."

"You can. Turn over."

He drew out of me, and I whimpered at the loss of him.

He lifted me off the chart table and turned me to face the helm.

My hands closed on the brass wheel my father had held for thirty years.

It was cool and worn smooth, and it steadied me for exactly as long as it took him to step up behind me.

He pushed my feet apart with his boot.

He bent me forward by the small of my back and slid into me again, slow, all the way.

I groaned.

"Eyes front," Ruel said. "Look at the bay."

Through the salt-fogged glass the whole harbor lay spread out in lamplight.

The Clarissa B. stood dark and enormous at her pier, with the bridge strung in blue lights behind her.

He started to move.

He took me in long deliberate strokes, his hands on my hips and his breath on my shoulder blade.

Every thrust shoved me against the wheel, and the rudder indicator ticked back and forth.

"Port a little," he muttered. "Steady. Hold your course."

"Are you steering me?"

"I'm trying to."

I laughed and moaned in the same breath.

He sped up, and the laugh broke apart into a cry.

One of his hands slid around my hip and between my legs.

I was still so sensitive that my whole body jumped.

"More," I said. "Don't you stop."

He gave me more.

Two fingers slid wet on my clit while his cock pounded in from behind.

The tide book hit the floor, and the radio on its shelf crackled a burst of static.

"That's it," he said. "You're doing it. Bring it in."

I came again, harder than the first time.

My forehead pressed against the glass, and the wheel spun a quarter turn under my hands.

He drove into me twice more, hard enough to lift my heels off the deck.

Then he came with a hoarse shout.

He pulled out at the last moment and spilled hot across the small of my back.

We stayed leaning on the helm together, shaking, while the boat rocked and the water slapped the hull.

"I meant to go slower," he said finally.

"You didn't need to." I dragged my fingers through his short hair. "I wanted all of it."

He lifted me and carried me across the wheelhouse to the long cushioned bench where the pilots sat on night tows.

He sat down with me in his lap and pulled his jacket over both of us.

For a while neither of us spoke.

His heart thudded against my ear, slow and steady.

"Again?" I said, after a long time.

"Give me ten minutes."

"I'll give you five."

He kissed my forehead, and I felt his smile on my skin.

The second time was slower.

I climbed over him on the bench, knees either side of his hips.

I took him in myself, an inch at a time, watching his face go still and helpless.

"Look at you," I said, and I used his own words. "Look at you holding still."

"Don't ask me to do that for long."

"I'm not asking."

I rolled my hips once, deep.

His hands tightened on my waist hard enough to leave marks.

"God, Captain."

"Say that again."

"Captain," he said, and his voice cracked on it.

I rode him slowly, with that word in my ear and his hands guiding my hips.

It was not hungry this time.

It was something steadier that I had no name for.

When I came, I came quietly, with my forehead on his.

He followed me with a low sound that shook his whole chest.

We fell asleep like that, tangled on the bench, under his coat.

I woke to gray light in the windows and a hard knock on the wheelhouse door.

"Capitana," Anselmo called through the wood. "I'm sorry."

"What is it?"

"There's a white car at the gate with a driver. Mrs. Braddock is holding a cashier's check."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend