He Divorced Me at His Ship's Christening, So I Held the Ship novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Kitchen

The caldo verde was still simmering when Ruel took the wooden spoon out of my hand and set it on the stove.

"It's going to scorch," I said.

"Let it."

He turned me around by the hips and backed me against the kitchen counter.

The old tile edge pressed cold into the backs of my thighs.

My father's kitchen smelled of kale and smoked sausage and bay leaf.

For the first time in two years, it smelled like someone lived there.

His mouth came down on mine, tasting of the red wine I had poured him.

I pulled his shirt up over his head and dropped it on the linoleum.

"Your father's picture is watching us," Ruel murmured against my ear.

I glanced at the wall.

My father stood in a frame by the window, a thick-armed man in a captain's cap, squinting at a camera in 1998.

"He'd tell you to take your boots off," I said.

"They're off."

"Then he'd tell you not to waste time."

Ruel laughed under his breath, and the sound went all the way down my spine.

He got my sundress off over my head in one pull.

I wasn't wearing anything under it, because I had hoped.

I watched him find that out.

"Captain," he said, hoarse. "You planned this."

"I planned dinner."

"This isn't dinner."

"No." I hooked my fingers in the waist of his jeans. "It's seconds."

He lifted me onto the counter, and the spice rack rattled.

I spread my knees, and he stood between them with his hands on my thighs.

He looked down at me and took his time doing it.

"Tell me what you want first," he said.

"I want to taste you."

His eyes closed for a moment.

"Then take what you want."

I slid down off the counter and onto my knees on the cold tile.

I unbuttoned him and pushed his jeans down.

I took him in my hand, heavy and hot.

He was already hard.

I looked up at him and licked one slow stripe from the base to the tip.

His hand came down into my hair and tightened.

"Captain," he started.

I took him in my mouth before he could finish.

He groaned.

It was a deep, helpless sound, and I felt it low in my own belly.

I took him as far as I could, my tongue flat under him, one hand wrapped around what I couldn't reach.

His hips moved once, shallow, and then he caught himself.

"Easy," he said, to himself more than to me. "Easy."

"Don't hold back."

"I will if I have to." His fingers combed through my hair. "God, your mouth."

I sucked harder and hollowed my cheeks.

He made a noise that was almost a curse.

Every muscle in his thighs locked, and he was shaking.

I thought of Wendell, who had never once let me do this without looking at his phone.

I thought, very clearly, that I would make this man forget his own name.

"Stop," Ruel said suddenly.

He drew back out of my mouth with a gasp.

I looked up at him, wounded.

"Not yet." He pulled me to my feet with both hands. "I want to be inside you when it happens."

"Then do it."

He turned me around and bent me forward over the counter, one palm flat between my shoulder blades.

My hands slapped down on the cool tile.

A moment later he was pressing against me from behind.

"Hold there," he said.

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