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Of course, the affair with the captain had been a long time ago, and she knew how to handle herself better now.
“And anything with Dylan Johns wouldn’t be a relationship,” she said aloud.
She planned to begin a new phase of her career soon, but that didn’t lessen the risk. She could destroy her whole future by getting into bed with a colleague. If the affair went south—if the captain found out and got angry about it—he could refuse to give her a reference for another job.
But why should she assume the worst? Other people had shipboard affairs all the time without derailing their whole lives.
Michaela looked around her stateroom and tried to imagine Dylan’s tall frame in the small space. He would fill it almost entirely, his long legs reaching the end of the bed and his broad chest taking up a good section of the width.
Giving up on sleep, she got up, turned on the shower, and stepped under the cool spray. It gave her no relief. The shower cubicles onboard were necessarily small. Trying to fit thousands of passengers and hundreds of crew onto the ship meant that some things had to be sacrificed, and despite the fact that these rooms were big in comparison to those on some ships, the space was still very tight. The slow billow of the shower curtain, the water against her skin, the scent of Dylan still in her hair—Michaela couldn’t help but imagine him crushed into the shower with her. His naked body pushed hers against the wall, and the water and thoughts of his tongue combined to make her wet all over.
“Stop it,” she berated herself. She turned the shower onto full cold. With the tropical heat of the Pacific permeating even the staterooms, the temperature wasn’t unpleasant, and it did help a little with her internal overheating.
As she toweled herself down she felt calmer. As if to confirm it, she said to the room, “I’ll deal with Dylan Johns tomorrow.”
…
The next day was another busy one, and Michaela didn’t have a chance to stop and think about the previous night’s passion. But once the last daytime activity came to an end, she looked at the clock, realizing that the first theater show would be starting soon.
“No, I’m not going,” she said, to prove…something. She wrote a memo to staff about a missing shuffleboard pole, refilled the printer cartridges, and filed a stack of papers that had been sitting on her desk waiting for attention. But as the minutes ticked into an hour, she sighed and shut down her office computer, then walked as if in a trance to find a seat for the second theater showing.
The dancers were all smiles, but this time Michaela could see the strain that having to learn all these routines in such a small amount of time was putting on them. Their smiles didn’t move with the natural contours of their faces—they were almost painted on. Sometimes she noted the stiffness that came from a moment of panic when the steps to a routine disappeared out of one of their heads.
The only dancer who seemed completely at ease was Dylan, his body moving naturally in between cues, even when he was cut off by the impromptu exit of another dancer.
The audience would never have known, but having seen a few of the numbers from this show many times with various dancers in the different roles, Michaela could see the places where he didn’t quite have the timing right or where he added an extra step or two. It didn’t change the fact that he was astonishing. He leapt and strode over the stage as if the work had been choreographed just for him. His muscles glistened as he worked them, and Michaela noticed every woman seemed to lean forward in anticipation when Dylan moved to center stage.
He’s an incredibly talented dancer, that’s all. And an incredibly talented kisser. She touched her lips at the memory. If she let herself, she could almost taste him still.
Peering down from her second-level seat, Michaela could see the front-row couch where she and Dylan had fallen into each other the previous night. The thought that someone could have walked in on them clutched in each other’s arms filled her with a strangely erotic panic. And as to him striding out of the theater with her in his arms, her shirt open, skirt hitched up, and bra undone…
“Oh, God,” she moaned quietly. “It just can’t happen. The ship is too public.”
She left before the end of the show, slipping out so no one would notice her when the lights came up. But she knew that the real reason she had to disappear was to prevent Dylan from seeing and devouring her with his eyes. Her body wanted him more than her mind could ignore, and under the scrutiny of his full gaze she became more helpless than she cared to admit. She hurried off to the staff canteen, hoping she could eat and leave before the dance team got there.
Despite almost gulping her food, Michaela was still eating when she heard a familiar male voice from behind her. “Mind if I join you?”
Her heart leapt and fell simultaneously, and she looked to each side of her, making sure no one saw her blush.
Dylan drew out a chair and pushed his tray next to hers. “Don’t worry, the others ate earlier.”
It was true, there were hardly any people left eating at this time. “We can’t do this. I—”
He hushed her with a quick finger to her lips, and just as she feared, she felt herself melting under his intense gaze. “I know this makes no sense, I know we shouldn’t, I know there are a thousand reasons not to.” He put his other hand on her thigh under the table. She looked around again, checking for curious eyes. Her leg flared with heat under his touch.
Dylan must have seen her pupils dilate and heard her breath catch. “Don’t tell me you don’t want it.”
Damn him, but he read her like a book.
“We’re two fully consenting adults.” He let the words drift around their heads, their meaning brilliant with promise. “But I’ll give you one chance. Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll leave you alone.” As he spoke, he worked his hand farther up the bare skin of her thigh, inching her skirt upward. He brushed his fingertips across the crease where her thighs met, then trailed the hand back down her leg to the comparative safety of her knee.
“We can’t. My stateroom…” The thought of rubbing the captain’s face in her romantic potential was tempting, but not tempting enough to risk what nasty revenge he would undoubtedly make her suffer. He was the captain, after all.
“No need,” Dylan said and stood, tugging at her elbow.
Her lips opened to speak, to deny the fever she felt even now building inside, but the words wouldn’t come. Her body wouldn’t let them.
