Rock the Boat: A Griffin Bay Novel (10 page)

“Why not?” He didn’t relent with his hand or that massive hardness. “Didn’t we agree that I call the shots here, Jordan?”

She bit her lip and didn’t answer.

“Just let go,” Davis whispered. “Give in. Surrender to your own feelings, for once in your life.”

He increased the pace. The fire redoubled inside Jordan’s body, and a moment later she felt the familiar tightening of all her senses, the warm tingle that told her she was almost there.

But still she couldn’t quite allow herself to…

“Do it,” Davis commanded. “Come.”

The soft vibration of his voice sent Jordan over the edge. She arched until only her ass and head remained on the berth, filling the confines of the cabin with a high, helpless cry. Wave after wave wracked her body, making her shudder and gasp.

When those convulsions died down, Davis seized her by the hips and rode her hard, pounding into her with rasping breath until he, too, tensed and shuddered, a gravelly groan coming from deep within his chest.

“God,” he gasped as he sagged over her body, “damn.”

Warm satisfaction coursed along her body, making her limbs feel heavy and thick. Davis pulled away gently and stood, his broad back to her as he took the condom off and stuffed it into the bottom of the cabin’s small trash can. Then he leaned his head against the locker’s teak door and stood in silence, panting with his eyes closed, catching his breath.

Jordan lay very still. Moment by moment, the afterglow departed. She felt the
Coriolis
rocking side to side, betraying what had just happened for anyone on the bay or on the shore to see.

Oh my god
, she told herself frantically as she sat up, reaching for her scattered clothing.
What have you done?

.10.

D
avis watched as Jordan scrambled back into her clothes. It was a crime to hide that tight, round ass in a pair of jeans. He almost told her to wait, to lounge around naked for a while longer and enjoy the cool-down, but her tense, jerky movements and hard-pressed lips told him loud and clear that his spell was broken. She would no longer listen to a thing he said—not like she had just moments before.

He pulled on his boxer-briefs, then bent to grab his jeans from the floor. Jordan, wiggling and twisting as she wrestled herself back into her bra, bumped into his shoulder and lurched away again as if his touch had burned her. She crawled across the bed and cranked open the porthole window on its brass hinge. Then she fanned the air frantically with her hands.

“What are you doing?” Davis asked.

“Trying to get the sex-funk out of here. Do you
know
what my crew will say if they realize what went on in here?”

It seemed like a rhetorical question. Davis didn’t offer a guess. He yawned and stretched his arms above his head, as best he could in the cabin with its low ceiling and confining walls.

“Put your shirt on,” Jordan said as she pulled her own t-shirt over her head.

“Nah,” Davis answered. “I’m good. I’m going to stay like this for a while.”

Obviously exasperated with his attitude, Jordan blew a puff of air up past her nose. A stray lock of her long, dark hair fluttered on the sudden breeze.

“If you’re smart, you’ll do what I say,” she said. “We still have to spend six days together on this boat, so—”

“Good.” Davis reached for her, pulled her hips against his own. The memory of her arching and screaming rushed through him, filling him with an energy he hadn’t felt for years. In another couple of minutes he’d be ready to go again. He was sure of it… if he could just hold Jordan’s slinky, tight body a little big longer…

She pushed him away. “Knock it off. Where are my socks? Help me find my socks.”

Davis spotted both of her white ankle socks stuffed in the space between the rumpled bed and the cabin’s wall. He fished them out for her; Jordan snatched them from his hand with an irritated grunt.

“Back to your old bossy ways,” he said, amused.

But Jordan wasn’t in the mood for laughing. “Damn right. I’m the captain of this boat and
I’m
in charge, no matter… no matter
what
happened between us.”

“Fine by me. I think the boss-lady act is hot.”

She shoved her feet into her socks and stood, staring at him soberly. “You do?”

“Yeah. It’s a nice contrast to what I saw just now.” He brushed her hair away from her cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear. “When you gave up all your control to me.”

She shuddered visibly, but whether from anger or the memory of her ecstasy, Davis couldn’t tell. When she had herself under control again—that exquisite, hard-shelled control he’d pried away at for days, until finally,
finally
she gave in and showed him her more vulnerable side—Jordan squared her shoulders and said, “Listen, Davis. This can’t happen again. It won’t happen again.”

“Oh, really?”

She knocked his hand away from her hair. “Yes,
really
. This was… unprofessional. And I take my business seriously.”

“I know you do,” he said with feeling. Jordan’s drive and focus—her surety of her own life’s path—was the thing he most admired about her. And envied.
If only I could have a
fraction
of your certainty about the direction my life is heading
…

“Somehow we just have to…” She tossed up her hands in a helpless gesture. “Pretend this never happened.”

Davis stifled a disbelieving laugh. He’d slept with a lot of women—that came with the territory when you were a touring musician, flitting from one city to the next, indulging in all the excesses fame and money brought you. But he had never had sex this good in all his life. He was
sure
of that—it wasn’t just the post-event warm-fuzzies talking. Even Christine had never rocked him this hard, back when everything had been great between them, when he’d been certain of her loyalty and commitment. It wasn’t even the sex itself that had so exceeded all Davis’s prior experiences—though it had certainly been good. It was Jordan herself that blew the rest away. To see a woman as self-possessed and
together
as she, give in totally to his seduction… and to give in so completely…. It was almost like magic to Davis. Jordan had become another person in his arms, revealing a facet of herself which Davis suspected she kept carefully hidden from everybody around her. No one else in the world knew just how much Jordan could really let go. No one but Davis knew how beautiful she was when she trusted, and just
lived
without worrying about a thing.

“I can’t just pretend this never happened,” he protested. “You were so—”

“Inappropriate,” she snapped. Her cheeks flamed pink and her eyes crackled with dangerous sparks. “You have to forget about this entirely, Davis.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he laughed.

She slipped past him and opened the cabin door. Cool air rushed in from outside, laden with the rich scents of the boat—oiled teak and the faint whiff of diesel. It drove away the warm, musky smell of their bodies, obliterating all evidence of the passion they’d shared.

“Well, then you have to
act
like it never happened. You do that on stage, right—acting? At your concerts?”

Numbly, he nodded. “I guess so. Kind of.”

“You can’t let on anything to Storm or Emily. They’ll lose all respect for me. God knows
you’ve
already lost whatever tiny particle of respect you had for me.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not true at all. I—”

She cut him off with a gusty sigh and leaned her forehead against the door jamb, squeezing her eyes shut as if to drive away all thought of Davis.

“I wouldn’t have done this at all,” she said raggedly, “because it’s so,
so
unprofessional… only, I’m not sure I want to keep up my charter business.”

“You… you don’t?”

“I don’t know!” Her sudden wail sounded heartbreaking and helpless. “All my life, this job was the only thing I wanted. But the clients are so unbearable.” She cast a guilty, half-apologetic glance in his direction.

Davis laughed. “I’m not
that
bad, am I? I mean, at least I made you come.”

Her lips twisted as she fought back a smile. But the sternness won out. “I’m
serious
, Davis. No one can know. You can’t let on to Emily or Storm that this happened, because
if
I decide to keep my business, I need my crew’s continued respect. And I need the reputation for professionalism I’ve worked so damn hard to build.”

“Okay,” he said quietly.

She turned and left him there in the cabin. He poked his head out the door, watching her stride angrily down the aisle toward the ladder and the world above the deck—her domain, where she remained indisputably in control.

“Jordan,” Davis called after her.

She turned and looked back at him with her hand on the ladder. Her dark eyes were soft, just for a moment—for the briefest heartbeat, they held some warmth for him.

“You’re a really good sailor,” he said. “Don’t give up your business. You’re so good at what you do.”

She paused, looking down at her toes for a moment. “Thanks,” she finally said, quiet and thoughtful. Then she was gone, climbing up into the white patch of sunlight.

Pretend this never happened?
Davis sank back on the messy bed, shaking his head in astounded denial.

For the time they’d spent wrapped in each other’s arms, Davis had forgotten everything he was losing—his youth, his charisma, his career. He forgot Christine and Mark, Tyler and his expectations, the disappointment of his family. Jordan’s touching, vulnerable surrender had proven to Davis that his life wasn’t falling apart—not as badly as he’d thought it was. If he could still make a woman fall for him—and a woman like Jordan, at that, with her stiff, unbreakable control—then Davis Steen wasn’t washed up yet. He still had hope.

There was no way in hell Davis was going to forget what had happened in this cabin. In fact, he felt more determined than ever to win Jordan over. He wanted to do it all again. If he could get away with it, he wouldn’t needle her into surrendering. He’d coax her—invite her.

But if she remained the stubborn, self-possessed captain, unwilling to admit to any growing fondness for her
unbearable
client, Davis would be just as happy with another fury-induced hate-fuck, as blistering-hot as the one they’d just shared.

.11.

T
he two days that followed the below-decks tryst were a strange, disorienting haze for Davis. As the
Coriolis
carried him from one stunning island view to the next—from cove to harbor, from inlet to strait—he was only half conscious of the remarkable beauty that surrounded him. And every time Jordan tried to arrange for quiet contemplation, anchoring the boat for a few hours in some scenic location, the memory of the passion they’d shared crowded into his thoughts, thrumming inside his head and chest along with his doubt in himself and his persistent fears over his eroding career. He didn’t regret a moment he’s spent with Jordan in his arms… but his longing for her grew stronger by the hour, and her stiff resolve to pretend nothing had ever happened between them hurt Davis more than he could handle.

Between Jordan’s stoic refusal to acknowledge what they’d shared, and the troubles that had sent him to the San Juan Islands in the first place, Davis was more in need of peaceful contemplation than ever—and ten times more determined to avoid it. He could hardly admit the truth to himself, but the reality was this: Davis was afraid that if he examined the situation between himself and Jordan too closely, he would realize that she truly didn’t like him at all. He couldn’t stand the thought that he might be just another rich prick of a client to Jordan—that his irritating presence was all the more unbearable because of the power he had to seduce her into very unprofessional behavior. And he
really
couldn’t stand the thought that maybe he deserved to be so disliked by her… that whatever she’d insisted in the cabin below, he truly had been unfair to her, and tempted her beyond her comfort zone just to soothe his own stupid, bruised pride.

And so, unwilling to face the truth—
any
truth about his crumbling life—Davis retreated to his loud music with a bull-headed determination that practically made steam shoot out of Jordan’s pretty little ears.

Whenever the
Coriolis
was in motion, Davis spoke to Emily and Storm as much as he could get away with—asking questions about the work they did, about how the rigging and sails worked—anything to keep up a conversation, to chase his own, darkly quiet thoughts away. When they weren’t involved too intensely in their work, both Emily and Storm seemed happy to teach him about sailing. A few times, Jordan even brusquely allowed him to haul on the lines and raise or lower the sails—under Storm’s guidance, of course.

The inroads he made with Jordan’s crew extended to their leisure time. The moment the
Coriolis
was safely at anchor, Davis would bring out his speakers and crank up the tunes, or play something energetic and wild on his guitar, and Storm and Emily would join him on the deck, dancing and laughing, singing along. Jordan never participated, though. She lurked beside the great wheel of her boat’s helm, watching Davis charm her crew while a frustrated scowl darkened her beautiful features.

As the sun sank low on the sixth day of the voyage, the
Coriolis
bobbed gently at anchor in Echo Bay, off the coast of a tiny island called Sucia. To the east, across the flat, indigo-blue expanse of the Salish Sea, Mt. Baker rose high above its dark mainland foothills. The snow-covered volcano reflected the oncoming sunset’s pinkish light. It was a beautiful scene—and Davis couldn’t stand the solitude of it, the lonely ache it raised inside him. He strummed the last harsh chords of the song he’d been playing and let the final notes ring out across Echo Bay. They reverberated clearly from the natural harbor’s bowl-shaped sides.

Storm clapped and Emily raised a fist to the sky, hooting, “Woo!” Then she began, “Hey, do you know that song by—”

But Storm stalled her with a hand on her shoulder. “Jordan looks pissed,” he muttered. “We probably should give the music a rest for now.”

Davis glanced back at the helm. Jordan sat on one of the cockpit’s side benches, knees pulled up to her chest, her nose buried in a paperback book while she sipped from a mug of tea.

“She looks all right to me,” Davis said.

“That’s because you don’t have the Griffin-Caines Sixth Sense,” Emily said, chuckling. “Storm and Jordan are cousins. You’ve
never
met a family as close-knit as their clan, I guarantee it. It’s spooky, the way they all just
get
each other. Anyway, if Storm says Jordan is pissed, it’s best to believe him.”

Davis unslung his guitar and set it back in its case. “Thanks for the warning. You two are really cousins?”

Storm nodded, grinning down the length of the
Coriolis
at Jordan, who studiously ignored all three of them. “Emily’s right; the Griffins and Caineses are a tight-knit family. We’ve all been islanders for generations—all the way back to the days when it was first settled by non-indigenous people. That kind of long history—with roots running deep in one location—really brings people together, I think. But Jordan and I are even closer than most members of our family. We’re so close in age that we’re practically a set of triplets—Jordan, her twin brother, and me. I’ve been extra-close to Jordan my whole life… and Carter, her twin.”

Davis cleared his throat, which had grown unaccountably tight, and stared out at the scenery to avoid looking Storm in the eye. No wonder Jordan was so hell-bent on keeping their encounter a secret. If Davis had a sister, and if some guy had done with
her
what Davis had done with Jordan, he’d probably pound that dickhead’s face in.

“So, uh…” Davis fished for a safer approach to the subject. “Is it weird having Jordan as your boss, since the two of you are so close?”

“Nah.” Storm sat easily on the deck, crossing his ankle over his knee and bracing his hands behind his head, the very picture of leisure. He leaned against the mast with a contented air. “She’s so good at her job, you know? I trust her judgment one hundred percent. I know she can be a little snippy sometimes, but that’s only because she takes her work so seriously. Sailing means everything to her, and I know she’d never make a bad call.”

“Yeah,” Emily added, sinking down beside Storm. “She’s so careful, so cautious… I know she’ll never steer this boat wrong. That’s the one good thing about her total lack of spontaneity—it means you can trust her with your life.”

I don’t think she’s really the stick-in-the-mud you believe she is
, Davis refrained from saying.

Flustered by the thought—the memory of Jordan arching and crying out in his arms—he spoke without thinking. “You know, I kind of envy what you guys have—that family connection. Wish I could say my family is as tight as yours.”

Why the hell did I mention my family, of all damn things?
Incredulous at his own stupidity, Davis snatched his guitar from its case again and strummed a few quiet chords. The music took the edge off his freshly-rattled nerves, and he felt the flush fade from his face as he regained his cool.

“Yeah?” Emily asked lightly. “Not such a great group?”

Davis picked out an intricate fall of notes. “They never miss a chance to let me know how disappointing I am.”

Emily and Storm both guffawed in disbelief.

“
What?
” Storm blurted. In the same moment Emily said, “Um, your band is like
the biggest thing ever
. Do your parents live under a rock?”

My band
was
the biggest thing ever. Not anymore
.

Davis shrugged, as if he didn’t care a bit what his parents thought of him. “Oh, you know. They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer—something respectable. Ever since I started getting serious about my music career, my parents have been on my case, constantly reminding me how unstable my field is.”

And they’re right
, Davis thought glumly. Even the guitar cradled against his body, sending its gentle notes humming through his chest, couldn’t take away the hurt he felt at facing just how damn
right
his parents had been all along.

Emily ran her fingers through her waves of golden-yellow hair, combing out knots made by another day of wind and salty spray. “If I were your parents, I’d just shut up and be proud of you. You’ve made it all the way to the top! How many musicians get to say that?”

Davis smiled at her gratefully and strummed a few chords of her favorite Local Youths song, trying to keep the volume low enough to appease the captain. Emily clapped her hands softly, but the song sounded bitter in Davis’s ears.
I made it all the way to the top
, he told himself sadly as Emily sang the lyrics in a near-whisper.
And now I’m falling down the other side
.

When the song finished, Davis heard light footsteps treading along the deck. He turned and found Jordan approaching. The sun was close to setting; it cast a halo of brilliant orange light around her; she seemed to glow like a vision, like an angel. She looked so beautiful and confident in that moment that Davis’s chest constricted. His throat burned with the force of his longing to touch her again, to kiss that full, curving mouth.

Storm and Emily climbed to their feet. Davis could see the respect shining in their faces, and he felt a stab of envy.

If my parents respected me half
as much as these two respect their captain
… If Tyler respected him half as much, if Christine and Matt had given him one molecule’s worth of respect compared to the love Jordan received from her crew...

Then Davis’s stomach lurched. A wave of disbelief and nausea washed over him as he realized that
he
hadn’t shown Jordan enough respect. He had taunted her into having sex with him—had done it all as a power trip, to reassure himself that he wasn’t losing his edge, that he still had what it took to be the sexy, charismatic, irresistible rock star. True, she had been consenting—he wouldn’t even have considered it if Jordan had said no. But that didn’t make it right. He had pushed her beyond control—beyond the sense of command that was so important to her, and so important to her crew.

You were right
, Davis thought sadly as he met Jordan’s eye, flushing with shame.
I really am the worst
.

“I was thinking of getting dinner started,” Jordan announced.

“Sounds great,” Emily said, bouncing off across the deck. She called over her shoulder, “Thanks for the concert, Davis!”

“I’ll give her a hand,” Storm said.

Jordan checked him with a quick shake of her head. “You’re a terrible cook, Stormy.”

“Then I’ll just put the water on to boil for you lady-chefs. I can’t mess that up, can I?”

“You probably can,” Jordan called, but Storm was already scurrying off toward the ladder and the cabin below.

Davis shrugged as a thick, uncomfortable silence fell between him and Jordan. Then he realized he was still holding his guitar—and it was probably annoying the hell out of her. He pulled the strap over his head hastily and turned toward his guitar case with a mumbled, “Sorry, captain.”

Jordan’s soft, quiet laugh stalled him. “It’s okay. You guys kept the volume down, and I guess that’s all I can ask for. After all, you
are
the client. It’s your vacation, not mine.”

He turned back to her with a tentative smile, holding his guitar by the neck.

“It’s none of my business if you want to have your own private Lollapalooza,” Jordan said with a smirk.

“Listen,” Davis said, “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t.” She shook her head emphatically. “Don’t say what you’re about to say.”

“Oka—y…” Davis let the word trail off into silence. Did she want his silence because she still insisted that they pretend nothing happened between them? Or did she refuse to hear his regrets because
she
didn’t regret the sex? Davis figured it could be dangerous to make assumptions one way or the other, so he held his tongue and held his guitar contritely at his side.

“Maybe after dinner you can play for us again,” Jordan finally said. “Like you did the first night. I mean… if you want to.”

The fact that Jordan actually wanted to hear him play and sing made Davis’s heart leap with unexpected happiness. He shrugged casually, fiddling with the guitar’s strap. “Yeah, sure. It’s no big deal.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Then, just before she turned to descend into the galley, her dark eyes dropped from his face and roamed over his body, taking in his chest, his arms, his narrow waist and the region below with deliberate, lingering appraisal.

Jordan was nearly at the cabin’s ladder before Davis’s comprehension surged up and eclipsed his earlier misgivings. There was no mistaking the look she had just given him. Jordan was still thinking about their hot encounter. He couldn’t blame her—the feel of her body and the sound of her gasps and moans hadn’t left him over the past two days. If anything, Jordan had only imprinted herself more indelibly in his mind, along his keyed-up, thrumming nerves.

The next time Jordan came to him, Davis felt sure he’d have nothing to feel guilty about afterward. But how the hell could they find another chance to be alone together? There weren’t many days left on this vacation. And when it ended, there was a good chance Davis would never see Jordan again.