She took another sip of the coffee, letting the taste flood her mouth. Instant coffee was certainly not the best thing out there, but it was better than no coffee.
“I’m sorry I unloaded on you yesterday. I just wanted to be able to share them with you.”
“I like that you did. I know how much it weighs on you, and I’m happy to share some of that.”
There he went with the perfect-boyfriend answers again, making her insides swoon. As much as she loved the answer, she knew that if she wasn’t careful, she would blurt out a response that might be too much too soon.
“Is there a plan for today?”
“Unless you want to do something different, my idea had been to just hang. We can just lie in the sun, maybe go for a swim, play truth or dare, whatever you want.”
“Truth or dare?” she asked, laughing. “Just what kind of dares are we gonna do on the boat, just us?”
He stood there with a puzzled look on his face, obviously having not thought this part out.
“Well, I had been joking, but give me time and I’ll figure it out!”
“Will you now?” she said, mischievously. “Then truth or dare is most certainly on the to-do list.”
The morning had been peaceful and warm, just the way Kyle felt it should always be in the islands. He’d finally gotten a little bit of sleep, somehow letting his worries about how to make everything work take a back seat in his brain for a bit. However, when the sun came up, so was he, unable to force his body to rest any more. He hadn’t wanted to wake Drea—she needed the rest. She felt so damn perfect curled up next to him, making him wonder again what he did to deserve having someone like her. The little cooing noises she made in her sleep made her that much more endearing, and it wasn’t just his morning wood that stirred.
His heart felt like it could explode every time he looked at her, and he wondered how he got here so quickly. There had always been a deep connection between them, and from the moment he arrived in St. Thomas they had been a pair. Drea pulled him into her circle and they had built their friendship on the basis of laughter, trust, and a love of sailing. But now, it went so much deeper than that friendship. He craved her. It wasn’t just the sex, although being with her physically was a mind-blowing experience, and he looked forward to giving her a number of other firsts. But it didn’t seem to matter what they were doing, he wanted to be with her. He wanted to be able to hold her hand, make her laugh, and most importantly, make her feel safe and loved.
As he had gotten the sails ready this morning and navigated them back in the direction of St. Thomas, he tried to make sense of all his feelings. If he knew anything, it was that he’d never felt this way before about another human being, and he couldn’t exactly put his finger on what it was. He felt like they had been together forever, not just a few days, although the five years of friendship they had under their belts might have contributed to that feeling. He just knew that the idea of a life without Drea made him want to throw up.
A distraction was desperately needed, but he didn’t know how to take his mind off of all of it. Usually one of the things he loved the most about being out on the water was that he was alone with his thoughts and the open air helped clear his head. Not today, though. Today the open air only filled his head with thoughts of Drea. Thoughts of a life with her, the two of them holing up in that little cottage of hers, making it theirs, of her in a white dress on the beach, her wild curls waving in the sea breeze, of her tummy prominent and round with their baby, of growing old and gray with her. These were the thoughts that would get him in even more trouble though. He needed to try to focus on something more superficial, like how just the thought of her amazing curves made him instantly hard.
They’d already checked off a number of things he’d imagined doing with her, and all of them had been better than he had ever thought possible. He’d never been like Dalton where sex was just another physical activity—he’d always had to have some kind of connection to the other person. But the last couple of days had been something else. Everything about Drea set his nerve endings on fire and even something as simple as feeling her lips against his had sent all the blood in his body rushing to his dick. Yet there was still so much more he wanted to do with her, both in bed and out. He wanted to give her the world.
She was back up at the front of the boat, wearing that itty-bitty red bikini again. When he had said that it was all he wanted her to pack, he was only kidding, but he loved that even if she had packed another suit, she’d chosen to only wear this. He loved seeing her this comfortable, not only in her own body, but in their relationship. It had to be a good sign that she was back in that suit. Maybe he would get to recreate the action from the booze cruise after all.
After dropping the anchor and lowering the sails, he moved to the front of the boat to join her.
“Ready for truth or dare?” he asked as he sat down next to her on the trampoline.
She put her book down and looked at him skeptically. “Did you figure out how dares are gonna work?”
“No,” he admitted. “I thought about truth or shots, but we should probably be responsible sailors and not get wasted.” She nodded. “So, then I thought truth or strip.”
“Truth or strip? So if I don’t want to answer something, I have to take off a piece of clothing?”
“That had been the idea until I thought it through a little more and realized we’re both in swimsuits.”
“Good call.” She winked.
“Not that I don’t want to get you naked,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“You don’t need a teenage game of truth or dare for that!” she laughed, making her boobs jiggle in the process. He watched as they moved freely in the loosely tied bikini top, imagining what he would do if one just popped out.
“Good to know. Anything else I should know?” he winked.
She giggled, shaking her head from side to side, making those wild corkscrew curls of hers go flying. “I’m an open book, you can ask me anything. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“Me either.”
“Good, then you can go first.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kyle wasn’t sure what to say. Conversation had always come easy to the two of them, but then again, silence had never been awkward either. Not that it was now, as he sat here trying to rack his brain for something to share. What could he possibly share that she didn’t know?
“You’re supposed to ask me a question,” he said, trying to make up for his lack of prepared topics.
“I was thinking! I was trying to make it really good,” she swatted at him. He dodged her contact, but only barely, laughing at her getting all flustered. “Tell me what you remember most about your dad.”
“That he was never around?”
She furrowed her brows at him, looking almost disappointed that that had been his answer.
“Seriously, he wasn’t around much. He was a drug officer for the Coast Guard, it was a big job, and it kept him away a lot. He was a great dad from what I could tell. He came to my games and school events and stuff. But what I remember most was that it was a big deal that he made it to those. I’d like to think that if he had lived, that he would have been around more as I got older, and that we would have done more father-son stuff, but he was gone just after I turned six so I never got the chance to find out.”