He chuckled and pulled her down. “No way. This is a first.”
“And the last,” she whispered as their lips met.
He kissed her, first gently, then hard, deep, and passionately, as she twisted beneath him with joy in her heart.
She realized that it was finally over. They were safe, and everything in her world would be okay again. She would have to mourn the loss of innocence in Tabitha and Lionel, plus the loss of Daniel in her own way. And she would have to help deal with the aftermath for Tabitha and Lionel. That would not be easy. The inquiry and investigation into this nightmare would go on for weeks, months, or perhaps much longer, but she hoped the entire industry would take steps to ensure that such a terrible thing would never happen again and that no one would have to work in such an atmosphere of abuse on the rigs—or elsewhere—ever again.
She was also thankful to not have to go back to that same rig. She knew it was billions of dollars’ worth of rig now buried in the sea and that the environmental hazard was also something that would take a long time to mop up, but she couldn’t be at all upset that it was destroyed. It represented such evil.
“Stop thinking,” he whispered. He kissed her, his tongue sliding along the edge of her lips before delving deep inside.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. He slid his hands in hers and pulled her arms up over her head, and she moaned as their bodies linked and twisted together. “You feel so damn good,” she said.
“There’s just something about danger, something about coming close to losing your life.”
“I think it’s more than that,” she said. “It was seeing the depravity of humanity and realizing that, once again, Mother Nature wins. She’ll completely absorb all that nastiness, feed it to the fish, and try to move on. I can only hope that I can too.”
He kissed her again and again. “You will,” he said. “We’ll make sure of it.”
She smiled. “You’re the best thing that came out of that place, you know?”
“No,” he whispered, trailing kisses across her cheek, breathing heavily against her ear and her neck. “I’d have to say, you are.”
She could feel shudders rocking her body. “Oh, my God, that feels so good,” she whispered, twisting beneath him.
He held her hands tight and firm.
She groaned as she tried to touch him but couldn’t move. He slid down her body, his kisses leaving a hot moist trail everywhere they went. He latched onto one nipple and suckled deep, and she could feel a response pooling in her abdomen. She groaned, raising her hips, her pelvis pressing against him, as he slid from left to right, giving the other breast the same treatment. Finally he slowly slid his hands down her arms, all the way down her hips to reach underneath and to cup her buttocks and squeezed them gently, all the while his mouth explored her ribs, her belly, and down to the moistness at the heart of her. When he reached for a taste, she shuddered and cried out.
He placed a hand gently over her mouth, and she realized that she could be heard. It was all she could do to keep back the cries as he tasted and delved and teased, until she was a liquid pool of mind-numbing jelly. When he finally rose up, she grabbed him by the hair and tugged him all the way up and then down to her lips. She kissed him deeply, and he finally slid all the way inside her body.
“Now that feels like a welcome home,” she whispered, smiling.
He lifted his head and smiled back at her and said, “I think that’s the nicest thing I’ve heard yet.”
“I mean it,” she said. “It’s been a long time of traveling and feeling like I was missing something in my life.”
“Well, hopefully we can find it together,” he said, “because I’m sure as hell not letting you go back to an oil rig like that one again.”
She smiled and wrapped her legs around him. “Agreed. How about we find a place and sort ourselves out for a bit and figure out our future together?”
He started to move, building up the pace faster and faster, diving deeper and harder into the heart of her. It was all she could do to hang on and to not let her cries rip out through the destroyer they were on. When she finally crashed over the edge of the cliff, he cried out gently above her and then slowly sagged down.
Wrapping her up in his arms, he whispered, “How about we figure out our future together every day, knowing that we have all the tomorrows ahead of us?”
With tears in her eyes, she whispered, “That sounds beautiful to me.”
“So sleep now,” he whispered. “And, when you wake up, it’ll be a whole new day.”
She did exactly that. She slept deeply and beautifully peaceful, feeling safe with him at her side.
Epilogue
Axel Salisbury almost leaped out of the office building; he was so happy the day was over. He’d been training on a software inventory management system. Office work. Ugh. As far as he was concerned, it was a load of crap. But their skill sets had to be updated on a regular basis. He’d much rather go out for target practice or for a workout in the gym or even for basic maintenance on their gear, but it wasn’t to be. Today was all about paper-pushing. He shuddered at that. As he threw his bag into the back of the Jeep, a shout came across the parking lot. He turned to see Mason. He walked across, shook his hand, and said, “You look like you recovered from that lovely trip we just completed.”
Mason nodded, his face grim. “That was a mess, wasn’t it?”
“The place wasn’t so bad,” Axel said, “but the people? Wow.”
“The company’s going through quite the headaches right now, between the government court cases and overhauling their employment practices, not to mention dealing with the fallout from the sabotage and the lawsuits from the sexual assault victims.”
“Sounds like they needed to have done something about it a long time ago,” Axel said, shaking his head. “And, so far, it’s been quiet since we got home.”
“Not anymore,” Mason said. “I need you on a team with me right now.”
Axel looked at him in surprise. “Now?”
“Somebody’ll be in front of your place in thirty minutes,” he said. “We’ve got a submarine down with eleven men and one woman on board.”
“One of ours?” Odd that it would have so few crew.
“It’s a new generation sub, smaller, more agile. Crew went down, doing some testing on it. And they’re stuck. We’re flying out in ninety minutes.”
At that, Axel nodded and said, “I’ll go home and grab my to-go bag.” He walked back to his Jeep, hopped in, and drove toward his apartment. He parked, grabbed his laptop bag, went in, his mind already sorting through what he might need to add to his already prepped to-go duffel. He prided himself on being ready in minutes. Lives often depended on it.
He was outside and waiting as a truck came by and picked him up. Mason wasn’t among the crew. Axel nodded and took the last empty place in the vehicle. “Do we have an update on the crew?”
“Last communication said they were alive, but that was over an hour ago,” the driver said, “but they’ve been beached on the sea floor.”