Page 30 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

I march us straight out of the cigar bar and through the corridor to the doors leading outside to the deck.

“Wait up!” Felix calls.

I slow down. “Sorry. It was getting claustrophobic in there.”

He’s looking at me like I’m a sudoku puzzle.

“What is happening?” he asks. “You seem freaked out.”

“I didn’t like what she was seeing in my card,” I confess.

“Hope,” he says, with kindly amusement. “Dear. You can’t think a psychic actually just read your future.”

“Not my future,” I say, feeling too weary to even bother denying it. “My present.”

“What do you mean?” Felix asks. “Money’s causing you relationship troubles? Aren’t you single?”

He’s kidding, I know, but I don’t have anyone to talk to about this particular problem, and I feel like if I don’t get it off my chest I’ll explode.

“I think it’s about me and Lauren,” I say. “She makes a lot of money, and I don’t, and sometimes that causes conflict.”

“Oh,” he says. There’s a pause, during which I realize he was not the right person to say this to, and now he’s uncomfortable. But I’m too embarrassed to think of a way to recover, so I don’t fill the silence, and we both just stand there.

“Uh, what is it Lauren does?” he finally asks.

“She’s a lifestyle influencer,” I say, not wanting to get into the details of the “finding a rich man” angle, which could sound alarming out of context. If I get into it then I’ll have to give the whole backstory, and that’s not the point.

“She always wants to do these fabulous things,” I go on.

“Vacations, spa treatments, expensive restaurants. And I can’t afford it—like, at all—so she’s always offering to pay.

She’s very generous, but I feel guilty that I can’t reciprocate.

And then last fall I had to borrow money from her to put a deposit on an apartment after my breakup, and I haven’t been able to pay it back yet.

She keeps telling me not to worry about it, that it was a gift.

But I feel uncomfortable she had to bail me out. ”

I know I’m saying too much. Felix isn’t my therapist or my financial advisor, and I’d rather he not think of me as some impoverished waif in debt to her best friend.

I don’t even get into how the card could also be about Gabe. The pressure I felt to fit into his upper-class world, and my insecurity about not belonging there. The way he too insisted on paying for everything.

I don’t want to be seen as someone with a pattern of being a charity case.

“Anyway, it’s not that important,” I say. “It just resonated for a second.”

Felix accepts this without argument, looking a little relieved I’m not pursuing the topic. I know I’ve said too much already.

“It’s nice out here,” he says. “Do you want to take a walk around the deck?”

“Sure,” I say.

We wander for a few minutes in the moonlight. It’s getting late, and there aren’t many people around. We stop and look up at the stars.

He’s quiet, and I wonder if he’s still put off by my oversharing.

“Sorry for getting stressed about tarot,” I say. “Didn’t mean to bring down the tone.”

“Ha,” he says. “Not your fault. Wasn’t much to like in my cards either, was there? I blame Olenska.”

It did not occur to me his bad mood could be about his cards.

“Is what she said true?” I ask. “Have you been cheated on?”

“Not that I know of,” he says. “But I suppose I’ve felt badly used.”

“How so?”

He groans. “This will make me sound like such a prat,” he says.

“Well, I already know you’re a prat. Your sisters have made it very clear.”

“Bless them.”

“Anyway, you were saying?”

He rubs his temple, like this conversation is giving him a headache.

I’m about to rescind the question, but he says: “Several of my exes were quite… how to put it? Socially ambitious. I had a bit of notoriety in the tabs as a kid—bad posh boy about London and all that—and my first girlfriend, Emma, wanted to be in Tatler a bit more than she actually wanted to be with me. Took me a while to figure it out. Which didn’t stop me from repeating the pattern a few more times. ”

“Oof,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

It does not escape me that we are from diametrically opposite worlds. His, where just being seen with him can get you into a society magazine. Mine, where $1.50-a-slice pizza plays heavily into my diet.

Still, it’s nice that we can confide in each other. I wonder if we’d be as forthcoming if we were actually dating.

“Well, so much for tarot being a fun diversion,” I say. “I was hoping to pull the Empress card.”

“What’s the Empress card?” he asks.

“It’s basically like drawing Beyoncé. She’s this beautiful woman in robes sitting on a red throne, holding a gold wand into the sky.

She’s a symbol of fertility—but not just the babies kind.

Like everything. The fulfillment of passion, the power of creativity, abundance, prosperity, romantic love. The whole deal.”

“Wow,” he says. “I didn’t know that was an option. Better that than a bunch of swords plunged into you.”

“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to draw her, and I strike out every time.”

He takes my hand and squeezes it. “You’re every bit Beyoncé to me,” he says.

“Thanks. Finally someone notices.”

“I do nothing but notice you.”

Emotion wells up in me. “Same,” I whisper. “Same.”

Slow down , I tell my heart. Slow down.

I am so grateful for this man, who is such a good listener, and so willing to be vulnerable with me about his disappointments. Under different circumstances, I’d revel in this easy intimacy.

But that’s not what this is about, and I don’t want to waste our limited time wallowing in painful topics. We’re already halfway through this cruise, and we’re under the stars on a beautiful night, and we should be making the most of what we can be to each other: lovers.

I wrap my arms around him and put my lips softly to his neck.

He tilts his head back, giving me access to his throat. There must be something about this stretch of the body that exudes pheromones, because electricity shoots through me.

He leans down and takes my mouth, and there’s an edge to it. His stubble grazes me, amplifying my wattage. I close my eyes and tip my head back to give him access to the space between my ear and jaw. When he kisses me there, I shudder.

I slip my hand under his shirt, enjoying how his abs reflexively tense, then release, beneath my touch. It’s like his muscles are alive for me. Like he wants me deep under the skin.

I slip my hand lower, beneath his waistband.

His cock is as alive as the rest of him—hard enough to fuck. I grip it, enjoying its velvet heat pulsing beneath my hand.

“Fuck,” he groans, pressing himself against my palm. I give him a bit more pressure and he puts a hand to the railing to brace himself.

“Not here,” he says. “Someone could see us.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” I say. “Turn around and pretend to be stargazing.”

He hesitates, but only for a moment.

Then he turns his back to me, and I catch him around the waist, like I’m innocently hugging him. But with my free hand, in the shadows, I unzip his pants.

I grip his cock, teasing it until he gasps. Every little breath he takes lights up a spark inside of me. I feel like I’m made of fireflies.

In the distance, I hear faint voices. A couple is rounding the deck from the other side of the ship. Not close enough to see us yet, but they will be in about a minute.

I stroke Felix fast and hard. “Hurry, baby,” I whisper in his ear. “Or they’ll catch us.”

Whether it’s the increased friction or excitement at the danger, he tenses against me. “Fuck,” he rasps out. “Oh fuck, I’m going to—”

“That’s it,” I whisper. “Come for me. Right now.”

He does.

I love the way he grips the handrail as his body rocks with pleasure, like what I’ve done to him would send him overboard if it wasn’t there.

Because that’s how he makes me feel too.

Like I’m about to fall.

He tucks himself back into his pants and steps away from me just as the couple moves into the light.

“Well, if it isn’t the lovebirds!” the woman calls. As they move closer, I see they are Tom and Nancy, the couple we met snorkeling.

“Gorgeous evening, isn’t it?” Tom says.

“Yes,” I say. “We were just enjoying the breeze.”

“Nothing like an ocean breeze to stimulate the senses, is there?” Nancy says. She winks at Felix.

Now he looks like he might fall off the ship for different reasons.

“Nothing like it,” he agrees weakly.

They bid us goodnight and step inside.

Felix turns to me with a horrified expression. “Did they know? Because it seems like they knew.”

I grin at him. “I think Nancy approves.”

He laughs and shakes his head at me. “I need to get you into bed before we get arrested.”

“Your bed?” I ask.

“My bed.”

“I’m going to stop in my room and change first,” I say.

“Don’t take too long,” he says. “The bed and I have plans for you.”

I take a shower and slip into pajamas, then pad over to Felix’s room and knock on the door.

He answers shirtless, with a towel wrapped around his waist.

He gives me a lopsided grin. “Hey.”

I give him one back. Not that I have a choice. My face just smiles when it sees him. “Hey.”

“I’m finishing up,” he says. “Warm up the bed?”

I walk into the bedroom. The bed is pristinely made, but there’s a piece of paper over the pillow on the side I’ve been sleeping on.

It’s a sketch—a line drawing in the same style as Felix’s tattoos.

In it, a woman in robes sits on a throne, holding a wand up into the sky. Below it the word EMPRESS is scrawled in all caps.

The woman has my face.

My heart throbs. Do not cry, I instruct myself. Whatever you do, do not cry .

Felix emerges from the bathroom.

“Hey,” I say, holding up the sketch. “Did you draw this for me?”

He sits down next to me and kisses my cheek. “You deserve to have everything you want,” he says.

I lean into him, still damp and warm from the shower.

“You’re who I want.”

I didn’t mean to say that. I meant to say “what I want.” “Who I want” sounds too personal.

It sounds long-term.

His eyes go dark, possessive.

He puts his hand flat to my chest, above my breasts, and pushes me down onto the mattress. “You’re who I want too,” he rumbles.

I gasp as he parts my legs with his knee. The drawing I’m still holding flutters to the floor. I make a mental note not to forget it, and then my brain is unable to focus on anything except his hands, gripped on my wrists, lifting them above my head and pinning them in place.

I arch up to him, because our interlude al fresco left me very ready to go and I want to speed this along.

But he doesn’t let me.

“No,” he says. “Tonight, I’m going to take you.”

“Take me?”

“Yeah. Take you,” he says in a very low voice.

He dims the lights and tenderly takes off my clothes. Every time I try to help, he stops me.

When I’m naked, he pulls my hands above my head again, covers my whole body with his, and kisses me.

It’s so deep and thorough and yearning that it feels like falling down a tunnel to the center of the earth.

It’s how you would kiss if there were no chance of escalation.

If first were the only base. If kissing were the greatest bliss, the deepest connection, in the universe.

He kisses me like that even as he slides into me.

He kisses me like that even as I come.

We’ve slept together, but this is the first time we’ve made love.