Sun-Kissed (Love In All Seasons 1)

I know he is just trying to keep me from getting hypothermia, but when his hand gripped mine... I think I felt something more from him.

Something electric.

I want this to turn into something more. I’ve waited my entire life for a moment like this.

I don’t want to wait anymore.

I’m in my panties and bra, my wet hair dripping on my skin. He reaches for a thick wool blanket and wraps it around my shoulders. I look around the cabin of his boat. It is simple but well cared for, and I can see from this man’s face that he lives outdoors, his face is ruddy with the sky and the sea. There is a passion in his eyes; the kind of passion I have always been looking for in another person.

The kind of passion I feel when I play.

“Here you go,” he says. “This will warm you up.” His hands are firm against me as he pulls the blanket tight against my still wet skin, drying me off. Once I’m wrapped in the blanket he tells me to sit back down on the bed.

I do as I’m told.

I watch as he removes his own soaking wet clothing. First a flannel shirt, one button at a time. When he leans over and tosses it aside, next to my wet clothing, I see more than tattoos and muscles; I see a man ripped, chiseled. A man carved from stone.

He pulls down the zipper of his pants and strips himself from his soaked jeans.

Before me is a man in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. A deep V leads to his groin, a thin line of hair reaching his belly button. He turns around, and his rear end is as defined as any I’ve ever seen. Not that I’ve ever been this close and personal to anyone’s backside.

With his butt to me, he pulls off his boxers, and I am bearing witness to the first naked ass I seen in my life. I’m shivering and cold, yet somehow my pussy is wet. This man is rock hard and naked.

I blink, squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to see what isn’t mine to have.

But I’ve imagined.

I’ve seen pictures.

And he didn’t ask me to look away...

I open my eyes, needing to see more. I whimper, ever so quietly.

Nothing compares to real life.

“What’s your name?” he asks. Reaching for a towel, he wraps it around his waist. As he turns back to me I can’t help but feel a flutter in my chest.

This man wears nothing but a towel.

This man who is a stranger.

This man saved my life.

This man is looking at me and asking me a question. I force myself to speak.

“I’m Alice,” I tell him.

He smiles. Oh, that smile. It could slay dragons. It could stop traffic. It could get a girl like me in a lot of trouble.

“In Wonderland, though,” he says. “I think you fall into a hole, not into the ocean.” He surprises me with his reference to a childhood storybook. He looks much too tough to know anything about Mad Hatters.

“In the book,” I tell him, “Alice has a happily ever after: she’s saved by the Cheshire cat. Just like me. I guess I got a happily ever after, too. My parents wanted to take me on a really expensive excursion today, but I’m tired of that commercial stuff. I wanted to just catch some fish and see the ocean for a while.” I smile at him. “Looks like I got what I wanted.”

He looks at me thoughtfully. “I get that, so many people only care about material bullshit.”

“But not you?” I ask.

The stranger shakes his head. “Not me.”

“Me either. I think people who throw caution to the wind and chase their own dreams, no matter how big or small… those are the people I understand.”

“You’re a dreamer?” he asks.

I nod. “I’d call myself romanticist… like I said, happily-ever-afters and all that,” I say smiling wider now, feeling so safe in this cabin.

His dog bounds through the doggy door. Immediately he comes over to me, where I sit nearly naked and he nuzzles against my legs.

The warm welcome from the dog seems to melt the heart of this rugged man before me. “Chum likes you, Alice.”

“I like him too,” I say, rubbing Chum’s back. “Even though he almost drowned me.”

He focuses on his dog before telling him to get out and leave us alone. “You know Alice; I don’t think your happily ever after is ending up on this dock.”

“It isn’t?” I ask.

He looks at me with an intensity I can’t help but match. I suddenly want to stay below deck with him all day long. I want him to prove that I am not a little girl. I want him to make me a woman.

“At least,” he says with a smile, “it doesn’t have to be.”