Macy Beckett - Make You Mine

Allie had damn near crippled him.

As if fantasizing about her for the past decade weren’t enough, now his brain wouldn’t stop refreshing his memory with the taste of Allie’s throat, the feel of her silken heat pulsing around his fingers, the tickle of her nails teasing his johnson . . .

Mercy.

Thinking about it tugged the knot in his groin. He hunched over and gripped the handrail, then hauled himself to his quarters. It was going to be an early night for him. He’d arranged for someone else to pilot the Belle so he could grab a hot shower and a little relief. With any luck he’d be in bed by nine.

Lord, when had he become such a geezer?

He sank onto the bed and kicked off his shoes. Checking his watch, he noted that Allie’s shift should be over soon. Then she’d be free for the rest of the night—free to make him feel “real good.”

When you’re ready, you know where to find me .

Marc groaned and leaned over, cradling his head between both palms. His body was ready, no doubt about that, but the rest of him was slow on the uptake.

He wasn’t sure what held him back. He’d always claimed he didn’t believe in magic or hexes or any of that shit . . . but at the same time, he couldn’t deny that some wonky stuff had happened since Allie reentered his life. She’d crossed his path and everything had started going south. Hell, right after he’d given her an orgasm, the bed next door had spontaneously combusted. Marc didn’t know if he was cursed, but either way, something freaky was going on, and he couldn’t ignore the signs.

But he wanted to. More than he wanted to breathe.

His cell phone buzzed from inside his breast pocket. He checked the screen and saw Ella-Claire calling .

“Hey,” he said. “I was about to get in the shower. What’s up?”

“We need you in the galley!” Ella’s voice squeaked in panic. “It’s an emergency!”

Marc sat bolt upright. “Another fire?”

“No, nothing like that,” she said. “Chef won’t serve dinner, and the guests are starting to complain.”

“Son of a bitch.” Of course the guests were pissed—supper should’ve been on the table an hour ago. “I’ll be right down.”

So much for finding relief tonight.

Marc put on his shoes, buttoned his jacket, and headed downstairs, a surge of adrenaline propelling his aching limbs into a jog. He purposely avoided both dining rooms and entered the galley from the back door.

What he found in there could only be described as chaos.

Two dozen crew members ran circles around one another as they assembled plates of whipped potatoes and seasoned green beans. Chef hunched over the industrial-sized stove, sautéing rock shrimp and filling the air with savory steam. At first, Marc assumed they’d solved the problem, but then Chef sampled a shrimp and hollered a cuss. He threw his steel pan into the sink, where it clanked loudly and splattered the back wall with sauce.

“Damn it all to hell!” Chef yelled, then jabbed a finger at his staff. “Get me some more shrimp!” His workers collectively flinched. When they didn’t move fast enough for him, he bellowed, “Get off your worthless asses and fetch my goddamned shrimp!”

The unfortunate bastards nearest to Chef wiped the spittle off their faces and scurried to the refrigerator to fulfill his request.

“What’s the holdup?” Marc asked, gently nudging aside the crew to join Regale at the stove. He pointed toward the main dining room. “They’re starving out there.”

Regale always looked like he was two heartbeats away from an aneurism, but now his face turned maroon and his jaw clenched hard enough to break.

“What’s the holdup?” Regale pointed to the pan he’d just chucked away. “My bourbon Creole lemon sauce, that’s what.” He jutted his chin toward the sink. “Go on. Try it.”

Mentally rolling his eyes at the overgrown diva, Marc swiped a finger along the edge of Chef’s discarded pan and brought it to his mouth. It tasted sour, like Chef had left it out too long and let it spoil.

“It’s rancid,” Regale said.

“So make a different sauce.” Marc wondered how the idiot had managed to keep a restaurant franchise afloat. “You can’t keep folks waiting all night for their supper.”

Regale sucked a long breath through his nostrils while his face deepened to the shade of an eggplant. “I did make a different sauce. That was the tenth batch! Everything turns out rancid, every single time!”

“Did you check your ingredients?” Marc asked.

“What kind of fucking moron do you take me for?”

Marc elected not to answer that question, but he assumed Chef meant yes . “Then I don’t know what to tell you. Sauté ’em in butter. You can’t screw that up.”

“Screw it up?” Chef drew back as if Marc had slapped him. “Are you implying this is my fault?”

Marc’s patience snapped. “Who else’s fault would it be?”

“I think we both know.” Regale closed in on Marc until they were toe to toe. “One of us just doesn’t want to admit it.”

“One of us,” Marc uttered, refusing to back down, “has no friggin’ idea what you’re talking about.”

Regale’s upper lip curled in loathing. “I’m talking about the back-swamp voodoo whore you keep around to polish your knob.”

Marc heard a pop inside his brain like a blown fuse. Without thinking, he fisted Regale’s shirt and slammed him into the stainless steel refrigerator. “You’d better shut the hole in your face before I shut it for you.”

But he forgot Regale was built like a bull.

The man used one powerful arm to shove Marc away and the other to coldcock him in the eye. Marc’s head snapped back as sparks of pain exploded behind his lid. He recovered quickly and delivered a left hook to Chef’s kidney and a right jab to the gut.

It barely fazed Regale.

He growled and charged Marc, leaning down like an offensive lineman about to flatten him. Marc braced for impact, but just as their bodies connected, Regale lost his footing in a puddle of his own bourbon sauce and went down hard, knocking his forehead on the floor.

He lay there, out cold.

Good. Now the bastard couldn’t run his dirty mouth.

Marc took a deep breath and glanced around the room at Chef’s wide-eyed staffers. Since there was no chance of maintaining his professionalism after that display, he issued a command.

“Fry up some shrimp and serve it with something—anything—bottled cocktail sauce if you have to. I want dinner out there in fifteen minutes flat.”

While the staff jumped into action, Marc dragged Chef’s unconscious body out of the way and made a call to the pilothouse.

“Hey,” Marc said when his man picked up. “Where’s the nearest port?”

“Just passed one about a mile back,” came the response. “Why’d you ask?”

“Turn the Belle around,” Marc ordered. “We’re dropping a passenger.”

Marc tipped back a can of Coke, wishing it were a shot of Crown Royal, and pressed a bag of frozen peas to his eye. He winced when the contents shifted against his swollen flesh. He’d have one hell of a shiner in the morning, but it would be worth it. Already, he felt twenty pounds lighter with Regale off the boat. The chef had taken all his toxicity with him when the paramedics had wheeled him down the ramp and into the darkness.

Now there was the incidental matter of who would cook their meals.

“Gimme some of that, boy.” Nodding at the bottle of Crown Royal, Pawpaw slid his tumbler across the table, and Marc used his free hand to pour two fingers of whiskey before sliding it back.