L. Marie Adeline- S.E.C.R.E.T

naked woman under a blanket being kissed by a giant, shirtless god, one with wet curls
and the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a man. He placed his lips on mine and
pressed, parting them easily, his warm tongue prodding, tentatively at rst. He folded
over me, his massive hand cradling my head like it was no bigger than a peach. When
he pulled away from me it was only reluctantly, I could feel it.
“I won’t be long,” he said.
“Hurry back.” Hurry back? I might as well have said that in a Southern accent! We were in
real danger and I was swooning like a schoolgirl.
Dropping the damp blanket to the oor, I looked around the room. I opened the small
galley closet and found a few blue work shirts hanging there. I peeled off my wet clothes
and carefully strung them over a chair in front of the space heater. I threw on one of the
annel shirts. It was so big, he was so big, it hung to my knees. I crawled on top of the
big bed, feeling the waves. With every passing minute, the Gulf waters seemed calmer
and calmer. I thought about the cute pilot and hoped he had reached shore safely. I
made a mental note to ask Jake to check for me. There must be some number, some
central call-in place where members and participants could reach someone from
S.E.C.R.E.T.
The sound of the motor dying down woke me from a nap. I had no idea how long I
ha d been out, but the waves had calmed considerably. I could hear Jake bumping
around above me, making his way across the deck to the stairs to the galley, where I lay
on the bed waiting. I wasn’t good at waiting. Calmness in the face of chaos wasn’t my
style. But this was, after all, my rescue fantasy. While I decided I didn’t like being
rescued one bit, I was willing to take part in the aftermath.
“Hi,” he said, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of me on the bed.
“Hi.”
“Everything’s good up there. We’re safely away from the storm. Do you mind if I take
off the rest of my wet clothes?”
“I don’t mind at all,” I said, resting back on the pillows. If he was going to rescue me, I
was going to play along. “So I’m safe, then?”
“You were never in any danger,” he said, shuing o his damp jeans. This comment
pricked the fantasy bubble and left me reeling in reality.
“Are you kidding? I fell off a boat into the Gulf during a hurricane!”
He was so tall he had to duck in the galley as he made his way to the bed.
“Yes, you did, Cassie, but I’m trained to save lives. And yours was never in great
danger. I can assure you.”
He was so smooth from head to toe that he looked like marble. “But, but what
if … something had happened to me?”
“It was a tropical storm that became a hurricane very quickly. No one saw it coming,
not even the weather bureau.”
I had to admit, there is something exciting about surviving an accident. You feel alive
in the most visceral way; your veins pulse; you can detect your skin breathing. You feel
very fragile and human, but at the same time nearly immortal. Jake tentatively
approached the bed. I could smell the salt water on his skin and some other scent