She booked a quiet overnight charter to clear her head after everything on land went sideways. Empty water. No conversation. A clean break before she had to decide what came next.
Dane Porter was the captain who answered the door himself. Tall, olive-skinned, hazel-eyed, and already looking at her like the silence would not last the night. The Night Heron was his—fifty feet of dark hull and quiet competence. The crew was off. The forecast was clean. One private cove under distant city lights was all it took.
He took her on the open aft deck where anyone with binoculars and enough patience might see. He filled her and told her to keep it. He talked about keeping her soft and claimed and full until the careful life she had built stopped mattering. Five days became longer. The city job, the lease, the precise version of herself she had been managing—all of it receded behind the steady claim of a man who wanted her on his boat and in his bed with no end date.
