by C. L. Stone
I snatched the razor from his hand and tried to shut the shower door on him. “Thank you,” I drawled.
“Well-come,” he said, matching my tone, although with a curious eyebrow lift above his dark eyes. I couldn’t tell if he understood my sarcasm. He backed up so I could close the door.
“What’s going on, Raven?” I asked, lathering up the soap to start shaving. It was a cheap men’s razor, two blades, disposable and generic. I had to go slow to not slice myself. “Did you need something?”
Raven opened the door again, holding it open fully this time as he looked in on me. “What?”
I rolled my head back, looking at the ceiling in exasperation. Maybe it was better if we all got over the modesty bit anyway. If I was going to work with these guys, and we were going to live in tight quarters, I had to get used to them seeing me naked. It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen a girl nude before. “Why did you open the door?”
“I couldn’t hear you,” he said. “You’ve got the shower running.” He left the door open and then crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the door, pressing it to the wall. The black clothes made him a little scary with his wide brown eyes, especially when he intensified that gaze. “What did you say?”
Oh well. He wasn’t ogling. Raven’s boundaries were simply nonexistent. “I was just asking what’s going on with you. How’s the crew?”
“Fine,” he said.
“Raven, you can’t hold the door open like that,” Corey said. “You need to let her shower on her own.”
“Why?” Raven asked, turning to look at Corey. “She was talking to me.”
“Don’t worry about it, Corey,” I said. I tried to bend, but then ended up lifting my leg, shaving my calves, going up just to above the knee, and then thought better of it and decided to shave the whole leg. I didn’t really know how short the dress was, better to do too much than too little. “Come on over if you can’t hear me, either.”
Raven didn’t shift, keeping his eyes on me. I wasn’t sure if Corey was going to do it. I lifted my leg as best as I could in the tiny space to prop it up on the shower wall, concentrating on shaving and it wasn’t until I stood up that I spotted Corey peeking around the wall. At first, he started to tuck his head back around but when I didn’t say anything or cover myself, he stepped around, his cheeks red, as red as Brandon’s face got when he was angry. “Are you sure this is okay?” he asked.
It wasn’t like he was interested. And I’d already given up with Raven about trying to stay modest around him. I waved dismissively at him and then continued shaving the other leg. “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s more important to catch me up.” I looked at Raven briefly before I refocused on my leg. “So did we figure out about this blond guy? Who is he? The one Mr. Smith paid.”
“German,” Raven said.
I stood up quickly, almost slipping but catching myself on the grab bar. Corey reacted, reaching out for me but then backed up when I’d corrected myself. I looked at Raven who hadn’t moved. “What did you say?” I asked.
“He’s German,” Raven said. “His name is Sam.”
“Is he part of Eddie’s group?” I asked, remembering the leader of the German team who had kidnapped us.
“Don’t know,” he said. “He doesn’t seem bothered by me or you or even Corey. If he is part of it, he doesn’t know our faces.”
“I’ve been trying to get his history,” Corey said. “All I have is his resume. He’s been on this cruise ship for a while, and before that, on another cruise, and before that at resorts around the United States. He’s German but he’s been in this business a long time. Not like Eddie’s group, who was only here for maybe a year or so.”
I was bent over to start on my other leg. I still didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to be prejudiced around any other Germans we might meet, but I had to be cautious and couldn’t help but wonder if Eddie might have reached out to this Sam at any time. It felt like too much of a coincidence.
There was shuffling in the room, and I thought it was Raven and Corey moving around again so I didn’t look up.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Marc’s voice sliced through the silence, making me nick my leg with the razor. “You’re all just standing around watching her shower? What the fuck, you guys?”
Oh great. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain this. I stood up quickly, spotting Marc in dark slacks and a white button up shirt. He was either going to dinner with us or somewhere with other guests, because he was completely combed, washed up and shaved. The rock star was ready to start mingling with the guests.
His mismatched eyes flared at the others. He pushed at Corey’s shoulder. “Go gawk at someone else.”
“It’s okay!” I cried out at him, waving dismissively. It was admirable he was trying to stick up for me, but I didn’t want to start another fight about this. “Sorry, they couldn’t hear me and I needed to be caught up. Did you need something?”
Corey grimaced while Raven grinned, amused.
Marc pulled his hands up in a give-up gesture. This time, he looked down at my body quickly, and then back up at my face. “You’re just going to shower with the door open?”
“I’m trying to hurry. Step back into the room if you need to? Give me a minute.” I asked, not willing to address the naked issue. I’d eventually have to get use to them running in and out while I was naked at this rate. Maybe that was my problem; I tiptoed around these guys. Blake had said I was missing my fire. Maybe I just needed to be more assertive. I needed to be one of the guys. Guys don’t mask their nakedness. If I acted too much like a girl around them, the meek thing I’d become since a few weeks ago, then they reverted to Neanderthals trying to be modest for me and respectful. If I let go of it to make it a nonissue, maybe that would jar them out of that and we could roll forward. “If you’re trying to hurry, though, just tell me what you need now.”
Marc opened his mouth, his jaw shifting a bit. I imagined he was trying to figure out what I was up to. “I got word from Axel to get down here. We need to go over what we’re doing tonight.”
“Tonight, I’m going to dinner with Axel and I guess a bunch of other Nightingale folks,” I said. I bent over and started shaving my leg again. They got the full view. I didn’t hide anything anymore. I bled a bit from the nick in my leg, but I ignored it for now. If I complained about it, they’d do that protective thing. “I think Avery and Ethan are going to try to talk to the one woman I haven’t met yet. Do we have a seating chart? Who am I sitting next to?”
“I don’t know,” Marc said. He opened his mouth, but then shook his head, and pulled his cell phone from his back pocket. “I can find out.”
“Do that,” I said, glad that he seemed to be pulling himself together. “If anyone from Nightingale isn’t at our table, or with Ethan, I want you to cover that table. Maybe include Brandon or Corey, too.” I finished my leg and did a quick swipe at arm pits. I hid my smile as the boys’ eyes followed my every move. Why was I getting a weird kick out of them watching me? They were memorized. Maybe I should have done this a while ago. I tried to peek out to see if any of them were turned on, but from the angle and the small space, only Raven’s crotch was really visible and I couldn’t tell since he was wearing all dark clothes. It was all shadow.
Marc backed up, his butt against the sink, and used his phone, his eyes darting up to me every few seconds over Raven’s shoulder.
Corey raked at his hair with his fingers. “I’d prefer if Brandon did the talking,” he said. “I’m never good at it unless we’re talking with geeks.”
“If it happens to be Colt is on his own,” I said, “can you sit next to him?”
“Why just him?”
“Just a hunch, but he seems like the geek type.”
Corey shrugged. “I don’t take him for a geek.”
“He wears glasses,” Raven said. “Geek.”
“That doesn’t make him a geek,” Corey said. “He’s just a guy with glasses. Yo
u’ve worn glasses.”
Raven pointed at himself. “Made me a geek.”
Corey rolled his eyes and shook his head before refocusing on me. “He might be smart, but I don’t think he plays video games and likes anime. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You know math,” I said. I rinsed off the razor and then passed it to him when I didn’t have a place to put it. “Talk math with him.”
Corey took the razor and held it, smirking. “You don’t just talk math, Kayli. That’s not really a thing you talk about. To be honest, I think he’s just a normal guy who happens to wear glasses. Kind of like you, when you’re being Kitty, except your glasses are fake.”
It was amusing to think he thought of me as a normal girl. I turned the shower off and then twisted my hair to get rid of the excess water. By the time I was done and turned toward the doorway, Raven had a towel out, waiting for me.
I appreciated the help. I stepped out, dripping from my hair and skin. I looked at Corey and then at Marc in the face as I let Raven wrap the towel around my body. I pulled it together so it wrapped around my breasts. It was showing off my butt since it was so short, not the big sheets like the ones in the spa. If I turned, the flap opened up and exposed my bare hip and the knot at my breasts felt like it was about to unravel any second.
The boys reshuffled. Raven was in the bathroom doorway and Marc stepped back into the stateroom. They kept watching me as I went to the sink. I found a toothbrush and paste. “Whose brush is this?”
“Mine,” Corey said. He moved back to sit on the toilet, but looked at me in the mirror. “Use it if you need to.”
“Okay.” I talked as I squeezed some paste on the brush. “Does someone have nail clippers?”
Raven left to get his kit and came back with nail clippers. He put them on the counter.
“My toenails are looking long,” I said, starting to brush my teeth, and then stopped to finish what I was saying. “I noticed earlier. Need to clip those back if I’m going to wear sandals.”
The guys looked down at my toes at the same time. I held back a laugh. Cute.
“What the fuck?” Brandon boomed. This time, I froze. He stared in at us, his lips moving, his eyes nearly glowing, the blue a stark contrast to the red of his face.
Good thing he hadn’t walked in when I was in the shower. Could I get him on the same page as the others, and get him used to just being around while I got ready? For a moment, I was unsure of my plan to just be one of the guys.
Raven turned with his hand up, stopping him. “She’s fine.”
“I can see she’s fine,” he said. He was dressed up in black slacks and a light blue shirt that was untucked. He held onto a pair of black sandals. His eyes were wide in disbelief. He scanned the room and then at the guys. Marc and Corey looked guilty. “What I want to know is why you’re all lurking around.”
“She’s the boss,” Marc said. “She wanted us in here.”
“What?” Brandon asked, and then looked over at me, his gaze scanning over the short towel, the skin I flashed at my hip as I moved the brush in my mouth. He stared and then looked up at me in the mirror. “Why?”
I removed the toothbrush to speak, but my mouth was full of paste and I was going to drip. Instead, I bent over the sink to spit out the foam, giving them all a flash of butt. I used a paper cup to rinse before I could really talk. But by that time all my snappy retorts had vanished. Maybe arguing wasn’t the answer with him. I looked at the sandals in his hands, black and strappy. “Those for me?” I asked, thinking ignoring his question and pretending like everything was fine and normal might be better.
He pushed his way past Marc. Marc backed up, getting shuffled into the room more. Raven squeezed into the room, too, but looked over Brandon’s shoulder as he came into the bathroom to show me the shoes. He tilted his head, obviously thrown off by me not answering his questions. “They aren’t for me,” he said, and plunked them down on the counter. “I saw the dress on the bed. Not your style.”
“It’ll have to do for tonight. We don’t have time to shop for another one.” I picked up the clippers and then I tried lifting my foot to the counter, putting my foot back down on the floor hard. Then my towel got loose, and slipped off. It fell to the floor before I caught it. My cool and confident spark fizzled in my klutz moment.
Well, now Brandon got a full view, his eyes widening as he gawked at me for a second. “Sweetie,” he said, bending over and scooping up the towel at my feet. “What the hell are you doing?” He flicked the towel until it was straight and shoved it toward my body.
“Trying to clip my nails,” I said, and let him wrap the towel back around my body. I took another one from the clean towels to wrap around my hair, still wet and dripping and I wasn’t sure if there was a blow dryer in here.
“Kayli,” he said with a sigh. His face moved down, and at first, he was trying to look away, or just look at my feet. Eventually, though, his head picked up and his eyes instantly went to everything, breasts, butt, crotch, and waist. “What the fuck? You can’t just walk around naked.”
“I’m not naked now. I am trying to get ready,” I said, frustration bubbling up. I flared my eyes at him. “We don’t have the space and the time to be modest around here. Either fill me in on what you’re doing tonight, or just stay out of the way.”
He clamped his mouth shut and took a step back. He checked in with Corey, who shrugged, grinning. Corey might have been trying to get his brother to relax, but Brandon still looked uncomfortable.
Marc pushed his way through when Brandon didn’t answer. Brandon backed up to the door. Marc took the clippers from my hand. He bent down and put a knee out for me. “Hop up on the counter and put your foot here. I’ll do this for you.”
Again, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but if they could get over me being naked and worked with me, then maybe they’d get over that jealousy a bit. Kayli Winchester exposes all and finally gets them to cooperate. Was that all it took?
I slid my butt onto the counter beside the sink and lifted my foot up onto his knee so he could cut my toenails. I adjusted the towel around me, although my butt was pretty exposed since I was sitting. Raven still had his kit in his hands. I waved at him to hand it over, wanting to search it. He came over with it, holding it open for me. I plucked out a men’s moisturizer and applied some to my face. I pulled off the towel from my hair and started briskly rubbing it against my scalp to try and dry it.
The boys watched, seeming fascinated by my prep to get ready.
I got a little dizzy with my head bent, trying to dry my hair. I pulled the towel away from my head and blinked, holding to the side of my face, waiting for the colors to disappear and my head to stop spinning.
“Give me that,” Brandon said. He nudged Raven away again. He flicked the towel open and then planted it over my head, and started rubbing.
I held my hands up to try to stop him. He was a being too rough. Marc was doing my other foot. I used my other arm to hold on to the towel around my body so it would stay put.
There was another uproar of voices: someone grumbling. Raven spoke up, although I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I waved my hands at Brandon, and then caught his wrists, getting him to stop so I could figure out what was going on.
Blake and Axel were standing in the doorway, looking in. Neither one made any effort to divert their eyes, just gazed a good long while at me in the towel and then at the others in the area and then at me.
“I’m assuming there’s a reason for this,” Axel said, his voice low, the storm building behind his eyes.
I needed to catch this before it spilled over into something bad. “Okay guys,” I said, waving off Brandon. Marc kept at my toes, he only had two left but they were the tiny ones and he seemed to really be concentrating. I did my best to stay still while giving a full, angry glare at all of them, a warning. I wasn’t really mad, I just wanted to get this out in the open. “Get over it.” I waved my hand over my body, as best as I coul
d with Marc messing with my foot. “Get it out of your system. You’ve seen girls naked before.” I stared at all of their faces. “See anything different? A third appendage? A dick? No? Then get over it. Like I said, we’re working in close quarters. I realize we don’t have the time for a lot of modesty. Can I trust you all to behave as we do this job? Can we get on with things? Are we good?”
Raven smirked. “If I say no, will you stay naked?”
Corey elbowed him in the gut. Raven kept his grin, and covered his belly with his hand.
No one argued. Blake had been right. I needed to be more direct with them all. No more helpless Kayli. They either got with the groove or they needed to back up and get out of my way. That meant they’d have to know if the others showed any interest. No more secrets from them; secrets are what had created the fiasco earlier. I’d have to explain it to them later about the relationship part, though. That was a discussion that would take a while and I didn’t have time for it; I needed to get ready for this dinner.
Marc finished and then patted my calf. “Okay,” he said. “You’re good.”
Axel held his lips tightly together, but remained in the room. He could yell at them for gawking, but he was looking at me, too. Everyone was. He couldn’t call the others out now for staying in the room and ogling if he was doing it. And the others couldn’t get upset by it if they were all doing the same thing.
I waved to get his attention. “Hey, did you get the makeup?” I asked.
He nodded and brought a bag into the bathroom, holding it open for me. There was a collection of different foundations, eye shadow palettes, mascara and more, a lot of common colors. The lady had given him the basics.
I wiped at the mirror, clearing the fog. I spilled the makeup in the sink, picking out the best colors.
I took my time at this and staying in the towel. It was tempting to let the towel go, but I didn’t want to go too far too soon with all of them in the same space. I wanted the message to sink in. The longer they went, looking at me as I got ready, the more evident it became that I was serious. This would change the dynamic between us. I wasn’t sure how, but it had to be better than the secrets we’d kept from each other. “Axel,” I said, “we were trying to figure out if Corey should sit next to Colt.”