by Amber Bardan
Wood, amber, a hint of something like rum. Haithem. Rich, deep and all male. I jammed the lid back on the bottle, tucked it back where I found it, then stood. The reflection that greeted me in the mirror made me flinch.
Oh, damn.
I leaned in and pressed my hands to my tangled hair. This level of dishevelment created a whole new category of unkempt. I picked up a lock, somehow at once both frizzy and lank, an achievement in itself. I brought the hair to my face and sniffed. The odor of puke and sweat permeated the chestnut strands. I let go and groaned.
Had Haithem actually rubbed his face in my hair?
My cheeks went warm then hot. Either he was taken enough by me not to care about the stink, or he was an incredible player.
I’d bet player.
This was not okay. Not just for vanity’s sake, but hygiene-wise. I groaned again then glanced at the shower.
I wanted to run to it, bury myself in the hottest stream I could manage. But something stopped me. Something made me not want to remove a single piece of clothing, not remove the smell of vomit, or sweat, or mess. It was as if stripping and washing it all away was some kind of acceptance. Getting comfortable. Making everything better.
It wouldn’t be better until I went home.
I turned back to the mirror. Shadows ringed my eyes. I looked like hell. Whether here or at home, no one needed to see me like this. Not even me. I closed the bathroom door and slowly flicked the lock. Then I took off my clothes and set the shower to scorching.
* * *
I’D WASHED QUICKLY. Something about being naked for any length of time on the yacht, locked door or not, seemed like wearing a bright red hood in the forest on the way to Grandma’s. I’d managed to shampoo my hair, turning it into one large mat without conditioner to tame it. I dried myself briskly. My limbs loosened, and my body felt warm and human again—relaxed, even. I wrapped a towel around myself and another around my hair.
I shouldn’t have showered.
Exactly as I’d feared, the comfort of such a small luxury—washing away the dirt and grime of the past couple of days—had mitigated some of the worry, some of the anxiety clinging to me.
I could almost hear Haithem placating me now. Telling me it was only three weeks—no big deal. I should relax, enjoy myself.
Enjoy myself right around his cock, most likely.
I snorted and walked to the wardrobe to pull out one of his shirts. He’d gone and screwed that possibility up for both of us. Friday night, I might’ve been willing to take a risk, plunge myself into the sensory kaleidoscope of Haithem’s arms, find out what all the fuss was about fucking, but in the cold, hard light of—what was it now, Saturday, Sunday?—and this clearly not being a dream, I’d had just about as much risk and consequence as I could handle. I let the towel drop and pulled the shirt on over my arms.
Being held prisoner didn’t exactly turn me on, either, no matter how many lush red bows Haithem tied on the situation. I shook my head. I’d brought this on myself. What man looked like him, talked like him, acted like him, without there being some deep, dark catch? Maybe I’d wanted a little trouble.
Served me right.
But my family were innocent. My poor, suffering family. I slipped the top button through the hole then stiffened.
He stood behind me.
Had he made a sound? Had the door clicked?
I didn’t think so, but I knew as surely as if he’d been announced over a loudspeaker that he was back there. The remaining buttons seemed to do themselves up. Every inch of my skin bristled, painfully aware of how nude I was under the shirt. I tugged the hem, thinking of the underwear I’d washed and laid out to dry over the towel rail in the bathroom.
I turned on the ball of my foot.
He stood by the bed and scanned me from my bare toes to the top of his shirt. The slow movement of his eyes warmed my skin more than the shower stream could have hoped to do.
And I was naked under the shirt.
Maybe he suspected, but I knew the thrill of that secret nudity. The knowledge made me hotter, wetter. But let’s face it—I’d been wet since the moment I slipped something of his over my head.
He scowled. “What are you wearing?”
Well, damn, you’d think he didn’t like seeing a half-naked woman in his shirt. Shouldn’t such a sight give him a hard-on or something?
“Something that doesn’t have puke on it,” I said, and smiled. It probably wasn’t the most innocent smile of my life, but then I hadn’t really intended it to be.
His brows rose just slightly, as if it’d only just occurred to him I hadn’t exactly packed for my surprise trip.
“Come here,” he said.
God, the way he said that. As if I could have stopped my feet. His voice made every single female cell in me roll over. Come here. Spoken the same way he’d say “Come to me” or “Come to bed”—or “Come for me, Angel.” Husky and deep and sensual.
I walked to him. Knew my hips swayed more than necessary, but I hadn’t told them to do that. He looked at me, watched me move toward him. And when Haithem looked at me, he really looked at me. He narrowed the world and put me in a tunnel somewhere between where I was standing and his eyes.
I stopped in front of him, my heart playing a fast little number against my ribs.
“Turn around.”
I shuddered as if he’d touched me somewhere private. Was this dirty? Had he asked me to do something dirty?
Turn around, bend over, good girl.
I’d read romance books. All kinds. I turned, some little nagging part of me reminding me that I didn’t actually have to do what he said.
He shifted, and I stared at the cabin wall, listening to the sound of my own breaths. He stepped close to me, and his trousers brushed the backs of my naked thighs.
Brushed my panty-less backside.
I gasped, and his arms came around me, reaching past my shoulders, and laying something cool on my neck. My hands flew to my throat, and I looked down.
He fastened a clasp at my nape.
A string of clear stones circled the base of my throat. Not diamonds, obviously. Because you couldn’t get a necklace with this many diamonds. Could you? I touched them. Small, hard, shiny, but not real. Most likely not real.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He turned me around then rested a hand on my shoulder. “You asked to be draped in diamonds.” He touched the center stone on my throat. “I always deliver on promises.”
“You expect me to believe these are real?” I pulled my chin back, trying to see the necklace better.
He grinned. Grinned so full of confidence there could be no doubting him. “Would you like to see the certificate?”
If this were a movie, this would be the part where I swooned, or where he pretended to snap my fingers in a jewelry box, and I threw my head back for a giant, toothy superlaugh. I wasn’t swooning. And I wasn’t laughing.
“But this must be...” I looked at the stones again, trying to remember how much fine jewelry cost these days. “Worth as much as a car.”
Haithem laughed, and the sound seeped into me and made my chest shake. His face transformed. White teeth flashed, hardness giving way to pure beauty. I didn’t think I’d heard him laugh before. I’d never thought a person’s laugh could be so dangerous. But a laugh like his? It would compel a person to do almost anything to hear it again.
“It’d have to be one incredible car.”
I tried not to be impressed. Tried not to like the absurd reality that Haithem would really give me things, out-of-this-world things. But his actions meant something to me. It meant something to have someone do stuff for me, give to me. Because I’d spent my life giving and giving until I thought it might kill me to give any more.
Now I stood in front
of the most insanely attractive man I’d ever laid eyes on, and he’d manifested diamonds out of the ocean because I’d asked for them.
I blinked and looked at the necklace again. “So, you just plucked these from thin air?”
“No, I had them in my safe.”
I studied him, but his expression didn’t flicker.
Why did he carry diamond necklaces in his safe?
A man traveling alone...what need did he have for such a valuable commodity if there was no one to give it to...
A wave of something I’d never felt before washed over me. It took me a moment to realize what it might be.
Jealousy.
I gaped and stepped back. “Did you have these for someone else?”
Oh, hell no, could he be? The possibility ticked through my head, and things made sense.
“Are you married?” I sank my hands into my hair and turned around, my heart dropping hard. “Oh my god. That’s why all the secrecy?”
He stayed quiet, each moment of silence confirming my suspicions. I turned back around and faced him. The asshole didn’t even have the decency to look guilty.
“You’re screwing with my entire life...because, why?” My muscles shook with energy. I shoved him in the stomach. “Because you don’t want your wife to know you’re a cheating, lying, philandering fuck-hole?”
He didn’t move, didn’t react. Made me feel a bit like a toddler trying to push over their parent. He placed his hands over mine, and that’s when I saw it—what I hadn’t seen before because he was so good at keeping it all below the surface.
My own rage reflected back at me.
“I’m not married, Angelina.” He let my hand go and stepped into me, so close that I would have fallen back if he hadn’t caught my hip. “I told you my policy on promises, and that extends to vows, but believe me—” he tugged me forward, so I could taste his breath when he spoke “—this would be so much easier on both of us if that were all this was.”
I stared into his eyes—angry eyes that burned with such conviction I couldn’t deny the truth of his words. I couldn’t deny my relief, either.
Relief that Haithem wasn’t taken. Wasn’t married. That he was available.
That he hadn’t planned on making me a seedy indiscretion.
At this point, I shouldn’t have cared if he was taken or not. I wouldn’t be doing anything with him in any case. Yet it would’ve hurt.
I’d nail this down to my pride taking a hit and leave it at that. Nothing deeper than that.
I breathed in, then out, and my energy scattered. The necklace shifted on my neck, reminding me that he still hadn’t provided a reasonable explanation for why he had it.
“So, what...? You’re a pirate then? You plucked this out of your treasure chest?”
Haithem smiled, but the smile held the same darkness as his eyes. “Have I ravaged you yet, wench?”
I rubbed my tongue on the roof of my mouth, looking for some moisture. Yet. As in, still to come... I couldn’t answer, afraid of what I might say.
He released my hip, and I stepped back.
“It’s currency.”
“Currency?”
“Sometimes, in business, it helps to have something other than cash on hand.”
What kind of business was that? The kind of business that is better conducted without paper trails. The bad kind.
I touched the necklace again. “So, this really is very valuable then?”
“You have no idea.”
I glanced around him to the door, an idea flickering to life. I’d never make it past him without him stopping me.
I rubbed my throat. “Do you have anything to drink?”
His eyes narrowed a moment, but then he nodded and crossed the room as if it wasn’t the first time I’d casually asked him for something. He crouched in front of a cupboard and popped open the hidden bar fridge I’d found earlier.
I inched toward the door.
He glanced up, and I froze.
“Cola, juice or water?”
“Juice,” I said.
He leaned into the fridge, and I ran. Out the door and over the deck. His steps thundered behind me, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to make it far. I yanked the chain at my neck hard, snapping the clasp.
I reached the railing and flung my arm out over it, the necklace dangling from my hand. The footsteps slowed. He crept toward me like a predator. My fingers shook. This better freaking work... If it didn’t, I had a feeling I’d come to regret it.
“What are you doing?”
“Give-me-a-phone-now.” The sentence rushed out as a single word.
He came closer.
“Stop,” I said, holding out my free hand. “Go get me a phone, or I drop this in the ocean.”
Haithem stopped moving and held up both his palms. “Angelina, we are miles away from any mobile phone towers. Do you really think a phone would work out here?”
“I think there’s no way you’d be out here without some way to reach the outside world. I think you most definitely have a satellite phone or something capable of making a call.”
I breathed heavily.
Haithem watched me and smiled a smile so cold it almost gave me frostbite. “Clever girl. I didn’t expect you to be so sneaky. I’m surprised.”
“Good,” I said.
He took a step, and I raised my hand further over the railing.
Haithem paused. “I won’t be next time, though. You only get to fool me once.”
“Shut up and get me a phone.”
“No,” he said.
My heart beat as if I’d swallowed a mouthful of speed. So fast it hurt. “I swear I’ll drop it.”
He moved closer.
“I won’t say anything about you—I’ll just put my family at ease.”
He smiled wider but just as coldly.
Fuck, he knew he had me.
Haithem closed in.
I couldn’t let him win.
I could drop his necklace in the ocean. I could test him and see what he was really made of. What he’d do to me. Find out who I was really trapped with. Put my infatuation with him to the test when I suffered whatever punishment doing something so reckless would get me.
But I’d never been brave. When I was little, I was the first to cry at the mention of a blood test. God, how I hated needles. Dad used to call me a wuss.
Now I wanted to push, to see how mortal this peril I was in might be.
I, more than most people, understood the full significance of my own mortality. I might be flirting with danger, but these days I wanted to live.
The only question remaining was how I now defined being alive.
Haithem reached my side, his fingers moving toward the wrist I held over the railing.
Don’t be such a wuss, Angelina. I flinched, hearing my father’s words in the back of my brain.
I opened my hand and let go.
ELEVEN
THE NECKLACE FELL straight as an arrow—from my hand into the dark gray water lapping against the side of the yacht. Haithem didn’t watch the necklace fall, didn’t lean over the railing and yell like a person who’d just lost something valuable. He kept his gaze on me, his lips tightening over his teeth the instant my fingers opened.
Silence extended between us. The only sounds were the ocean and the roar of blood in my ears. White clouds blanketed the sky. They must have moved, because it grew darker on deck. I stared at Haithem, unblinking. My heart didn’t seem to want to stay in my chest—it rattled my rib cage.
I wanted to hit Rewind, reverse time by a few moments and take back my actions. I’d always known Haithem was dangerous. Looking at him now, his features tight and cold, bristling with fury, I knew again for s
ure. He wasn’t a man you’d want to cross.
But I had.
I’d messed up. I just prayed I had it in me to survive the penalty.
Yet I’d wanted this. Wanted to watch him explode. I guess I could call this buyer’s remorse. I fell against the railing. He still gripped my wrist. My throat tightened, but I needed to speak, needed to be the one to crack through the silence.
“What are you going to do to me now?” My voice didn’t shake, but my body did.
Haithem raised his brow. “Do to you?” His voice dripped with honey, laced thick with a false sweetness that was perhaps more terrifying than if he’d yelled at me.
Not that I wanted to hear him yell.
Not at all.
“I’ll pay for this, won’t I? You’ll punish me some way... I know you will.”
He turned closer to me, trapped me between his body and the railing. He didn’t let go of my wrist, nor did he hurt me. He could’ve. He could’ve squeezed, exerted just enough pressure to make me a little more afraid.
He didn’t.
Maybe that counted for something.
“Because you know me so well?” He finally dropped my wrist. He didn’t need to hold me anymore. He had me right where he wanted me. “Who am I, then?”
Who is he?
I stared at the stubble on his neck, black spikes that ran toward his chin. His skin didn’t move, didn’t jump at the base of his throat the way he must’ve seen mine flickering like crazy. I gripped the railing.
I had no idea who Haithem was.
Someone up to no good, sneaking around in secret, afraid to let me go. I could only speculate. Spy, secret agent, mobster, criminal? Who knew... Maybe he was even a pirate, after all?
But the one thing I did know was that at that exact moment, I was no one to him. Not a lover, not a friend, not an ally—just a sexual conquest gone wrong.
A problem.