by Naomi West
Here comes the hard part.
I close the door on Row’s father and turn to her. Her eyes are narrowing, she’s already suspicious.
“Do you trust me?” I ask her, taking my shoulders.
She’s quiet, her eyes are studying me. “For some things.”
“Which things?” That’s something at least. She could have just said ‘no’.
“I trust you with my body.” She blushes. But she’s honest. I love that about her. She’s not gonna lie to me. “The way we were last night. I trust that.”
“Do you trust me to take care of you? To do what’s best?”
She hesitates. “I don’t know you very well, Kennedy. I don’t even know your last name.”
“Squire,” I tell her without missing a beat. She’s right. She can’t see what’s in my mind. She can’t possibly know how hard I’m working to keep her safe. And why would she? 24 hours ago, I didn’t even know that about myself. I need to manufacture some trust here, quickly.
“Kennedy Squire,” she repeats, something soft coming into her eyes that I can’t interpret.
“Row,” I say, squeezing her shoulders. “I’m going to keep you safe from Esposito. Your father too. Do you hear me? Your father too.”
“Ok,” she whispers.
“But in order to do that, we’re gonna have to do something you’re not gonna like.”
Her eyes drop to her father in the backseat, covered by the towel. To the backpack on my back. “You want to leave him here. You want us to get off the ferry and leave him here.”
She’s right on the nose. “I’ve got a man on the other side. He’s going to get your father from there. Take him to a safe house.”
She struggles away from me. Tries to step back. She’s looking at me wild, like an animal trapped in a snare.
“Row, the three of us traveling together is way too suspicious. Esposito is going to have his entire team looking for us, some tourist is going to identify us right away to the fifty or sixty trained, hardened men that he’ll dispatch to find us. He doesn’t take kindly to being betrayed. He’ll see this as the ultimate betrayal, Row. I’ve taken the woman he wanted.”
I take a deep breath. I allow my certainty, my command, my understanding of the situation to come into my eye. “If the three of us stay together, we’re sitting ducks. If we split up, we have a better chance at living.”
“What if you stayed with my father, and I went alone on the other plan?”
“Not a chance,” I dismiss the idea immediately.
“I can protect myself,” she says, her chin up in the air and a resolute look in her eye.
“You certainly think you can,” I say. “Listen to me, Row. I’m not separating from you. Not until I know for sure that you’ll be safe. Your father, he’s an afterthought to Esposito. He was the way to get to you. If he thinks we’ve split up, then he won’t waste resources on finding him when he could be finding you.”
The words sink in one by one. Her eyes search mine, back and forth. “You mean that he’ll be safer away from me?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately. “And you’ll be safer too. If I only have to concentrate on protecting one person rather than two.”
She reaches up and brushes some dust off the brim of my cap. “You don’t count yourself in that number.”
I shrug. She’s right. I don’t count. Only she counts right now.
She looks back at her sleeping father, hidden almost entirely by the towel. “The man that will find him when this ferry lands, you trust him?”
“With my life,” I tell her. “And the lives of my mother and sister. He went to America to get them out of harm’s way. He’s taking them now to a small home he and his wife own in Corfu. Where this ferry will land in two days.”
“My father will get the same protections as your mother and sister?”
“Yes.”
She’s calmer now that she has all the information. I can see the wheels turning in her head. Her eyes cast back and forth as she thinks. I want to wrap her up. Yank her hair back and kiss her silly. I know it would soothe her as much as it would soothe me. And this is making my nerves raw as hell, watching her stand in the ill lit car park in the belly of a ferry. Dust smudging her face, her hair exploding out of her ponytail. She’s tense. And I know just the way to bang that tension out of her. But not here and not now, and that’s making me tense. I need to get her to safety.
“Alright,” she finally says, her eyes staring up into mine, so clear it’s like I could see right through her to the other side. “I trust you enough to do this.”
I immediately grab her hand and start tugging her out of the car park but she tugs back on my hand. I stop and turn. “Thank you for letting me reason it out in my head. Not just making me do it.”
I flick the brim of her hat. “I know you, professor.”
Chapter Eleven
Row
Kennedy locks the door to our cabin behind us and immediately does a sweep of our small, but nice, quarters. I stand in a daze. Totally and completely willing to just let him do all the work.
I’ve been shot at, threatened, chased, shouted at, fucked, kissed all in the last 30 hours. Oh yeah, and I abandoned my unconscious father on a ferry boat to Corfu, all on the word of a man I met yesterday.
And now I’m on a cruise ship to Santorini. Holy Zeus. My head is a bowl of spinning mush right now.
Only my eyes move as I watch Kennedy competently search our room and adjoining bathroom.
“Ok,” he says walking back over to me and tossing his hat and wallet on the dresser. “We’re safe.”
“Safe,” I repeat dully and continue to stand there like someone who’s just witnessed a fifty car pile-up.
He eyes me shrewdly for a moment before he crosses the small room and grips me by the shoulders. “We’re safe, Row. We made it onto this boat completely safe. Unfollowed and untraced by Esposito’s people. Just like Dare and I planned.”
“But. I don’t have my passport.” It’s all my brain can manage to say. Even though it’s already completely obvious. Of course I don’t have my passport. I don’t have anything beside the clothes I’m currently wearing. Neither does my father. I try not to think of him in that car. Alone. At sea. Hours from having any clue as to what the hell is happening to him and what the hell is happening to me.
“You don’t need one. We’re staying inside the country, technically. And I sent your passport, your father’s, and one of mine, to the border of Macedonia. Not far from where we started. The passports will set off alarms, Esposito’s people will rush there.”
“That’s not far from Corfu. Won’t it occur to them to search there?”
“That’s why we sent your father on a car ferry. He has to skirt the entire country. Those ferries take days. Your father will arrive in Corfu after they’ve already ruled it out.”
“It’s a good plan,” I say dully. “What do you mean you sent our passports to the border?”
“I paid two tourists who were staying at our hotel to turn them in when they got to the border. Say they lost them. When the border police scan them through the system to identify if they’re real or not, Esposito will be notified that they’ve been scanned. The same way he would be notified if we’d actually tried to use them to get across the border.”
“Ok,” I say. “Ok.” I start to lower to the bed but think better of it when I see how clean the bedspread is. I’m dusty and sweaty. “You sure have thought of everything.”
“Yeah,” he says. “And I’m about to think of some more. You need a shower and some sleep.”
I nod and the movement makes me sway a little.
“Or better yet, you need a bath. I don’t think you could stand up for an entire shower.”
He leads me into the bathroom where there’s a small tub, a sink and a toilet. He starts filling the bathtub.
“Bath’s a waste of precious resources.”
“So are cruise ships,” he says, flashing a fast
, brilliant smile at me. “We’re just going to indulge ourselves for the next two days until we get to Santorini. Consider it a celebration of being alive.”
As the bathtub fills he gently undresses me. First my socks and boots. Next come my shirt and pants. Small puffs of dust from the dig site billow off them as he tosses them to the ground. I can’t believe that was just this afternoon that we were there. Discovering Iairos’s tomb. And then re-burying it. I gasp against the twist in my gut at that memory. I can barely think about what my mother would have thought about that.
I realize that one of my hands has fisted around the gold locket at my neck as he gently pulls my hands away so he can unhook my bra. Slide my panties down my legs. And then he’s on one knee below me, holding my hips to keep me steady. He presses a quick nip to each one of my hipbones, like he couldn’t help himself. But then he’s standing again. He gently pulls the hair tie from my hair, removes the pins I use to keep the shorter parts back. My hair cascades around my shoulders. And lastly he undoes the clasp of my necklace. And carefully, slowly, he tosses one of the hand towels hanging on the wall onto the edge of the sink and hangs the necklace on its hook.
I start to move toward the tub, now pretty full. I turn the knobs so the water stops running and swirl my hand through the water. It’s going to feel lovely. Necessary and lovely.
And then, from behind me, one of his bare feet steps into the bathtub. I look up in surprise and see him, completely naked and halfway into the tub. I give him a half smile. I wouldn’t have minded some time alone, but as he sits all the way in and then firmly pulls me in after him, I have to admit, the human contact is nice.
I sit between his legs. My back to his front. Letting my head fall back on his shoulder, I close my eyes and block out any and all thoughts. I concentrate only the feeling of him dragging a soapy cloth over every inch of my skin. My arms, in between my fingers, my breasts, my ribs, my armpits. I giggle a little at the tickle of it and I can feel his answering chuckle.
“You love touching me everywhere,” I mumble as he soaps inside my belly button, the crack of my ass.
“Yes,” he growls, one arm bracketing my waist as he leans forward with the cloth, dragging it down my thighs. “I touch you everywhere. And nobody else does.”
“That’s for sure,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve even touched myself in all the places you have.”
“Hm,” he grunts and I can’t tell if that’s in approval or disapproval. Maybe it’s both.
I expect him to start romancing me. Partly because I know him. But also partly because I can feel his enormous erection absolutely crushing into my lower back. But next he just washes my hair and helps me out of the tub. He dries me as thoroughly as he’s washed me.
I’m hungry, I can tell. But the thought of eating turns my stomach. I’ve never been so tired, so absolutely wasted, in my entire life. He sits me on the edge of the bed and makes me drink a glass of water.
“For the shock,” he says. “It’ll help.”
But then he’s tucking me in. I watch through half-closed eyes, it’s the best I can do right now, as he pulls some clothes from his backpack on.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m going to pick up a few things from the shop and the kitchen,” he says. “I also want to make sure I know the docking schedule. We’re set to make a few stops here and there and I want to make sure that no one boards the ship whose not supposed to at those times.”
I nod, but I’m already drifting off. I dimly hear the lock clicking behind him.
# # #
I run my hand over the cave walls for just a moment, to get my bearings. I can hear the drip, drip of a stalactite being formed somewhere deep in the bowels of the cave system. And the leathery flap of a bat’s wings. I’m not scared, though I’m alone. And I don’t even need a flashlight. Everywhere I turn, my eyes light up the path for me. Useful. Phosphorescence? Could be. I hear a whimper, coming from my left, and I freeze. Where there was just the wall of the cave a moment before has become a yawning opening. A hole that opens and beckons me inside.
I hear the whimper again. Looking down, I realize with some surprise that I’m barefoot. That’s odd. I’d never go someplace like this without my hiking boots. I put my hands at my hips to search for my archaeological tools and realize that I’m just touching my bare skin. There’s almost nothing on me except for a thick piece of leather around my neck. I can feel a metal loop on it.
I pause, a chill running up my spine. I’m not supposed to be here. This is bad. But then I hear the whimper again and I’m moving forward. That was a child. That was a child’s whimper. Maybe hurt. Maybe in pain. I rush forward.
I turn into a large cavern and see a small, crouched form in the middle. He’s curled into a shaft of light beaming down from the cave ceiling high above. He’s so small. And sick. I can see that even from here.
He looks up at me. His skin is golden and his hair a curly black. He clutching his hands over his chest.
“Help me, Kyna,” he says and his hands fall away, revealing a neat little hole, an empty cavity where his heart should be.
It’s Iairos. Poor, sweet Iairos. Who died for his sister and can’t even rest in peace. I rush toward him, wanting to offer any comfort I can.
But suddenly I’m ripped backward, off my feet. My neck explodes in pain. I whip my hands up to the leather collar around my neck, terrified that it’s shrinking. But I realize it hasn’t shrunk, it’s been yanked. By a chain that is now attached to the metal loop. I scramble to my knees and search around for the chain as the cries of the child, of Iairos, get louder and louder behind me.
I find the chain on the cool wet of the cave floor and rise to my feet. Clutching it in my hands. I give the chain an experimental tug, needing to find what it’s fastened to. Then I can let myself free, get to Iairos. But when I tug it, I hear a low chuckle coming from the shadows at the other end of the cavern. The chain tugs back at me. At my hands and at my neck. I stumble forward.
And out of the shadows steps a man. A man I’ve only seen a few times in my life. But I know him. Instantly. The inky black hair. The large, glassy eyes. Every ring on his fingers. It’s Esposito. I’m chained to him.
# # #
“Row! Wake up!” Someone is shaking my shoulders and calling my name and I come awake on a desperate gasp. My legs swishing through the sheets, my pillow wet with tears. I know immediately where I am. I know whose hands are on me. Who lays next to me on the bed. I know, in my bones, that I’m safe. That there is literally no chance of Esposito getting his hands on me while this man next to me lives and breathes.
“Kennedy,” I half sob and launch myself at him. The force of it pushes him back and I land on his chest, sprawled out, one leg slung over his hips.
One of his hands traces a circle over my back. “Hey, it’s ok. You were having a nightmare.”
“I know,” I say into his chest, my lips brushing against his chest hair, which just smells like him.
“You were talking about Iairos when I woke you up,” he says, and then his hand tightens over my hair. “And Esposito.”
“Iairos was dying. Begging for help. His chest didn’t have a heart in it.” The details pour out of me, murky, confused, the way of dreams. “Esposito owned me. He had a leash around my neck. A-a collar. He’d shown it to me before. Once. When he told me it was the last chance for the money from my father. He showed me what he’d make me wear.”
I shudder as I move closer to Kennedy, my leg slung over him. Our cores are almost aligned in this position. I can feel him brush against me.
Kennedy’s fingers are at my scalp, pulling my head back. His eyes are almost black in the dark. His normally light hair is blue in the moonlight off the ocean. I’ve never seen him look so intense.
“You’ll never wear his collar, Row,” he says to me. “You’ll never belong to him. You can’t. Because you already belong to me. Only me.”
I feel his erection growing
against me. The tip of his cock sliding through me. I’m growing wet at his words. At the safety I feel in his arms.
“I should’ve fucked you last night,” he says, almost to himself. “It’s been too long since I reminded you who owns this body.” His hips thrust up gently, sending him just a half an inch into me. I bite my lip and hold still, not wanting him to take it away. “You got scared. Thought somebody could take this little pussy from me.” He thrusts upward again, giving me just a little bit more.
He lowers his hips then and I can’t take it. I need him to possess me. To show me from the inside how safe I am. I drop my hips a little, trying to take him in, but he pulls himself away, grabs my hips roughly.