The single saving grace of this moment is that no one seems to have noticed me.
And there are other people up here. Lots of them.
Strange men, every one of them absorbed in one task or another. One has a length of clear rope or string hanging off the side of the ship, and he stares down after it. One has a tablet and is tapping at the screen so quickly I can’t believe he’s reading anything on it. One is actually mopping the deck. Swabbing it? He doesn’t look up at me, either. None of them do. Not even when I take a few tentative steps forward.
The sun is killer. I put a hand up to shade my eyes. The guy with the tablet glances up at me, then back down at the screen. It’s like random, disarrayed girls usually wander around their ship.
A shadow looms over me, staying tall and dark and mysterious for several heartbeats before it resolves into a man. Shirtless. Carved muscles. The shadows of tattoos around one arm and over his chest.
Poseidon.
That’s what his name was. It comes to me in his voice, as if he’s murmured it into my ear. What a strange name.
I’m sure he didn’t look this pissed before.
“What are you doing out of bed?” He barks the question like an order, rough-edged and glacial. It’s so clear who the captain of the ship is. He holds it in his bearing. I’m wearing his clothes, but I feel like shrinking down to the deck and disappearing.
“Looking for you.” I manage it in a voice that barely trembles. This can’t be the same person who made me drink water and spoke to me in a coaxing, gentle way. It can’t be, but it is.
His eyes narrow. “You need rest.”
“I need a phone.”
“Go back below, where I left you.”
I straighten my spine and cross my arms over my chest. I have one single card to play in this conversation, and I think if it were an actual card, it would be flimsy as hell. Still. There’s that saying about playing the hand you have. “Did you call my dad?”
A frown curves the corners of his lips down, and damn it, they are perfect lips, like a god would have. But a frown is not exactly what I expected. Usually when I mention my dad, people move faster. Nobody back home wants to be on his bad side. He’d buy their companies out of spite.
I summon the ghost of sorority girls past and widen my eyes, though Poseidon is the furthest thing from a groveling frat boy this world has to offer.
“Did you call the police? Someone shot my boyfriend. They stole his yacht.”
He doesn’t answer, staring at me with open disbelief.
“Did you call… anyone?”
Another shiver streaks down my spine, goose bumps pulling tight all over my skin. I woke up with the hazy thought that I was safe here.
I am not safe here.
Fear forces another question from my lips. “What are you going to do with me?”
I have the feeling I should keep looking at Poseidon. That I should keep my eyes on his, because it might give me a few seconds’ warning if he moves. I glance around at the other men in spite of myself. I wasn’t thinking before, wasn’t seeing. They’re all hard men, hard bodies, hard faces. Rough men. Cruel men? Maybe. And beyond them, an endless expanse of sea.
All the things I feared when those pirates came onto Robbie’s yacht come back, multiplied by ten, fifty, a hundred. This ship is much bigger than the yacht. There are more men here by far. They would be more violent than the sea. I know they would. They would be violent in all the ways women are taught to fear, and honestly, honestly, I never thought it would come to that. Not ever in my life, not with Robbie standing nearby or another friend who would hook their arm through mine and pull me to safety.
There are no friends here.
Especially not the man standing in front of me with power radiating off him and irritation in his eyes. He’s all that’s standing between me and the rest of his crew, but maybe there is no real difference between them. Maybe he’s as cruel and hard as they are.
These men could do anything to me. There’s no one here to stop them.
6
Ashley
Poseidon takes one step forward and I startle, taking a pathetic half-step back.
He laughs and does it again, and damn it, so do I.
There’s nothing out here but sky and sea and the men on the deck. There’s plenty of space. But it seems like he takes up all of it. Even if I wanted to run, I couldn’t. “Nicholas,” he says, eyes on me.
A man with auburn hair and bottle-green eyes looks up. “It’s under control,” he says. That must be the first mate.
Poseidon crowds me all the way back to the door and pulls it open behind me. His movements are almost playful, but his expression is too cutting for this to be a game. I wish I could turn it into a game. That would make it easier. I turn to take the first step and lose my balance, pitching forward over the first step.
He catches me in the middle of my life on a film reel before my eyes, complete with the newspaper headlines. Daughter of Donnelly Tech founder dies from tripping on stairs. “Watch where you’re going.”
“I am watching.” This is not true, because I no longer have to watch where I’m going. His grip around my upper arm is so tight that it’s impossible to fall. So tight I can’t speak. What if he’s taking me to a dungeon, some cage at the belly of the ship? He could be. My feet barely touch the steps on the way down. It’s not a very wide staircase, he’s up against me, touching me. Part of me feels relieved that it’s him and not the rest of the men from up on deck. Part of me knows it’s ridiculous to feel any relief at all.
We stop at the door to his bedroom. It’s more than a room. A suite. Quarters, I guess. He dips in and reappears a moment later, pulling a shirt over his head. He puts an arm around my waist and keeps going.
I should have taken the time to explore when I had the chance. Then I’d know if we were heading toward a sea cage or somewhere else. My mind is too crowded with nightmare scenarios to sift through the possible rooms in a place like this. It’s too crowded with the way he looked in the sun, with his low-slung pants and the breeze in his hair.
We go all the way to the end of the hall and take a sharp left into another narrow space, divided in half by a stainless steel pass-through. Poseidon steps up to it and slaps a hand down on the steel. “Cook,” he calls, and a man comes into view. He says nothing, but he doesn’t look wary. Either he’s not afraid of Poseidon or he’s used to him. I don’t know how a person could ever get used to him. The man lifts his chin.
“For her,” says Poseidon. Two tall stools are bolted to the floor in front of the pass-through. The cook disappears from view, and Poseidon takes a seat and snaps his fingers at the other. At me. “Sit down.”
My ass tips against the hard metal surface, and a bowl appears in front of me.
It’s oatmeal.
I hate oatmeal and make it a point never to eat it, but my stomach doesn’t seem to know that right now. My mouth waters. It could be filet mignon for how much I want it.
Poseidon folds his hands on the counter and watches me. I can’t bring myself to look at him while I’m doing this, while I’m picking up this battered spoon and using it to eat plain oatmeal.
Plain… gruel?