It’s thinner than oatmeal with the slightest hint of brown sugar, and at many points in my life—every other point in my life—I would have spit it out. Not today. I can barely hold myself back. He watches me so intently that I have to speak. The cook makes noise in the kitchen, out of sight, but that’s not enough to cover up the fact that I have become an animal.
I swallow another mouthful of oatmeal gruel and clench my fist around the spoon. “Am I a prisoner?”
Poseidon watches my hands, then my face. “I’m still deciding.”
“What does that mean?” That’s as long as I can wait to take another bite. I don’t know who I am anymore.
“It means you’re worth a lot more to me alive than dead, so keep eating.”
I stop eating. My hand is shaking with how hungry I am. I’ve slept at least twice since I’ve been on the ship. It’s been days, I think. Days since I’ve eaten. I’m normally the kind of person who carries around three granola bars in her purse to avoid becoming hangry. It also doesn’t thrill me that he’s thinking about how much I’m worth if I’m dead.
But.
I take another bite anyway. More slowly this time. “Who are you?”
“I told you my name.”
“You gave me a fake name.” I make a show of scraping my spoon around the outside of the bowl to delay the inevitable. “What kind of name is Poseidon?”
The corners of his lips twitch, and a small, foolish part of me hopes he’ll laugh. Why I hope that, I don’t know. “It’s not a fake name. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.”
“Should I have?”
“Anyone who sails this corner of the sea should know me. Or they’ll soon find out.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“Probably because it is.”
“So you’re… what?” My heart curls up into a knot in my throat. I swallow around it. “In shipping?”
He laughs, a rough bark of a thing, nothing like I remember from before. Maybe I dreamed it. “Shipping. Yes. I do some of that.”
I put oatmeal in my mouth, not tasting a thing, the whole process reduced to a mechanical slog. “And?”
“What any businessman does.” His tone stays level, almost bored. “I buy and sell things.”
The bowl is empty. I turn my spoon down and put it in the empty middle.
I want to see his face when I ask him my next question.
“What do you want from me?”
His entire face changes. The way he’s looking at me—the way he’s looking at me—
Not a smile. It’s pure lust.
The heat in his eyes spears through me, sending my whole body into a hot, shameful flush. If any other man looked at me like this I would get up and walk away. Robbie looked at me like this once. Like a whole sordid scenario was playing out in his mind. The way Robbie looked at me was a shy glance compared to this open eye-fucking.
A real grin spreads across Poseidon’s face, and a deep-water chill holds tight around my bones. “I want many things from you.”
I swallow again and catch the flicker of his eyes moving down to the front of my throat. He’s talking about sex. The thought of sex with this man is terrifying. It’s as terrifying as that leap into the ocean. As terrifying as realizing there was no island in sight. As terrifying as the moment I knew my feet would never touch solid ground again.
But it’s also… exciting.
“Please.” I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue, and his jaw clenches. “Please. Just let me call my father.”
“Yes, dear old Daddy. He must be so worried.” He shouldn’t be so intimidating, sitting here like this, but he is. My heart taps against the cage of my ribs. “What did you tell him, that you were sleeping over with a friend?”
He knows about me.
The realization hits all at once, like a giant wave I’m not expecting. I don’t dare ask how much he knows or where he got his information. There’s enough about me on the internet to know quite a bit, but there are other things that don’t feature on my Instagram, like how protective my dad is. He would have to have other sources for that.
I take in a long, slow breath and let it out. “You could drop me off at the nearest port. I’ll figure it out from there.”
“No, princess. You’re far too valuable to leave ashore. You’re going to fetch me a pretty bounty, aren’t you?”
The oatmeal I’d been so obsessed with is a pile of rocks in my gut. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re my hostage.”
I scramble up from the stool. It feels better to be on my feet for this for exactly one second before my balance is off, my head is floating like a balloon, and I’m falling, staggering, exhausted.
Poseidon is out of his seat in the space between thoughts. I register how inhumanly fast he moves and then his body is breaking my fall, his arms are caging me in. He backs me up against the solid wall next to the galley door and I hate it, I hate how good it feels to be braced here with the wall on one side of me and him on the other. There’s nowhere to go. I can’t crumple to the ground because he won’t allow it.
I can’t stop breathing because he won’t allow it.
But it’s hard. I want to hold my breath. I want to turn my face into the wall and hide.
There is nowhere to hide.
One of his hands makes contact with the wall next to my head. I could kiss him. I’m near enough to kiss him. I try not to move a muscle but my whole body trembles. He’s closer now, the hard lines of him against the soft lines of me, pinning me to the wall, and then the bare inch between us feels like a thousand miles. I drop my eyes to the front of his chest.
Poseidon puts a hand in my hair and tips my face to his. He’s not gentle about it. I don’t know where I ever got the idea that he could be that way.
His eyes burn with a dangerous heat and light. I was wrong about those eyes—they’re not blue, after all. They’re a battle between blue and green. They’re like the sea. Like the violent, neverending sea. I have the strangest urge to jump in. I can’t do it. I can’t, because the ship is indestructible, and so is Poseidon.
Also, his grip is getting tighter in my hair, tighter and tighter until the pain begins and I open my mouth to moan or cry out—I don’t know which. It doesn’t hurt enough to scream. It doesn’t hurt like being captured by those pirates would have hurt. But it’s a fresh, electric pain, different from the aches and bruises of being lost at sea.
When the pain reaches its peak, he lets go.
He’s breathing faster.
Not harder. He’s too strong to be winded by the simple act of pulling my hair.
He’s not touching me now, but he might as well be. The sheer force of his body in my space keeps my knees from giving out. I have no idea what’s going to happen but I’m alive with it. I’m painfully alive, every nerve firing with panic and desire. With an embarrassing, heady crush. So awful, so intoxicating.
I’m drunk. That’s what it feels like. I’m drunk and scared and excited and I need a minute to figure it out.
I’m not going to get that minute.
“I don’t usually touch hostages.” Poseidon’s voice is rougher, like sea glass that hasn’t been worn down. It has deadly sharp edges. “There aren’t many moral lines I won’t cross, but that’s one of them.” His eyes rake down over my body, pure hunger and want. It’s echoed in every line of his body. All of his power is focused on me. “You’re making me question my own ethics, princess. That doesn’t bode well for you.”