“Can I come with you?”
“No.”
“Poseidon.” He stops at the bottom of the stairs and looks at me, shadows under his eyes, the blue of his irises clouded with demons. He expects me to stay here, and I can’t. Not today. Not with this thumb drive in my pocket. Not after yesterday. “Let me come with you.” Dry mouth, dry lips. He could still be a storm, this man I trust—the same way my mother trusted my father. He could strike out at me now. I almost wouldn’t mind it. It would bring me back to earth. “Please. I’m driving myself crazy in this house by myself.”
His eyes trace the contours of my sundress, its straps, its flow of fabric. When those eyes return to mine, it’s with a certain resignation. “Fine. But stay close to me when we’re there. You can’t wander off at the shipyard. It’s not safe.”
5
Poseidon
My official cause of death will be Ashley’s sundress.
All the other bullshit will play a part. The rain. The outrageous difficulty of building a new ship. The fact that we’re being hunted by the goddamn government.
The sundress is the final blow.
The open-top Jeep that came with the house bumps over the jungle road, and I try to ignore how delicate and beautiful Ashley looks bouncing on the seat beside me. Her dress is a criminally pale blue, the fabric gauzy and soft, and I want to tear it off just to feel it come apart in my hands. Just to see her skin exposed to me under a cloud of ruined fabric.
All the assholes at the Haven Island shipyard will be thinking the same thing, and worse.
I’m thinking worse.
If this stretch of road weren’t so narrow, I’d turn the Jeep around right now. Fuck checking on the progress with the new ship. Fuck making sure Nicholas is still alive.
Ashley doesn’t belong anywhere with sailors looking like this.
She’s bound to start a riot in that fucking dress. At least on my ship I’m the captain. This is a lawless land. We follow an unspoken code. Don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you. But a woman, a woman like her, she’s fair game. Only as safe as I can keep her.
Three twisted curves in a row, and the road tosses us out onto the flat, open terrain of the shipyard. Two sides are bordered by the ocean with a wet dock, a dry dock, and a collection of floating and permanent docks, most of them occupied. An elaborate matrix of scaffolds sprouts out of the gravel and pavement. We came down a road that splits off to the village, separated from the shipyard by a stretch of tropical forest with a wide path cut through for moving supplies and people. Workshops line the forest boundary.
It’s crawling with men. Some of their repairs were undoubtedly delayed by the rain that started twenty minutes after we touched down and only stopped after I went to the shore last night.
Ashley will never know how I cursed the sea, how I railed against it, and how I finally, grudgingly, begged for it to fucking stop so she could sleep. How I swore I’d be back soon. She’ll never hear from me how quickly the storm cloud untangled itself from the sky, or how the sea went gentle and apologetic.
Like the sea is the asshole, and not me.
Heads turn as I swing myself out of the Jeep. I ignore those staring pricks and go around to help Ashley step out. She can climb down herself, but I want them to see me touch her. Ashley puts her hand in mine with trust I don’t deserve, like I didn’t leave the imprint of bark on her back or fuck her throat so hard that tears ran down her cheeks along with the stream from the shower.
I keep her at arm’s length once her feet are on the ground. At exactly arm’s length. Not so close that I could skim my hand under her sundress, though the ache in my cock makes a convincing argument that it would be the right thing to do. That it is, in fact, the only right thing to do, and everything else is wrong.
It’s wrong to put dead air between us as we stroll through the middle of the yard.
They all look at her. All of them. Their eyes trace paths over skin not meant for them. Her pale skin, so translucent I can see her veins, the pink-blue color of an oyster, is only for me.
“Eyes on your work if you want to keep your job,” I snap at the next man foolish enough to let me see him watching. “You need something to look at, you can look at me.”
He declines.
We’re three paces past him when Ashley touches my arm. “He wasn’t doing anything.”
“Defend that bastard again, princess.”
Her chin comes up at my tone. “And what if I do?”
“I won’t wait until we’re back at the house to deliver the consequences.”
Ashley blinks. It was a mistake to bring her here. My head throbs from lack of sleep and the rest of me throbs from how pretty she is in that dress. I want to sail her to the middle of the sea, a million miles from the next person, and have my way with her.
And then I want to sleep until this heartache finally subsides.
I just want to sleep.
But only if she’s with me.
“Poseidon.” She’s soft, in that dress. Even the way she speaks to me—I don’t deserve that either. She has endless patience for me, this princess. Endless grace.
I open my mouth to apologize, but a couple of guys who have been working the yard sidle up to my opposite side. “You didn’t say you were bringing company,” the taller one says.
“Unless she’s not with you,” his buddy points out, craning his neck to look at Ashley. “Better for everyone if she’s not.” He laughs like he’s made a real joke.
His laughter ends like I’ve lopped it off with a knife, but all I’ve done is take both the collars of their shirts in my fists and force them backward until they’re both pressed against the in-progress hull of someone else’s vessel.
It would be a relief to beat the shit out of them.
They don’t meet my eyes, so I only slam them again before letting them go.
Another man steps up as I return to Ashley, wearing the same jeans and T-shirt uniform as most of the pirates here. “Poseidon, you prick.” He claps me on the shoulder as hard as one of my brothers would, and Ashley glances between the two of us with a surprised confusion. He’s not Nicholas, or any one of the crew. He could be one of them, though. He’s almost as tall as me, and the kind of dark-eyed handsome that makes him sought-after by women who bat their eyes at ports of call. He could have his pick. But I’ve never seen him take anyone to his room at the end of the night. I don’t know why.
“Why are you here, asshole?”
“I heard you got a lady and I had to see for myself.”
“I’d be happy to kill you today.” He laughs at my death threat. “I’m not fucking around right now. Touch her and you—”
“Die?” says the oldest friend I have, aside from my brothers. “You’re getting predictable.”
I met Caspian the summer after I left the farmhouse. He ended up as the captain of his own ship, same as me. We’ve sailed together many times. I know what he’s like under duress. Fucking lethal. And experienced. What I don’t know is what made him that way.
He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.
I have my suspicions. Right now, none of that matters.