Lair, page 5
I turn and grope away up the stairs, leaving him standing there panting and hands fisted by the pool with its dancing reflections of light.
“Hold up, hold up, hold up,” Cailee says as I pace back and forth at the bow, cell to ear. Beyond, the lights of Ajaccio twinkle in the dark. “Why are you so hung up on what he thinks of you?”
“What?” I say, flinging up a hand. “What do you mean? He’s the owner! Of course I have to care about what he thinks of me!”
Cailee sighs. “You do know this is, like, your thing, right?”
I stop pacing. “My thing?”
“This is what you did with Josh. You were too worried about what he thought of you to have any confidence in yourself.”
I stand there, bottom lip pouting, feeling the beginnings of resentment forming. “That was harsh.”
“I’m sorry. But you know it’s true. You were always trying to please him.”
I put a hand to my brow, suddenly unsteady on my feet as I think of old compromises, backpedaling, accepting slights and gaslighting and fists in order to be in his eyes what I already knew myself to be.
The smothering, tortured patterns of old ways, laid bare before me.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, telling myself Cailee can’t know there are tears in my eyes.
But I know she knows, all the same.
Her voice is very gentle when she continues. “Arie. Babe. I just—I feel a little responsible here. I mean, I was the one who dragged you into this, and . . .” I can practically hear her slap her forehead from here. “I wasn’t thinking about it, but this is gonna be a huge test for you. Like, the whole yachting industry is about pleasing people. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” She makes an angry noise in her throat. “You’re gonna have to be careful. This Voper guy—you don’t wanna repeat what you went through with Josh, do you?”
I look down, feeling an unaccountable flush creeping up my neck. “It’s not like we’re together or anything—”
“I know. Just don’t get all wrapped up in what he thinks of you, okay? You’re trying to get away from all that. Let it go. Be yourself. Go mate with that hunky first mate.”
I snort laughter and nod, wiping at my eyes. “Okay.” And I feel a calmness settle in my shoulders, a strength come back into my spine. I lift my chin. “Okay.”
NINE
I’m allowed a late start the next day, as I’m on laundry duty. I’m ironing male crew uniforms when Thea comes in with a mound of bed sheets. One look at her face and I know she’s got some juicy gossip to share. “What is it?” I say eagerly, and she looks around before leaning in. “It’s Lucia.”
This’ll be good. “What about her?”
“She’s gone.”
I blink. “What?”
Her eyebrows shoot up: I know. “These were from her cabin.” She lifts the armful of sheets. “All her stuff was gone. No one’s seen her. Poof. I asked around, but Mrs. Colding won’t say anything. Word is, Mr. Voper got sick of her and had Jason escort her off the boat during the night.”
My jaw drops. “Wow.”
“Right?” Thea shakes her head. “One thing I know?” She drops the sheets. “Girl was a pig.”
She leaves, and I start untangling the white bedding and pause, frowning at a heavy smear of red on them. Is that . . . lipstick?
When I’m relieved for break, I hear the rattling drop of the anchor and go abovedeck to see where the Lair’s landed next.
From the looks of it? A pirate cove. The cliffs of Corsica soar up for miles in tumbled crags and pinnacles of red sandstone mantled with maquis scrub. The Lair has backed up to them into a little sheltered bay where deep water froths about boulders speckled with the droppings of sea eagles wheeling in the sun-drenched sky. It’s absolutely stunning.
I hear the scoffing whine of Emmie on a sun lounger on the swim deck. “But what’s stopping us from drifting and smashing up against the cliffs?”
The cool, patient voice of Mrs. Colding replies. “Just wait.”
As I watch, the tender idles up to the largest of the boulders in the cove. On the foredeck stands Jason, a thick black stern line in his hands stretching back to the yacht. At the end of the line is a heavy ring of chain-links. He waits for his moment, muscles bunched and skin gleaming gold in the sunlight, and leaps onto the sharp-looking boulder in his bare feet. Emmie and Thea on the swim deck turn to each other, hands hiding their mouths—hot—and I shake my head. But my eyes are also drawn to his physique, so well-defined under his tight polo, as he throws the chain like a lasso around the crown of the boulder and snugs it down tight around outcroppings. The sun is beating down on him, and a drop of sweat turns to golden light as it falls from his brow. How have I never appreciated the male body like this before? For its own sake, separate from the man? Then Jason has straightened, unclipping his crew radio. “Reel her in, Captain.” There’s a slow, methodical clanking—the slack anchor-chain getting inched back in—and the stern line begins to rise taut as the Lair is towed backwards. The chain suddenly rattles and constricts around the boulder. The stern line hums. And Jason, utterly sure of himself in this world, presses his radio. “Good.” The Lair is now effectively rendered stationary between two opposing tension points.
I’m snapped out of my reverie by a burst of clapping—Emmie and Thea, standing to applaud. Mrs. Colding seems unimpressed.
I can’t help grinning as Jason hops back aboard the Lair. “Impressive.”
He shrugs, sheepish. “I know how to put on a show for the guests.”
I eye him up and down. “That you do.”
For a second he stares, and then a laugh leaps out of his throat. “Yeah, well, a hot bod is almost a requirement to get hired as a mate on a boat like this.” His ears, I note, have turned very red. “You’re pretty much there to be eye candy for the female guests.”
“Don’t forget the female crew.” The rejoinder is out before I can stop myself, or the guilt can set in.
Remember, I think. You can allow yourself this much.
Jason, meanwhile, arches a brow. “Oh? Seen any candy about, have you?”
I shrug, nose in the air. “Maybe.”
He cracks a grin. “To think I almost let myself be a scrawny bookworm my whole life.”
“To think,” I tut. “What a waste that would’ve been.”
He regards me for a long moment, the corners of his mouth dimpling in restrained humor. “Miss Strand,” he declares at last. “You are starting to emerge.”
Cailee’s words ringing in my head, I force away all my customary defenses—Why not have fun?—and turn to him with lifted chin. “Do you like it?”
He stares at me, all teeth. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He rubs his neck, glances about and leans forward. “Hey, I was thinking—”
“Mr. Young.” Crew radios whine, and everyone looks up. It is, unmistakably, Mr. Voper’s voice. “Meet me in the main salon, please.”
I look up, too. Mr. Voper stands under the awning of the aft bridge deck, staring down at us.
Jason unclips his radio. “Right away, sir.” He points at me. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I grin. “Okay.”
I look about. Emmie has missed all of this, intent on bossing Thea around. But Mrs. Colding is watching me with a speculative expression.
When Jason returns minutes later he’s pale in the face, eyes distant. I approach him with a smile. “So? What were you gonna say?”
He looks at me, opens his mouth—and turns away. “Let’s go, boys!” he calls. “Wash that tender down!” And like that, he’s gone.
It eases into me like a delayed blow, a creeping, prickling bottoming of my guts. What just happened? And then the queasy humiliation: Was I too forward? Was he not into it?
But Emmie interrupts. Thea is hopping up and down, pointing at a family of dolphins swimming by in sparkling arcs through the water, and Emmie couldn’t care less. She groans from her sun lounger, flawless skin glistening with oil, arm flung to brow. “I am so bored. We don’t even have a yoga instructor onboard.”
I unroot myself. Fuck it. Here’s my chance to get on her good side. “I teach yoga.”
She peeks at me from under the shade of her arm. “Really.”
I square off with her. “Yeah. Internationally certified.” I turn to Mrs. Colding. “I could do it now, if I can be spared from my duties for a bit.”
Mrs. Colding stares daggers at me.
But Emmie’s eyes flick me over. She sits up. “All right, then. Let’s do it.”
Warm triumph spreads through me.
We do it in the sun on the aft main deck, laying out mats over the closed panels of the pool roof. Everyone changes into leggings and sports bras, as Emmie demands that all the stews participate—out of self-consciousness or wanting an audience, I can’t tell which. Mrs. Colding glowers and follows along as if submitting to some humiliation, and a few of the deckhands loiter to watch Emmie stick her ass out in cat cow pose. So an audience, then.
It feels good to teach again; I haven’t done it in a while. The instructions flow out calm and clear, and even Emmie listens when I walk about and adjust her posture.
It’s only when I’m in cobra pose, arching my back up from the mat with my breasts thrust out, that I lift up my eyes and notice Mr. Voper watching from the shade of the bridge deck overhang.
I instantly blush, faltering in my suddenly too-sexual-feeling pose, and all heads turn to look. The deckhands have suddenly disappeared.
I can’t process it at first: Mr. Voper is undoing the buttons of his coat, one by one. He shrugs it off and casually hands it to a passing deckie, begins slipping off his thousand-dollar Italian shoes. “Mind if I join?”
The stews share dumbfounded looks. Apparently, something unprecedented is transpiring.
Mr. Voper raises a brow at my silence.
“Y-Yes,” I manage at last. “Be my guest.”
He smiles at my phrasing and chooses a mat within the overhang’s shade. Waits, barefoot, like some eloping CEO. The sight of him there is so bizarre it takes me a moment to snap out of it. “Um, right.” Let it go, Aurora. Be yourself. “Plow pose.”
He isn’t too bad. It’s obvious he has never tried yoga in his life, but there is an athletic grace to him that takes to it with startling ease. His presence, however, frays all concentration. Whispers begin and heads constantly turn, as if he were a black hole in the group’s center. Emmie doesn’t miss the opportunity to play it up, going off-script and trying the puppy dog stretch and wheel pose, arching her ass at him and glancing temptingly over her shoulder. But he ignores her, watching me with an unwavering intensity that is disconcerting. I shift, feeling a flutter between my legs, and when I see Mrs. Colding looking between us with narrowed eyes, it’s too much. I stand and begin to circle the class, scrutinizing postures.
After a while, I realize I can’t ignore it: Voper’s is off.
I cut through the group—heads turn—and come to his side. He’s in a kneeling lunge position, back arched and back leg bent, one hand reaching up and behind to grip the foot. He stilts a few fingers to the mat to steady himself. “Here, let’s get you back on track,” I say, lifting a hand. “I’ll show you.”
And I touch his shoulder.
There are audible gasps. Mrs. Colding shoots to her feet.
But Voper’s eyes only glitter with amusement. Even with him kneeling, I look half his size. I take a breath. “You’re strong, but you need to relax your chest.” I place a hand there. It’s cold, strikingly so, and I think of how I saw him last night, and what’s hidden beneath this fitted white business shirt. I swallow and put a hand to his back, gripping his ribcage. The dense, torsional webbing of muscle there is undeniable. “Breathe,” I say, and realize I’m saying it more for my sake than for his. I clear my throat. “You’re not breathing.”
For some reason, this only amuses Voper more. A seam of a smile appears at the corner of his mouth.
I sigh. “A little deeper. Just breathe. Can you breathe for me?”
Voper’s face twitches, filling with a sudden, inscrutable nakedness, but he won’t look at me. His nostrils flare, his jaw muscles flex. We are very close. I’m barely aware of Emmie watching with mouth hanging in scandalized fury, Mrs. Colding with open fascination. That Captain Redfearn, even, has taken a break from his duties to watch with narrowed eyes and crossed arms.
For I know what’s going on here. I know where this kind of tension comes from. Sometimes it feels like I’ve struggled with it all my life.
I lower my voice. “Mr. Voper.” His eyes jerk at me. “Relax. That tension inside? You have to let it go.”
He does not look away. Those blue eyes seem to grow larger and larger, searching mine, hauling whatever they need up out of the depths. And I think, He never blinks.
Then he sucks in a deep breath, his beastly barrel of a chest expands, and he arches back in a fluid motion, gripping his foot. His form is perfect.
I step away as if released from some sorcery. “Very good.”
But when he stands, towering over me, the mask is back in place, his face cold and unapproachable, full of a trembling restraint. Is that . . . disgust?
“Thank you,” he says, and curtly nods. “That was . . . edifying.”
And he turns and flings open the double doors of the main salon, disappearing inside.
I stand there not knowing what to think, feeling Emmie’s eyes burning into the back of my head.
TEN
That night Thea leans against our cabin wall and crosses her arms, a gloating smile on her face. “You two . . .”
I punch my pillow to fluff it, a little too aggressively. “Please just leave me alone.”
My thoughts haven’t left me alone, though. They very much haven’t left me alone. For the rest of the day I’d been all but useless, almost burning every uniform that had come across my ironing board. How could I not turn over, in my mind, every little moment I’d had with Voper that afternoon? How could I not wonder what that expression on his face had meant? What that deep, dangerous tension in his muscles (all those muscles) had meant—
Thea sniggers. “You don’t wanna talk about it? I mean, I definitely think we should talk about it.”
“What’s to talk about?” I grouse. “Voper doesn’t like me. Hardly breaking news.” Thea squints one eye at me, and I glare at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she laughs, shrugging, hands up. “Nothing. Just . . . there seemed to be a connection there.”
I shrug now, suddenly self-conscious. “I just . . . could tell. He’s carrying a lot of pain.”
“Oh?” Thea raises her brows. “You could tell that, could you, from feeling up his hot bod?”
I flush, trying to find the words. “I went through a lot, when I was . . .” I feel a mortifying pressure behind my eyes, and wave a hand. “Anyway, it’s why I do yoga. It helps my stress and insomnia. So, I can tell when someone else is also struggling.”
“Well,” Thea says, thinking that one over. “All I know is, I’ve never seen Voper do anything like that before.” Another ambivalent shrug, and when she climbs up into her bunk I sit there, musing on that.
Sometime in the night I wake with a start, for no reason that’s readily apparent. The cabin is dark, the yacht calm and motionless. Just my insomnia, then.
I look up at the cabin doorway to find a familiar shadow there, looking down at me, and the thought thuds through me: Josh.
My muscles lock all over. Terror ices my blood. My mind reels.
No. It can’t be. He can’t have followed—he can’t have found me—what is he going to—
But when the shadow steps forward, it’s not Josh. It’s Voper.
Something flutters and catches behind my breastbone.
Why is he here? What is happening? I shrink back and open my mouth, but his hand is there, his cold pale hand. His blue eyes poison-black in the darkness. My body buzzes, tipped into a tumult of confusion. I should scream, I know. This is wrong. I should fight this. But there is something else in the terror coursing through me. Something depraved and thrilled. He rolls on top of me, and the size of him pressed against me is undeniable. A shivering languidness fills me. My hands open and close, clawing into the sheets. I can’t help it, I grind my hips up to meet him, and he lifts away. Bad girl. When he removes his hand from my mouth, he stares at my lips. I stare at his. They’re so full, for a man’s. Sensuous. I wonder how many women have fallen for those lips.
I suddenly want them.
But one long, pale finger stops my mouth. He dips his head and whispers it into the sensitive shell of my ear: “Relax.” His exhalation is cold against my neck. His fingertips glide down me, grazing the sides of my breasts, my ribs, and I quiver. Hidden, neglected parts of me flare to life. I feel a fluttery clench between my legs and realize: I am turned on by Adrian Voper. I want Adrian Voper.
I don’t care. I pull at him, wanting that delicious weight on me, and I hear a husky, gorgeous grunt of amusement. I can’t see his face, his expression, what he thinks of me. All I know is what I can feel pressing against me. He wants me, too. For whatever reason, in this moment, he wants me.
I won’t waste it. I grab at him, whispering it, begging it, “Please.” I hear him groan, and the thought of me causing him to lose control makes me tingle. I grab a fistful of his hair and pull him to my breasts. I know what he wants. I know what will make him happy. His hands float down me and buttons pop, fabric falls away. He’s peeling me like some rare delicacy. I’m being devoured. I’ve never, ever been wanted like this, and I’m so turned on I want to scream. How can Thea not hear us? How can she not know what’s happening to my world?
And then—no—he’s gone, the weight has left me, but only so he can roll me onto my side. I feel him pressed against my ass, his hands filled with my breasts, and I shut my eyes. Dear God. I grind back against it, wanting it. He chuckles deep in his throat and it’s tipping me over the edge. Then his voice is in my ear again. “Relax,” he growls. “You have to let it go.” I feel a wetness spreading, a wetness that is not me, and open my eyes. The bunk is soaked, water is spreading over the sheets all around us, dripping onto the floor. And when I look over my shoulder at Voper, he’s shirtless, white as a corpse, in the same swimming trunks he wore in the pool. He smiles. “Breathe,” he says, his mouth sharp, and bites my neck . . .
