Chapter Five
THESE ARE YOUR last days of freedom.
His words echoed inside her head all night. She couldn’t sleep.
When she woke up, she felt wretched and grotty, and completely unable to control her emotions.
It took a pot of coffee in a lovely silver service for her to even feel remotely civil.
She didn’t seek Andrei out until after that.
She was sure that he had slept up on the deck, just as he said.
She castigated herself for putting him in the position where he had to be on this journey.
She had been angry at him, and at her brother, but the closer she got to Alabria, the more grateful she was for the protection. The more she questioned herself, even if she wouldn’t let Andrei know that she did.
Though their attraction—mutual!—was now out in the open, and it made everything feel electrified. It made breathing feel painful.
She didn’t see him at the front of the boat, and wandered around the starboard side, taking in the view of the glorious Mediterranean before she went aft and stopped. Because there was an even more glorious view there.
Andrei. Swimming in the pool. He was shirtless, his dark skin glistening in the sun.
He leveraged himself up out of the pool, the muscles on his body shifting with the motion, water droplets sliding down the hollows in his chest, his abs.
He was wearing tight black swim shorts that did not cover his magnificent thighs.
He was a work of art. She had never painted a damn thing in her life, but suddenly she wanted to take it up. Or maybe sculpt him out of something. If it was the only way she would ever know what it was like to touch his body, she would take a hunk of clay right now and try to shape it into him.
Because at least then maybe she could caress the fine lines of his body. Wow, that was an incredibly weird thought. But she was in an incredibly strange state. The door on her self-imposed prison was about to close, and then Andrei would be out of her reach forever.
He’s always been out of your reach.
Maybe.
“Good morning,” he said, his dark eyes flickering over her dispassionately. She looked down at her loose pajamas, and felt annoyed. If she were in her underwear, he probably wouldn’t be able to look so disinterested. It wasn’t fair. He was basically naked.
“Good morning,” she said.
“How did you sleep?”
She huffed a laugh. “Not well. Though I don’t suppose that would surprise you.”
“Because I don’t like boats?”
“Because of my looming marriage,” she said.
Manacles. Chains. A total loss of freedom.
How ridiculous to be so angry about something she had engineered. It wasn’t like anyone was forcing her hand. Nothing other than her own desire to positively impact her country. Her own obsession with legacy.
But sometimes she did feel trapped by that. By her own impossibly high standards for herself and her life.
Now, see where it had led her.
He began to walk toward her, her stomach clenching tight, her… She could feel the echo of each and every footstep between her legs. Could feel herself getting sensitive, getting wet.
He was such a hazard. This wasn’t the first time her body had gone completely rogue around him.
One time he had tried to show her some basic self-defense moves, and his hands on her body had given her fantasy fuel for weeks. She was absolutely sure that if he had any idea what she’d done to herself in her room after that he would be horrified.
Or maybe he wouldn’t be. Because however he had reacted afterward, he did want her. At least, he had in the moment. But he was a man, so it could be that simple. He had a woman’s body pressed against him, and maybe that was all it took. Maybe it wasn’t about her at all, but just his sex drive.
He walked by her, his shoulder brushing against the side of her arm as he reached down and picked up a towel from one of the lounge chairs.
He began to towel off his hair, his chest, and she found herself held captive by the motion.
His chest, his washboard flat abs. His hip bones.
Oh God, don’t look there. Right at the center of those very tight swim trunks.
The mysteries of the male form in all its glory were beneath those shorts, and she found herself very curious indeed.
Not that she’d never seen a naked man in pictures, but she hadn’t actually seen one in the flesh. And anyway, he was the only one she wanted to see.
Lucky you. In a few weeks, you’ll be seeing Lucian.
A stranger. A man she’d never even met. The idea was like a bucket of cold water poured over her head.
It wasn’t that he was a stranger, if she was being honest. It was that he wasn’t Andrei.
“What do you want?”
He sounded put out, his temper short.
“I don’t know. I thought that I might seek the company of the person on this vessel that I know best?”
“You are staring,” he said.
“You’re a sight to behold,” she said, not seeing the point in lying. He must know that he was beautiful.
“Stop,” he said, his words short. Clipped.
“What?”
“You know.”
He wasn’t doing any better than she was. It made her feel strangely powerful. She’d felt alone in her need for him for so long. Discovering that he was tortured by it too? It was a heady drug.
“Maybe. But if you keep denying it then how will I really know?”
“I’m not playing games with you,” he said. “Not for the entirety of this journey.”
“Who said that I was playing a game?”
“You know how things are. A game is all it could ever be.”
He turned and walked away from her, and she stood, mesmerized by the muscles in his broad back, immobilized by the pain in her heart.
The problem was her. She’d had to decide what she wanted. What she was going to do. This had been her decision, and she had regrets now. Maybe there was a way that she could have fewer regrets.
But he was right about one thing. She couldn’t play games. She had to be certain.
He had been cruel to her earlier and he regretted it. But he needed his distance. What would she have done if he had grabbed her? Kissed her? Shown her exactly what he wanted to do with her. Shown her exactly how he wanted her.
She thought she wanted him, but what she wanted was a fantasy. She thought she could poke and provoke him as she might do some frat boy who approached her at university.
If she got a taste of his real need she would run, terrified, and she would have every right to. Because she didn’t really know.
And instead, you’ll let Lucian, the Sea Serpent of the Mediterranean, introduce her to pleasure?
The idea made him feel homicidal. And that wasn’t beneficial for anyone. He had to be able to walk into that palace as her bodyguard, and not present as a threat to the ruler of the country, or he would find himself executed and quickly.
It was perhaps not a ringing endorsement for his mental state that the only thing that bothered him about that was the possibility that he wouldn’t be there to protect her.
But in many ways, life for him would end after she married another.
Nothing has to change. She can still be yours in all the ways that matter. You will sacrifice yourself for her. Devote yourself to her.
Yes. That was true.
Without ever corrupting her, or violating Onyx’s trust.
Yes. Lucian will get to violate her instead.
He growled furiously, angry, yet again, that he was trapped on this boat.
If he didn’t hate the ocean so damned much he might’ve thrown himself in to swim for a few laps.
He was a good swimmer, and had become a better one in the years since the shipwreck.
But he did not swim in the ocean recreationally. For obvious reasons.
It was growing dark, and they had made no plans to eat together. In fact, he had seen a staff member with a tray of food heading to the lower decks earlier, and he thought that perhaps she had taken dinner in her room. All for the best.
He walked around to the forward deck and saw Emerald, leaning against the railing, her red hair a curtain around her face. Her shoulders were shaking.
“What’s the matter?”
She gasped, lifting her head and wiping her cheeks. Then she looked at him, her eyes glittering with sadness, with fierce determination.
“I can’t imagine.”
“You don’t have to go through with this.” He would demand that the yacht turn around now and head straight back to Basilia. Hell, he would jump in and swim them both back. His fears about the ocean be damned.
“I do.” Her stubbornness sounded nearly petulant.
“You can find another husband.”
“Is that what you think? That this is about me being afraid of King Lucian? No. What I’m grappling with is that there’s no way for me to marry someone who isn’t you without feeling extraordinary pain.”
He could say nothing to that. She had said it. She had spoken the invisible thing into existence. She had put into words something that they should never acknowledge. Something that he would never acknowledge, no matter how she changed the rules on them now.
“Emerald,” he said. “You are emotional.”
She threw herself at him then, as if she was leaping off a cliff, wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head in the curve of his neck.
The warm, soft press of her body against his undid him.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, held her there, even though he knew that he should not.
“Yes, I’m emotional,” she said. “Because I’m never going to know.
I’m never going to know what it could have been.
I’m never going to know what passion is.
Not really. I waited, all this time. I’ve never been kissed, I’ve never been touched, I’ve never—”
He kissed her. He could take it no more. He swallowed her words down like the sweet honey that they were, an elixir that turned his dark soul into sunshine as the sweetness of her mouth flooded him. He kissed her because he could do nothing else.