Chapter Eight
CASSIE WASN’T SURE what had woken her but she knew before she opened her eyes that she was alone in the bed that took up much of the cabin. She also noticed that the boat was still, only rocking gently. The storm had passed. In more ways than one.
She turned over and cracked open her eyes to see pale daylight. Sheets in a tangle. She smelled them in the air, sex. It made her insides clench as she tried to wrap her brain around what had happened.
She was no longer a virgin. She’d never expected sex to be so…all-encompassing. Transcendent. Amazing.
She ached all over but pleasurably. Between her legs felt tender and her face got hot as she remembered how frustrated she’d been with Ares’s teasing. And then, the exquisite pleasure/pain of him entering her body.
Where was he? There was no sound from outside the cabin. Gingerly, Cassie got up and cracked open the door. The main cabin was empty. The door leading up to the deck was open though.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the en suite and groaned.
Smeared make-up, glitter on her cheeks. She washed her face quickly and saw Ares’s T-shirt on the ground and reached for it, pulling it on.
It reached to mid-thigh. She went up the small set of steps and emerged into a cloudless dawn morning. The storm well and truly gone.
Ares was at the stern of the boat, his back to her. Jeans riding low on his hips. He didn’t seem to hear her. She went out, feeling suddenly shy after last night. She stopped a couple of feet behind him, near the control panel and wheel. She cleared her throat and saw him flinch. What?
Confused now, Cassie went and stood alongside Ares and looked at him. His hair was wild but his face arrested her. It was pale, almost green. Her initial thought was that he was seasick. It wasn’t unheard of even after a few days at sea. And it had been stormy. ‘Ares…are you OK? Are you ill?’
He looked at her and his eyes were wild. She noticed that he wasn’t really looking at her. More like through her. He wasn’t seasick. It was something else. A sliver of fear went through Cassie.
She touched Ares’s arm and then down until she could take his hand. She tugged him over to the seat on one side of the deck. ‘Sit down, Ares.’
He did. As obedient as a little boy. She came down on her haunches in front of him. ‘Ares? What’s going on?’
His glazed expression didn’t change. He shook his head. ‘I can’t…’
Cassie thought of something and said, ‘Wait here.’ Even though he didn’t look capable of going anywhere. She went back down into the cabin and hunted around until she found what she was looking for.
She went back up on deck and handed Ares a tumbler glass with a measure of whiskey. ‘Drink this.’
He took it but she noticed his hand wasn’t steady so she put her hand around his and lifted it to his mouth. He swallowed a drop. Cassie said, ‘More.’
He looked at her and for the first time she noticed he saw her and felt heartened. He took some more. Cassie noticed his hand wasn’t trembling any more. She came up on the seat beside him.
The sun was coming up, bathing the wide sky in shades of pink. After a few moments, Cassie said as lightly as she could, ‘Was it that traumatic?’
Ares looked at her, uncomprehending, and then he got it. She was talking about him taking her virginity. He shook his head and the ghost of a smile touched his mouth. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with you.’
But had it been as amazing for him as it had been for her? She doubted that.
‘Then…what was that?’
He looked at her and threw back the last of the whiskey. She took the empty glass and put it down. She thought he wasn’t going to say anything and then eventually he said, ‘I was kidnapped, when I was ten. They held me on a boat. Locked in a cabin for two weeks.’
It took a second for this to sink in, and for Cassie to grasp the magnitude and when she did she went cold all over. ‘Ares…’ she breathed. ‘I didn’t see anything online…why…?’
It all made horrific sense now, the way he’d always seemed reluctant on the boat, happy to let her navigate. Going down into the cabin as little as possible. Sleeping on deck.
‘It’s not online because my parents had it all but scrubbed from the web. It’s still there if you dig for it but they don’t like to be reminded of any chink in their armour, any sign of weakness.’
‘What happened?’
‘The kidnappers, an organised crime gang, asked for a ransom, but my parents refused to pay. My older brother, he was the smart one, they didn’t want to risk him being kidnapped if they paid.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘Ares, that’s so wrong.
Did they hurt you?’ She couldn’t recall seeing any physical scars but then she hadn’t been much focused on taking a survey of Ares’s body last night.
It had been an instrument of pleasure. Not something to scrutinise.
She wanted to though, some day. Lay him out on a surface and inspect every inch of him. She pushed that aside.
He let out a short sharp laugh. ‘Not physically no, apart from some bruises from rough handling. A bump on my head. Maybe concussion.’
He didn’t have to tell her the scars were inside. To this day. She felt guilty. She remembered him trying to persuade her to take a plane.
‘Is it just boats or…?’
His mouth compressed. ‘Mainly boats… I’m not great in small spaces with locked doors, but it’s not as bad.’
Something struck her. The memory of how he’d taken charge during the storm. ‘How did you learn to sail if you hated it so much?’
A flash of pain crossed his face. ‘My father. He would not tolerate a son who couldn’t sail a boat.
He made no allowances for what had happened—he insisted I sail at every opportunity.
After all, I belonged to one of the world’s biggest shipping dynasties.
He saw it as akin to getting back on a horse after being thrown. ’
Cassie’s mouth fell open in horror. After a moment she said, ‘What a monster. Ares, I’m sorry, if I’d had any idea…’
‘No one knows how it affected me. Not really.’
Her chest felt tight. ‘Your own parents compounded the trauma.’
‘They didn’t care. It wasn’t them that rescued me, it was the police.’
Cassie sucked in a breath. Her parents had been focused on hating each other more than loving her or Caius but she knew they wouldn’t have just abandoned them to their fate in a situation like that.
‘That’s why you broke with them.’
Ares nodded. Cassie sat back and absorbed this. It had been so bad and the abandonment had been so traumatic that not even inheriting a vast dynastic business and fortune had swayed Ares from his vow to break with his parents.
‘What about your older brother? Did you ever talk to him about it?’
Ares shook his head. ‘He tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t articulate what I’d been through.
The terror of not knowing what would happen, of knowing there was no escape.
My parents didn’t encourage me to talk about it with anyone.
My brother was being groomed to succeed, my parents pushed us apart, I can see that now. ’
‘So you had no kind of therapy?’
Now Ares laughed out loud and shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Maybe if you had you wouldn’t still be having panic attacks.’
He looked at her, sharp. ‘How do you know what that was?’
‘You saw my reaction to that arguing couple yesterday… I’ve had to learn to manage my anxiety around witnessing any kind of confrontation. I know it’s not as traumatic as what happened to you but—’
He put a finger to her mouth and shook his head. ‘It’s not a competition, Cass. We’ve both been affected by what happened to us.’