Chapter Seventeen
Isla
All at once, telltale heat landed on the middle of my back. Then, with deliberate gravity, a large hand coasted down my spine with the gentlest caress I’d ever felt.
For a breathless moment, I was frozen in shock from the foreign touch.
Then the sensation was gone, and my survival instincts kicked in. Shoving my hair out of my face, I spun around.
The bathroom was empty.
Suspicious, shaken, turned on, alarmed by the latter more than anything, I frantically scanned the en suite like I couldn’t already see every marble-tiled inch.
Nothing was out of place. There was no blond-haired, green-eyed, infuriatingly dominant SEAL, and nothing was amiss. Except…
Shit.
My barrette.
My lockpick, screwdriver, serrated blade, all-purpose multitool disguised as a golden barrette was missing.
The barrette my brother had given me.
The one he’d made me practice over and over with for so many different scenarios, I’d lost count—that barrette.
Irrational, insurmountable anger I should have stopped to analyze, hit hard and fast. Grabbing a towel, I was marching toward the door with its stupid lock I’d picked before I had the ridiculously soft terrycloth wrapped all the way around myself.
Not giving a damn about my hair or state of undress, much less the trail of soapy water I was leaving all over his cabin, I aimed.
Oh God, did I aim.
Hallway, stairs down, deck, stairs up, and right to the door of the bridge that I yanked open.
The blond asshole Helios glanced up and snorted. “Nice fucking look. You forgot to drown.”
“Screw you. Where’s the other blond asshole?”
Staring out across the bow of the mega yacht with a sneer like he hated it here, he snorted again. “Don’t fucking care. But if I did, and if I knew?” He threw me a disdainful glance. “I wouldn’t tell you shit.” He focused back on the ocean. “Go find somewhere else to fuck off.”
I slammed the door—as much as you could slam a stupid self-closing, impossibly perfectly designed thieving-asshole-yacht-owner’s door.
Marching down the stairs to the main deck, I stormed through the entire length of the living room that was as tricked out as a palace, calling out as I went. “Where the hell are you?”
The only non-asshole blond man on this damn yacht came up a flight of stairs from yet another deck, or the garage deck. I didn’t know. I’d lost count.
Glancing at me with a blank expression that both freaked me out and made me wonder what the hell went through his head, Ares spoke in a tone that was too even-keeled to be natural. “You looking for Nix?”
“Is that not obvious?” I didn’t wait for a reply. “He stole from me.”
Going completely motionless for two heartbeats, it looked like he’d stopped breathing altogether. Then he focused his almost colorless blue-eyed gaze over my head, and strode in the direction I’d just come from.
Turning to watch him walk right past me, I got even more pissed. “That’s it? You’re just going to ignore me?”
Without so much as a pause in his stride, Ares walked through the slider door I’d left open, then took the stairs that led to the deck above us.
I yelled after him. “I changed my mind. You’re an asshole too!”
He didn’t say a word.
I went down the stairs he’d come up.
A minute later, which felt like an eternity, I found the source of my anger.
Standing with his back to me in a spotless galley that was all stainless steel everything and commercial-grade appliances, Nix didn’t glance up when I knew he’d heard me.
Looking like he was holding court in his fancy kitchen that was nicer than any restaurant I’d ever seen, he shook something in a pan over an open flame. “I see you found me.”
“Give it back,” I demanded. “Right now.” I hated how the scent of delicious food suddenly made my stomach growl.
“Hungry?”
Screw him. “Screw you.”
Reaching for the cabinet above him without taking his eyes off the pan, he opened the cupboard and took out a plate. “I’m assuming professional trespassing doesn’t preclude you from dining with an invitation.” He slid whatever was in the pan onto the plate.
“I’m assuming stealing from your invited dinner guest doesn’t preclude you from giving back what isn’t yours.”
With crisp, efficient movements, as if his day was measured by energy expended and he wasn’t going to waste a single second of it, he opened a dishwasher a mere six inches. Tossing the pan inside before using his knee to shut the door, he simultaneously grabbed a napkin.
Then, plate in hand, he turned around, and his green-eyed stare struck me like a physical blow. “Did you think you were my dinner guest?”
All at once, I regretted everything—the towel, the storming through the yacht, my wet hair, the yelling, even my bare feet, because every misstep in front of this man was a vulnerability I couldn’t undo.
Like missing pieces of armor as you walked into battle.
Once that first strike was launched, you didn’t get to retreat, regroup, and come back prepared.
You had to fight.
And you had to do it with what you had.
Mentally preparing for a down-and-dirty dogfight when I knew damn well this man wasn’t the type to engage in anything less than an armed conflict he’d already outmaneuvered before it ever began, I still stiffened my spine. “I think you’re an entitled, selfish asshole.”
He single-handedly took a knife and fork from a drawer in front of him. Then he gave a clipped command as he angled around the prep area separating us. “Come.”
I stupidly followed.
And stared.
Broad shoulders, huge biceps, narrow waist, and that ass.
Jesus, it filled out his tactical pants.
The same way his thighs stretched the black material that was some kind of rip-stop, waterproof, synthetic fiber.
If I’d been in any other state of mind, I would’ve been envious of the high-tech material.
Instead, I was courting anger like my life depended on it as my traitorous libido soaked up every fluid step of this man’s rippling muscles.
A prisoner to my emotions more than a SEAL’s kidnapping, I almost ran into his back when he abruptly stopped at a twelve-person dining table and pulled out a chair.
My brain caught up to the situation. “I’m not sitting.”
Ignoring me, he set the plate, napkin, and silverware on the polished wood table that was so shiny you could see your reflection in it.
Then he sat down.
Fury sprang through my veins like a rebirthing. “Give me my hair clip!”
He kicked out the chair next to him.
I wanted to kick him.
He picked up the knife and fork.
I stepped onto the battlefield. “You came into the bathroom.”
He sawed off a bite of fish like it was steak instead of a tender fillet he could’ve forked.
“You touched me without permission,” I accused.
“Sit,” he ordered.
“Barrette,” I demanded.
Calculating green eyes met mine. Then he slowly took in the length of me.
My heart stuttered, and my fight wavered.
His gaze landed back on mine, and his voice turned lethally soft. “Sit down next to me, Isla.”
A monster had entered the war, but I was already too far behind enemy lines to notice.
I sat.