Chapter Nineteen
Isla
So angry I couldn’t see straight, caught in another fit of fury that was dangerously becoming a pattern, I stormed toward his cabin where I’d stupidly left my bikini.
Unwilling to let anything else of mine get stolen on this damn boat, I was aiming for retrieval—of my swimsuit and my dignity.
The latter I wasn’t sure I had a chance in hell at.
Yes, I’d helped myself to his shower and used his place in Cap d’Antibes. Yes, I’d picked his damn locks. Yes, I’d done things I shouldn’t have. But so had he.
That ghost of a caress in the shower was him.
I was certain of it.
So certain, that it was irrelevant I couldn’t prove it. I still felt his heated touch as sure as my mind had locked onto the image of his intense stare. Now both were destroying my equilibrium more than the slight sway of the boat, and I never lost my stasis. Not like this.
But Phoenix Erikson had stolen more than my coveted barrette, and this anger I’d allowed to consume me was not about a material possession.
It was about a SEAL, and the unbidden, deeply buried yearnings he’d provoked in me.
That single act of wrapping his arm around my waist had untethered my reasoning from my actions.
Then his dominant caress down my spine had widened the chasm, and it no longer felt like I was in control of my body.
Briefly closing my eyes, I took a deep breath.
“Come on, Isla. Get it together,” I whispered, hating that my own name now sounded foreign on my lips compared to how a green-eyed dominant had said it not five minutes ago.
Possessive, commanding, seductive—
I shook my head against the dangerous fantasy of those wishful but fictional thoughts, and gripped my towel tighter.
Ignoring my growling stomach, I slowed my pace and hoped I didn’t come across as disconcerted as I felt to anyone watching those security cameras mounted in every ceiling corner like they’d bred themselves.
The only places I hadn’t seen any cameras were in the cabins.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
Just as I’d told the maddening SEAL when he’d toyed with me while he sat at his giant dining table that I was sure had never seen twelve guests at once, I knew what he was doing.
Every move he made was calculated.
He was the predator, and I was the prey.
He wasn’t going to stop until he had answers about what had happened on his estate.
But that information wasn’t going to come from me, no matter how dominantly he played his hand.
All I had to do was wait him out or last until this boat docked somewhere, and that I could do.
Reminding myself I’d been in much worse situations and survived, I glanced out one of the tinted windows toward the rear of the boat. Then I stopped short.
“Oh my God.” My heart leapt.
Dolphins.
A whole pod of them following the boat.
For a stunned moment, I watched their spectacular gracefulness.
Then I was running.
Shoving open the door of his suite, I rushed into the bathroom, dropped my towel, and yanked on my bikini. Then I was out of his cabin and sprinting up the stairs that led to the bridge.
Pushing my way inside, bypassing Nix, I frantically stepped in front of Helios. “Stop the boat! Stop the boat.” Not willing to miss those dolphins, not waiting for either one of them to stop this damn yacht, I reached for the throttles I’d seen Nix push, and pulled them both back.
The boat abruptly slowed, and I was off the bridge, flying down two flights of stairs.
Sprinting across the lower deck to the large swim platform that extended out over the sea mere inches above the water’s surface, I literally hit the deck.
Then, on my stomach, I slid to the very edge and fluttered my fingers in the cool ocean.