Chapter Twenty-One
Isla
Stretching out my arm as far as I could, trailing my fingers just below the surface, I sang the last line of the song.
The dolphin closest to me arced out of the ocean, then shallowly dove. A moment later, its long nose gently bumped my fingers right as its head surfaced.
It was magical, and I laughed.
“You tricky girl!” Or boy. I didn’t know which, but the beautiful creature looked like a girl, so I was going with it. Fluttering my fingers, I smiled wide. “You like my terrible singing, don’t you?”
Her head bobbed before she did a backflip and swam under one of her siblings or friends.
“They respond to high-pitched noises.”
Startled, but not showing it, I kept my hand in the water as I looked over my shoulder at the owner of the quietly deep voice he used like a weapon. “I know what dolphins respond to.” Ass. Why did he think I was singing?
Glancing past me, Nix tipped his chin. “Looks like a pod of females and their calves.”
“Gee, what gave you that impression?” Reaching out further, I wiggled my fingers for the smaller, younger dolphin who’d been dancing around my intrusion of their world.
Ignoring my sarcasm, he asked a question that bordered on too personal. “Who taught you about sea life?”
The smaller dolphin circled my hand. “What makes you think I didn’t teach myself?”
To his credit—not that I wanted to admit it, not even silently to myself that he had some redeeming qualities—he didn’t answer.
For the next two minutes, I pretended he wasn’t there.
Slowly graduating to waving my entire arm through the water, I laughed as the playful girl dolphin let out some burst pulses, then bumped against my hand in the cutest, most awesome game of tag I’d ever played.
Then an infuriatingly dominant human voice broke my borderline spiritual spell with the magnificent mammal. “Time’s up.”
Nix no sooner spoke than that asshole, Helios, fired up the yacht’s engines. Or at least I assumed it was Helios because he’d been on the bridge.
Spooked, the dolphins shot through the water, the boat lurched forward, and two hands gripped my waist a split second before I would’ve rolled off the swim platform.
Anger and something far too close to baser instinct erupted as I was jerked up and spun around. Then I was on my feet inside the lower deck, and the muscular former SEAL was pushing a button to close up the swim platform.
Speechless, or maybe just breathless, I watched in stupefied silence as hydraulic arms folded the bow of the boat in on itself, sealing the sun and ocean away from us as the beach club area became just another interior room on the large yacht.
As if he could read my mental tug-of-war between my mind and my body’s reaction every time he touched me, he offered up an explanation.
“We need to get underway.” Cryptic and non-telling, same as everything else he’d said since those first few words in French that had landed on my back like a dangerous caress, he didn’t seem the least bit affected by grabbing me.
“You mean you need to get underway,” I threw back, not sure if I was reminding him or myself that I wasn’t a willing party to this.
His stark gaze landed on me, and he made no effort to hide the ruthlessness lying just under his controlled expression. “Did you or did you not have an armed hostile breaching my property and aiming for you?”
This was the upside of having survival instincts drilled into you as an impressionable child. When something truly alarming happened, I didn’t panic.
I didn’t outwardly flinch.
Gunfire, extreme weather, adrenaline surges, potentially fatal wounds, charging wildlife, hysterical crowds, or any other situation where a threat to life was either imminent or on top of me, I didn’t melt down.
I’d been punishingly trained not to.
But right now, with this man, I had lost the boundary between perceived threats and actual, true danger because every time I looked at him, all I saw was dominance. A flavor so enticing that I’d already forgotten my anger, which was a slippery slope I needed to get off before I hit rock bottom.
Armed with only my attitude and a bikini, I looked up at the man I’d let kidnap me. “You know what your problem is?”
Without missing a beat, he answered in the affirmative. “Yes.”
Only slightly thrown because I was quickly learning to expect the unexpected from him, I didn’t hesitate either.
“Great. Glad you have at least some self-awareness.” I turned toward the stairs, and his addicting voice that was all quiet confidence and commanding authority landed on my back like an instant reminder of his stolen caress.
“Retreating isn’t your MO.”
For a single breath, I inhaled his choice of words and processed them. His military training was either so ingrained, he didn’t know how to speak to a civilian, or he was using purposeful vernacular to intimidate me.
Glancing over my shoulder and seeing an impenetrable expression I was all too familiar with, I had my answer. “You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that to intimidate me.”
“Was I intimidating you?” His voice dipped with the question like he was trying on seduction, albeit with a heavy dose of coercion, but he didn’t do anything even remotely pedestrian to try to sell it.
He didn’t tilt his head. He didn’t toss out a flirtatious smirk.
In fact, his expression didn’t budge at all, and his body hadn’t moved so much as a millimeter.
Raising my eyebrows and smiling with fake innocence, I lobbed his stupid question right back at him. “Was I intimidating you?”
His tone immediately morphed back to all business. “The bridge is off-limits. Use your own cabin to bathe. You’re allowed in the galley. Clean up after yourself.”
Expecting obedience, not waiting for any questions or comebacks, he strode past me.
An idea took root and grew.