Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phoenix
A twenty-foot wave hit the Paragon before Helios could angle into it.
The bow lifted, then slammed back down, and the woman screamed.
The sound carried from the galley, or close to it, and I was Oscar Mike before the stabilizers buffered the next swell. Heading across the bridge, I barked orders at Helios. “Portside, forty-five degrees, angle in.”
“What the fuck do you think I’m already doing?”
Not helming the boat. “I’m checking on the woman.”
Helios’s judgment landed on my six. “Told you she was trouble.”
“You’re the expert.”
He snorted. “Damn straight.”
I hit the top of the stairs. “Navigate around the storm.”
“You told me we were going through it.”
I didn’t give a fuck what I’d said earlier. “Now we’re not. Reroute.”
“Jesus Christ. Next time you want to fuck around and find out with your floating deathtrap, keep your crew on board. I’m not goddamn Moses. There is no rerouting. The only way out of this now is through it.”
“Find a way,” I ordered before moving blindly and heading to the interior companionway. Knowing every inch of this ship, I aimed for the main deck and the woman I never should’ve brought on board. Halfway there, another wave struck, and she cried out.
I picked up my pace, but I was too late.
Hitting the galley from the stern side, I spied Ares at the bow entry, bent over the woman.
The ship rocked, a dish clanked in the metal sink, and she whimpered.
“You’re fine.” Hovering inches above her, Ares didn’t touch her, but he didn’t hold out a hand either. “I’ll lead you to your cabin.”
“I can’t see anything, and the boat’s going to sink!”
Ares’s tone morphed to that of a Tier One. “Stand up.”
The woman stood and threw her arms around his neck.
“I’ll take her.” Cutting across the galley, I gripped her waist from behind. “We’re not going to sink.”
“Everything’s sinkable,” she argued.
With her arms still wrapped around him, Ares looked over her head at me.
I tipped my chin, but he didn’t fucking move.
Trained similar to me, I knew he saw me. There was enough ambient light. “Problem, Ares?”
The ship rocked, she let out another sound of distress, and Ares braced his hands on either side of the galley bulkhead.
Every detail I knew about the former Delta operator ran through my head, and I isolated one relevant fact. Besides his stepsister, I’d never seen Ares put his hands on a woman. Or anyone for that matter. Nor had I ever seen anyone embrace him.
I increased the pressure of my grip on her waist. “Let go of Ares, Isla.”
“I’ll fall.”
She was sandwiched between us, and our reflexes were honed to a fraction of a second. “That’s not going to happen.” My gaze on Ares, I nodded toward the wheelhouse deck with a silent command to go help Helios. “I’m turning you to face me, Isla.”
Ares let go of the bulkhead. I widened my stance, and the woman dropped her arms.
I spun her to face me.
Before she lifted her head to look at me, Ares was gone.
Shaking like hell, her arms at her sides, her face cast in shadow, I still saw the fear in her expression. “Can you walk?”
“Do you always do this?”
Let a woman interfere with a mission? Never. “You need me to carry you to your cabin?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?”
Only when she employed the same tactic. “You’ll be safer in your cabin.”
Warm, curved, her waist shifted in my hands as she inhaled. “So I can fall around in a bedroom instead of a kitchen? Why are we sailing in this storm?”
“Helios is rerouting.” For her. Which should’ve been the only problem I was focused on—that and her immediate extraction from my three-foot world.
“How….” The boat rocked, and she stumbled.
I pulled her against my chest.
The breath she’d just taken left her body, and she gripped my right arm. “H-How long will that take?”
“Depends on his directional heading.” I wrapped my left arm around her waist and issued instructions. “Feet on mine. Arms around my neck. Move when I do. Follow my lead.”
“Are we going to do the tango?” Opposite from how she’d grabbed Ares, she linked her hands softly around me.
“Feet,” I reminded her.
“You didn’t answer my question.” She stepped onto me. “And most mega yacht owners don’t wear combat boots.”
“Danner MEBs. Marine Expeditionary Boots,” I added. “Do you know many mega yacht owners?” I tested two steps with her.
Going on tiptoe, fighting my lead, she gripped the back of my neck. “No, I don’t know any yacht owners. At least not well enough to dance with them.”
“We’re not dancing. We’re moving.” I tapped her right leg that she was favoring. “Injury?”
“Same difference, and no.”
She hadn’t been favoring the leg earlier. “Did you fall in the galley?”
“Do you always try to seduce women this way? With your big yacht and your big boots and your big hands?”
“I’m not seducing you.”
She made a derisive sound that had my palm itching to be on her throat as I ordered her to do it again. “That’s what they all say.”
Ignoring both the pulse of my cock, and the direct shot of enmity toward every man who’d every touched this woman, I aimed. “They?” Telling myself I was distracting her from another three steps instead of extracting intel, I walked us down the galley companionway.
“Men.” Her right leg loosened up, but her grip didn’t. “How can you see in this darkness?”
I cataloged her last two words. “How’s that leg?”
“Fine.” Letting her thighs fall against mine, she made a show of relaxing into my steps and letting my forward strides naturally manipulate her backwards ones. “How long were you a SEAL?”
“How long have you been a drifter?”
The muscles in her back stiffened. “Are we having a conversation?”
I didn’t converse with women. “No.”
“Good to know.” She turned her head as I entered the main saloon, but then she was quiet as I crossed it.
Before I reached her cabin, her legs tensed again. “You don’t seem like you were a Marine.”
“I never said I was.”
“You’re wearing Marine boots.”
“Make and model of an all-terrain boot manufactured by a civilian company. Not Marine issue.”
“Then you were a SEAL,” she said confidently. “I knew it.”
I opened her cabin door, but I didn’t let go of her. “We’re here.”
She looked up at me in the almost pitch-black interior corridor. “You’re not denying it.”
She wasn’t stepping off my boots. “Don’t get involved.”
Her laugh was clipped and without humor. “You held me at gunpoint, then tossed me over your shoulder, and threw me onto your helicopter. Now I’m in the middle of the ocean on your giant boat, in a storm, with nowhere to go even if I’d wanted to. How am I not involved?”
“With me,” I clarified.
“Exactly. How am I not involved with you, Phoenix Erikson?”
I gripped the side of her face and brought my mouth almost to hers. Then I gave the little trespasser a warning. “I can see in the dark because I am the darkness.”
She sucked in a telling breath.
Setting her on her feet, I released her, then pivoted.
I was halfway down the corridor when her protest hit my six.
“I am not weak!”
Pausing, I gave her a gift she’d never understand. “Nor are you consequential.” Not now, not to my plan. It would’ve been cruel to let her think otherwise.
But I still choked on the words as I walked the hell away.