The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Amelia Wilde

  I summon the ghost of sorority girls past and widen my eyes, though Poseidon is the furthest thing from a groveling frat boy this world has to offer.

  “Did you call the police? Someone shot my boyfriend. They stole his yacht.”

  He doesn’t answer, staring at me with open disbelief.

  “Did you call… anyone?”

  Another shiver streaks down my spine, goose bumps pulling tight all over my skin. I woke up with the hazy thought that I was safe here.

  I am not safe here.

  Fear forces another question from my lips. “What are you going to do with me?”

  I have the feeling I should keep looking at Poseidon. That I should keep my eyes on his, because it might give me a few seconds’ warning if he moves. I glance around at the other men in spite of myself. I wasn’t thinking before, wasn’t seeing. They’re all hard men, hard bodies, hard faces. Rough men. Cruel men? Maybe. And beyond them, an endless expanse of sea.

  All the things I feared when those pirates came onto Robbie’s yacht come back, multiplied by ten, fifty, a hundred. This ship is much bigger than the yacht. There are more men here by far. They would be more violent than the sea. I know they would. They would be violent in all the ways women are taught to fear, and honestly, honestly, I never thought it would come to that. Not ever in my life, not with Robbie standing nearby or another friend who would hook their arm through mine and pull me to safety.

  There are no friends here.

  Especially not the man standing in front of me with power radiating off him and irritation in his eyes. He’s all that’s standing between me and the rest of his crew, but maybe there is no real difference between them. Maybe he’s as cruel and hard as they are.

  These men could do anything to me. There’s no one here to stop them.

  6

  Ashley

  Poseidon takes one step forward and I startle, taking a pathetic half-step back.

  He laughs and does it again, and damn it, so do I.

  There’s nothing out here but sky and sea and the men on the deck. There’s plenty of space. But it seems like he takes up all of it. Even if I wanted to run, I couldn’t. “Nicholas,” he says, eyes on me.

  A man with auburn hair and bottle-green eyes looks up. “It’s under control,” he says. That must be the first mate.

  Poseidon crowds me all the way back to the door and pulls it open behind me. His movements are almost playful, but his expression is too cutting for this to be a game. I wish I could turn it into a game. That would make it easier. I turn to take the first step and lose my balance, pitching forward over the first step.

  He catches me in the middle of my life on a film reel before my eyes, complete with the newspaper headlines. Daughter of Donnelly Tech founder dies from tripping on stairs. “Watch where you’re going.”

  “I am watching.” This is not true, because I no longer have to watch where I’m going. His grip around my upper arm is so tight that it’s impossible to fall. So tight I can’t speak. What if he’s taking me to a dungeon, some cage at the belly of the ship? He could be. My feet barely touch the steps on the way down. It’s not a very wide staircase, he’s up against me, touching me. Part of me feels relieved that it’s him and not the rest of the men from up on deck. Part of me knows it’s ridiculous to feel any relief at all.

  We stop at the door to his bedroom. It’s more than a room. A suite. Quarters, I guess. He dips in and reappears a moment later, pulling a shirt over his head. He puts an arm around my waist and keeps going.

  I should have taken the time to explore when I had the chance. Then I’d know if we were heading toward a sea cage or somewhere else. My mind is too crowded with nightmare scenarios to sift through the possible rooms in a place like this. It’s too crowded with the way he looked in the sun, with his low-slung pants and the breeze in his hair.

  We go all the way to the end of the hall and take a sharp left into another narrow space, divided in half by a stainless steel pass-through. Poseidon steps up to it and slaps a hand down on the steel. “Cook,” he calls, and a man comes into view. He says nothing, but he doesn’t look wary. Either he’s not afraid of Poseidon or he’s used to him. I don’t know how a person could ever get used to him. The man lifts his chin.

  “For her,” says Poseidon. Two tall stools are bolted to the floor in front of the pass-through. The cook disappears from view, and Poseidon takes a seat and snaps his fingers at the other. At me. “Sit down.”

  My ass tips against the hard metal surface, and a bowl appears in front of me.

  It’s oatmeal.

  I hate oatmeal and make it a point never to eat it, but my stomach doesn’t seem to know that right now. My mouth waters. It could be filet mignon for how much I want it.

  Poseidon folds his hands on the counter and watches me. I can’t bring myself to look at him while I’m doing this, while I’m picking up this battered spoon and using it to eat plain oatmeal.

  Plain… gruel?

  It’s thinner than oatmeal with the slightest hint of brown sugar, and at many points in my life—every other point in my life—I would have spit it out. Not today. I can barely hold myself back. He watches me so intently that I have to speak. The cook makes noise in the kitchen, out of sight, but that’s not enough to cover up the fact that I have become an animal.

  I swallow another mouthful of oatmeal gruel and clench my fist around the spoon. “Am I a prisoner?”

  Poseidon watches my hands, then my face. “I’m still deciding.”

  “What does that mean?” That’s as long as I can wait to take another bite. I don’t know who I am anymore.

  “It means you’re worth a lot more to me alive than dead, so keep eating.”

  I stop eating. My hand is shaking with how hungry I am. I’ve slept at least twice since I’ve been on the ship. It’s been days, I think. Days since I’ve eaten. I’m normally the kind of person who carries around three granola bars in her purse to avoid becoming hangry. It also doesn’t thrill me that he’s thinking about how much I’m worth if I’m dead.

  But.

  I take another bite anyway. More slowly this time. “Who are you?”

  “I told you my name.”

  “You gave me a fake name.” I make a show of scraping my spoon around the outside of the bowl to delay the inevitable. “What kind of name is Poseidon?”

  The corners of his lips twitch, and a small, foolish part of me hopes he’ll laugh. Why I hope that, I don’t know. “It’s not a fake name. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.”

  “Should I have?”

  “Anyone who sails this corner of the sea should know me. Or they’ll soon find out.”

  “That sounds threatening.”

  “Probably because it is.”

  “So you’re… what?” My heart curls up into a knot in my throat. I swallow around it. “In shipping?”

  He laughs, a rough bark of a thing, nothing like I remember from before. Maybe I dreamed it. “Shipping. Yes. I do some of that.”

  I put oatmeal in my mouth, not tasting a thing, the whole process reduced to a mechanical slog. “And?”

  “What any businessman does.” His tone stays level, almost bored. “I buy and sell things.”

  The bowl is empty. I turn my spoon down and put it in the empty middle.

  I want to see his face when I ask him my next question.

  “What do you want from me?”

  His entire face changes. The way he’s looking at me—the way he’s looking at me—

  Not a smile. It’s pure lust.

  The heat in his eyes spears through me, sending my whole body into a hot, shameful flush. If any other man looked at me like this I would get up and walk away. Robbie looked at me like this once. Like a whole sordid scenario was playing out in his mind. The way Robbie looked at me was a shy glance compared to this open eye-fucking.

  A real grin spreads across Poseidon’s face, and a deep-water chill holds tight around my bones. “I want m
any things from you.”

  I swallow again and catch the flicker of his eyes moving down to the front of my throat. He’s talking about sex. The thought of sex with this man is terrifying. It’s as terrifying as that leap into the ocean. As terrifying as realizing there was no island in sight. As terrifying as the moment I knew my feet would never touch solid ground again.

  But it’s also… exciting.

  “Please.” I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue, and his jaw clenches. “Please. Just let me call my father.”

  “Yes, dear old Daddy. He must be so worried.” He shouldn’t be so intimidating, sitting here like this, but he is. My heart taps against the cage of my ribs. “What did you tell him, that you were sleeping over with a friend?”

  He knows about me.

  The realization hits all at once, like a giant wave I’m not expecting. I don’t dare ask how much he knows or where he got his information. There’s enough about me on the internet to know quite a bit, but there are other things that don’t feature on my Instagram, like how protective my dad is. He would have to have other sources for that.

  I take in a long, slow breath and let it out. “You could drop me off at the nearest port. I’ll figure it out from there.”

  “No, princess. You’re far too valuable to leave ashore. You’re going to fetch me a pretty bounty, aren’t you?”

  The oatmeal I’d been so obsessed with is a pile of rocks in my gut. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re my hostage.”

  I scramble up from the stool. It feels better to be on my feet for this for exactly one second before my balance is off, my head is floating like a balloon, and I’m falling, staggering, exhausted.

  Poseidon is out of his seat in the space between thoughts. I register how inhumanly fast he moves and then his body is breaking my fall, his arms are caging me in. He backs me up against the solid wall next to the galley door and I hate it, I hate how good it feels to be braced here with the wall on one side of me and him on the other. There’s nowhere to go. I can’t crumple to the ground because he won’t allow it.

  I can’t stop breathing because he won’t allow it.

  But it’s hard. I want to hold my breath. I want to turn my face into the wall and hide.

  There is nowhere to hide.

  One of his hands makes contact with the wall next to my head. I could kiss him. I’m near enough to kiss him. I try not to move a muscle but my whole body trembles. He’s closer now, the hard lines of him against the soft lines of me, pinning me to the wall, and then the bare inch between us feels like a thousand miles. I drop my eyes to the front of his chest.

  Poseidon puts a hand in my hair and tips my face to his. He’s not gentle about it. I don’t know where I ever got the idea that he could be that way.

  His eyes burn with a dangerous heat and light. I was wrong about those eyes—they’re not blue, after all. They’re a battle between blue and green. They’re like the sea. Like the violent, neverending sea. I have the strangest urge to jump in. I can’t do it. I can’t, because the ship is indestructible, and so is Poseidon.

  Also, his grip is getting tighter in my hair, tighter and tighter until the pain begins and I open my mouth to moan or cry out—I don’t know which. It doesn’t hurt enough to scream. It doesn’t hurt like being captured by those pirates would have hurt. But it’s a fresh, electric pain, different from the aches and bruises of being lost at sea.

  When the pain reaches its peak, he lets go.

  He’s breathing faster.

  Not harder. He’s too strong to be winded by the simple act of pulling my hair.

  He’s not touching me now, but he might as well be. The sheer force of his body in my space keeps my knees from giving out. I have no idea what’s going to happen but I’m alive with it. I’m painfully alive, every nerve firing with panic and desire. With an embarrassing, heady crush. So awful, so intoxicating.

  I’m drunk. That’s what it feels like. I’m drunk and scared and excited and I need a minute to figure it out.

  I’m not going to get that minute.

  “I don’t usually touch hostages.” Poseidon’s voice is rougher, like sea glass that hasn’t been worn down. It has deadly sharp edges. “There aren’t many moral lines I won’t cross, but that’s one of them.” His eyes rake down over my body, pure hunger and want. It’s echoed in every line of his body. All of his power is focused on me. “You’re making me question my own ethics, princess. That doesn’t bode well for you.”

  7

  Ashley

  There’s nothing between us but air and the scent of him. I breathe in soap and salt and spring water. It’s the way the sea would smell if I were a mermaid. I can’t know that, I can’t, but I also can’t breathe. I feel every heave of my chest, every dig of my teeth into my lip.

  Everything that happens now—

  I can’t stop it.

  No one would be able to stop it. Not the cook, who’s the only one in earshot and doesn’t seem to care. He hasn’t stopped banging things together. For a beat I wonder if this is what my mother felt like when she was taken.

  But.

  I wish Poseidon would touch me again.

  This thought is crazy. I must be out of my mind. He said I was his hostage. It’s the most horrible repetition of our family history. But if Poseidon did put his fingers in my hair again, if he did pull me against his body, then at least it would be happening, and the agonizing wait would be over.

  Surviving this wait seems less and less likely with every second that passes. My knees are shaking, hands too, my eyes struggling to close. His wrist and forearms block my vision on either side, and if he doesn’t take his hands away from the wall, then he might lean down—

  He might lean down…

  He curses under his breath and moves.

  And because I am pathetic, because I am lost in whatever this moment is, I close my eyes and wait for the rough, searing kiss I know is coming.

  Instead my legs give out under the sweep of his arm and I find myself carried in them, curled against a hard chest. My eyelids are so heavy, so heavy, and I can’t keep them open another second. I’m resigned to my fate.

  My fate turns out to be the same bed I left not long ago. He bends, and there’s a whisper of fabric, like he’s pulling down the blankets, and then he lowers me to the mattress.

  Pulls those blankets over me.

  Sits down in the chair next to the bed with a sigh.

  Why are you sighing? I want to ask. You’re the one who’s keeping me here. But of course I don’t. Of course I sink headfirst into sleep.

  And snap awake sometime later to an empty room.

  I know he’s not here because it’s easier to breathe. There’s less pressure on my heart and on my lungs and on all the parts of me that scramble to find footing when he’s around. No footsteps come near the door.

  If I’m going to escape the same end as my mother, then it has to be now.

  The plan comes together in a few blinks. I have limited energy, that’s true, but I survived floating on the ocean before. I can do it again. It’s better than staying here and being at this man’s mercy. I’ll take my chances with dark seas. Moonlight peeks in around the curtains on the windows, but it’s not as bright as it was a few nights ago. If I wait much longer I won’t even have that.

  I ease myself out of bed as quickly as I can. He has a desk, which I ignore, and a small chest by the bed. It’s filled with boxes. I open one and find a pearl. That won’t help me. I put it back.

  The dresser is next. It has lots of things inside, and there are more in a set of drawers built in by the window. A small watertight container is the first thing to come to hand. I don’t have any food from the kitchen but I find some abandoned Power Bars and beef jerky. Both of those go into the bag.

  Then there’s the compass.

  It’s heavy and old, with an engraving on the inside of the cover I don’t bother to read. The needle tips in its glass housing, always s
winging back to north. My heart has slowly moved up into my throat and higher, into my ears. Poseidon will be back soon. When he comes back, my chance is gone.

  The last thing to go into the watertight bag is a map. I have no idea if it’s a map of the place we’re sailing to or another part of his strange collection, but I shove it into the bag anyway and close the seal on the top.

  Lights burn in the empty hallway. Muffled sounds from the kitchen tell me the cook is awake. I’m hoping this is the graveyard shift, and that whoever else is here will be sleeping.

  I don’t risk the stairs. The last time I went looking for Poseidon I found him on the deck of the ship, near the top of those stairs. There has to be more than one way out.

  The hallway stretches out like a horror movie, but I take a big breath and go. Past a series of closed doors. Past one that’s open a few inches, low voices murmuring inside.

  I make it to the galley. My lungs burn. I’ve been holding my breath, trying not to make any noise, but I have to take one now. The galley is to the left. And to the right...

  Another staircase.

  I could swoon with relief but I climb the stairs instead. At the top, a heavy wooden door is my last obstacle.

  It opens with a gentle turn of the knob, letting me out into the night.

  I’m on a different part of the deck now, on the port side. Far down near the bow, a man sits on top of a collection of crates, his back to me. Nobody else is in sight. I pull the door closed behind me. It’s practically soundless next to the rush of wind on water.

  There’s one more thing I need, and I find it strapped to the wall five feet down from the door. A big, white buoy. Even if I could swim—and I mean really swim, not kick in a general direction—I’d need this.

  Do not think of how deep the ocean is, Ashley. Do not think of how dark it is.