Didn't I Warn You

by Amber Bardan

  “Who is this?”

  I shut my eyes. My tongue went dry.

  The paper ran over my cheek, a gentle scrape that made all my hair stand on end.

  “A deal is a deal, Angelina.”

  My eyes opened. “My brother.”

  I gave him three long seconds of a look that could kill, then rolled away from him and scrambled for the dress he’d thrown on the floor.

  “That’s not a proper answer. I asked who this is, not what he is.”

  He spoke to my back.

  I pulled the dress on, tugged it over my boobs and my hips with numb fingers.

  “Josh, my twin brother, Josh.”

  The words escaped, and yet my tongue didn’t fall out. I didn’t catch fire. Didn’t spontaneously combust.

  My lips went numb as my fingers.

  For a year, I’d kept that name in, sure that if I’d said it out loud I’d die, too.

  I didn’t die.

  But I might throw up.

  Cool air gusted into the cabin.

  “Where is Josh?” Haithem spoke behind me. He’d followed me off the bed.

  He knew, the bloody bastard. He knew for sure. That’s why he asked me like this. If I could kill him, I would.

  I straightened on jelly legs. “You only had one question left.”

  “Except you came twice. So I could demand another three.”

  I yanked the zip up and faced him. “I didn’t ask to come twice.”

  He sighed. “Fair enough.”

  Fair? He said that without choking?

  He glanced at the open doors then went and closed them. “Weather’s turning.”

  The boat dipped.

  My stomach roiled. I stumbled to a chair and sat, wrapping my arms around my middle.

  Why didn’t he push?

  He was a pusher, but he’d dropped it. Cut me a break. I’d rather he didn’t. Rather he gave me a little consistency, a little something more to hate him with.

  “Did you check my emails?”

  Haithem lowered himself onto the couch. “Not yet.” He reached for the plate with the meringue then picked up a fork.

  “Why?” I scooted to the edge of the seat, watching him eat the sugary pie top.

  He took a bite, shrugged and swallowed. “I forgot.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He looked at me, finishing the meringue in a few large scoops.

  “You don’t forget.”

  He put the plate down and licked his lips. “You know me so well, do you?”

  “I know you don’t forget.”

  “That I don’t.” He smiled and sucked the side of his thumb. “Fine, I didn’t forget.”

  I leaned in and rested my hands on the coffee table. My fingers bumped the knife. “Did my parents reply to the message you sent?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.” The word became a growl grazing my throat. “They’d have replied immediately. My dad has freaking email on his phone.” My chest tightened; everything in my upper body did. “Tell me.”

  Haithem said nothing.

  “Tell me.” I slammed my fist on the table. The plates clattered. “Tell me.” My voice echoed around the cabin.

  Nice girls don’t raise their voice, Angelina.

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe everything I’m doing is to protect you?” His growl was deeper than mine—and so raw that it almost fooled me into believing him.

  He took my hand. I tugged, but he gripped tighter. He turned my hand. A bright drop of blood trickled down my wrist.

  I gasped. Never could stand the sight of blood. It was tied up with illness, hospitals and, inevitably, death. He picked up a napkin and placed it over the side of my palm.

  I stared at my hand, the white napkin sucking up my blood. He removed the napkin and examined my cut.

  “Breathe, Angelina. It’s only a nick.”

  Don’t be a wuss, Angelina.

  I snatched my palm away. “Show me the email.”

  “I deleted it.”

  “What?” I clutched my injured fist to my chest. My hand didn’t hurt. I hadn’t even felt the nick. But my chest did—my chest hurt as though he’d taken the knife to it.

  “That’s not right. You had no right to do that.” I rubbed the place above my breasts with my fist but couldn’t wipe out the ache. “No right at all.”

  My voice caught.

  Oh shit, I was going to cry. I sucked it up—literally. Sucked in a breath and pulled back those tears. Pushed them down. I’d had a lot of practice. It was practically a part of my skill set.

  “No right?”

  The yacht rocked again. I clutched the arms of the chair, not taking my eyes off him as he rolled himself forward, unaffected by the movement.

  “Look around. This is my yacht.” He held out his hands, palms up. “And I’ll let you in on a secret.”

  He didn’t sound as if he was revealing a secret. His voice was clear and crisp.

  “We just left Australian waters.” He leaned back with a smile that cracked across his face like a clap of thunder. “Right now, this is my ocean, my world, my rules.”

  The world swayed under my chair.

  “So stop worrying about what you think is right. Stop worrying about what rights you think you have. They mean nothing here.”

  Bile rose in my throat. Damn yacht.

  Damn Haithem.

  “The only thing you need to believe in now is me. Show me you can be trusted, and just maybe you’ll earn some rights back.”

  I doubled over. The contents of my stomach rose into my esophagus.

  I’d gotten lost in the game. Orgasms and questions. Pleasure and answers. Freedom and restraint. A game I’d fooled myself into believing I had a chance at winning.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  I might be queen in a game of chess, but Haithem wasn’t the king. I couldn’t sneak up and take him. He wasn’t even on the board. He was standing somewhere above, moving the pieces.

  He was the player.

  I gagged. Nothing came up. The room tipped sideways. I fell off the chair onto the carpet.

  My head rushed.

  I needed to get out. Get off.

  Escape.

  Haithem took me by the arm and led me to the bed. I fell back against the cushions. He handed me the lid from the tray, turned upside down. I leaned over the tray cover, taking slow breaths. He knelt beside the bed and rummaged through the cupboard of the bedside table, pulling out half the crap I’d shoved in there.

  He stood and tore something out of a piece of foil. “Here.”

  I eyed the small white circle in his palm.

  “It’s medication. It’ll help with the seasickness.”

  If it weren’t for the fact that I was about to go exorcist all over the cabin, I’d have told him where to insert his “medication.” Instead, I snatched the pill from his palm.

  “It’s a wafer. Just dissolve it on your tongue.”

  I placed the wafer in my mouth. It melted in a little puddle of bitterness.

  Haithem turned back to the mess on the floor, putting things back into the cupboard. He paused at the large bag, opening it and glancing inside.

  I groaned. Fantastic. Why’d I shove that bag there?

  He stared in the bag with the vibrator and accessories then finally glanced up at me. Just for a moment, his expression made me forget that I hated him all over again. Made me remember what we’d been doing moments earlier.

  He closed the cupboard.

  “I need to get off this yacht.” I blinked, my eyes clouding with moisture. “Please put me ashore somewhere. Just leave me anywhere.”

  He sat next to m
y hip. “I can’t do that.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “Fine, I won’t.” He didn’t say it in a mean voice as he had before; if anything, he spoke sweetly. “You think I’m a bastard—I am. I have to be.”

  The cabin tilted. Haithem rested a hand on my waist and one on the bedside table, holding us both in place.

  I pulled the lid of the tray closer.

  Goddammit.

  “I didn’t say those things for kicks. They’re the truth. Don’t expect me to do the right things, and don’t expect me to play by rules I don’t believe in.” He released my waist.

  I breathed deeply, trying to still the rise of my stomach.

  “You’ll only be disappointed, and we won’t get along.”

  My stomach clenched. I retched. Nothing came up but spit. Tears spilled out my eyes. My stomach wrenched again.

  Haithem climbed off the bed and went to the fridge, returning with a green apple.

  “Try this.”

  “I don’t want a fucking apple.”

  “They help.” He took a bite then held it in front of me. The sweet scent hit my nose. “They really do. It’s an old sea trick.”

  I took the apple and crunched through the skin on the opposite side to the one he’d bitten. It didn’t make me hurl. I took another bite then rolled onto my back.

  I finished the apple slowly and—curse him—my stomach settled back into its regular place.

  He took the lid from the tray and the apple core from my hand, setting them aside. “Better?”

  I turned my head toward him. “I need to get off this yacht.” My chest hitched. “Please, it’s making me sick. I’m going crazy. I need to put my feet on the ground.”

  He scanned my face then brushed my hair over my shoulder. “All right, tomorrow we’ll get off the yacht. You can put your feet on solid ground.”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t believe him. How could I? Why would he turn around so quickly?

  “Yes, tomorrow we’ll go to land.”

  He stroked the hair out of my eyes. My stupid, leaking eyes. How could he do that? Good then bad, then back again. I was spinning. Didn’t know which way was up or down anymore.

  He must’ve had special mind-fuck training.

  “Why did you delete the email?”

  He traced my jaw with his fingertip. “Let it go. I don’t want to do this, but I will.”

  “I can’t.”

  His gaze dropped from mine to his hand on my skin. “It wasn’t a nice email. Leave it at that.”

  My chest compressed. Not a nice email? It didn’t surprise me. If Haithem had really written what he’d claimed he had, they’d be furious.

  Absolutely, deathly mad.

  “What did they say? I want to know.”

  “I’d rather not tell.”

  Oh god.

  That bad. I dragged myself up to sitting position. If I didn’t, I’d be crushed under the weight of my own anxiety. “I’d rather you didn’t delete my emails.”

  His expression hardened.

  “Please tell me.” I dropped the attitude. Went for sad and pleading again. Not my favorite style. Yet Haithem didn’t seem to realize he had a way of softening when I did it. I didn’t want to think about why, but we’d done this enough now for me to figure out that sad eyes counted for something.

  To an extent.

  Enough for a little leverage. Not much, but a little.

  “They’re angry with you. Your mother replied.” He looked across the cabin. “She said you’d worried them but she also criticized your behavior. She called you cheap, said she was disgusted you’d run off with a man.”

  I nodded. Tears trickled down my cheeks. Yep, sounded right. Worried but disapproving. Loving but concerned. Uninterested but controlling. I was only surprised she hadn’t come right out and called me a slut. What with the way she’d taken to religion since Josh.

  “What about Dad? Did Dad have anything to say?”

  “He asked you to think about your mother and come home.”

  I wiped my face with my palm. “They’ll expect another response.”

  “Already done.”

  My shoulders dropped. “Again?”

  “Yes, I apologized. Said you were sorry to upset them but you needed to do your own thing for a while, and suggested they take the next few weeks to get used to it.”

  “You actually said that?”

  I rubbed my arm. How strange he’d used those words. Words I’d thought but would never say. Words with enough truth no one would deny them.

  Haithem handed me a handkerchief.

  I wiped my face and let his words run through my mind. He could’ve said worse things. Now, at least, they’d spend the next couple of weeks thinking I’d lost my mind and grown some balls.

  It’d be a bitch when I got home, but I could deal with that.

  “You could, you know...” he said.

  “Could what?”

  “You could take this time to let them get used to it. Do your own thing.”

  I handed him back his handkerchief. “And you’d just slide right off the hook, right?”

  “I’d call that win-win.”

  I relaxed back into the pillows. Somehow, I imagined Haithem and I had different ideas about what it meant to win.

  SIXTEEN

  I SAT IN the speedboat, gazing up at the yacht towering above us. Under normal circumstances, this would be considered a big speedboat. Much bigger than the one Dad used to take Josh and me out in. Mostly Josh—but sometimes me, too.

  Next to the yacht, the speedboat could’ve been a toy.

  The sea lay calm as a painting but so much more vivid than anyone could hope to capture on canvas. You’d never know it’d stormed last night. The sun blazed in the sky, and we in the speedboat were nothing more than a speck in the vastness of the ocean.

  “You ready?”

  To let Haithem whisk me off into nothingness?

  Sparkling blue stretched around us. Not a scrap of the land he’d promised.

  I nodded.

  He reached underneath my seat, pulled out a life jacket it and handed it to me. I put it on and did up the straps as tightly as they would go.

  He started the boat, steering us away from the sun. I held my hat on my head with one hand. The air cascaded over us. Haithem’s T-shirt rippled over his back. I almost hadn’t gotten into the boat with him looking that way. Pale blue T-shirt, white board shorts, bare feet. Casual, like some regular hunk. I preferred him in his immaculate, formal dress. At least that made him look like what he was—someone to be reckoned with.

  Not sexy beach guy.

  The boat hit a bump. My backside rose off the seat then slammed back down. A thrill ran from my knees to my head.

  I laughed and gripped the edge of the seat.

  Haithem glanced over his shoulder—striking me with an even deeper thrill. He pulled a lever, taking us faster. We rushed across the ocean, parting the air and water around us. My insides rose and fell, while my outsides flailed and bounced. He turned the boat in an arc.

  My heart lifted.

  I shook with laughter. Air swept the hat from my head. I lunged for it, but it blew into the water, disappearing from sight as we sped on. The boat slowed, and I glimpsed the so-called land.

  Starting as a pin-sized island, it grew into something big and vegetated enough to outrank a sandbar, but it wasn’t what I’d anticipated when I’d asked for solid ground.

  We drew closer, approaching a small dock—the only evidence anything human had ever been to the island. Haithem stopped the boat and helped me out.

  My feet hit wooden planks, yet the ground still didn’t seem steady as it should be. I too
k a step, and the dock rolled. I stumbled off onto the sand and sat.

  “Sea legs,” Haithem said, carrying a basket and a bunch of towels out of the boat. “You’ll adjust in a minute.”

  I kicked off my sandals and buried my feet in the hot beach. I’d been longing for the hard, unshakable security of land beneath me—concrete, bitumen, brick paving perhaps.

  Trust Haithem to be sneaky.

  “I’m not sure I’d call this land.”

  He dropped the towels and basket in a patch of shade. “If we go in a little farther, there’s dirt. Dirt means land.”

  “You’re way too tricky,” I said, and lay down. The sand warmed my back like an electric blanket. “What do you plan on doing with me on a deserted island, anyway?”

  He walked toward me, looking even bigger than usual from my vantage point with my back against the ground. “Whatever you want.” He tugged off his T-shirt and dropped it beside me. “That’s the point.”

  Holy bananas, Batman.

  I made a sound, tried to pass it off as a cough. His big chest could’ve been airbrushed if it weren’t for the hair spattered over his pecs and down his stomach. Perfectly sculpted yet not over-the-top. Muscles that screamed raw strength. Screamed for my fingernails to claw over them.

  “But right now, let’s take a swim.”

  I glanced at the water. It was probably warm on a day like this. “I’m not wearing bathers.”

  “Whatever will the fish think?” He took my hand and hauled me to my feet.

  “I’ll watch from here.”

  “Take off that dress, unless you want to wear it in the water.” His eyes glistened. His chin lowered.

  Excitement curled in my stomach. Today, Haithem was the one who wanted to play with me.

  I stepped back and pulled my dress over my head.

  He stepped forward. I shuffled back. He walked around me. I turned with him. He grinned then lunged for me.

  I ran.

  Made it to where the water licked my toes before they flew clear off the ground. My feet went over my head as my stomach hit his shoulder and my breath rushed out in a squeal. Haithem jogged into the water, turning me the right way up. I reached for his shoulders. He tossed me. My fingers slipped over his skin.

  I crashed into the water, body sinking down, head submerged.