by Naomi West
Fuck breakfast.
I have way more important things to do.
I'm on her before she has turned all the way back around, kicking open the cabin door behind her and using my sheer physical presence to force her back inside.
For a second she shrieks and goes stiff but then her body is pliant as her hands loop easily around my waist.
“Oh good. It’s you," she says, laying her cheek on my chest. "I was wondering where you'd gone."
"To get you something to eat," I say, holding up the plates.
I'm rewarded when her eyes light up. "Thank God. I’m starving."
“Me too,” I say, looking her up and down. She could make a monk’s mouth water right about now.
I set the plates on the dresser and nudge her back on the bed, pushing up her dress so that it pools around her hips. Her panties are gone with a flip of my wrist and then there's nothing between me and the warm, wet heaven of this woman I just found.
An hour later, she polishes off the last of the food I brought for her while she gazes out the small, round window of our cabin. "I saw a posting board in the hallway," she says. “There was an announcement saying that we're going to land on Mykonos soon. For the day.”
I nod. "We'll let a lot of passengers off, but none on. I checked, don't worry."
"No, that's not why I mentioned it. I’m not worried. I was hoping we could get off and look around."
I still for a moment. It startles me how much I want to give that to her. I want her to have anything that she wants. Shit. I want her to have everything that she wants. It feels like gritting against sandpaper, but I shake my head, no.
"It's not safe. Not until we get to Santorini and we can get to the safe house there."
She cocks her head to one side. "Safe house?"
I nod. "I have a house in the cliffs there. It's equipped with a lot of safety measures. No one besides my family knows that I own it. The locals know me by a different name. We'll be safe there for a little while."
"So, no Mykonos?"
"There something in specific you were hoping to see?" I ask her.
"Um, the sun?" she says, saccharine sweet, her smile sarcastic.
"I'm sorry, darling, have I been smothering you?"
"Yes. Completely," she says, leaning over to snatch a grape off my plate. "But the multiple orgasms take the sting off of it."
I lean back in the chair, bringing the first two legs up into the air. I eye her in an intentionally predatory way. She stares levelly back at me. "You know I’m not acting like this simply because Esposito is after you, right?” I ask her.
She cocks her head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that this is me, Quickdraw. No matter the situation. I fuck when I want. A lot. I'm rude and bossy and kinky. And I don't share." I lean forward and catch her behind the neck, drag her in for a deep kiss. She smells like herself and the sex we just had. It makes me want to drag her back to the bed.
She pulls back from the kiss and raises a skeptical eyebrow. "You can't even share me with an island for a day of sight-seeing?"
I drop my head backwards. Under any other circumstance, I'd give her this in a second. "Come on. I'm a little possessive, but I'm not a dickhead. I want you to be able to sight-see if you want that. But it's too dangerous right now. We want to be seen as few places as possible right now, ok?"
She nods slowly. And lifts her hands to gracefully braid her hair back in one long, red rope. "Makes sense."
She's obviously disappointed. I'm relieved that I can give her a silver lining. "But most of the passengers are gonna go off and explore the island for most of the day. We'll have the ship to ourselves. Wanna go swimming?"
Her eyes light up with a hundred different colors and I feel like I've just won the Nobel prize. She flings her arms around my neck and launches herself into my lap. "But I don't have a suit!"
I chuckle, tracing a hand over her back. "I'll buy you one in the shop." I clap my mouth, so I don't say what is on the tip of my tongue. But it comes cascading out anyways. "Nobody does this."
"Does what?"
"Touches me like this."
She raises her eyebrows, and gives me a wry smile. "You seem plenty experienced in touching, Kennedy."
"No, I don't mean sexually. I mean...joyfully."
Comprehension passes through her and again I'm struck at how her scientific brain allows her to understand and not judge. Everything is just information to her. "Because people are scared of you?"
I shrug. "I think so. And even my friends. My closest friends, Dare. Alessia. They're not scared of me, but they're conscious of what I've done. What's on my hands. It gives them maybe just a touch of reservation around me."
She studies me now. Calmly, seriously. Her eyes passing over my face as the wheels turn in her head.
"What?" I ask, after a minute, trying hard not to squirm.
"Nothing," she says. "Just forming a hypothesis."
I’m not sure I like the sound of that. "Care to share?"
She shakes her head. "No self-respecting scientist would postulate without all the information.”
I shake my head at her and lift her off my lap, trying to tamp down my smile. I can’t let her know how charmed I am by this shit. At this rate I’m gonna be eating out of her hand any minute. “Sit tight. I’ll go get you a bathing suit.”
I zip to the boat shop and back and I’m pleased to see that most of the passengers have already gathered on the main deck, watching as the shore line of Mykonos approaches. Row and I will be two of the only passengers left behind from the look of things.
I cruise the store. I’m not a picky shopper, but I am looking for something in particular. The smallest fucking bathing suit I can find. Oh. And a burner phone. I didn’t want to get her all worked up, but Dare should be finding her father on that ferry boat any second now.
I buy the swimsuit and the phone and run up to one of the emptier decks to make the phone call. Dare answers on the second ring.
“I’ve got him,” he says without even a greeting. “But the guy’s a straight-up asshole.”
I can’t stop the relieved bark of laughter that bursts out of me. Our plan was the best we could come up with on short notice. But that baby had a lot of holes. The fact that the first part has gone ok is a tremendous relief.
“You found him in the back of the red Mazda?”
“Yup, thirsty and hungry and demanding to see his daughter. Your note didn’t do much to assuage his mania.”
I wince. “Yeah, well, the guy loves her. And he’s been knocked out for a day and half. The last thing he knew everything was fine. The only thing he and his daughter had to worry about was too much dust on their dig site. And then he wakes up to this nightmare. Jesus. I think he’s earned the right to raise a little hell.”
“Well, that may be,” Dare growls. “But there’s no fucking way I’m taking him back to your mom and sister raving like a loony. He’s gonna scare the crap out of them.”
“I don’t care if he strips down and does the hokey pokey, you’ve gotta take him to your place. It’s the only place he’ll be safe. And Row’s gonna lose her mind if he’s not safe.”
There’s hearty pause on the other end of the line. And then Dare’s voice, a curiosity threaded through. “You got the hots for this chick?”
“Yeah, she’s really hot.”
“No, I mean like the serious hots. Like a crush.”
“You make me sound like I’m in seventh fucking grade.”
“Holy shit you do!” There’s an obnoxious amount of glee in his voice. “Kennedy fuckin Squire, feeling the feels. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Just put her father on the phone so I can reassure him, and all this will move a little faster alright?” He doesn’t stop laughing. “You dick.”
Then there’s a scuffling on the phone and Dare’s laughter gets more distant.
“Hello? Hello?” I hear Professor Rourke’s voice.
&n
bsp; “I’m here, Rourke.”
“Where’s my daughter? What have you done with my daughter?” The true panic has a soft spot appearing for him. I’m apparently made of soft spots these days.
“She’s alright. She’s safe.”
“I don’t believe you. Let me talk to her.”
I sigh and start heading back to the room. “Look. She’s safer with me than she was with you in Greece. I won’t let him get to her. No matter what.”
There’s a heavy pause. “Him? You mean Esposito?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a hitch in his breath. “He found us.”
“I found you for him. But I’m not going to let him get Row. Or you, ok?” I’m weaving through the hallways of the cruise ship. “Dare is taking you to a safe house in Corfu. My mother and sister are there. All of you are going to stay low and stay the hell out of his radar.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I talk to my daughter.”
Luckily I’m outside of our cabin door now. I unlock the door and push it open. I almost crush the phone in my grip when I push into the room and see what’s waiting for me. Row spread out on the bed. Her dress billows out all around her. Her hair is in a messy fan over the pillow and she’s reading some of the boat literature they leave in every cabin. She looks s fucking beautiful.
I make a mental note to at least pick up some paperbacks for her the next chance I get. The poor brainiac has been reduced to reading sponsored cruise literature.
She pops her head up when I walk in, her brow furrowing when she sees me on the phone.
“Your pops,” I say, tossing the phone to her. I’ll never forget the look on her face. Pure, unadulterated joy. And peace. And relief.
“Daddy?” she says, clutching the phone with both hands.
She glances at me and blushes a little bit. “Yes, he’s a very good man. Yes, he’s treating me well.”
She listens for a minute. “Daddy, actually it makes complete sense to be with him instead of on our own. Who better to know Esposito’s moves than someone who has worked for him? He’s one step ahead, which is more than I can say for the two of us. Sitting ducks at the dig site.”
She listens again, her face calm, although her shoulders are tight. “One: Because I have good instincts. Just like Mom. And you know that’s true. And two: Because his mother and sister are proof. He’s housing you in the same place as the two most important people in his life. Who he put in danger, by the way, because he decided to help us. And now you’re there with them, being protected.”
She paused again and for the first time I see something dark cross her face. Something that looks like regret. Sadness. The smallest touch of shame.
“I found him. But we didn’t have time.” She listens. “Re-buried.”
Crap. She must be talking about Iairos. My stomach plummets. I don’t know if I could feel like more of a dick about that one.
“The whole site. We tagged and bagged everything we could and made the rest of it look like there was nothing left. It was the best we could do.”
Her voice rises and so does the color in her face. “Because there was a literal sniper shooting at us, Daddy!”
I step forward, hold my hand out for the phone. She stares at it blankly for a second, like she doesn’t understand what I’m asking for. She doesn’t understand that I’m not asking. I harden my expression. The way I do when we’re having sex. The full-on bossy thing that gets her going so well.
Her stare narrows but her mouth opens the tiniest bit. She hands over the phone to me. I can hear her father still talking on the line, but I take the phone from her hand and immediately snap it closed.
Her father heard that she’s safe. Dare can take it from there. He knows that the next part of the plan is to wait there until Row and I come for them. I feel like a dick making him be away from his kids, but he knew how important this was to me. He knew this process could take weeks while I make sure this world is safe for Row.
Row is still staring at the now-dead phone.
“Why did you do that?” she asks.
“Hang up on your father? Because he knew everything he needed to hear right now and he was making you feel bad. Making you feel bad when you tried your hardest and did better under terrifying circumstances than anyone in the world should have done.”
She looks at the phone but then up at me. “You think I did a good job? The best I could with the site?”
“You did better than your father could have done. Because you didn’t go down with the ship. You’re living to see another day. So that you can bring some redemption for Iairos some day.”
I shove the bag with the bathing suit in it toward her.
“Now let’s go swimming.”
Chapter Thirteen
Row
Kennedy’s house in Santorini is not what I expected it to be at all. When he said it had a lot of security measures, for some reason I got it in my head that we were headed to some kind of modern glass monstrosity, up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. But that isn’t it at all.
Kennedy’s house is small. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and a small living room. It’s built into the side of the cliff the way that all the houses there are. Thick whitewashed walls and terra cotta tile floors. The windows overlook a breathtaking view of the ocean and the house is sandwiched in between neighbors on all sides. Actually, all the houses are like one sprawling unit climbing the mountain. The walls are thick, which makes for privacy.
“Wow,” I say, turning a circle in his small living room. I can hear the wind whip up off the ocean and a mule drawn cart on the stone street outside.
“You-uh-like it?” he asks, setting his bag down.
I throw my hands out as I discover the stained glass window in the kitchen, sun slants in and throws juicy ruby-colored shadows over the driftwood breakfast table. I realize that there’s views of the ocean from every room. The bedrooms sit atop the rooms we’re currently in, in a cozy two story. The back wall of the house is a little crooked, pushed-in in places. And I realize this is because the house is built right into the side of the cliff.
“Kennedy, it’s incredible,” I breathe. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been someplace more beautiful.” And I’m telling the truth. We left the cruise boat an hour ago and the sun has just started to set behind the mountain that rises out of the sea in the middle of the ocean view. “Look,” I say. “The sun looks like a crown over the top of the mountain.”
“Volcano,” he says, looking where I’m pointing. “That’s actually a volcano.”
My mouth goes dry with excitement. “You’re kidding me!” I rush to the window. “Active? Is there a geological station here? When was the date of the last eruption?” I gasp when I see a large twist of Obsidian on a small table under one of the windows. I rush over, jam my hands in my pockets and immediately start making observations. “Is this volcanic glass from the volcano?”
He doesn’t say anything, so I straighten up and turn around, thinking maybe he left the room. But I’m surprised to see him sitting on the royal blue sofa couch, his forehead in his hands.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my stomach plummeting. He almost looks ill.
“Nothing. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll show you, Oia.”
For the first time since all of this began, I’m a hundred percent certain that he’s lying. There is definitely something wrong.
“Kennedy.”
“We’re gonna have to do something with your hair though. It’s too recognizable.” He stands and jogs up the whitewashed stone stairs to one of the bedrooms and calls down to me. “Not dye it, of course. No. I’d rather cut my arm off than change what you’ve got going on. But I might have something up here that could cover it.”
“Kennedy.”
He jogs back down the stairs and comes to stand in front of me. He’s avoiding my eyes like the plague. There’s an ornate silk in his hand, orange poppies over a field of blue. “Here, I’ll tie it over your hair. And I’
ll wear a cap too. We can pick up some clothes in town. There’s mostly tourist shops, so everything will probably be a little more vacation-y than you might like but-”
“Kennedy!”
He stills behind me for just a moment, and then his hands finish tying my hair back in the scarf. “What?”
