Page 216 of The Black Trilogy

The more time I spent with Nick, the more I liked him. After the challenge of Black and his complexities, Nick’s easygoing charm was exactly what I needed. With Black, I constantly had to listen for what he wasn’t saying. Read between the lines. Nick was straight-up, and did I mention hot? Yesterday alone, three women had walked into solid objects after being distracted by him, and we had a side bet as to what the total would be by the time we left.

Double figures, for sure.

At the beginning of the third week, a hotel security guard caught us sneaking around the boathouse on the edge of the marina. His face clouded as he reached for his radio.

“What are you doing?”

I thought back to the glimpse of Nick I’d caught in the shower last night, which made my cheeks redden rather nicely.

Nick’s lips curved up in a cheeky smile as he pulled me tight against him. “What do you think?” he asked the guard.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t worry, we’re leaving.”

Nick swept me up in his arms, and I gave a convincing shriek. The guard followed at a distance, still suspicious as Nick carried me back to our room. On the doorstep, Nick paused, checked discreetly behind us, then attempted to find my tonsils with his tongue while he fumbled with the lock.

At times like that, I couldn’t believe I got paid to do this job.

We stumbled into the villa, landing on the bed as the door bounced off the wall and slammed behind us. Nick kept up his search, and I was only too eager to assist. His hardness pressed into my thigh and I ground against it, my body taking over as my mind went blank. As I wrapped my legs around him, he levered himself up and we paused, nose-to-nose.

“Nobody’s watching anymore, baby,” he whispered.

“Good.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Time slowed as I thought of my past. Of the other times I’d been in that position and how it made me feel. Used. Dirty. But Black had laid those demons to rest. Quite literally, in the case of one of them.

I bit my lip. Nick was offering me a way out. But the very fact he’d offered meant I didn’t want to take it.

I shook my head.

“No, I don’t want you to stop.”

Nick continued my education for the rest of our time in Mexico, when we weren’t busy working, of course.

“I don’t know what the future holds, baby, but I know I want to hold you until we go home,” he said.

“Black’s probably planning my life as we speak, but you’re right—we should make the most of this.”

After all, Black had told me I didn’t need to be good.

The job still took priority, though, and having ruled out other avenues, Nick began to suspect the use of submersibles in the smuggling operation. As the sun rose one ordinary Wednesday morning, we made a dive into the marina and found cleverly concealed doors in the hulls of two of our suspect boats. The crew had covered the cracks with fake barnacles, and unless you were inches away, the openings were impossible to spot.

Three days later, Nick visited the harbourmaster to enquire about the possibility of berthing his imaginary yacht there in the marina for a couple of weeks. Alas, the cost proved prohibitive, but as he dropped his cigarette into the wastebasket of the operations office, he still managed a smile. The paper smouldered for a while before the flames took hold then chaos broke out. Smoke poured from the windows, blurring the view as I snuck onto our target boat with Nick’s camera.

“And?” he asked half an hour later as I slipped back into the villa.

“A mini-sub. I need your laptop to upload the pictures.”

There was clearly big money in drugs. As well as the mini-sub, I’d seen stacks of cash, gold coins, and even a photo of the yacht’s owner with his pet tiger.

“Here, I’ll help.”

As the encrypted email flew through cyberspace to Nick’s bosses, sadness swept over me. I almost wished we hadn’t found the submarine, because now Riverley beckoned. My last night in the honeymoon suite wasn’t something I’d forget in a hurry, though. Even now, I still flush thinking of the things Nick did to me.

“Could you put your seat belts on, please?” the flight attendant asked as the plane descended towards Dulles.

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