Page 20 of Lair

I don’t care. I pull at him, wanting that delicious weight on me, and I hear a husky, gorgeous grunt of amusement. I can’t see his face, his expression, what he thinks of me. All I know is what I can feel pressing against me. He wants me, too. For whatever reason, in this moment, he wants me.

I won’t waste it. I grab at him, whispering it, begging it, “Please.” I hear him groan, and the thought of me causing him to lose control makes me tingle. I grab a fistful of his hair and pull him to my breasts. I know what he wants. I know what will make him happy. His hands float down me and buttons pop, fabric falls away. He’s peeling me like some rare delicacy. I’m being devoured. I’ve never, ever been wanted like this, and I’m so turned on I want to scream. How can Thea not hear us? How can she not know what’s happening to my world?

And then—no—he’s gone, the weight has left me, but only so he can roll me onto my side. I feel him pressed against my ass, his hands filled with my breasts, and I shut my eyes. Dear God. I grind back against it, wanting it. He chuckles deep in his throat and it’s tipping me over the edge. Then his voice is in my ear again. “Relax,” he growls. “You have to let it go.” I feel a wetness spreading, a wetness that is not me, and open my eyes. The bunk is soaked, water is spreading over the sheets all around us, dripping onto the floor. And when I look over my shoulder at Voper, he’s shirtless, white as a corpse, in the same swimming trunks he wore in the pool. He smiles. “Breathe,” he says, his mouth sharp, and bites my neck...

I wake rigid in bed and jerk my hand away from my damp underwear. I’m so turned on I’m practically writhing, so unnerved I have to clamp a hand over my mouth. Where is he?

No. No. Just a dream.

Jesus.

What the fuck was that?

I suck in a breath, cheekbones burning red in the dark, and try to decide how much of my emotions are shame, how much arousal. If I only dreamt him wanting me, or if he really does in this strange, waking world.

ELEVEN

My thoughts are heavy and slow, my hands shaky as I go about my morning makeup routine. I start with a light moisturizer, then a waterproof foundation (perfect for yachties) that I apply with my fingertips and blend out with a damp sponge. I set everything with a translucent powder, a bronzer in a butterfly shape around my face, and go about applying my finishing touches of mascara, blusher, lipstick. I study myself in the mirror as I do, eyes gliding over dark hair, freckle-dusted nose, the questionable plumpness of my lips. Judging. Assessing. And then I realize: I’ve spent double the time I usually do on my makeup this morning. This is a ritual. A preparation.

I’ve been thinking of last night’s dream the whole time.

I drop my hands, jaw clenching. What am I doing? Maybe Cailee was right. Maybe I’m falling back into old habits. It’s not even been a month, and already I’m fantasizing about another guy who’s abusive. How fucked up am I?

Sure, I haven’t been touched by a man in a while. Not since Josh. But a wet dream, about Voper of all people?

I dump my makeup back into my bag and head up to the crew mess.

At the top of the stairs I’m confronted by a spiral of hair that bewitches the eye, a perfect French twist that has a vertiginous power to it. I know this hair, this severe coiffure, but it’s all wrong. It’s not blonde. It’s a witchy black.

The coiffure revolves, and Mrs. Colding turns around to take me in.

“Ah, there you are, Miss Strand.” Her icy gaze sweeps me head to foot in curious evaluation. Behind her, four angrily gossiping clones of myself turn to glare at me and the fact whams home: All the stews have dyed their hair the exact same shade as mine.

I shift my weight uncertainly. “What—what’s going on—”

“Let’s not dawdle,” Mrs. Colding submits sharply, and turns her gleaming stranger’s head. “Girls. I’m sure we all have duties to attend to.”

A silence, a shuffling of feet, and the stews file out, giving me poisonous looks. Even Thea eyes me warily.

When they’re gone, I say it. “Mrs. Colding?” My voice wavers. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Mrs. Colding steps close and looks down her long nose at me, cups my chin in her hand. I stand perfectly still. I haven’t seen this expression from her before. Wonder, perhaps, or pity. The beginnings, too, of respect. It’s absolutely terrifying. “Come,” she says, and her voice is the softest it has ever been. “Let’s see how you do serving today.”

The guests have requested breakfast on the bridge deck, outdoors in the shade of the overhang. I follow Mrs. Colding and Thea from the galley, down service stairs and out onto the deck, a wooden charger in my hands. My fingers are slick with sweat, my heart fluttering. Last night’s dream must be written all over my face as I approach the long dining table. Voper sits at its end, Emmie beside him. He is wearing his usual dark suit, but today no tie throttles his neck, and the top few buttons of his white business shirt are undone. The change is strangely startling.

When his eyes flick up at me, I nearly drop my charger.

He takes a thick cut of steak this morning, red and rare, swimming in blood and juices. He attacks it nicely, easily, his knife gliding through the meat as if it were melting, never hacking or sawing as most men do, and I wonder how I ever thought those long, pale hands were womanly. I think of them on me, gripping me, weighing me, and look up to find his eyes on me again.

Does he know what I’m thinking, what’s happened to me? Does he know I want his mouth on me, tasting me, biting me?

Emmie has been coldly watching me this whole time. Her eyes dart between my hair and the other stews’, Mr. Voper’s eyes and mine. She lifts an oyster out of a bucket of ice and lemon wedges on the half-shell and swallows it down whole, tosses the shell aside. “I see the country girl is serving us today,” she comments idly, flicking her fingers.

Voper’s knife does not pause. I feel a sick twisting in my guts and Mrs. Colding glances at me, purses her lips. “She is coming along nicely.”

“Is that so?” Another oyster goes back, and Emmie washes it down with a swallow of champagne.

“Is there something you wanted to say, dear?” Voper poses in a soft voice, eyes still on his plate.

---