Page 36 of Lair

Screw it.

I shimmy out of my clothes and into the teddy, cock a hip and inspect myself. It looks even better than I thought it would—I look like a goddamn sex goddess. My breasts are cupped up and bouncy, my hips shapely, the outfit’s black lace diving into a coy triangle between my legs. I wonder if he thought of me in this when he chose it. What I would look like. What he would do to me.

My throat is suddenly dry.

I lie on the bed in the teddy, luxuriating in the rapturous feel of its fabric, its fit, its intimate conforming to my body. As if it was somehow him conforming to me—him holding me. For so long, Josh had made me feel invisible, desexualized, my desires something to be ashamed of. But Adrian...

My belly rises and falls heavily, unevenly. I’m tremoring with nerves, a warm tingling between my legs. I glide a hand down the lace, thinking of his hands on me. The way he caught my lip in his teeth, blazing me to life. I have that to think of, as my fingers glide lower, dipping beneath. That and the dizzying power of his mouth. His indismissible dark eyes.

NINETEEN

The note is waiting for me in the morning: Guests at 8:00 tonight. Care to accompany me?

My heart does a little squee.

The day can’t pass quickly enough. I spend it pacing my cabin, doing yoga on the sun deck, sitting with my knees hugged to chest before the sheet of glass in the underwater observation lounge, watching dolphins cavort past and thinking of secrets given up in darkness.

I don’t see Adrian Voper once all day.

At six I start getting ready. Absurdly, ridiculously, I want to impress his friends, and so I choose something that’s a little more flashy for tonight: a gauzy, high-slit champagne dress that lets one leg strut out and my breasts hang like delicious pearls beneath plunging halter ribbons. When I finish it off with earrings winking out of my mane of hair and my bright-red lipstick that hardens the shape of my mouth, I don’t even recognize myself.

Dusk is falling when I step out onto the aft main deck to watch the other yacht arrive. It seems the whole crew is on deck; they’ve been talking about nothing else all day. I try my best to ignore all the looks I get, the whispers behind cupped hands. Captain Redfearn does not seem to know what to make of me. Jason, at his post by the stern lines, eyes me unhappily.

A voice whispers in my ear. “Ignore them.”

I turn to see Mrs. Colding, hands clasped before her, as courteous as ever. But the air is different between us. It’s confiding, conspiratorial. Almost friendly. She leans in and adds in a wry tone, “Yachties thrive off gossip.”

I smirk. It’s true.

And her saying this allows me, finally, to ignore my own doubts and feel it: the pride in knowing I am the woman who will be on Adrian’s arm. That somehow this floating pleasure palace has become half mine.

The feeling sweeps through me, buoying me up, until the breath catches in my throat.

It takes a moment for me to follow what Mrs. Colding says next. “That one’s been moody all day.” She juts her chin at Jason, her eyes lingering on me knowingly. “He’s been taking it out on the deckhands, making them polish and wax the hand rails the entire afternoon.”

I study Jason again, the smallest twinge of guilt nagging at me. It must suck being in his shoes right now.

I shake this off, focusing my gaze on our surroundings. We’ve anchored in a private bay somewhere along the Corsican coast, and the sea is burnished red by the boiling demise of the sun. It is out of this lurid glare that the other yacht glides.

She’s almost as big as the Lair, her bulky hull cutting through the water like a shark. Also like the Lair, her windows are darkly tinted, her design private, discreet. She slowly circles us, and I catch a glimpse of the name backlit in blue on her transom: Vespertine. Then she slows, stops. There’s the splash of her anchor, the rattling of her chain, and silence.

Minutes later, the second yacht arrives.

Seriously? This one’s smaller, elegant, but no less magnificent, and similarly tinted. The name on her transom: Lazaret. She casts anchor on the other side of the Lair, and silence falls again.

What are they waiting for?

With a last flare of crimson the sun slips away, the lights of the three yachts glittering on the dark waters, and I hear a faint thump above me.

I step forward and crane my head up.

It’s Jason. He’s hopped over the rail and edged out in his bare feet onto the curving fiberglass stern of the deck above. As I watch, he unloops the halyard and lowers the courtesy flag (in this case, the flag of France), as is tradition at sunset. But he’s not done—he’s running up another flag to take its place. It slowly unfurls in the wind, a triangular black field on which ripple two inverted white triangles, glowing in the Lair’s uplights. Some kind of ensign for a yachting association.

Murmurs spread among the crew, and I turn to see the same pennant being hoisted in answer on the Vespertine and Lazaret.

What is going on?

I’m still standing there watching, befuddled, when full night descends on the bay and there’s a soft footfall behind me.

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