Page 63 of One Secret

I sigh before resolutely pushing my own trauma and shit to the back of my head. Darcy needs to be my focus, right now. Taking care of her and protecting the life that she wants to live.

Even if it doesn't include me.

Testing out a pair of arms that feel like jello, I take a moment and then support my weight into a full press-up. Darcy stretches languidly with me, her hips tilting to hold onto mine, her arms looped around my neck. Emotive is not a word I would use to describe myself so I have to hope that everything swirling inside my head is there to read in my eyes. I try to make my tone reassuring.

'Yeah,' I repeat... 'Everything's going to be just fine. We'll get back to the hotel and—'

'A boat!' Darcy has shifted, her attention caught by something on the horizon under my left arm. She twists to inspect up at the rock face above. 'Where did your binoculars go?'

Her scanning dislodges our bodies and I slip free from inside her. The saltwater, which had felt so warm only a few seconds ago, is by comparison icy cool along my shaft. My first instinct is to take hold of her waist and fit us back together but the sound of an approaching engine has me joining the search instead.

We discover that I set the binoculars down on a plateau shelf a few feet over Darcy's head before pouncing on her like an animal. How tidy of me.

I'm surprised when Darcy takes the binocs in hand and scrambles up onto the rocks to make better use of them. A quick pinch and flick of her fingers sets her bikini panties to rights and, for the rest of it, she doesn't even bother. She just stands there on the isle, in the breeze, nude but for an ebony triangle covering the apex of her thighs. No shame in her body at all.

Not that she should have any.

Darcy is stunning. Like when dressed, her naked figure maintains a certain sexy tomboy style. With small breasts, a tight little butt, and legs for days, she's more lean than she is curvy. Each of her muscles are clearly defined and toned into edges and angles that you just don't get from pilates or spin class. Instead, Darcy looks like a boxer. A fighter. Someone who earns their strength against an opponent, not on a yoga mat.

And then there's that confidence of hers. That hardened perseverance that implies her "opponent" might just be the entire damn world.

Or at least the country of Sweden.

Damn, but that's going to bug me until I find out what happened...

Rearranging my shorts back up around my waist, I look around for Darcy's but find nothing. They had been a thicker beachwear material and not meant for swimming. Which means, water-logged and heavy, they had probably sunk to the depths of the Mediterranean, ne'er to be retrieved.

I'm equally unsure where the top half of her swimsuit went.

Lifting myself from the little pool and sloshing waves of water everywhere, I relocate my carry-on bag and pull out the spare T-shirt I'd rolled up inside.

'Here.' I throw the shirt at Darcy, who catches it deftly and one-handed. Pinning the binocs between her knees, she pulls on the garment and then goes back to spying on the boat through the oculars. She adjusts the zoom dial. Then the focus.

The binoculars are complex and military-grade so she's probably messing up my lens settings. But all is forgiven when I see interesting patches appearing over the shirt where wet skin protrudes and clings...

'You know the name of Felix's boat?' Darcy asks, knocking me out of my distractions.

'Yeah.' It had been in the background check I put together. 'It's Principessa—'

'—d'Oro,' Darcy finishes, reading the name off the hull of the vessel as it passes. She offers me the binoculars. 'The Golden Princess? What a pretentious name. But it would appear, at least, that our host has finally arrived.'

I turn the perfectly conditioned binoculars towards Nisí tou Chrysoú where the Principessa is now docking alongside the pier.

A tall and lean gentleman in a white shirt and sunglasses is stepping out onto the wooden gangway. With his shot of blonde hair and two accompanying women draped all over him, he's easy to identify.

Felix Caruso: head of the Caruso crime family; an active suspect in connection to forty-six outstanding murder and disappearance cases; multiple convictions for fraud and suspicions of drug smuggling, human trafficking, and providing aid to known terrorist groups in the Middle East; serial womanizer; a descendant of Italian nobility; and worth approximately eight-hundred and thirty-six million US dollars.

I suppose with that kind of clout behind you, you can call your boats anything you damn well please.

'We should head back,' I suggest, packing the binoculars away and scouting the terrain for an easy way back across the spine of the island and onto the jet skis.

Darcy glances at the sky, her hand shielding her eyes. Where had her shades gone?

A-ha! I find them on the ground nearby.

'We've got hours before we have to meet him for dinner,' Darcy points out. The look in her eye is fiery as all hell, whispering dark temptations of how we might spend that time... My body instantly responds. Tired and aching muscles be damned.

'We do,' I agree softly. 'But there are some things I want to take care of before we meet with Caruso.'

---