Riptide (12 page)

Speechless, Bria stared as he stripped off the black boxers, tossed them onto the chair with the other items of discarded clothing, and padded supremely naked toward the bathroom. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, that bottomless blue gleam taunting her. Inviting her. Sucking her in.

He smiled a tiger’s smile. “You’re welcome to join me.”

*   *   *

“I worked on this sucker all night,” Jonah said the second Nick walked into his office half an hour later, his hair wet and slicked back. Unlike his own office, Jonah’s was all sleek, modern glass and high-tech, with not a book or ancient knickknack in sight. It was as though their inner sanctums had split personalities. A shrink would have a field day trying to interpret what their respective environments said about each man. And their friendship.

A shrink, Nick thought with annoyance, would have a field day analyzing his reaction to one Princess Gabriella Visconti. He’d never lost his head to a woman, or been shaken to the core by dizzying lust,
ever
. Nick liked sex. A lot. But he hadn’t had sex in almost a year.

There hadn’t been time, and when the inclination struck, he took care of himself.

Deprivation would explain it.

Hell, he couldn’t swallow that big a lie. Even from himself. His unbridled passion for her—harder and faster and hotter than any momentary lust he’d had for any other woman, ever—rocked him to the core. He was immune, damn it. Until her mouth brushed his. Then all bets were off and the rules changed.

His personality wasn’t an act, it wasn’t a persona. Cool, unemotional, and detached was who he was. A leopard didn’t change his spots. But, holy hell. He’d forgotten himself completely. Lost his head completely. She brought out emotions that he didn’t know lived inside him.

For those few minutes when their mouths were fused, Bria was everything. Nourishment. Air. Life.

Possibilities.

Nick tasted her even after he’d brushed his teeth several times while he showered. He smelled peaches on his skin, even though she’d worn nothing but his soap. Her taste and smell surrounded him like an invisible hallucinogenic drug.

He’d lost his fucking mind.

“Do you have something more important on your mind than what I’m showing you right here?” Jonah asked, an edge to his voice that Nick had never heard before. “Because, pal, we have a serious situation on our hands. And no,” he snapped, as Nick frowned, “I can’t do anything about the focus. Someone fucked with the feed from the surveillance camera on the main deck. But take a harder look.”

Pleased, no, ecstatic for the distraction, Nick narrowed his gaze at the monitor. “What am I looking at? Blurry, blurrier, and blurriest?” The deck surveillance cameras were strategically placed for a three-sixty view of the surrounding area. There for a variety of reasons, mainly to monitor for piracy, and a boat called the
Sea Witch
and her thieving redheaded captain. The feed was usually clear enough to read the name on a boat two hundred yards away.

These images were useless. Impossible to ID a shape as human, let alone any details.

“Two men. Here,” Jonah touched the screen. “And here. A third … here.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I could have gotten better pictures with a disposable camera. Hell, I could have drawn a better picture—in crayon.”

Jonah, who looked like hell, his dark hair standing up around his head like a mad scientist, was not amused. The expensive surveillance equipment was one of his many babies on board. Nobody messed with it. And clearly, someone had. He was not a happy camper.

Nick wasn’t either.

Jonah leaned his hip against his sleek, black glass desk. “Blurrier,” he told Nick tightly, “is Halkias.”

The pale, elongated blob was suspended in midair over the dive platform, and Nick only knew it was the dive platform because it was marked as camera number five. There was a field of black, and three, ghostly cigar-shaped blobs. Two upright, one in flight. “Jesus, someone tossed the son of a bitch overboard. It doesn’t look like Her Royal Pain in my ass, but I wouldn’t put it past her.” The woman had lethal skills. Especially when she kissed.

Without her hair sleeked back in the sophisticated coil, she looked wild and sensual. The tangle of glossy curls around her shoulders made her look as though she’d climbed straight out of bed after hours of manic lovemaking. Her bee-stung mouth told the same story.

He’d fucking kissed her for less than seven minutes. A lifetime—

“Nick?”

“What?” he snapped. Jonah had just said something he’d missed because he couldn’t keep his mind off the pain in his ass princess.

His friend sank into his chair and rubbed a hand across the dark stubble on his jaw, brown eyes troubled. “The last time I saw him, he was very much alive, Nick. Unconscious, but alive.”

“Yeah.” Nick folded his arms over his chest, glaring at the blurry video still. “I was kinda hoping I’d broken the son of a bitch’s neck when I pulled him off her. Someone saved me the trouble and aggravation. Either they killed him, then tossed him, or they just tied him up and tossed him. Shit, now, instead of one homicidal maniac on board, we had three? Have you called this in?”

“That’s the second bit of bad news.”

Nick sank into Jonah’s guest chair. “Christ. Are we going to put this farce to music? Now what?”

“I figured you’d want to contact Aries before we contacted the authorities.” Jonah slid a piece of paper across the shiny surface of his desk, and Nick reached for it. “Instead of answering, he sent us this encrypted e-mail. I took a wild guess as to the content. You give it a shot.”

It only took him a few minutes to decode the message. He and Aries had knocked this code out months ago. “Son of a bitch.”

“What’d it say?”

“All communications from the
Scorpion
are being monitored,” Nick paraphrased as he crushed the note in his fist. “The signals are being triangulated between Rabat, Freetown, and Dubrovnik.”

Jonah raised his eyebrows. “Morocco, Sierra Leone, and
Croatia
?”

“I doubt the trace is originating from any of those cities,” Nick said, glancing at the high-tech equipment nearby. This “favor” had gone from mildly entertaining cloak-and-dagger to murder, too damned fast. The stakes had been raised by players unknown, and Nick was no longer amused or interested in playing spy.

“So.” Jonah exhaled. “Now what?”

“Aries says ‘business as usual’ as they close in on the principals from their end.” Nick scrubbed his jaw. He needed a shave. “We have sixteen innocent people on board who didn’t sign up for a God-damned murder mystery cruise.”

“What do you want to do?” Jonah asked. “Head back to Tarfaya? We could claim engine trouble, unload everything and everyone, and be short of both the diamonds and the men responsible for killing Halkias.”

Nick gave the idea serious consideration. It certainly had merit. Reluctantly he shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Nick—”

“Hundreds of thousands of men, woman, and children are being killed by weapons purchased with money obtained through the sale of blood diamonds,” he said tersely. “We’re the only lead Aries and his team have to this group of sellers. Our participation in this will put a stop to much of that, which is why we agreed to do this.”

“Tragic, but hardly our responsibility, Nick. The crew and divers trust us— Fuck.” Jonah slammed a fist against the arm of the chair. “Trust
me
to keep them safe on board. You own this ship, but as captain, the buck stops with me.”

“Officially, yeah. The buck does stop with you. But I was the one who made the pact with the devil.” Nick pocketed the message, unwilling to trust the sanctity of his own goddamn garbage bins anymore. “Christ, Jonah. I’m sorrier than hell for dragging you into this mess.”

His friend shook his head soundlessly.

Nick stared at the floor. The situation was a mess, and he had to fix what he could. “Our crew comes first. Take the men you know you can trust and use the chopper to fly out of here.” Nick looked up. “You’re a shit pilot, but you should be able to get to Las Palmas in one piece.”

“I’m not sure that’s the answer.” Jonah didn’t rise from his seat, and the set to his jaw told Nick everything he needed to know about his friend’s opinion on Nick’s orders. “We both knew the risks of transporting multimillions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. I opted in without question because what’s happening in Africa is criminal.” He rubbed his brow, his tone weary. “But now we know there are murderers on board. We can’t tell the crew. We can’t call the authorities.”

“And Aries has tied our hands.” Nick was torn between what was right for the world and what was right for his ship. He’d made a choice, but now people on the
Scorpion
were being attacked. He couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. “I’ll stay on board, finish the transfer. You keep your name clear.”

Jonah gave a mirthless laugh. “Think I’m going to leave you to have all the fun? Hell, no.” This time there was a glimmer of humor in his eyes. “No guts no glory, Cutter.”

Nick frowned. He was the one who’d offered to help the counterterrorist operative. Not Jonah. And having his friend put his life—hell, any of their lives—at risk because he’d wanted a little excitement in his life didn’t sit well with Nick. “You didn’t sign up for murder.”

“Neither did you,” Jonah replied, “but that’s what we’ve got.”

Nick blew out a frustrated breath, then stood and clasped his friend’s shoulder. “The only way we’re going to protect our crew is if we find those bastards first. Have you fixed the surveillance camera or is this the grainy crap we’ll be getting for the duration?”

“Working on it.” Jonah paused. “Have you given any more thought to your princess’s involvement?”

Nick knew the taste and texture of her mouth, and the silk of her hair between his fingers. He knew just thinking about her gave him an erection. And he knew, damn it, that he didn’t like losing control like that.

But, no. He didn’t know anything else for certain.

He was starting to think nothing about this trip was what it seemed.

“I don’t entirely trust her,” Nick told him, pleased to notice that his modulated tone hadn’t changed to the imbalanced frenzy he felt just thinking about her. “That said, I’m not willing to throw her to the wolves if she’s an innocent.”

“Interesting.
I
don’t get the criminal vibe from her,” Jonah said with a shrug. “But I’ll follow your lead.”

“Appreciate it, buddy.” Nick hesitated, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t get the vibe either. But he had to have
something
to deter him from jumping her at any, and every, opportunity. “I wouldn’t have agreed to do this if I didn’t believe it was the right thing, no matter what Aries wanted me to do.”

And one princess with a sexy mouth wasn’t going to distract him from staying the course no matter what chaos she caused.

“I know,” Jonah said, watching him soberly. “Aries and his people are closing in. Once they have that sewn up, they’ll round up whatever bad guys are on board, and things will be back to normal before we dock at Cutter Cay. A matter of days for that to happen, right? Doing our part in this will make a difference.” Jonah sounded more comfortable now that they’d cleared the air and he felt back in control.

“It’s a plan, then. We’ll stick to our schedule, and while we’re doing that, uncover who on board is our murderer.” And why Bria had been targeted by Halkias. “In the meantime, it’s business as usual. Consider everyone on board a suspect. Everyone.”

“Right.”

They were scheduled to remain at anchor in this location for another two weeks. But plans had to change. Nick got to his feet. “Let’s tighten two weeks to one, then we’ll head to Cutter Cay at top speed, agreed?”

They shook on it. Then they went to Nick’s office where he unlocked the safe and handed Jonah a weapon and a box of bullets.

They weren’t without skills of their own.

*   *   *

Nick had instructed Bria not to leave the cabin under any circumstances until he was positive all signs of danger were past.

A lovely sentiment. But after an hour in his suite—no matter how luxurious and white it was—she needed air. She needed human contact. She needed, damn it, not to be pacing as she analyzed those mind-blowing kisses. Or staring at the bed where he’d practically had her salivating after his hard body.

She expertly applied makeup so she looked naturally sun-kissed and not made-up at all, which always took longer. Then judiciously applied concealer to the bruises on her throat and arms.

She sketched the view from the window. Water as far as the eye could see. She sketched Nick—first, with his head on a platter, which amused her, then one of him smiling, another of him scowling, and then one of his expression right after the kiss.
That
was an interesting one. And interesting that her pencil remembered more than her mind’s eye.

He hadn’t been as unaffected as she’d first thought.

Tossing down the drawing pad, and in need of more aggressive movement, she stalked from one side of the bedroom to the other. Seven times.

She made the bed.

She paced to the window. To the door.

Looked at the pictures in a magazine.

Went to the bathroom.

Reapplied her lipstick.

Did a sketch of the
Scorpion
and another of the man who’d attacked her. Then paced some more.

Fortunately, the steward had saved her from her own insanity, calling through the door between the suite and Nick’s adjoining office that he was leaving a selection of clothes on the chair for her.

She’d collected them immediately and spread them out on Nick’s bed. A bright cornucopia of designer labels. The real deal, not the knockoffs Bria was used to. She plucked up a white one-shoulder sundress made from fine linen. It looked as though it would fit.

It did. After winding the red sash from the dress she’d arrived in around her waist a couple of times and tucking in the ends, she shoved her feet into her wedge sandals, and left the cabin with her tote, which contained everything she owned. Nobody stopped her.