Riptide (17 page)

Nick had absolutely no interest in food. Bria looked as wild and exotic as a gypsy with her thick, shiny hair in a messy tangle of curls around her bare shoulders. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her.

The game had changed, but he couldn’t pinpoint how, or where, or even why. All he knew was that his old rule book was worthless when it came to Gabriella Visconti.

Her dark eyes still looked a little dazed, fever bright as they darted over the table, the ocean beyond, the deck—everywhere but at him. It was impossible for her to hide the hard, telltale throb at the base of her throat or the flush that made her skin glow.

Steam from the hot tub drifted lazily in the almost still air, the shifting lights adding another layer of mystery to the deck along the shadowy perimeter.

Bria glanced around. “Where is everyone? Did you lock everyone else in their cabins too?”

He ignored her none-too-subtle dig. But it certainly helped his bruised sense of control. “Having dinner, and watching an Indiana Jones marathon.”

She tilted her head, and a few long tendrils slipped forward over her shoulder. “Why aren’t you in there with them?” she asked, her eyes finally meeting his.

Score one for me,
they flashed. He almost cracked a grin. She thought a direct question to put him on the spot was a win?

Nick couldn’t quite figure her out. Was she the sophisticate she appeared to be? She certainly oozed class and sophistication. A royal beauty.

He narrowed his eyes. A royal pain in the ass, is what she was. And yet he’d stake his share of the dive that she wasn’t as experienced in the bedroom as she wanted him to believe.

Unless
that
was a ruse to keep him occupied while the Moroccans skulked about his ship doing God only knew what.

Christ, what was the real answer here?

He smiled at her across the table. “Why would I watch a movie when I can get to know you better?”

“Get to know me better, huh?” The sarcastic lilt to her voice let him know the gloves were off and it was game on. She picked up her fork, toying with it a moment before tipping her head in that way she had. It slid her hair over her bare shoulder, outlined the curve of her throat in moonlight and muted deck lights.

She’d covered her bruises. Around her throat, smudged on her upper arms. But Nick knew the location of every one. He didn’t have to see them to remember that she’d been brutally attacked under his watch.

“All right.” She cradled the stem of her glass. Red fingernails turned him on. He imagined them digging into his ass as he pumped into her—“Nick? Where’d you just go? What do you want to know?”

Where the hell to start. How about the way she’d taste on his fingers? Nick tamped down the heat, dragging his gaze from her slender, red-tipped hands, back to her face. “Tell me about growing up as a princess.”

Her jaw shifted faintly, and he wasn’t sure if he’d hit a memory or a nerve. “Other than some high points,” she said, readily enough, “I was pretty much like every other privileged child. Spoiled, pampered…” Her eyes lit with a sad sort of sparkle as she added softly, “Loved.”

Dangerous ground. He reached for his wineglass and asked, “Wasn’t there responsibility to go with the crown?”

Her bare lips curved into a smile that hit Nick in his solar plexus. Sweet, teasing, and completely without artifice. “I was only a princess for seven years, so I never wore a crown. Not a very long time to get all the hand-kissing, baby-shaking parts of my duties learned.” Her dark eyes caught the moonlight, and her smile widened, exposing those slightly crooked eyeteeth that he found ridiculously charming.

That smile … Nick wanted to feel it around his dick. He wanted to crush that explosion of gypsy hair in his fists, and— His grip tightened on his glass, and he set it down before he cracked it. “Seven years,” he repeated, aware it came out tense. “Before your parents died and changed things for you. Who took care of you after that?”

Her smile slipped at the mention of her parents’ death. “It’s complicated.” She lifted a shoulder. “Marvin Ginsberg was my personal bodyguard, and he raised me.”

Nick pushed his plate away with his thumbs, far more interested in Bria than food. “Marvin …
Ginsberg
?”

“I know, right?” Her smile, dangerous enough, returned, this time shaped into a conspiratorial grin that had Nick’s pulse skyrocketing. “His real name was Mauro, but everyone called him by his American father’s name, and it just stuck. He was more a Marvin than a Mauro anyway.” She rested her elbow on the table, propping her chin on her hand. It did mouthwatering things to her cleavage that was practically spilling out into her salad, and Nick forced his eyes to remain on hers.

“His mother was Marrezan and lived in Pavina,” she continued. “So Marv had lived on Marrezo off and on most of his life. He was my—” She shrugged slim, bare shoulders as she removed her elbows, curling her slender fingers around the stem of her glass. Her generous, kissable mouth curved gently, and her eyes softened.

“Your?” Dampening down the chaos of his thoughts, he made a fist beside his plate as he had the tactile memory of cupping her smooth ass in his palm. His erection felt as though it would be there for a while.

The smile slipped, leaving her looking sober and too vulnerable. She picked up a chunk of lobster in her fingers and dragged it through the mayonnaise, ate the bite, swallowed. He couldn’t look at the movement of her throat because even that gave him carnal thoughts. He’d call Aries first thing in the morning. Insist she be allowed to leave.

Wiping her fingers on her napkin, oblivious to where his thoughts were, she continued. “He was everything to me, from seven to twenty-three. Bodyguard, mother, father, protector. He taught me a lot. About everything.”

She reached for another chunk of lobster, ignoring her fork. It was the most sensual damn thing Nick had ever seen, watching her eat with her fingers with such obvious enjoyment. In silence, she focused on her salad for a few minutes.

The silence was comfortable, for
her,
filled with crackling, high-octane sexual tension for him. She didn’t try to fill it, which was a pleasant surprise. Most women would’ve. Instead, she ate with relish, companionably quiet. But every bite she took meant he had to look at the motion of her lips, her teeth, her tongue. His control was already hanging by a thread.

He drank from his water glass, ignoring the wine, looking over the dark ocean to rest his eyes for a moment. The
Sea Witch
’s lights were out, but he could see her blacker-than-black outline out there a few hundred feet off the port bow. The moon painted a milky road across the midnight surface of the water.

Would have been nice if life could paint such clear and obvious paths to follow. But that wasn’t how it worked. Things were more intriguing if they weren’t so clear-cut and defined.

He’d always found liars particularly interesting as human studies. Fortunate, because in his experience, they were thick on the ground. The why-and-why-not of them was what made his hobby with T-FLAC so fascinating. Especially since he didn’t play in that dirty water very often. He enjoyed the challenge a liar presented. The better the prevarication, the more the challenge. It had, he knew, started with his own father, the king of misdirection.

A man who lied to his own wife and sons was a hell of a puzzle.

Bria’s fork clinked against her plate. “Okay,” she said slowly, “I know I was expecting an expression north of frigid, but you have a scary look on your face right now.” Her tone was light, but she pointed her fork at him like a weapon. “I hope you aren’t armed.”

As a matter of fact, he
was
armed. He had a Sig Sauer tucked beneath the lightweight sweater, in the small of his back. He’d instructed Jonah to do the same. Having her out of the bedroom out in the open was a risk. He schooled his features. “A trick of the light,” he said softly, indicating she continue eating.

She cocked a dark eyebrow at him. “Sure it is,” she said, but half under her breath.

He almost grinned. Saucy woman. He leaned back, cradling his glass. “I’ve never been to Marrezo, what’s it like? You went back for your brother’s coronation a couple of years ago, right? How has it changed since you saw it last?”

Even as he peppered her with questions, he realized he wasn’t just making conversation. He really wanted to know about this woman who agitated him more than any woman had done before. About her life, her home. Her past.

Bria circled the foot of her glass on the crisp white tablecloth beside her plate. “My life as a child was idyllic. I was surrounded by people who loved me, in a country where I was adored. So if I paint Marrezo gold, that’s where the bias comes from.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she gave a gentle laugh.

“It’s the third smallest monarchy in the world after the Vatican and Monaco. Surrounded by deep blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.”

“Sounds charming,” he said, not because it was poignant, but because he saw how her face lit when she spoke about her childhood home. And he liked hearing her talk.

Her smile went crooked. “Oh, it is. Idyllic and beautiful and a strategically perfect place for international terrorists to set up shop.”

“Why?”

She raised her hands to represent imaginary borders. “It’s small,” she explained. “Like, really small. In the scheme of things, Marrezo was just one of hundreds of tiny voices in the European Union. It’s situated between Sardinia and the west coast of Italy, which is a great staging point for, well…”

“For terrorist activity,” he supplied when her voice trailed off.

She nodded.

He watched the emotional play of her features, saw the subtle way her eye muscles firmed into studied matter-of-factness. She could recite it all she wanted, and he respected her aplomb, but he could tell the memory still weighed on her.

“So what happened?” he asked, both to watch her as she spoke and to fill his own ignorance on the subject.

She was right. Marrezo was tiny. Barely a blip on the world’s radar. Given the island country had created Bria, that didn’t seem right to him. The birthplace of such a vibrant woman should matter more.

But maybe that was his bias talking.

She took a sip of wine. He didn’t push her, watching the fascinating play of studied detachment, resignation, sorrow, and pride as she considered his question. Then, quietly, she took a long, deep breath. “We had no warning. My mother had just read me a bedtime story—”

He watched her over the rim of his glass.

“She’d just tucked me in when we saw flames reflected in the windows. My mom was nobody’s fool.” Her smile flickered in and out like a light. “She screamed for Marvin, who grabbed me. As he carried me through the secret passages of the palace, we saw my father fall. Thrown from the top of the stairs…” She shuddered, rubbing her bare arms. “I knew in that instant that my mother and Draven had been killed too. My entire family had been wiped out in hours. I was the only one left.”

Nick couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, seven and terrified.

“I remember the glow, mostly,” she finally said, studying her wine as if it held all the answers. “The palace was in flames, both towns were burning. The sky was orange with it, and thick with the smell of smoke, like a really demonic sunset. People were screaming, and attempting to run, or swim, or paddle away as fast as they could.”

“Then what?” he asked when it seemed like she’d stare at her glass forever.

Her eyes lifted, and he was relieved to find them clear. Not a tear in sight. “Marv took me to the Sapphire Grotto a few miles away. He left me there, raced back to help…” She paused, her fingernails tapping gently against her glass. The gentle clink of crystal punctuated the silence like a tiny bell. “I waited in the cave,” she said calmly, “hiding way in the back until Marv returned the next night. He had a boat, and he rowed all night to reach a small fishing village on the coast.”

“Horrific.” Even for an adult who might have had a hope in hell of understanding what was going down. Zane had been with their father when he’d had his heart attack and died. It was still hard for his brother to talk about that day. To a little princess, it must’ve seemed like the world was ending.

The door to the media room opened, and the chatter of automatic gunfire riveted her attention for a moment before it was once again muted.

Bria sighed, then raised her chin, and her eyes met his. Direct, bold. “Nick, I’m not telling you this just to share something,” she said, her husky voice firm. “I’m telling you because what happened forged who I’ve become. You keep calling me ‘princess’ like it
means
something, but I’m not a princess. No matter how many times you call me one, it’s just a … a mask. A title, a word. I don’t
feel
it.” She tapped her heart. “In here, I’m as American as apple pie.”

She was anything but the girl next door, no matter where or by whom she been raised. “You’ve got the princess walk down.”

To his surprise, she laughed. The sound slid into his skin, into his jeans, and squeezed. Christ.

“Show me a confident woman who doesn’t.”

“That’s it?”

She shrugged. “I was catapulted into full-blown reality at a young age. As long as I knew him, Marv was paranoia personified. We were on the run for a long time. He taught me how to protect myself. I can fire almost any kind of gun, and I’m a fourth dan black belt in Krav Maga.”

Nick’s eyebrows shot up, this time in surprise. So she
had
been responsible for beating the crap out of Halkias. Good for her.

“In other words,” she finished, her tone even, “to feel safe, I want—no, I
need
to be responsible for my own safety. Marvin made sure I would never feel powerless again.”

She put up a slender hand as if he was about to argue. He wasn’t.

“After I got mad at you for imprisoning me today, I got where you’re coming from,” she assured him. “I really do. You feel responsible for me while I’m on board your ship. I appreciate it, and I’ll accept that.” And without waiting for him to get a word in edgewise, she continued firmly. “But by the same token, you have to understand that not being allowed to take some control of the situation scares me more than having an unknown assailant around, and being locked up terrifies me.”