splashing on tiles brings my attention to the bathroom door. The longer I stare at it, the harder unease presses down on my chest.
Raphael called me a broad and now he’s washing me off his body. But now that I’ve let him inside me, I have this awful feeling I won’t be able to do the same.
I sit up straighter, trying to ignore the fresh trickle of cum pooling between my thighs. I didn’t realize Raphael was living on the yacht, but jeez, why wouldn’t you? I study the bedroom—cabin—for the first time. Black curtains, cream walls. Soft fabrics on hard furnishings. It’s definitively him, and everything that isn’t belongs to me. The panties swinging off the lamp. The shorts crumpled on the window seat. My stuff looks as out of place in this room as I feel.
The air is so awkward it stiffens my limbs. I lie back and succumb to it, staring at the ceiling. After what feels like hours, but is probably only minutes, I realize the shower is still running. That awkwardness heats into embarrassment.
Is he waiting for me to leave? Jesus. Aside from not taking me on a date and fucking me without a condom, he’s treated me like every other woman. He fucked me from behind, and he fucked me rough. Maybe he expects me to be gone before he gets out?
Sick at the idea of him coming out of the shower and being annoyed I’m still lazing in his bed, I jump out of it. I scramble around for my bra and shorts, put them on, then yank my vest top over my breasts.
Now what?
I wish I knew what the regular one-night-stand etiquette was. It might give me some insight into what to do after a one-morning-stand. I could have probably figured it out with a bit of common sense, if, you know, I wasn’t stranded on a mega yacht in the middle of the Pacific.
Oh—one I also happen to work on.
If my head wasn’t already spinning, I’d smack it against the wall for my sins. I’m such an idiot. The second I leave this room, I run the risk of bumping into a coworker.
Taking a deep breath, I squeeze my eyes shut and mentally place two scenarios side-by-side. The first, is Anna’s shocked face when she sees me in my pajama shorts creeping out of Raphael’s room. The second, is Raphael stepping out the bathroom in a low-slung towel. He’s looking at his phone and slows in surprise when he realizes I’m still in his bed. Oh, he says, running a hand over his neck. I thought you’d have left by now.
Absolutely not.
I rip open the door and scurry down the hall. I find one slipper at the end of it; the other in the crew mess. I ignore the Chief Officer and First Engineer having breakfast and dart up the stairs, where the blanket is slung over the railing. Other members of the ghost crew step aside to let me pass, biting their lips and glancing at their watches, but I keep my chin tilted high and my mind on the swim platform.
Next mission: hitch a ride back to the Coast.
Shivering by an open door, I press my nose against the window and squint out to the Pacific. It’s bright and blue and not a single vessel bobs over its turbulent waves.
Come on. I touch the pendant around my neck, as if to remind it that lucky girls would suddenly chance upon a shuttle leaving for the port any second.
Nothing.
My sigh mists up the glass. I need to find someone and beg them to take me over. The bosun and his deckhands are usually hovering around the platform, cleaning jet skis in the garage or washing down the decks.
Wrapping the blanket tighter around myself and bracing my bones for the cold, I step outside to see if I can spot any signs of life. I’ll probably die of hypothermia, but it’s favorable to dying of embarrassment.
“You gonna swim home?”
The harsh wind carries a cashmere-coated question to my back. My shoulders snap into a tight line. I turn to see Raphael leaning against the frame of the French doors, humor dancing in his eyes.
Christ, he looks handsome. Fresh suit, fresh shave. The only sign he’d beaten someone to death a few hours ago are his busted knuckles gripping a kitchen towel.
I swallow the rock in my throat. “If I have to.”
“Mm. Long way to swim on an empty stomach.”
His phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket and turns his attention to the screen. “Get inside, Penelope,” he says, without looking up. “I’m not done with you yet.”
I stare at the side of his face for a few beats, then out to the ocean.
As I reluctantly cross back into the warmth of the sky lounge, Raphael cracks my ass with the towel like a whip.
I’m starting to think I fell asleep on my couch while reading Lucid Dreaming for Dummies, or something. Maybe I didn’t really get into Raphael’s car last night, he didn’t really kill Blake, and I’m not really sitting in the crew mess with his cum drying on the inside of my thigh.
Because, surely, Raphael Visconti making me breakfast can’t be real.
My glare cuts through the room and into the kitchen where he stands over the stove, poking eggs with a spatula. His cell is tucked between his ear and shoulder, and he barks ragged Italian into its mouthpiece.
The harsh spotlights highlight all of the man’s contrasts. The sharp suit that’s at odds with his busted knuckles; his callous foreign monologue that conflicts with the sophisticated roll of his wrist as he swirls the contents of his vodka glass. The sight is a source of tension, and I sit here with a straight spine and curled fists, bracing in case it combusts in my face.
He abruptly hangs up and tosses the cell on the counter. It starts buzzing immediately, but he ignores it in favor of dishing up breakfast. As he strolls toward me with a loaded plate in hand, he snatches the phone back up and continues his slew of Italian.
The plate clatters between my fists, and he heads back to the kitchen.
My gaze flicks down at it and my throat tightens. Scrambled eggs, salmon, and sourdough toast—my favorite. Does he make breakfast for every woman he fucks, or just the ones he kills men for?
For a while, I find comfort in autopilot. Fork to eggs, fork to mouth. Chew, swallow, repeat. But when a dark shadow shifts over my toast, I realize it’s impossible to be mechanical when Raphael is standing so close.
My fork stills mid-air and I swallow, then force my eyes to climb the sharp front crease of his trousers and meet his blistering stare. It doesn’t waiver, even when he rests his palms on the table and dips to steal the egg off my fork.
Christ. A rough shiver vibrates through me, still rattling my insides long after Raphael has sauntered back into the kitchen.
I let my fork clatter to the plate, my stomach too full of unease for any more food. Him swiping my breakfast gave me the same gut-wrenching feeling as his kiss between my shoulder blades did, or his hand against my crown, cushioning the blow of the headboard.
Gentle. Thoughtful. Intimate. All my reservations about being here rise to the surface, and suddenly, I need air that doesn’t taste like a…boyfriend.
I scrape my chair back, earning me a sideways glare from the kitchen. I ignore it, take my plate to the sink, and start running the hot water to wash it up.
Raphael comes up behind me and cages me in. Burning up at all the points where his suit touches my skin, I try to slow my breathing and focus on the suds fizzing in the basin.
His Italian so close to my ear makes me feverish. When he pauses to let whoever is on the line speak, he slides his arms through mine and takes the plate from me. I can only grip the edge of the counter and watch his large, damaged hands as they swipe the dish sponge over the plate until it’s sparkling.
So, even on his darkest days, this man is domesticated. This isn’t helping with my unease in the slightest.
The moment he gives me an inch of breathing room, I mutter a thank you, then bolt like a racehorse toward the door. His hand catches me just above his watch on my wrist, and he tugs me around.
With a cold glance at my shorts, he switches to English.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Anywhere you aren’t. “Upstairs.”
He frowns and motions for me to wait, then he disappears down the stairs. Minutes later, comes back with a Stanford hoodie on a hanger. He holds it up beside me, looks down at the hemline and gives a curt nod of approval, as if he deems it long enough.
“Put this on first.”
I don’t argue but I wish I did. Because the moment the collar brushes over my nose and assaults me with his warm oak and mint scent, an awful realization fissures my heart.
One-morning-stands hurt.
There’s a small living room at the back of the yacht. It sits three floors above the swim platform, and its large bay window frames the storm rolling over the Pacific.
I snatch up a cushion from the sofa, crawl onto the window seat and press my burning face against the cold glass.
It took ten minutes to find a suitable room to hide in. My only requirement was a door that locked from the inside. Now, Raphael’s men can’t glare at me, and the yacht cleaners can’t side-eye me over their vacuums. I knew I’d found the perfect place when I found no cameras tacked to the ceiling, and a finger-sweep over the coffee table turned up a layer of dust.
The obnoxious tick of a grandfather clock tells me it’s been over an hour since I last moved. I fear if I do, I’ll start climbing the walls. My body buzzes with a million questions, none of which I have answers to.
Why didn’t Raphael shove me onto the first shuttle heading back to shore?
Why did he make me breakfast?
Between all the suits, when the fuck does the man wear his college hoodie?
I peel my face off the glass and nestle my nose in the collar. Christ, I should really stop doing that, because his scent soaks into my skin and heats it every time. He smells so good.
In a sudden rush of female solidarity, I hope he doesn’t treat all his one-night-stands like this, not if he seriously doesn’t plan on seeing them again. Because being booted out while he’s in the shower would have been favorable to wearing his warm clothes and tasting his delicious eggs.
Sighing, I lift my head and glare out to the Coast. The sight of an incoming shuttle makes my throat tighten.
Is the staff heading here for work already? The thought of Laurie catching me strolling around the yacht on my day off wearing Raphael’s hoodie as a dress makes my blood itch. Sure, the look on Anna and Claudia’s faces would be priceless, but still, I know what I’d look like to them: just another girl who dropped her panties and let Raphael Visconti fuck her from behind.
Pathetic, really. At least the other two guys I succumbed to wooed me with sweet words, even if they turned out to be fake as fuck. Raphael hadn’t even unleashed his signature charm on me; he just killed a man and carried me to his bedroom.
Squinting under the sun, I press my face to the glass and realize I recognize the lone figure in the Carhartt beanie seated at the back of the boat.
Matt. What the hell is he doing here?
Heart racing, I fly out the room and take the back stairs two at a time, until I’m shivering on the swim platform to greet him.
As the boat bumps against the fender, he cups a hand to his brow and looks up at me.
“What the fuck, Pen?” is all he says.
He stares at the Stanford logo on my chest as Griffin strolls out of the lounge behind me, kicks his legs apart, and roughly pats him down. He gives a nod of approval to the suit driving the boat, then pins me with a blistering glare.
“You’re trouble kid,” he grunts, before slamming the lounge door so hard the glass rattles.
Yeah, whatever. I’m too taken aback by Matt’s sudden arrival to care about my reputation among Raphael’s men.
Icy wind whipping around us, we stare at each other for a few beats. I open my mouth to cut through the silence, but Matt glances at the camera masquerading as a heat lamp above our heads, and pulls me toward him by the hips.
“Blink twice if you’ve been kidnapped.”
I pause, then blink twice.
His eyes grow wide, then he shoves me away and runs a shaky hand through his hair. “Fuck. Seriously?”
“Nah. Just wanted to see what you’d do if I’d said yes.”
He considers this. “Jack shit,” he admits. “I’m not exactly going to beat up Raphael Visconti, am I?” He nods out to the raging Pacific. “I’d be sleeping with the fishes by lunch.”
My laugh softens the tight line of his shoulders. He runs a look of disbelief down my body and shakes his head. “Tell me—why did I wake up to a man with biceps the width of my head hammering down my front door?”
“What?”
He gives the suitcase at his feet a little kick. My suitcase. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding it. “Yeah, he kicked down the door to your apartment and told me to collect all your stuff.” He rolls his eyes. “If he’d asked, I’d have told him I had your spare key.”
My heart sinks a few inches in my chest. Why would I need my stuff? And although I was joking, maybe I have been kidnapped. Otherwise, why the fuck couldn’t I go and get it myself?
“Oh dear,” I mutter.
“Oh dear indeed, Pen.” Matt glances behind me, curiosity warming them. “Can we go inside? Your lips are turning blue.”
I know he cares more about getting an MTV Cribs-style tour than my health, but I lead him through the yacht regardless. His slew of holy shit’s and fucking hell’s echo off the mahogany walls, and by the time we enter the lounge, he’s buzzing with excitement.
“Imagine being so rich you live on a yacht,” he exclaims, yanking off his beanie and flopping down on a sofa. “Do you know how much it costs to run a boat this size?”
“No. Do you?”
He looks at me seriously. “A fuck-ton of cash.”
Smiling, I flick on the barista machine behind the bar. “You’re just a walking, talking calculator, aren’t you Matty? Coffee?”
“On Raphael Visconti’s yacht? Obviously.”
I make us both flat whites and join him on the sofa. He eyes me over the steam rising from his cup. “Come on, then. What’s the deal?”
I hitch a shoulder. To hell if I know. “I think…well, I don’t know. I think we’re fucking.”
I use present, not past tense, because the suitcase sitting in the corner of the room suggests I’m going to be hanging around for a little while.
Matt blinks. “You’re fucking Raphael Visconti.”
“Can you stop saying his full name like that? Sounds like you want to fuck him too.”
He ignores me. “You’re fucking Raphael Visconti on his mega yacht.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “I’m reiterating the fact in the hope you’ll stop looking like you’re about to cry and realize how lucky you are.” He shakes his head, a bitter edge to his expression. “Bet his dick is huge.”
Lucky. My necklace grows denser. I don’t feel lucky. Raphael’s hot body flushed against mine only raised more questions than answers, and now there’s a constant stream of unease running through my veins.
My fingers curl around my coffee cup so tightly it scalds my skin. I have the sudden urge to grip Matt by the collar of his puffer jacket and beg him to help me.
Instead, I claw together some decorum and glare at the space above his head. “I don’t know what this is,” I mutter.
“You’re friends with benefits.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Enemies with benefits, then. Jeez, Pen. Have you never had a fuck buddy before?”
My gaze slides down to his shit-eating smirk. Something about my expression wipes it right off.
He nods. Sets down his coffee cup and switches into teacher-mode “All right, I’ve got you. Believe it or not, I’ve had a few fuck buddies in my time, and here are the top three things you need to know.” He pops out a finger. “First of all, you’ve gotta be sure about what you want. Do you want to stay on this mega yacht and fuck the billionaire Raphael Visconti, yes or no?”
I don’t bother telling him his question is skewed for a biased answer. Instead, I glance at the blinking camera above the bar and nod tightly.
He grins. “Yeah, no shit. Okay, then second of all, you need to make sure you both understand it’s not serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“For about a year, I was sleeping with this girl three times a week. Then one night, I realized her toothbrush was in my bathroom—and not her spare.” He stares at me pointedly and rolls his eyes when he’s met with my blank expression. “Turns out I was her boyfriend and I didn’t even know it. My point is, communicate. You’ve got to be clear with your intentions from the beginning.” He smirks. “Give him your bitter monologue about love being a trap—he’ll get the hint pretty quickly.”
My laugh comes out easy. Suddenly, I realize the unease in my system doesn’t feel as venomous as it did before. “And the third?”
The grin melts from his face. He leans over and grips my arm. “The third, is to always remember that being friends with benefits can’t last forever. I’m sure the same is true for enemies with benefits, too. Don’t stay too long, all right?”
My throat clots. “What happens if I stay too long?”
A sad smile tilts his lips. “You’ll get trapped.”
It’s those three words that are still haunting the inside of my skull ten minutes later, when we’re standing on the warm side of the French doors, watching Raphael’s men load up the small craft.
Matt sighs. “Odds on me getting thrown overboard before we get back to Devil’s Dip?”
Griffin looks up and glares at me through the glass. I sigh too. “Pretty high, I’m afraid.”
“If I die, tell Anna I loved her.”
“You don’t love her, idiot.”
He grins. “I know, but it sounds kind of romantic, doesn’t it? Anyway—” He turns and grabs my wrists. “Repeat my three tips back to me.”
I bite back a smile. “Be sure of what I want, make sure he’s on the same page, and…” My smile dims a few watts. “Don’t fall in love.”
He looks down at me like a proud father. “You’re not as stupid as you look.” Before I can fight his insult with a better one, he pulls me in for a hug, his chin coming down on my head. “And most importantly, relax and enjoy yourself. Suck some dick, get your pussy eaten—”
“Matt!”
His laugh vibrates against my cheek. “In all seriousness, don’t take it too seriously, all right? Men fuck without feelings all the time. Women can too.”
I pull back, flushed from his vulgarity. “You’re a pioneer for the feminist movement, Matty.”
He winks. “Yeah, yeah. I’m a pioneer for whatever will get me laid.” Griffin raps an angry knuckle on the door, making him flinch. “Fuck me,” he grunts, tugging on a beanie. “Way to ruin a moment.”
“You’re increasing your chances of getting chucked overboard by the second.”
“Yeah, I better get going,” he says, zipping up his jacket. “Listen, I’ve put some snacks in your suitcase. Those peanut butter ones you don’t think I realize you’ve been stealing from my cupboard.”
I frown. “That’s oddly nice of you.”
He chucks me under the chin. “Yeah, well when I packed them, it was six a.m. and I thought you’d been kidnapped.”
I laugh. “Well you can’t take them back now.”
“I suppose not. Oh—one more thing. Be home for Christmas, all right? I banked on you also being a loser with no family. Got a turkey in the freezer and I’ve already bought us those silly Santa hats.”
The pit of my stomach warms. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Matt blows me a kiss from the shuttle, just before he shrinks to a small dot on the horizon.
With my fingertips on the window, I watch until he disappears entirely, partly because I’m worried he truly will get tossed overboard, and partly because I miss him already. He’s shaping up to be a good friend, although I’d rather claw my eyes out than tell him so.
Once there’s nothing on the Pacific but sea foam, I turn around, press my shoulders against the glass, and take a deep breath. Matt’s three tips have lit a fire inside me; kidnapped or not, I’m going to hunt down Raphael and lay down the law.
