Chapter Thirty-Nine

Safiya

M y skin was on fire, my legs were trembling, but my newfound anger was a wild sandstorm of hurling, majestic fury.

I could not breathe through it.

I could not spear my foot through it as I yanked the first soft pant leg up. I could not even balance its magnitude as I pulled on another woman's clothes—a woman who may or may not be someone Grayson was intimately familiar with.

Because that was what this storm was about.

Him.

Pushing me, baiting me, bathing me, saving me, carrying me, asking provocative questions like he had never asked before. This was not a bath where he had kneeled and touched me more intimately than he ever had.

This was not another woman's clothes on my body.

This was a ghost who did and said and behaved how he wanted, when he wanted, and I was powerless against all of it. Worse than that, I was at his mercy.

He did not get to ask me, while the most intimate part of my body was bare, if I had ever taken what I had wanted.

He took.

He always took.

I would not fall into his trappings.

I would not—

My reflection in the mirror stopped me cold.

Listless, wet hair, sunken eyes, bruised chin, a thin welt of dried blood across my throat, the most expensive outfit I had ever worn… and my cheeks were flushed like I had been in the sun all day.

As if a twig had snapped, so did my reasoning.

Looking away from the mirror, I yanked on the designer leggings with a brand name I recognized because even as a sheepherder from Turkey who had never had a single possession worth a damn, I knew Chanel.

I also knew this yacht was so expensive that if the owners were the type of friends that Grayson associated with, then I was never going to fit into his world—no matter how many degrees I earned. And that singular thought only made the anger grow.

Not bothering to search through another woman's belongings to look for a hairbrush, I stormed out of the bathroom like a ghost SEAL had strode into it, but as soon as I was in the opulent suite, I stopped short.

Standing with his back to me, miraculously in a new shirt that was dry and fitted to his size, he remained still like a silent, lethal sentry, but I knew he heard me.

He always heard me.

You could not move around the man without him noticing how many steps you took.

I knew this because, same as he had watched me all these years, I had watched him.

So I stood there, righteous in my anger, embarrassed in my clothes, and jealous in this suite.

I stood, and I waited for him to turn around.

Except he did not.

Wearing his fresh clothes that did not look like he had borrowed his rich friend's wardrobe, staring at the vastness beyond the slider glass doors, the quiet bass of his voice swept from the view and traveled across the impossibly expensive cabin like liquid heat. "Your anger has a vibration."

"Your aloofness has a color." Cold. Like his eyes.

"You've never been angry with me before."

Every word further he spoke, his voice, his cadence, his purposeful avoidance of eye contact, they ate away at my bloom of anger. "That man said the captain needed you."

"The captain can wait."

"He can, or you are making him?" Fighting against my traitorous body that yearned for his touch, the picked and bruised bloom of my fury had made a last stance with my merited words and set itself free, but I regretted saying them.

The subtle lighting in the suite picking up the blond streaks in his light brown hair and accentuating the hard planes of his muscular body made him look like both a god and an imposing lethal force.

Nodding toward the view, he withdrew a hand from his pocket. "We're still a ways out. I'm not needed yet." He turned, and his gaze immediately landed on mine as if he had known where I was standing, but he did not say anything else.

He stared.

My breath trapped hostage somewhere between my lungs and my throat, my stomach started a familiar pattering, and I could practically hear the blood rushing through my veins in a mad attempt to make me move toward him.

But I did not.

Not one step. Not one breath. Not one flex of a single muscle.

If he was a god, I was a stone.

If he was the warrior, I was the battle.

If I did not move, I might make it off this boat with my shredded heart still beating.

With barely a dip of his head and only the briefest fraction of a glance, his gaze traversed my entire body and set every restrained muscle on fire. "Breathe, Safiya."

The fire swarmed to my chest and grew. "You breathe."

With a gesture I had never seen him make, he tilted his head the slightest degree to the left as his penetrating stare held firm. "Do you need me to?"

All at once disarmed, the battle I was singularly fighting momentarily ceased. "What do you expect me to say to a question like that?" Of course I wanted him breathing. Then we die together.

"The truth."

Which truth? That I would sacrifice my own breath for his? That I would lie down right here and prostrate myself at his altar of unattainability if he asked? That I could not stand another second in my own skin, let alone these clothes, wondering if the woman who owned them had gotten to touch him… or call him husband.

I lied. "I will speak the truth when you do."

"Will you?"

"Test me and find out." He had innate powers of perception. I was sure he would be able to tell if someone was lying or not.

"Do you need to be tested?"

"I need—" Too late I caught myself, but it did not matter. I saw the color shift in his eyes, the almost nonexistent, slight rise in his chest. Averting my gaze, I pushed another lie past my suddenly dry throat. "I need you to leave."

As if the gravitational pull of the earth shifted on his command and time waited for every beat of his heart, he measured his strong strides as he reduced the palatial suite to mere feet.

Stopping nearly level with me on some invisible parallel line only he could see, his left shoulder almost brushed my left arm as he faced the door and I faced the pitch-black night. Then he leaned until his mouth was nearly against my temple, and he said the last thing I was expecting.

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on, Safiya Savas." For the first time, his lips touched my skin.

My bloom erupted, my battle fell, and my heart stopped.

He took a step toward the door.

I made a move toward destruction.