“If you don’t want to dance,” he said, “then why the hell are you here?”
Good
question
, she thought, but didn’t say. Maybe that DNA idea wasn’t as good as she initially thought. Maybe she should just put the entire encounter with Misha behind her and go on with her plan.
She had an optional ticket, one that allowed her to disembark at any port if she ran out of funds. The limitation was in the small print, and really it was designed for the cruise line so that it could legally toss her off the ship if she ran out of money.
Apparently, back in the early days of the cruise line, too many people paid the starting fee and then never paid for anything else, and the ship couldn’t legally toss them off. Instead, the cruise line had to sue for its money, and that never really worked out.
Hence the “new” guidelines, which only existed on lower-class fares. Upper-class fares, like Misha’s, forced the purchaser to pay for everything, including meals, even if the passenger disembarked early.
She had checked on those regulations before she followed Testrial on the ship. She hadn’t mentioned that little piece of information to Misha in their fight that morning because she didn’t want to tip her hand about when she might be leaving the ship.
But that nice little clause in the cruise line’s fare regulations made it even harder for the ship to prove that Testrial didn’t just disembark at some earlier port. Eventually they would find out that his identi-chip—the one she had disabled after she killed him—hadn’t been found leaving the ship, but it would be an eventual discovery, not a quick up-front one.
“C’mon, honey,” that pugnacious bulldog said to her, extending his fat hand. He was dressed well. He clearly had money. Although dancing with him might have been uncomfortable, given that he only came up to her shoulder.
Still, if she hadn’t spent the night with Misha, she would have taken this guy up on his offer. He would have been one of her alibis. But she needed him out of the way, in case Misha showed up.
If Misha showed up.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I’m not in the mood to dance.”
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing at her wrist, “just one.”
She moved her hand slightly so that he didn’t catch her wrist. Instead, he caught her fingers. She gripped his thumb and pushed it backwards enough to hurt him, but not enough to send him to his knees.
“I’m really not a woman you want to mess with,” she said.
His eyes widened. His face had grown pale.
“Yes, right, okay,” he said. “Just let go, all right?”
She did.
He rubbed his hand, kneading the area near his thumb particularly hard. “You could’ve just said no, you know,” he said.
“I did,” she snapped. “You didn’t listen.”
He nodded and scurried away—if a bulldog could scurry. He looked a bit like a tottering tree stump.
She watched him go. She might have felt sorry for him, if he hadn’t been the second man in twenty-four hours who didn’t listen to her.
In fact, that was the hallmark of this entire trip, because Testrial had laughed when she started her litany of his crimes. He hadn’t gotten serious until he saw how serious she was, and how much she had changed.
She was so intent on watching the bulldog that she almost missed the announcement.
The androgynous voice with the formal tone and upper-class accent said, in its snotty little way, “Rafael de Brovnik.”
She turned toward the main doors, and there he was. Her breath caught. She had forgotten in just a few hours how absolutely gorgeous he was.
A diffuse light had fallen on him for just a moment. That was how the entrances of the rich and famous worked in this ballroom—they had everyone’s attention, if everyone wanted to give it to them.
Misha looked a bit uncomfortable, like he didn’t want to be here. He was wearing a long black coat, a brocade vest, and snug black trousers. The brocade brought out his blond hair and highlighted his boots, which were threaded with what looked like real amber.
The light found amber all over him—cuff links, ear posts, buttons. Amber made him look expensive and softened him a bit.
Or maybe the room softened him a bit.
For the first time ever, he seemed out of his element.
He looked around as if he was searching for her. She slipped behind the staircase. She could still see him, but knew that the shadows here protected her from him.
She wanted to observe him for a few minutes, just to get her breath back.
God, he was beautiful.
God, she wanted him.
Her entire body remembered exactly how his felt. She could almost imagine his hands on her right now, touching her—
She didn’t quite shake her head this time, but close. She hated the effect he had on her. Or rather, she wanted to hate it.
She was mad at him, that was it. She was mad and she hated the way he had made her feel, so cheap and used.
She had to remind herself of that because she also loved the way he had made her feel—all night long.
Maybe she could turn into one of those women who didn’t care how their lover treated them because the sex was so very good.
Yeah, right. And maybe she could step out of an airlock and breathe without any special equipment.
Speaking of breathing—or thinking of it, anyway—she made herself take a deep calming breath. She had to get control of herself.
And as she breathed, she had a thought:
How had he known she would be here? Or had he known? Had he been frequenting the ballroom all along?
She doubted that, given the discomfort on his face.
Which meant that he knew she was here.
Which meant that he had been following her from the moment she got on this ship.
The son of a bitch.
She felt the anger slide over her. She grabbed onto it like a lifeline, using it to cancel out the attraction.
Then she squared her shoulders, and walked across the ballroom, keeping to the shadows so he couldn’t see her.
For once, she would have the element of surprise.
For once, he wouldn’t know what hit him.
And then she would find out who he was, and what he really wanted. Once she knew that, she could make her next move.
She could figure out just how much of a threat this Misha/Rafael de Brovnik really and truly was.
Misha hated dancing. He really and truly did. The very idea of going into the ballroom made him uncomfortable.
But Rikki had gone into the ballroom, and she wasn’t leaving. He had watched her icon for a good fifteen minutes before he headed there. He had hoped that she would go elsewhere, a bar or one of the portside pubs. But given her reaction to his suggestions about drinking the night before—and hell, given her reaction to the tiny bit of alcohol she had consumed—he had a hunch that drinking of any sort was low on her priority list.
He usually avoided cruise ship ballrooms. Even on a ship this large—one of the largest in the fleet—the ballroom seemed stuffy. On some ships, the ballroom actually
was
stuffy, but here it couldn’t be. The environmental systems and the design of the room wouldn’t allow air to overheat or get stale.
Still, it felt that way to him. On the first night, he had gone inside, stared at the room in awe, and then had gotten overwhelmed and left. Most passengers stuck with the awe. The ballroom was one of the largest rooms on the ship, extending upwards three stories, in addition to taking up a space as big as the lower-class dining room.
Maybe he found such places stuffy because he found dancing unnecessary. It was one of those activities he would never pursue if it hadn’t been for his job.
But, weirdly, he had to dance a lot for his job. He had become a spectacular dancer. He had become good at a lot of things he never liked or expected to like. He had rather thought he would like dancing, but then he did it, and he loathed it.
It was a complete waste of time.
Tonight, he wouldn’t be able to avoid dancing. In fact, he needed to dance.
He wanted to talk to Rikki. He also wanted to touch her, but he didn’t want to think about that.
He had set up the tracking program on a small screen he wore on his wrist. The screen was black and the band itself was black flecked with gold. It went with his amber jewelry and his black clothing. Still, he kept his wrist covered so no one realized how much hardware he wore.
Just like no one would know he carried two weapons, one—a small nearly weightless laser pistol—in a pouch built into the seam of his waistband, and the other a knife made of bone that he kept in a specially built part of his boot.
Whenever he wore the boots, he carried the knife.
It was the laser pistol that was unusual, and he wasn’t sure why he was carrying it. Apparently he trusted Rikki even less than he had just twenty-four hours ago.
He arrived at the ballroom and stepped into a world of light and shadows, swirling colors, and rich sound. The music overwhelmed in here, as if it was alive. Dancers covered the floor, their clothing whirling with their perfect movements. The air didn’t smell stale; it smelled faintly of sweat and perfume and alcohol. It provoked a heady excitement that seemed almost palpable.
Perhaps it was. Some of these ships did put intoxicants into the air, things that enhanced an experience. Usually, those intoxicants were limited to small doses, and placed in areas like a dance floor so that people would think they had enjoyed themselves a bit more than they actually had.
He adjusted his collar, then brought his hand down. That movement was a nervous tick, and he shouldn’t be nervous. He was a man on a mission, a man who came to this ship to travel from one sector to another, true enough, but also a man who had come to have a good time.
He took a second step inside, passed the place that the ship’s designers had set up as the hesitation point, and listened as an androgynous voice announced his arrival: “Mister Rafael De Brovnik.” The voice sounded official, but it barely carried over the music. Only the closest dancers even looked at him. Everyone else continued twirling—
one
, two, three;
one
, two, three.
There had to be two hundred couples on the dance floor. The music came from an actual orchestra, with real human players. He hadn’t realized this ship actually invested in musicians, not androids, not elaborate reality constructs.
He scanned the room, and didn’t see her. He knew that a few moments ago, she had been standing to his left, but he didn’t see her there. But “to his left” encompassed a lot of room. The ballroom was too big to take in all at once. He took another step inside.
The main part of the room was given over to dancing. The floor had a permanent shine that no shoe could scuff. Wide, curving staircases rose on each side, leading to a balcony that bridged across the middle. Some couples stood up there, looking down at the dancers, enjoying the music and some champagne from above.
Beneath the stairs were private areas that could opaque. If the air had the kind of aphrodisiac that he had worried about from the night before, the area under those stairs would be crowded with mismatched couples, unable to keep their hands off each other.
But he saw no untoward groping on the dance floor, and even though the air had the faint tang of sweat, it didn’t carry the starchy, unmistakable smell of semen.
He was greatly relieved. Because he didn’t need a mood enhancer to augment his barely controllable lust for Rikki Bastogne. Time to stop fooling himself. It had been a mistake to come here. He wouldn’t be able to control his response to her, and he didn’t dare risk touching her.
He turned, and as he did, a hand brushed his arm.
“Leaving so soon?”
She stood next to him. Only this wasn’t the somewhat disheveled, angry woman who had left his suite that morning. This was a goddess.
She wore a black and silver dress that covered every part of her and yet left nothing to the imagination. The silver shoes peeking out from the frothy hem added several inches to her height. That, plus the way that she had swept up her hair, made her taller than he was.
He had to look up at her, which was even more disconcerting.
“I’m not fond of dancing,” he managed to say.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looking for you,” he said.
“To apologize?” she asked with a slightly wicked smile.
He almost said
Apologize
for
what?
Then realized that no woman would respond well to that question.
He made himself answer her smile with a smile of his own. Then he extended his right hand. “Dance with me,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. One of them glittered. She had pasted some kind of jewel at the very tip.
“I thought you’re not fond of dancing,” she said.
“I’m making an exception,” he said.