Authors: Amber Bardan
“What are you doing?” I called, my sweaty skin chilling.
He paused and looked at me. His features had evened, smoothed into the shell I’d already come to know. “You said you wanted to do it the hard way. I’m obliging. Let me know when you’ve had it hard enough—and maybe then I’ll play nice.” He snapped the heel off my shoe and peered inside, then tossed it over. I grasped the railing and watched my shoe and heel fall into the water.
My head seemed to crash with each wave. “I liked that shoe.”
I looked at him, only to see my other shoe receive the same treatment. He turned to me, and my skin flushed again.
Too much—way too much.
This was one screwed-up fantasy. The edges of my vision clouded. At least it looked as if I might be waking up.
“Do you have anything to say to me now, Angelina?”
I stared at him and nodded—then emptied my stomach onto his polished black shoes.
Haithem
M
AYBE
THE
FIRST
honest thing I ever experienced from her was the moment she vomited on me. That wasn’t faked. She was sick. Most likely from spending the night in a freezing lifeboat in nothing but a dress.
I ran my gaze over her shuddering sweat-coated form. Her skin glistened with moisture in a way that sank my attention into every section of her exposed flesh. Some of her hair clung to the smooth rounded curves of her face, the rest was wild in a rolling-in-bed kind of way. Her hips and tits still screamed for me, even after I’d forced her back into that dirty dress.
They chose well.
My enemies chose so well it made it hard to swallow. I hadn’t realized I had a type. When you’re living in obscurity, on the move, there’s no time for types of girls. There’s only available ones. There’s only easy ones.
I wouldn’t have guessed this pretty, girl-I-could-know kind would make me want to throw caution to the soulless sea. Because I could know her. She had lips for kissing but eyes for talking to.
A soft throaty voice that begged to be listened to.
She moaned.
I shut my eyes. Stopped myself from going over to the bed and shaking her awake and demanding answers. Because I
’
d sedated her.
I linked my fingers together and watched again.
Her head tossed against my pillows.
Maybe they thought I was weak. That I missed my family and having a life. Maybe they thought I’d look at her and remember what those things were like. That I’d get fuzzy ideas and bare my soul to a spy.
Another low keening sound tore between her teeth. I sprang out of my seat—even though if it weren’t for the fact her temperature was so high I’d be tempted to doubt even that sound from her lying duplicitous lips.
She’d find I wouldn’t be easily overcome. There wasn’t that much hope left in me.
They destroyed my life.
They murdered my family.
They killed my optimism.
I crossed to the bed, and stared down at my pretty little prisoner.
Hope couldn’t be used against me. For the briefest moment, it almost had. Not anymore.
Her hands curled in the sheets. My fists curled at my sides. I’d read her university transcripts. She’d completed a dual major in journalism and theater studies. She was literally an actress.
A very, very good one.
She tossed again, her face turning towards me. Her lips parted with a throaty moan that sent a wave of need slamming into me.
Fuck
. Swamping lust gave my heart a deeper rhythm in my veins.
I shouldn’t touch her.
Shouldn’t
.
I couldn’t look away. Sweat beaded her upper lip, clinging to fine invisible hairs as innocently as a milk-mustache. My hand parted ways with my will, reaching for that mouth.
What a perfect weapon.
I brushed her top lip.
Shouldn’t be touching
. The heat of her skin branded my thumb. Jesus, her skin was warm.
So fucking warm
.
A dark blend of shame and desire had me hard and desperate, even if unwilling. Her heat should’ve been a giveaway. My palms prickled with the memory of her fevered skin flowing slick and quivering under my touch. I sank to my knees beside the bed. Perhaps, I should’ve known she was unwell.
But I hadn’t wanted to notice—I’d wanted to
touch
.
Just like I had to touch now.
I rubbed my thumb back and forth over the irresistible petals of her lips. Over the tiny split on her bottom lip that broke the silky smoothness. Why not touch—she was mine. Everything in me shook with the compulsion to sink my thumb into her hot mouth.
Whoever recruited her knew what they were doing. Kept her life squeaky clean. Perfectly mundane.
I’d found their one mistake.
Six weeks.
Her nose scrunched. I moved my touch over her cheekbone, where light freckles fanned out and faded.
So deceptively wholesome.
There were six weeks missing from her life where she’d vanished from the face of the planet. Six weeks where even though her absence was noted on her academic record, it was forgiven without reason. Six weeks long enough for an intensive training program with the right people.
My fingertip found the groove in her cheek, where even resting her dimple creased skin.
Yes, Angelina was the ultimate angelic weapon,
Karim had been right. I’d been naive. I wanted to believe in her and I wanted to believe in what we’d shared. But one coincidence is a coincidence too many. Now there were four. The coffee shop. The elevator. The spying on the dock. Stowing away on a lifeboat.
I’d be a fool to believe any of it, no matter how tempting it was.
I tore myself free of the thrall of touching her, and stood.
She’d been there on my bed. Thighs apart. Panties damp enough to see pussy-soaked fabric. Wet enough the musk of her lust reached me. That was believable. I could have fucked her. Clamped a hand around her throat and fucked her hard and rough the way the look in her eyes demanded.
But she wanted that.
She’d enticed me to take her. Is that how she’d get to me? Did she plan to seize me by the cock?
Never
.
I scrubbed the side of my face with my palm. I still felt the lick she dragged over my jaw. The way she’d run her tongue over me like an animal—she took no prisoners.
Neither would I.
She had no idea who she was dealing with. If she thought she did, she was about to find out how wrong she could be.
I’d be the one to take her. Push her. Exploit her weaknesses. Use her lust against her the way she’d intended to use mine against me.
By the time I was done, I’d know her to her deceitful core.
EIGHT
T
HERE
’
S
SOMETHING
ABOUT
puking up your guts that makes everything very real. You just don’t dream that shit—the heaving, the muscle contractions, the burning and definitely not the vile, acidic stench. I curled onto my side and retched foam into a bucket. When I fell back onto the pillow, a cool cloth pressed over my forehead.
“The medication will work soon, and you’ll feel better.” The familiar voice was soft, and smothered my burning system with another layer of heat.
Haithem
, whoever and whatever he was.
I draped my arm over my eyes and groaned. The cool cloth stung my skin. If I’d still believed I’d dreamed up the whole experience, this would be the part where it turned into a nightmare. This would be the part where smart girls ran. But my body groaned with heaviness, immobilized by fever, the roiling in my belly and pain in my joints—and something else, too. The tiny focused place inside me that was having a meltdown of its own.
“Your temperature was extremely high, but it’s coming down. You’ll be all right.”
I resisted the urge to rub my rump, where a stranger had jabbed a needle while speaking gibberish to Haithem. I let one eye slip free from the cover of my forearm and glanced at him. Bright red lines marred the skin on his neck, but the look on his face was even more haggard than the rest of him.
Holy shitballs
. I covered my eyes again. I’d scratched him like a crazy person. I’m not sure what I’d been thinking. Things got a little hazy after I puked on him. I only remembered the stranger, the flash of a needle, and fighting like a demon. Because that’s what you do, obviously, when you’re delirious, and spies are trying to administer medical treatment to you.
“What’s wrong with me?” Bitterness burned the back of my throat, and my tongue felt twice its normal size. “Did you drug me?”
Haithem tugged the arm off my face. “You were ill. I took care of you.” The way he’d said that. Slowly. Purposefully. My temperature leaped back up a few notches. I stared at him. The way he
looked
at me when he’d said that. Intimate—possessive.
He took care of me
. As though I was
his
to take care of.
I went hotter still—hot yet shivery.
An image struck me of being his. Being his pet. Taken care of. More shivers swept me.
He released my arm and leaned back. Bristles coated the wide angles of his jaw. Somehow making him hotter. Somehow making him more rugged, a little dirty, yet more touchable. His eyes glowed black in the dim cabin.
The sheets clung to me—his sheets, the sheets on his giant sex bed.
“You made yourself sick from hiding in the lifeboat overnight.”
My mouth opened. “From falling into the lifeboat, you mean.”
He didn’t blink, just watched me—read me, I’m sure. If he could really read me, then he should’ve known the truth.
“I need to go home now.”
His jaw pulsed. A rap sounded on the door, then Karim burst in. My little black bag swung from his hand, and the last dying note of my cell phone ringtone trickled from inside it. He rushed to Haithem and held out the bag.
“We found this in the lifeboat.”
Haithem took my bag and yanked out my phone. His finger swiped across the screen, and I sat up, seeing the flashing missed calls notification before the screen faded. He drew back, eyes trained on the screen, fingers tapping. His expression hardened, turned cold and empty.
He turned to Karim. “How long have we been in range?”
“About half an hour.”
Haithem flashed a look at me then handed the cell to Karim. “We’ll detour. Dispose of this immediately.”
“No, it’s mine.” I lunged for the phone, and my head spun.
Haithem grabbed my wrist and urged me back against the mountain of pillows. “You need to rest.”
“I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m no spy—give me my fucking phone.” I shoved his hand away, panic spurting through me with enough force to subdue the hot, sick feeling clinging to me. “I need to go home.”
Haithem switched languages, speaking softly to the man behind him without taking his gaze off me. Karim nodded and left the room. I pushed off the blankets, scrambling after him. Haithem dropped my bag and seized my arms.
“Calm down. Everything will be fine.” He spoke in soothing tones, and despite myself, it calmed me. “You’ll be home before you know it.”
His touch gentled. His fingers on my skin were light, his hold on me ludicrously comforting.
I relaxed against the pillows and smoothed a hand over the dirty dress that somehow had magically materialized back over my body while I was passed out. “So you believe me?”
He said nothing but reached down for the handbag on the floor. The mattress rose and fell under his weight. I held out my hand for my bag, but he flipped open the top and rummaged inside. He placed my lip gloss and compact on the side table, then fished inside and pulled out my emergency tampons.
My cheeks burned. “May I have my bag, please?”
“Soon,” he said, and drew out my wallet.
“There is absolutely nothing in there that could possibly interest you.”
He flicked through the pockets of my wallet, pulling out old receipts and movie ticket stubs and placing them beside the other items. He moved to the inside pocket, and I sat up quickly. He tugged out a worn photograph.
“Don’t touch that.” I reached for it.
He held the photo higher, rising off the bed and examining it. His lips thinned, and he looked at me. “What’s this?”
I knew what he saw, and my heart rushed, my chest squeezed and pain echoed through my limbs.
Me and a boy.
Me and a boy, embracing inside a blue Mustang. My hair wild from a ride with the top down. Joy in my eyes and in my heart.
“None of your fucking business.”
He sank to his knee beside me. “You have a boyfriend, Angel?” Under other circumstances, the nickname might have been an endearment, but he spoke it now as though it were a curse. “You have a boyfriend yet kiss men in elevators, meet them on yachts?” He leaned down. “Is this the responsibility you were talking about?”
My pain exploded into rage, and I snatched the photo from his hand. He let me take it.
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My eyes burned, my lungs burned, my skin burned. I could have caught fire, but the scariest part was the sobs building behind my ribs. Sobs I could never let out. Sobs I’d held back a year. I pressed the photo against my collarbone and rolled away from him. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
I felt him watching me. Felt him staring, judging, weighing my truthfulness. He moved, and the slap of cards against wood sounded next to my head.
Bank card, library card...
I listed them in my head.
The sounds stopped. His movements stopped. He muttered something foreign.
I rolled onto my back. He held my driver’s license in his hand, staring at it as though it had singed his fingers. He glanced from it to me. His expression flattened. “You’re only twenty?”
I frowned and nodded. “Yes.”
He stood, dropping the card, and stared at me so long I became painfully aware of my entire external self. Aware of every hair on my head, of my eyelashes, of the split that had developed in the middle of my bottom lip.
I ran my tongue along the crack. “May I call my parents, please?”
He continued looking at me, staring. “No.”
No
?
The skip, skip, skip of my heart became a bang, bang, bang.
“I need to let them know I’m okay. They’ll be freaking out.” I sat, leaning up on one hand. I needed to get home. Needed to get as far away from him as possible. “I won’t mention you...if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You’re learning,” he said, and sat next to me. “I’m glad you understand you can never, ever speak about me.” He placed a hand on my arm, his grip firm and inescapable. “Tell me you understand, Angelina?” He tugged me closer and looked into my face. “For your own good, agree that I don’t exist.”
I didn’t try to pull away from him. Not that he’d have let me. There was zero give in his grip. I panted. It was almost as if the lining on my lungs had thickened. Thank fuck he didn’t know the other reason I’d come here. I wiped words like article and magazine from my mind. No matter what happened, I could never tell him now. I’d say whatever I needed to say, whatever he wanted me to say to get him to let me go. “You. Don’t. Exist.”
He smiled, but it was cold and jagged. Then he reached out and smudged the sweat above my mouth with his thumb.
My lips parted.
He watched my lips too long. “Good girl.” His hand stayed on me, moving to my cheek. “Where are you then, Angel? If I don’t exist?”
I blinked. What was he doing? Goose bumps managed to spring along my arms despite my internal furnace. This was a game. A game with rules I had to learn or I’d lose before it even started. I couldn’t lose this game.
“I ran off with a boy from the party.”
He traced the outside of my jaw, but his fingertips curled, and his knuckles bumped my chin.
“We’re staying in a caravan park,” I whispered. My gaze traveled to his mouth. He had such a compelling mouth. Pink smooth lips, but the stubble around them was hard and sharp. His teeth were large and white and straight. He tapped my chin with his thumb, bringing my focus to his eyes.
“Why would you run off with a boy from a party without telling anyone?” he said, studying every flick of my eyes. “That’s not very nice.”
The heat in my cheeks cooled. His words were a kick to my chest. He was toying with me. Showing me a way home but making me pay for it. My teeth clamped together.
The muscles around my nose scrunched, then I let the truth bleed into our contest of lies. “I’m tired of being nice. I’m tired of doing the right thing. I wanted to get away.”
“You wanted to get away?” he asked. “That’s a good enough reason to hurt the people you care about? That’s enough reason to make your mother cry, your father sick?”
My gaze snapped up, and my lips shook. “It’s not like that. I’m smothered. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.” My lungs burned like I’d inhaled smoke. “But nobody even sees me. No one hears me at all.”
My shoulders twitched. I clamped my arms around myself. Somehow everything I’d been tying down came springing free.
He gripped the back of my neck and pulled me close, planting his lips on my forehead. “Good girl.”
His kiss was electric cool.
I grabbed his shirt and tipped my head back to see him. “Let me speak to them now, please.”
He pried my hands from his shirt and leaned forward, opening the drawer in the side table, and pulled out a notepad and pen.
“I assume your family members have email addresses?”
He held out the pen. I took it. He opened the notepad. I scribbled Dad’s email.
“I’ll make sure they know you’re okay, and that you’ll be home safe with them in three weeks.”
The pen slipped from my fingers. “Three weeks? You said two.”
My heart ping-ponged from hope to horror. An email might keep my parents under control for a weekend—but not for
weeks
.
I couldn’t be stuck with him for weeks. A day couldn’t end soon enough.
He scooped up the pen and handed it back, not looking me in the face.
“That was before. Things have changed.” He held the notepad out again and seized my gaze. “Before, with your agreement, I could’ve trusted you. Now I need to be sure when you leave, I’ll be a ghost...”