Authors: Viv Daniels
She knew the deckhands were paid to keep things clean, but did they have to scrub everything until it shone? Even the wet wood seemed brighter than it had any right to.
“Look who’s showing her face!” called her friend Lisa, lounging on a deck chair with some trashy novel. Lisa checked the watch laying on her towel. “And it’s only two o’clock.”
“Local time?” Kalina replied. “I’m still on LA time.”
“It’s six PM in LA, hon,” said Tiffany, who occupied the lounge chair to Lisa’s left. “It gets later going east.”
“London,” said Kalina. “I meant London.” She’d been in London only last month, then Paris, Monaco, Morocco, The Seychelles, Hong Kong… who gave a shit what actual time zone she was in? Everywhere she was was the same schedule — party all night, sleep all day, check out the beaches or the shops or the clubs if she was up for it. The last time she’d kept track of her hours was during her first attempt at freshman year in college, and that was…
The boat hit a wave and Kalina shot out her hand for balance as the hammer inside her skull grew insistent. “Please tell me it’s vodka-tonic-thirty.”
“Tough luck again, sweet pea,” said Lisa. Her parents were some kind of Texas oil family, and occasionally the country came out of her. “There was a mix-up with the service schedule. We’re on our own at the bar this afternoon.”
Tiffany glared at her and Lisa fell silent.
Kalina swallowed back a throat full of bile and crossed to the outdoor bar. Glass, check. Ice cubes, check. Vodka… as she reached for the bottle, she saw a half-finished vial of coke that must have somehow slipped behind the bar. Even better. The stopper was shaped like a little snowflake, which was probably someone’s idea of a hilarious joke.
Kalina drew out a line on the glass serving tray and grabbed a cocktail straw. A little bump was all she needed this afternoon.
She sighed as the coke whizzed through her sinuses and muffled the hammer. Ahh. Who needed vodka when you had cocaine? Okay, time to get the party started. Kalina and her girls needed bellinis. She rooted through the bar fridge for champagne and peach nectar, mixed up a pitcher and joined the girls back at the lounge chairs with a tangle of stemware clutched between her fingers.
“Where is everyone?” she asked as she started pouring drinks. Lisa demurred — a lifetime of southern cooking had left her with a tendency toward a fat ass — but Tiffany took a drink, and so did Mirelle and Stevie, who had just joined them on the deck, their hair wet from a jet ski ride.
“Tim and Jorge are downstairs in the video room with the Nintendo,” Lisa explained, “and Decker and Bran are off the stern fishing.”
“Great.” Kalina took a slug from her champagne flute and smiled as the sweet bellini slid down her throat. She should probably eat something, too, but lunch was over and she wasn’t ready to venture into the kitchen alone. Not if the staff was still grumbling about
service schedule mix-ups
.
Kalina’s friends might not know the truth, but the staff always did, especially on yachts this small. And the only service schedule mix up was that one little bitch maid picked the wrong time to schedule a
service
on Kalina’s boyfriend.
The room had been dark when Kalina entered, and she fumbled for the brass light switch. But when the light flickered on, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Bran sat on the bed, spread-eagled, his board shorts dangling awkwardly from one ankle, his head lolling back on his neck. And that cute blonde stewardess, Anna, knelt before him, the khaki skirt of her uniform riding up over her lacy panties, her head buried in his crotch.
Kalina hardly knew what she was doing before she had a handful of that witch’s blonde hair in her fist. “Get off him, you whore!” she’d shrieked, dragging the girl back as she yelped. Brad’s dick flopped out of her mouth.
“Kalina?” Brad’s eyes shot open. “I thought you were downstairs watching the movie.”
“Are you cheating on me?” Kalina had screamed, as the girl slapped at her wrist until she let go. Anna whimpered and shied away, tugging her skirt down and the white flaps of her blouse closed over her exposed tits. “With this trash?”
“Oh my God,” was all Bran had said.
“I want her off this boat” she said, staring down her nose at the little slut. “She’s fired.”
“What?” Anna cried. “You can’t fire me. Brad’s father is the one who owns—”
“Shut up,” Kalina snapped. “No one is speaking to you.”
“Kiki, honey…”
Ugh, she hated when he called her that. “I never want to see this slut again. Do you hear?” She whirled on her heel and stomped out of their cabin.
Stupid Bran Nesbit and his stupid inability to keep his stupid cock in his stupid pants. Didn’t he understand that half the girls he met would take a lot of Nesbit dick for even a scrap of the Nesbit fortune? A tennis bracelet, a trip on the helicopter—anything would do. He was trapped in a sea of gold-digging sluts.
Kalina knew well how this worked. Since the time she was fourteen, she’d been on the receiving end of the same treatment. Debonair older men trying to take control of the purse strings, hot young gigolos hoping to get their greasy hands on her family money—it was disgusting. At least if she stuck with other rich kids she knew they weren’t in it for the cash.
She and Bran made a simple sort of sense, as long as he could follow basic ground rules. No outside pussy where she could catch them, and on their bed on a 80-foot yacht was definitely a place that she’d catch them. There was fooling around and then there was humiliation, and Kalina St. Claire was not interested in being humiliated.
She felt a crease forming between her eyes and rubbed it away with her knuckles. It wouldn’t do to start getting wrinkles at the tender age of twenty-two. She threw back her head and downed the rest of her bellini.
“I ordered snacks,” Stevie was saying now, securing her bleach-blonde hair into a high ponytail with a neon scrunchie. “It’s a mess down there in the galley, though, so who knows when they’ll be by.”
“Bran really needs to get his staff in order,” Lisa sniffed.
Tiffany cleared her throat and turned the page of her magazine. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.” She snickered.
“Apparently some girl packed up and left at the last port or something,” Stevie went on with a shrug. “The blonde?”
“Good riddance,” said Mirelle. “That girl was such a flirt. She used to bend over and flash her tits at Jorge whenever she got a chance.”
“Come on,” said Lisa, “they know what they get paid for around here. A little bit of T&A, a better tip. Am I right, Kalina?”
Kalina shrugged and lay face down on a lounger. Time for some tanning. She unclipped the back of her bikini top and smoothed her hair out of the way.
Stevie and Mirelle did the same, though Mirelle was already a smooth, deep brown thanks to the Greek side of her heritage. She was an Onassis on her mother’s side, after all.
“Well,” said Stevie,” “Down in the galley they’re all real upset about it. They said they don’t know how she’s supposed to get home.”
“Please,” Kalina spat out in clipped tones. “She got paid for the summer. She has a passport and spare cash to buy a plane ticket.” She turned her face back into her towel and squeezed her eyes shut. Didn’t know how to get home? Couldn’t she read the signs at the airport ticket counter? The slut was hardly destitute.
Stupid Bran. He should have bought her a ticket. He couldn’t even fire that whore right.
A minute passed and her friends were still talking about the stewardess. Just great. There were nearly thirty crew members down below gossiping, and now the story was going to drift up to the passengers. If her friends were curious, all they’d have to do is ask one of the crew. She raised her head and opened her mouth to change the subject.
The galley door banged open and a crew member emerged with a tray of food. He held it between two hands, like he’d never carried a tray of food in his life before. It was possible he didn’t — this was one of the deckhands, who helped with the sailing and general upkeep of the yacht. His name was Adam, and Kalina knew there wasn’t a girl on board who hadn’t wasted more than a little time watching him work.
Hello, sailor.
The crew member was tall, with dark hair cut shaggy, skin golden from the sun, and a slim physique that showed off all those muscles he got from running lines and carrying supplies. He didn’t have that broad-shouldered bodybuilder shape like Stallone or Schwarzenegger, but Kalina had never liked the ‘roid look, anyway. The crew uniforms were cheesy — pleated khaki pants with green and yellow D-ring belts
and starched, white, long sleeve shirts with the Nesbit family crest on the pocket, but somehow Adam made them look like military whites.
He also had a reputation as a killjoy. He never took part in the poker games the boys liked to play with the crew, never looked hungover after port leave like other crew members, and wasn’t even the type to give you a gentle good morning, which was just fine with Kalina. She liked servants to remember their place. And from the stormy expression on his face right now, Adam knew his place and was not look happy to be playing waiter this afternoon.
“Where do you want it?” he asked Stevie.
“Oh, anywhere,” she singsonged, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of the low side table near their lounge. The deckhand bent to put the tray down and Stevie mimed squeezing his butt cheeks.
Mirelle laughed. Kalina rolled her eyes. What was with people and screwing the help these days?
“Oh, Adam?” Stevie rose on her elbows, which had the effect of revealing her nipples to the world. “Before you go, can you pass me that tanning oil?”
The deckhand grabbed the bottle of oil and turned. His eyes widened as he caught sight of Stevie’s tits, then he raised his gaze to the horizon, his jaw clenched tightly closed..
The girls all laughed. “So, not a homo,” Tiffany murmured under her breath.
“Here,” he said, holding the bottle out blindly.
Stevie raised herself up a little more to grab the bottle from his fingers, her breasts swinging freely in the breeze. “Also… I hate to be all this trouble, but can you help me get my back? I hate to have an uneven tan.”
She really was laying it on thick, wasn’t she? A beat passed, and then Adam snatched the bottle back and crouched next to Stevie on the blanket. He shook a bit of oil into his palm, then slapped it on her back as if he was applying a fresh coat of stain to the deck.
“Mmmmmm,” moaned Stevie, like she was getting some kind of Thai massage. “You’re so good with your hands, Adam.”
His lips were a thin line, his eyes cold as stone beneath his furrowed brow. “All set.” He wiped his hands on the corner of a towel and stood. “Do you need anything else?”
“Well,” she said, coyly, “you could do my front.”
“I think you can reach.” He tossed the bottle on the seat next to her.
“If I think of something, I’ll call you,” Stevie said sweetly.
Adam grabbed the empty tray and started back toward the galley. He paused over Kalina’s towel, casting a black band of shadow across her body.
“Are you done with this?” Weird. Despite Stevie’s teasing, she hadn’t heard anything dark in his voice when he’d been speaking to her. But with Kalina, there was something in his tone, the brewing of some great storm.
Kalina raised her head far enough to see he was gesturing to the empty bellini pitcher and her stemware. She clutched her towel to her chest and reached for the champagne flute. “Yes. Thank you.”
Their fingers touched as she passed it over, and their eyes met. For a moment, the fizz of snow and champagne died down in her brain as she looked into his eyes. People shouldn’t be allowed to have eyes like that. Eyes that looked right into you and saw every last little thing that was wrong with you. Every awful, cheap thing that all the wealth in the world couldn’t erase. Kalina tried to breathe, but her lungs wouldn’t inflate. She was pinned like a bug under his gaze. A low, dirty, helpless bug.
And then he was gone, the galley door swinging shut behind his admittedly nice ass. She let out a breath. The sun was bright again, and she was buzzed and rich and surrounded by her friends and everything was just freaking
fine
, thank you very much.
Just fine.
***
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