Page 8 of Fighting With Light

“Really? Commando?” she yells from the water.

“Do you know how hot it is here?” I yell back and run to the water. The waves lap against my legs until I’m about waist deep and I wade over to her, careful to keep my distance. We swim a little further out until we’re treading water. Idon’t know what her plan is or if this is going to go further than I thought it would. That wasn’t my goal tonight, it was to gather details. But she is more tight-lipped than I thought she would be, so I’ll have to plan more dates for us. I don’t know how else to get the information from her without being obvious about it.

“Can I ask you something?”

She nods, dips back under the water, then pops up just a foot away from me as she slicks her hair back. It’s dark enough I can’t see anything under the water, but the moon illuminates what I can see, and I can’t help but stare.

“What did you want to ask me?” she asks.

I drop my eyes from her lips. “Did you come here by yourself?”

She shrugs and looks away. “Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, wondering if her mobster bodyguards are suddenly going to pop out from under the water. I didn’t see any with her, and there was clearly no one else in the villa, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t next door. That could mean my time is limited and the moment I get back, I’ll have to leave. Because if they’ve seen me, I’m sure they are already coming for me and it will be too late for me to call my brothers.

“Yes, Liam, I’m here alone,” she breathes. I stare at her for a moment, a brief shadow of sadness crosses her face and then it’s gone. I don’t know her that well, she could be lying.

“Why didn’t you come with a friend?”

She shrugs and swims so she’s laying on her back and her chest floats up in the water. For normal Liam, it would catch my attention, but my focus is strictly on her face. I need to know if I have to run.

She sighs and says, “I’m around a lot of people all the time. I go with a friend of mine, but she’s still in Miami at the moment.”

That’s interesting, her father’s competitor owns Miami.

“I wanted to do something on my own. I came with someone, but then I told him to find a room and leave me alone or go back home.”

I jerk back, not sure if she is with another man or if it’s her bodyguard she’s alluding to.

“Don’t worry, we’re not a thing, never will be. Let’s just say my father is overprotective.”

I chuckle. “So when I take you back, I won’t have some guy pointing a gun in my face?” I wince at my choice of words, but I don’t think she caught it and hope she just took it as a protective thing, not a mob one.Kai is so much better with words.

“No,” she sighs. “Just me, myself, and I.”

I nod and reach for her ankle, tugging her back towards me.

She rights herself in the water and swims closer to me. “We seem to answer a lot of each other’s questions without actually answering them.”

“You’re perceptive,” I mutter more to myself.

She lifts her hand and traces the line of my collarbone.

“I am,” she whispers.

“Would you like to go out with me again?”

She looks up at me from under her long eyelashes. “Yes,” she says.

I open my mouth to ask her if she’s going to do another excursion, and she says, “I would like breakfast though.”

I swim a little closer without touching her. “Oh?” I ask, somewhat surprised at how forward she is. I know she’s a bit wild, but I didn’t expect her to be this bold with who she believes to be a complete stranger.

“I think I can do that,” I tell her instead.

She nods and starts swimming to shore. I guess that’s that.

I’ve learned a few more things about the mob princess compared to reading and researching her. Aelia is a woman that knows what she wants, she will take it, and she won’t apologize for it. But on the other hand, she’s been nothing but kind and courteous to everyone we’ve come into contact with.