Page 27 of Kept in the Dark

Her only response is a deep inhale and adjusting her head against the seat. I reach over and place my hand on her thigh. The fabric of her dress prevents skin-on-skin contact, but I can feel the warmth of her. I swallow down the urge to ball the silk in my hand and draw it slowly across her bare knee.

I jostle her leg. “Nicole, wake up.”

With a gasp, she jerks awake, her movements impeded by the seatbelt across her chest. She stares down at it, blinking away the sleep from her eyes, then looks around, out the windows, and finally to me.

Honey. Pure, flowing honey. Sweet amber liquid.

“Dimitri?” Her voice is hoarse from a sleep-dried throat. I know it is what she would sound like, waking up beside me after a long,vigorousnight.

Fuck. A jolt of pure energy leaves me stricken and cursing myself. All it took to forget the effect that her eyes on my face and my name on her lips has on me was hiding her body under my coat for a brief ride in the car.

While I am recovering, she asks, “Where are we?”

I unclick my belt and reach for the door handle. “Come.”

The air here is more humid and stickier with salt, and the scent of the ocean is all at once fresh, fishy, and rotten in this protected part of the bay. The gentle sound of waves lapping against the shore is a familiar melody that reminds me of the freedom and solitude of being on the open water.

I grab my go bag from the trunk, circle back to the front, and hold out my hand to her.

Whether it is due to lingering fear that she will not cooperate, or that it calms me to hold on to her, I cannot say, but pleasure thrums in my veins when she takes my hand for support as she slides out of her seat. As I lock the car, she stops, looking around with a pensive frown.

“What’s next in this getaway—a train and a plane?” she grumbles, dropping my hand and wiping at the smudges of black makeup underneath her eyes.

“You do not like boats?” I guess.

“I’m not a strong swimmer.”

“That is what the boat is for.”

There is a thick second of tension as she assesses me with a small scowl, but it dissolves when her lips twitch at the corners and she spins my jacketon her shoulders to wear it more correctly. “Just tell me you’ve got life jackets, and spare me the dad jokes this time.”

“My father never made that joke,” I protest, frowning.

We stare at each other for a second, and I sense this was another idiom that I did not catch. She tries not to smile, lips clamping down around it, and I relent. At least it appears to amuse her, if not me. “I have life jackets.”

She takes my offered hand again.

We approach the last row of docked boats—me with relief, her with her head down as she chooses each step across the weathered wood dock in her bare feet—and I am pleased to find my boat just as I last left it.

TheLunais mostly wood, with some fiberglass concessions to the corrosive nature of seawater. It is very much a houseboat designed for one person, and that person really ought to be about half a foot shorter than me. But Nicole and I should manage for a little while—long enough to get answers to some lingering questions.

I climb the ladder up onto the open deck, help her, then duck down into the top part of the interior cabin. The wheel and navigation equipment encased in polished brass sit behind the captain’s chair, opposite a seating area built into the wood-paneled walls. There is a kitchen along the back wall, which is a generous name for what is really no more than a sink, hot plate and unplugged refrigerator.

She says nothing as I lead her down to the sleeping cabin, which sits just below the waterline. Half is storage for important things—pump, batteries, anchor—and half is the bedroom, which is filled nearly entirely by a foam bed built into the three walls. Off to the side, there is a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and a tub/shower with an upright seat. There is just enough space for both of us to stand together next to the bed, though I am hunched forward.

TheLunahas everything I have ever required, but with Nicole here, taking it all in with silent judgment, it suddenly feels curiously lacking.

“You can sleep here.” I gesture to the mattress, unloading my keys and wallet from my pocket onto one of the shelves built into the wooden wall. I keep my phone, and I will sleep with my knives as I normally do.

She sits, bouncing and making a face at the distinct odor of mildew rising from the old bed covering. Cleaning and airing everything out would normally be my first order of business. My priorities are different this time.

She removes my jacket. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“Here,” I say, jerking my chin at the bed, then crossing to the closet and toeing off one of my shoes.

She starts to rise, then thinks better of it, shifting further back to stake her claim in a way that nearly makes me smile. “Can’t you be a gentleman and take that couch up in that cabin up there?”

“I am not a gentleman, and it is my bed,” I point out reasonably.