Gianna
I glared out the long narrow window in the cabin Alexei had left me in. Were they still called portholes if they weren’t round? Night had fallen and the line of lights, Ostia’s glittering shore front, grew smaller and turned away. Every moment, the moving yacht took me further from land and the possibility of reasonable escape.
My focus remained on the retreating strip of land. It was the safest place for my thoughts. They wanted to drift to the last hour, how far I’d gone with my captor and what he’d done with that silver tongue of his.
A shiver raced through my shoulders and I shook my head. Eyes closed for a breath before I opened them and resumed my impotent stare out the window or porthole or whatever the hell it was. Alexei would tell me what to call it if I asked, but I scrunched my eyes closed and tried to banish him from my thoughts completely.
He was exactly the type of guy I had worried about, that I had stayed away from relationships and kept my virginity to avoid dealing with even the possibility of falling in love. What was the point, when I’d be promised to another?
He would have been so easy to love. As much as I’d needled him with complaints the entire time – he had kidnapped me after all – his offer was almost as attractive as he was when we’d finished the tour of his yacht.
The only piece of clothing he’d worn had been a pair of skin tight shorts. The moonlight reflected off his lips when he smirked while bragging about the yacht’s Jacuzzi. Despite everything how I’d come to be in his presence or what he’d just done to get such glistening lips the desire to kiss them almost overtook me at that moment. I’d fought it then and tried my best to ignore it now.
I jerked away from the window. My arm shot back as I spun and my hand slammed into my suitcase. It clattered to the floor. The pain rid my mind of such dangerous thoughts about a dangerous man. Staring at my fallen luggage brought home why that word had been the first that crossed my mind seeing my current captor step outside the bar.
Kidnapping me hadn’t been a whim to him. Katie and I had decided on our Europe trip at the last possible minute. We’d only bought the tickets two days ago. Alexei had learned about that somehow and not only had he trailed us to our hotel, his people had liberated my luggage when he’d approached me at the bar. Poor Katie had to be freaked out, assuming she’d made it back to the hotel by now and found my things gone.
It was the kind of planning I could respect. If it hadn’t been in service of kidnapping me, I would have to add it to the ever growing ‘Pro’ column I’d kept tally of in my head. No matter how long it grew, how interesting Alexei became, the single item on the other side written in jagged lines, angry red and circled thirteen times would always counter it. He’d kidnapped me. You couldn’t trust someone who would do that.
I sucked in a breath and shook my head. There was another item on the ‘Con’ list. Alexei wanted to hurt my father. You never betrayed your family. That was rule number one, no matter how you felt about them.
The walls of my, admittedly luxurious, prison cell shrunk around me. The slit of a window with its ever shrinking line of lights from the shore offered no help. I paced around the space and considered the flat screen on the wall but a TV show wouldn’t distract me, not now.
My eyes fell to the door. When Alexei opened it, I saw how thin it was, only an inch or so like the rest on his yacht. I wasn’t Wonder Woman or anything, but if I gave it my all, it’d probably open.
A futile gesture, I’d still be stuck at sea, but better than being locked up in a small cabin with only my thoughts. I pressed my hand against its surface. It didn’t budge an inch, no give at all. My shoulder came next. It thudded against the door, but even then, the only result came in a dull pain that throbbed down my arm.
I shook it out and wiggled my fingers as I glared at the door. My eyes dropped to the small square handle embedded at the edge. It took seeing the word “PULL” printed above it to remember the door opened inward.
At least no-one had been around to see that. I reached out with my recovered arm and tested the handle. The lock clicked and the door opened. I remained frozen for a long moment, staring out into the narrow hallway beyond and the door across from me.
A smile came to my face before I banished it. Just because Alexei hadn’t locked me in a cabin as if it were a prison cell didn’t make up for him kidnapping me in the first place. And I still couldn’t escape the yacht… or could I?
They had a dinghy, the small boat that had brought us here. The yachts I’d seen or been on with boats like that usually had them trailing on a line. I’d need to head to the back of the yacht.
The narrow hallway I found myself in after padding from my room looked the same coming and going. When Alexei had brought me down to this level, I’d been more interested in watching the muscles in his shoulders move as he walked in front of me than the direction we came.
Closing my eyes, I listened to the slight hum of the engine. It was loudest to the left, so I crept down that way. The door at the end of the hall had a circular window now that was a porthole. The small deck we’d embarked onto was right outside.
Instead of being dragged behind the yacht, the small motorboat sat on the edge of the deck, a few feet over the water. The door opened for me without any trouble. I even followed the pull directions the first time.
The wind whipped my hair once I stepped through. Cool but not cold, the sea breeze still sent me shivering. My summer dress wasn’t exactly designed for a night on the Tyrrhenian sea, even in late June.