Row
Kennedy locks the door to our cabin behind us and immediately does a sweep of our small, but nice, quarters. I stand in a daze. Totally and completely willing to just let him do all the work.
I’ve been shot at, threatened, chased, shouted at, fucked, kissed all in the last 30 hours. Oh yeah, and I abandoned my unconscious father on a ferry boat to Corfu, all on the word of a man I met yesterday.
And now I’m on a cruise ship to Santorini. Holy Zeus. My head is a bowl of spinning mush right now.
Only my eyes move as I watch Kennedy competently search our room and adjoining bathroom.
“Ok,” he says walking back over to me and tossing his hat and wallet on the dresser. “We’re safe.”
“Safe,” I repeat dully and continue to stand there like someone who’s just witnessed a fifty car pile-up.
He eyes me shrewdly for a moment before he crosses the small room and grips me by the shoulders. “We’re safe, Row. We made it onto this boat completely safe. Unfollowed and untraced by Esposito’s people. Just like Dare and I planned.”
“But. I don’t have my passport.” It’s all my brain can manage to say. Even though it’s already completely obvious. Of course I don’t have my passport. I don’t have anything beside the clothes I’m currently wearing. Neither does my father. I try not to think of him in that car. Alone. At sea. Hours from having any clue as to what the hell is happening to him and what the hell is happening to me.
“You don’t need one. We’re staying inside the country, technically. And I sent your passport, your father’s, and one of mine, to the border of Macedonia. Not far from where we started. The passports will set off alarms, Esposito’s people will rush there.”
“That’s not far from Corfu. Won’t it occur to them to search there?”
“That’s why we sent your father on a car ferry. He has to skirt the entire country. Those ferries take days. Your father will arrive in Corfu after they’ve already ruled it out.”
“It’s a good plan,” I say dully. “What do you mean you sent our passports to the border?”
“I paid two tourists who were staying at our hotel to turn them in when they got to the border. Say they lost them. When the border police scan them through the system to identify if they’re real or not, Esposito will be notified that they’ve been scanned. The same way he would be notified if we’d actually tried to use them to get across the border.”
“Ok,” I say. “Ok.” I start to lower to the bed but think better of it when I see how clean the bedspread is. I’m dusty and sweaty. “You sure have thought of everything.”
“Yeah,” he says. “And I’m about to think of some more. You need a shower and some sleep.”
I nod and the movement makes me sway a little.
“Or better yet, you need a bath. I don’t think you could stand up for an entire shower.”
He leads me into the bathroom where there’s a small tub, a sink and a toilet. He starts filling the bathtub.
“Bath’s a waste of precious resources.”
“So are cruise ships,” he says, flashing a fast, brilliant smile at me. “We’re just going to indulge ourselves for the next two days until we get to Santorini. Consider it a celebration of being alive.”
As the bathtub fills he gently undresses me. First my socks and boots. Next come my shirt and pants. Small puffs of dust from the dig site billow off them as he tosses them to the ground. I can’t believe that was just this afternoon that we were there. Discovering Iairos’s tomb. And then re-burying it. I gasp against the twist in my gut at that memory. I can barely think about what my mother would have thought about that.
I realize that one of my hands has fisted around the gold locket at my neck as he gently pulls my hands away so he can unhook my bra. Slide my panties down my legs. And then he’s on one knee below me, holding my hips to keep me steady. He presses a quick nip to each one of my hipbones, like he couldn’t help himself. But then he’s standing again. He gently pulls the hair tie from my hair, removes the pins I use to keep the shorter parts back. My hair cascades around my shoulders. And lastly he undoes the clasp of my necklace. And carefully, slowly, he tosses one of the hand towels hanging on the wall onto the edge of the sink and hangs the necklace on its hook.
I start to move toward the tub, now pretty full. I turn the knobs so the water stops running and swirl my hand through the water. It’s going to feel lovely. Necessary and lovely.
And then, from behind me, one of his bare feet steps into the bathtub. I look up in surprise and see him, completely naked and halfway into the tub. I give him a half smile. I wouldn’t have minded some time alone, but as he sits all the way in and then firmly pulls me in after him, I have to admit, the human contact is nice.
I sit between his legs. My back to his front. Letting my head fall back on his shoulder, I close my eyes and block out any and all thoughts. I concentrate only the feeling of him dragging a soapy cloth over every inch of my skin. My arms, in between my fingers, my breasts, my ribs, my armpits. I giggle a little at the tickle of it and I can feel his answering chuckle.
“You love touching me everywhere,” I mumble as he soaps inside my belly button, the crack of my ass.
“Yes,” he growls, one arm bracketing my waist as he leans forward with the cloth, dragging it down my thighs. “I touch you everywhere. And nobody else does.”
“That’s for sure,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve even touched myself in all the places you have.”
“Hm,” he grunts and I can’t tell if that’s in approval or disapproval. Maybe it’s both.
I expect him to start romancing me. Partly because I know him. But also partly because I can feel his enormous erection absolutely crushing into my lower back. But next he just washes my hair and helps me out of the tub. He dries me as thoroughly as he’s washed me.
I’m hungry, I can tell. But the thought of eating turns my stomach. I’ve never been so tired, so absolutely wasted, in my entire life. He sits me on the edge of the bed and makes me drink a glass of water.
“For the shock,” he says. “It’ll help.”
But then he’s tucking me in. I watch through half-closed eyes, it’s the best I can do right now, as he pulls some clothes from his backpack on.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m going to pick up a few things from the shop and the kitchen,” he says. “I also want to make sure I know the docking schedule. We’re set to make a few stops here and there and I want to make sure that no one boards the ship whose not supposed to at those times.”
I nod, but I’m already drifting off. I dimly hear the lock clicking behind him.
# # #
I run my hand over the cave walls for just a moment, to get my bearings. I can hear the drip, drip of a stalactite being formed somewhere deep in the bowels of the cave system. And the leathery flap of a bat’s wings. I’m not scared, though I’m alone. And I don’t even need a flashlight. Everywhere I turn, my eyes light up the path for me. Useful. Phosphorescence? Could be. I hear a whimper, coming from my left, and I freeze. Where there was just the wall of the cave a moment before has become a yawning opening. A hole that opens and beckons me inside.
I hear the whimper again. Looking down, I realize with some surprise that I’m barefoot. That’s odd. I’d never go someplace like this without my hiking boots. I put my hands at my hips to search for my archaeological tools and realize that I’m just touching my bare skin. There’s almost nothing on me except for a thick piece of leather around my neck. I can feel a metal loop on it.
I pause, a chill running up my spine. I’m not supposed to be here. This is bad. But then I hear the whimper again and I’m moving forward. That was a child. That was a child’s whimper. Maybe hurt. Maybe in pain. I rush forward.
I turn into a large cavern and see a small, crouched form in the middle. He’s curled into a shaft of light beaming down from the cave ceiling high above. He’s so small. And sick. I can see that even from here.
He looks up at me. His skin is golden and his hair a curly black. He clutching his hands over his chest.
“Help me, Kyna,” he says and his hands fall away, revealing a neat little hole, an empty cavity where his heart should be.
It’s Iairos. Poor, sweet Iairos. Who died for his sister and can’t even rest in peace. I rush toward him, wanting to offer any comfort I can.
But suddenly I’m ripped backward, off my feet. My neck explodes in pain. I whip my hands up to the leather collar around my neck, terrified that it’s shrinking. But I realize it hasn’t shrunk, it’s been yanked. By a chain that is now attached to the metal loop. I scramble to my knees and search around for the chain as the cries of the child, of Iairos, get louder and louder behind me.
I find the chain on the cool wet of the cave floor and rise to my feet. Clutching it in my hands. I give the chain an experimental tug, needing to find what it’s fastened to. Then I can let myself free, get to Iairos. But when I tug it, I hear a low chuckle coming from the shadows at the other end of the cavern. The chain tugs back at me. At my hands and at my neck. I stumble forward.
And out of the shadows steps a man. A man I’ve only seen a few times in my life. But I know him. Instantly. The inky black hair. The large, glassy eyes. Every ring on his fingers. It’s Esposito. I’m chained to him.
# # #
“Row! Wake up!” Someone is shaking my shoulders and calling my name and I come awake on a desperate gasp. My legs swishing through the sheets, my pillow wet with tears. I know immediately where I am. I know whose hands are on me. Who lays next to me on the bed. I know, in my bones, that I’m safe. That there is literally no chance of Esposito getting his hands on me while this man next to me lives and breathes.
“Kennedy,” I half sob and launch myself at him. The force of it pushes him back and I land on his chest, sprawled out, one leg slung over his hips.
One of his hands traces a circle over my back. “Hey, it’s ok. You were having a nightmare.”
“I know,” I say into his chest, my lips brushing against his chest hair, which just smells like him.
“You were talking about Iairos when I woke you up,” he says, and then his hand tightens over my hair. “And Esposito.”
“Iairos was dying. Begging for help. His chest didn’t have a heart in it.” The details pour out of me, murky, confused, the way of dreams. “Esposito owned me. He had a leash around my neck. A-a collar. He’d shown it to me before. Once. When he told me it was the last chance for the money from my father. He showed me what he’d make me wear.”
I shudder as I move closer to Kennedy, my leg slung over him. Our cores are almost aligned in this position. I can feel him brush against me.
Kennedy’s fingers are at my scalp, pulling my head back. His eyes are almost black in the dark. His normally light hair is blue in the moonlight off the ocean. I’ve never seen him look so intense.
“You’ll never wear his collar, Row,” he says to me. “You’ll never belong to him. You can’t. Because you already belong to me. Only me.”
I feel his erection growing against me. The tip of his cock sliding through me. I’m growing wet at his words. At the safety I feel in his arms.
“I should’ve fucked you last night,” he says, almost to himself. “It’s been too long since I reminded you who owns this body.” His hips thrust up gently, sending him just a half an inch into me. I bite my lip and hold still, not wanting him to take it away. “You got scared. Thought somebody could take this little pussy from me.” He thrusts upward again, giving me just a little bit more.
He lowers his hips then and I can’t take it. I need him to possess me. To show me from the inside how safe I am. I drop my hips a little, trying to take him in, but he pulls himself away, grabs my hips roughly.
“Not until I decide it’s time,” he says gruffly, his eyes boring into mine.
“Please,” I moan, and there’s tears on the edge of my voice. Overwhelmed, overworked tears. “I need it. I need you.”
And he thrusts his hips up and slams me down in the same motion. My whole body goes loose and tense at the same moment as he completely fills me from the inside. There’s no room for fear, it’s gone. There’s no room for doubt, it’s completely disappeared. There’s only room for this deep and overwhelming pleasure. This rightness that rockets through my body.
Kennedy rips the sheets back from us and pushes me up, so that I’m straddling him. His stare rakes across my breasts, my hair tumbling everywhere, and down, to the place where we’re joined.
“Take what you need, Quickdraw,” he grits out, and laces his fingers behind his head.
The pleasure, the permission, in his words, has me tightening around him and I haven’t even moved yet. From this position, I can see his chest, his muscular arms, his gorgeous face tight with arousal.
I experimentally lift my hips, I’ve never had sex in this position before. And then I let myself fall back down onto him. His cock impales me. Deliciously. My face goes slack with the shock of it as I perform the move again.
“So deep,” I murmur in pleasure, my head falling back for a second. I lift up and push back down again, forcing him so far into me. After a few more strokes, I’ve found a rhythm, fast and punishing to both of us, but his cock is hitting every place inside me. I’ve never risen so quickly. My breaths come out in short gasps.
He watches me with eyes like lasers as I fuck myself on his cock. His face goes tighter and tighter as I take my pleasure. His hips lift a little bit to meet me, but he lets me do whatever I need to get off.
I twist my hips just a little bit, falling forward, my hands on his chest. And the move grinds my clit against him. I’m coming like a gunshot. Like cannon fire. Like a plane careening toward earth. My entire body comes. Down to my fingertips, my eyelashes. Every tense emotion I’ve felt over the last day explodes out of me, synthesized into glorious, intense pleasure.
When I come back to earth, my pulse still racing in my ears, I open my eyes right into Kennedy’s. He’s staring at me like a wild animal that’s just been let out of a cage. His eyes are crazed, his breaths washing over my face.
In less than a second, he’s flipped us over so that he’s on top, his weight crushing me against the mattress.
“You see what I do for you?” he growls, his mouth at my neck, his hand tangling in my hair. “You see what I give to you? I let you fuck yourself on my cock, take all the pleasure you need. Because I take care of you.”
He hasn’t thrust into me yet, he’s just pressing an inexorable press that never ends.
He rears up, his hands on either side of my head. “This is mine,” he growls and finally pulls back to slam into me.
My mouth drops open as a wave of pleasure rolls through me. Everything inside me is so sensitive from having just come my brains out.
“And I protect what’s mine. This pussy is mine.” He thrusts again and again. My body is rising again, tensing. I’m starting to claw against his back as he falls forward, whispering in my ear as he slams into me over and over.
“This body is mine, Row. You’re mine. Only mine.”
One of his hands closes over my throat, not enough to constrict me, just enough to show me it’s intentional.
“I own this throat, Row. Nobody puts a collar here except me. You hear me?”
I nod and it makes the pressure on my throat increase for a second. Stars burst in my eyes as I fling myself over the edge and come like a madwoman, choking out my pleasure as I scream his name, arch and claw and come.
“I own it,” he says over and over again. “It’s mine. I own it.” I can feel every molecule of him on every molecule of me. It’s almost like we’re mixing together. And I realize that we are, as he comes and comes and comes inside me.
He collapses over top of me, his weight pressing me into the mattress. Seconds later a pounding comes right at our heads from the cabin next to us.
“Come on!” a man’s distant voice yells. “It’s 3:00 in the fucking morning!”
Kennedy lifts his head and looks me in the eye. We both burst out laughing. It feels so good to laugh. Almost as good as it did to come like a freight train. I feel loose. And free. And not scared anymore.
Kennedy rolls off of me and I come up onto an elbow, survey him in the silvery light through the small window of our cabin. “You mean all that, don’t you?”
“Hmmm?” he asks, reaching for the water glass.
“I mean, that’s not just the sex talking,” I say. The picture is coming clear in my head just seconds before I speak the words. “You’re being completely serious. You’re legitimately gonna protect me.”
He looks up at me. His stare is somehow clear and dark at the same time. “Yes. I don’t say things like that if I don’t mean them.”
“Why?” I can’t help but ask. “Why the hell are you doing this for me?”
“I don’t know.” He sighs and runs a hand through my hair. “You don’t deserve this shit from Esposito. Most of the people that I bring in have done something to deserve his… attentions. You hadn’t though.”
“And that bothered you enough to double-cross a dangerous mob boss?”
“No.” He pulls my hair a little. Not as hard as he does when we’re having sex. But not lightly either. “It didn’t. I’ve had twinges of that feeling before. I can’t explain it, Row. I just couldn’t let him have you.”
I shrug. “Well, that suits me just fine.”
He laughs. “I’m sure it does. I wanna make another promise to you, Row.”
“What’s that?”
His words make my heart skip a beat. For some reason the idea of him making a promise to me just sounds so damn good.
“No matter what happens, we’re not gonna let Iairos’s tomb stay buried. We’ll lay him to rest however you see best fits.”
My throat constricts a tiny bit. I feel like I can barely speak. I take a minute. “Ok,” is just about all I can manage. “Just because it matters to me?”
“Sure. But also that story affected me. Made me think of my own sister.”
“Her name is Mara, right?” I ask. I remember because I’d heard him say it on the phone to Dare. If he notices that I’d been eavesdropping, he doesn’t say anything about it.
“Yeah. Mara Laurel.”
“You don’t have the same last name?”
“Nope,” he says. “We don’t have the same father. She’s a lot younger than I am. About 13 years difference.”
“She’s 18?” I ask, doing the math.
He looks at me in amazement. “How the hell did you know how old I am?”
“I warned you. I’m a very smart woman.”
He grins. “I have no doubts about that professor.”
“So, the Iairos story reminds you of your sister?” I ask him. It’s such a sad story that I hope they don’t have very much in common.
“Not really, just more the idea of doing something really hard to protect someone you love. And then it not really having the intended effect.”
“You did that for her?”
“Yeah,” he says, absently handing over the glass of water when I reach out for it. “That’s how I got mixed up in the mob in the first place. I used to work for this guy named Greco. He took me in as a protégée. He protected me and gave me money. He also protected my mother and sister from Mara’s dad. A real bad guy. I never knew what happened to Rick Laurel. Just that Greco disappeared him. One day, poof. He was just gone.”
“And then you were indebted to Greco,” I guess.
He nods. “That’s how it works. There are no simple transactions. Once they get you, they get you for life. And I was really good at what I did. So he did pretty much everything he could to keep me there. Including starting to threaten Mom and Mara. Who I’d only gotten mixed up in that mess to protect in the first place.”
He pauses and takes a deep breath. Like he’s about to plunge into an ice cold pool. “That’s how I met Dare. And his wife Alessia. Greco sent me to murder her. But she clocked me over the head with a lamp and knocked some sense into me.” He chuckles a little bit and absently rubs his hand over his eye and jaw, as if he’s re-feeling an old injury. “When I came to, there with her, Dare had already taken out Greco. He was trying to free Alessia. But really he freed me. I was suddenly, for no reason that had to do with me, freed from that hell of a life.”
There’s something in his voice. Something when he talks about Alessia that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s almost… worship? I take it on the chin with a clinical sort of observation. I make a note to get more information on that when I can. For now, there’s more pressing questions in my brain. Ones that can’t be ignored.
“How old were you?” I ask.
“Seventeen when I first started. Twenty or so when I got out.”
“So young,” I whisper. My heart cracking into about a hundred little pieces. “So young to have been a hit man.”
He stills and turns to look at me. “How did you know that? I mean, I know you’re smart, but how did you figure that one out? Don’t tell me ‘murderer’ is written all over me.” He tries for a laugh but it lacks any music. He’s uncomfortable, deeply.
I decide to come clean. “I heard you talking to Dare on the phone outside our room last night. Just the end of the conversation. I knew that you were sending him to get your Mom and Mara. Although I didn’t know ‘Mara’ was your sister.” I pause. “And I heard you refer to ‘another hit man’. So, I figured that’s what you were.”
He rolls away from me. Looks up at the ceiling, his face carefully blank. “You slept with me again after that. After you knew what I’ve done.”
“Kennedy,” I say, gathering my thoughts for a moment. “I’ve been around death, in one way or another my entire life. Studying it in every way possible as an archaeologist. Even as an amateur when I was just a kid. And then when my mother died. When my father might as well have died after that. It took years for him to grow back even a small section of whatever it was that had been chopped out of him when she died.” I pause for a moment.
“I don’t like thinking about that period of time in our lives. He was a good father, always took care of me. My needs. He fed my mind with intellectual pursuits, he provided for me. He showed love in the ways he knew how. But there was a part of him that was just not alive anymore. That’s the clearest death I’ve ever really seen. Clearer even, than my mother’s. And I was in the room when she died.” I roll over to study him as I talk, and he’s captivated. I can’t explain why, but I suddenly have a need for him to understand my perspective. Where I’m coming from. So I plunge on. I’ve already done the hard part, after all.
“I’ve seen New Orleans funerals. And the funerals for kings and presidents. I’ve been to two thirds of the countries in the world and I’m not quite thirty yet. I’ve seen enough of the world to know that death, and the bringing of it, is deeply part of the human experience.”
His eyes are practically burning me. The way he’s looking at me. Unfathomably. He’s looking at me like he’s trying to make out my features from the bottom of the ocean.
“Killing is something people do. Plain and simple. For a host of different reasons. Some better than others,” I continue. “I’m not saying that I’d be able to make my peace with it if you were still an active hit man. I-I think I’d have a really hard time with that. But the way you spoke of it, like it’s a thing of the past. Well, I guess that’s why you became a skip tracer for Esposito. Your training as a hit man probably transfers in a lot of ways, and this way you don’t have to have so much blood on your hands.”
He scrubs a hand over his face and I can’t read his expression for the life of me. He looks lost. And tired. And confused. He looks back at me and if it wouldn’t have completely broken the spell, I would have flicked the light on to better see his face. But as it is, all I can do is look back at him. There’s an energy between us. Something thick and pulsing. I can’t tell if I’ve crossed a line.
He reaches out his hand as if he’s going to brush my cheek. But then he pulls his hand back and in one smooth motion, has rolled out of bed. He rips his pants off the chair he’d tossed them over.
“Where are you going?”
He’s pulling his shirt on as well.
“I’m gonna do one more sweep of the deck.” He turns back to me, silver in the moonlight. Like an ancient statue. His eyes are weighted with the realities of his world. “You should try and get a little more sleep. It was a big day.”
And then he’s gone, the cabin door clicking locked behind him. I collapse back on the pillow and turn my head to watch the moon over the water. For the first time since all of this began, I feel alone.