“What the fuck!” I yelled so loud that I swore it scratched my vocal cords.
“As entertaining as your caterwauling is,” a droll voice said from the side, “that last one hurt my ears. Knock it off.”
My head turned to the left toward the deep voice. “Gym Bro,” I exclaimed when I recognized the tall, dark, and muscled man in his black mesh shirt and black jeans.
“Excuse me?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting in confusion, though he didn’t otherwise move, given that he was similarly trussed up along the wall.
I didn’t bother explaining my nickname for him. “Where are we? What’s happened?” It hit me then that I had either sobered immediately upon realizing someone had restrained me with a strange man, or I’d been here for hours. Probably the former, since I didn’t have to pee. “How long have I been here?”
“We are on the enforcer’s ship. We have been kidnapped. It has only been about fifteen minutes,” he answered my questions.
“Fifteen minutes.” I frowned at the news. “Wait,” I said as his first answer slammed home. “What enforcer? What ship? Who kidnapped us?” My voice rose in volume and incredulity with each question.
“I am Cair Anas,” a voice from my right side stated.
My head now turned in that direction. A door whooshed closed behind the other tall, muscled man I’d seen in the parking lot.
“This is my ship.” The man had removed his hat and sunglasses since I’d last seen him.
“Now I understand why you wore sunglasses,” I said, shocked by the muted yellow of his irises.
The man—Cair Anas—stepped closer to me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Emily Nichols,” I answered by reflex, fascinated by his shimmering hair above pearly skin. “What do you do to make it iridescent like that?” I blurted out my question.
Cair sighed, the deep sound vibrating through me. “I do not do anything.”
“You don’t like your hair’s reflectiveness,” I continued, dimly aware that my focus on his appearance was in part to ignorethe skyrocketing panic at being restrained on an enforcer’s ship. Whatever an enforcer was.
Cair’s full lips thinned into a line of displeasure. “Emily Nichols,” he said my name.
I shivered in response. This time, not from the cold. What was it about his melodic voice that had an erotic effect on me? “Your hair is beautiful,” I said, and he quirked an eyebrow. “Why do you wear a hat? If you don’t like it, you can dye it?” I questioned why he couldn’t solve his imagined problem.
“It does not keep the color, Ms. Fix It,” he snapped at me, eyes widening. “You realize that you have been seized, right?”
“I babble when I’m nervous,” I admitted. “Why have I been … seized?” My breath became ragged, even without using the wordkidnapped. I gulped several times in a futile attempt to oxygenate my brain. My vision darkened to pinpoints.
“Emily Nichols,” Cair repeated, stepping so close I could reach out and touch him.
Well, I could if I wasn’t shackled. My blood became icicles when my instinct to lean away from him, from the implied danger, also failed because of the shackles keeping me immobile.
“Why were you defending my runner?”
His runner? Was there an athlete there that I missed? “Who?” I asked, before being distracted by the heat emanating from the man before me. And his scent, a curious mix like fresh rain with pine.
Cair pointed at the other restrained man. “Xelthar Zarnoth. My Brakian runner.”
“Your what? Who?” It was as if Cair was speaking Latin. The words meant nothing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Cair sighed again. “I was afraid of that.”
“Listen. This has all been a big mistake,” I said, the fingers of my hands above the glowing rings spreading outward. “Whendo we reach land? You can just let me off at whatever port we’re closest to. I won’t report this to the police if you just let me go,” I promised. And I meant it. This would all soon be a bad dream.
Laughter from my left drew my attention.
I glared at Xelthar. “Why is that funny?”
“She thinks she is on a boat,” the man said to Cair, instead of answering me.
