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I rummage in my pocket and take out a velvet box. “Come over here.”
She eyes it warily but crosses to me anyway, as though she were made to obey.
Inside is a honey-brown crystal pendant. I bought it because it looked like her eyes, bright and warm and impossible to look away from.
I clasp it around her neck, and my fingers brush the nape of it, and the fine hairs there stand straight up. The crystal sits perfectly against the blue, and it feels as if the whole room is holding its breath.
“Beautiful,” I say.
“Do you mean the necklace?” she asks.
“The necklace is only a stone,” I say. “You’re the one who gives it any worth.”
Then I look at the crystal again, sitting warm and honey-colored against her collarbone, and I see that it doesn’t match her eyes at all. I bought it thinking it would. It doesn’t come close. Nothing this hard and cut and finished could ever catch what actually lives in her eyes, the fight and the warmth and the tired stubborn light of them. Her lips part, but nothing comes out of them, and she covers her mouth, staring into the distance.
“You will wear the blue one,” I decide, and straighten the strap on her shoulder. “The black one is only ever for me, to remind you who you belong to.”
Color floods up her face all the way to the tips of her ears, a warmth reserved for me. “You’re awful,” she says, shoving my hand away, and she flees back into the lounge.
The door slams, and I catch myself smiling at the rare lightness of it. The feeling is too real to pretend away. She has me whipped, and I don’t even mind.
Then I think of those men on the deck watching her cross it in anything at all, and the smile goes cold on my mouth. Anyone who lets his eyes linger too long on her this weekend is going to become a problem I eliminate myself.
22
DELANEY
The deep blue swimsuit clings to every curve of my body and traces the shape of me. It doesn’t show much skin, but it hugs my waist and my hips on purpose, and the crystal pendant sways against my heaving chest with every breath I take. It’s the most special thing anyone has ever given me, and he must have paid a pretty penny for it.
I thought I could handle the heat of Lev’s gaze scorching through me after standing in front of him in it at the office. The office had braced me for this, or so I had told myself. Stupid.
Standing before him now is a different thing entirely. In the office there were walls and a mahogany desk and the pretense of work to hide behind. Here there is nothing but sunlight and open air and him, as compelling as he has ever been. His eyes sweep down from my shoulders to my hips and back up, slow and thorough, and my skin feels as though his fingers ghost over every line they pass. I have to fight the jittery urge to cross my arms over myself. I keep them pinned at my sides instead, because I refuse to let him see me shrink.
He makes an appreciative hum, then tips his head and turns toward the deck. “Come with me,” he says shortly, and I fall into step behind him at once.
He’s in a black tank top and shorts that outline his powerful frame like a modern sculpture come to life. I’m used to him in tailored suits and starched collars, buttoned up to the throat, every line of him controlled. Stripped down like this he looks somehow more dangerous, not less, and anything but inconspicuous, all that silver hair and corded, hard muscle and old scar out in the daylight where anyone can see it. The sight of him dressed down dries my throat right out and leaves me weak-kneed, and I hate that my body still answers him greedily before my head can catch up.
He glances back and catches my eyes head on, and a shiver goes down my spine. I have no time at all to look away before I’m caught staring, and my mouth snaps shut.
“You don’t need to know a single soul here.” His voice is cool, melodic, and he holds out his hand to me.
I set my palm in his. “I’m only his assistant,” I grouse to myself.
His fingers close around mine, and my palm burns where his skin meets it, a warmth I gravitate toward. “You are not here to work today,” he says insistently.
“Then what am I here for?” I ask, and I incline my head.
He brushes a strand of hair off my face where the breeze has caught it, feathering it back, and his fingertips linger a second too long against my temple. A coil of anxiety and giddiness settles in my belly. “Be yourself,” he says. “Enjoy the party. For once in your life, let someone else carry the weight for an afternoon, zólotse.”
I don’t know what to do with that, only that my heart swells. Nobody’s ever offered to carry anything of mine before, and I already know I’ll crave it from now on.
I only half understand him, and some part of me insists that this sounds like a date. He picked the swimsuit himself. He picked the necklace. Without a shadow of a doubt, that is not a thing a boss does for a person he pays.
At the last party he called me his woman in front of a whole ballroom of the most dangerous people in the city. This time I have no name at all, only an order not to please anyone. There’s no title to hide behind, no fortress, no clear place to stand. Whatever my identity is on this boat, guest or liability, I decide right then and there that I’m not going to let myself get hurt today, that I will keep my feet under me, firm as a rock, no matter what this afternoon decides to throw at them.
The yacht towers over me and swallows me whole. It rises up in white levels like a floating building, its decks crowded with out-of-season hydrangeas, and its enormous hull gleams with a cold brilliance against the water. Uniformed servers glide between the guests with trays of champagne, dressed so flawlessly they could be part of the furniture.
I learn quickly that a party like this needs no reason to exist. People drink and sunbathe and make deals over dirty cash in low voices that ordinary people will never get close enough to hear. There is no cake being cut, no toast being given, no moment the whole thing is building toward. The excessive wealth of it simply pools and shimmers with nowhere it needs to go. I don’t know where to put my hands, or my eyes, or the rest of me.
