a better word. If you denied something long enough, your body eventually stopped expecting it.
Shirley blew air slowly out through still-pulsing lips.
She needed fresh air. Perspective.
She needed to get away from his lingering scent and the breath-stealing memory of him bending her back in his arms and plundering her mouth. Like the pirate he was. The stealer of kisses. And of dignity.
Half an hour in the bracing air of the Tasman Sea would do her wonders.
It might even help distract her from the all-encompassing desire to find Hayden and to pick a fight with him again, just to keep her arousal levels up. Up where he’d left them dangling so helplessly. So wasted.
If she couldn’t kiss him, she could shout at him a little bit and release tension that way.
HE’D made his point but he didn’t feel particularly good about it. Hours later and far out to sea, Hayden was still rattled by that kiss. The kiss he’d initiated then rapidly lost control of.
He’d lost control before, but it was always a carefully reined surrender. Even letting himself go came with some strict rules and recovery solutions. At all times.
With Shirley he’d literally lost it. His body participated in direct defiance of his will. On its own agenda. Nice little karmic reward for being a bastard and bending her to his will.
Just because you can …
He released his fingers from the punishing fists he’d made standing there at the bow of the Paxos, resting his arms on the aperture in the high wall which protected the crew and cargo from potentially high seas. Other people clenched their teeth when they were stressed, he clenched his fingers. To the point of pain.
It was unconscious but it made his dentist happy.
‘Hayden.’
Shirley spoke, soft and tentative, behind him. Knowing he was the cause of her uncertainty only infuriated him more. He turned slowly and faced the music.
She was in black from head to toe but it was just a T-shirt and leggings and she’d toned her make-up right back to a translucent foundation. Closer to what it had looked like the day she’d wiped Boudicca from her skin. Hayden stared at her and she shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. When he wasn’t being distracted by dramatically highlighted eyes and burnished coffee lips it was possible to appreciate the fine texture of her skin. He’d attributed its smoothness to her make-up. But it looked as if it was all natural.
He cleared his throat. ‘You honoured our bargain.’
One elegantly plucked brow arched. ‘You thought I wouldn’t?’
‘I thought I might have voided it.’ By kissing you.
She glanced away briefly. ‘I asked you a question and you answered it. It wouldn’t be reasonable to protest.’
‘Most people would.’
‘I’m not most people.’
No. She wasn’t.
‘Anyway, I came to get you. There’s something you need to see.’
‘Where?’
‘Towards the back of the ship.’
A mosaic of sea-containers? He could see those from here. But what else did he have to do with his time other than humour her? Even a half-hour in the stuffy little cabin had done his head in.
‘Lead on.’
She led him down the length of the ship and then stopped as she slipped one shoe on from its resting place against a giant blue sea-container. It was only then he realised she’d come to him barefoot. It seemed so comfortable on her he hadn’t stopped to think how out of place it was on a working freighter.
‘I worried I might not find it again,’ she said, her face strangely alight, turning down a gap between the high-rise of stacked containers.
‘For someone who takes things so seriously you seem unnaturally delighted by shipping containers.’
She laughed but didn’t turn, continuing into the man-made valley. ‘Just wait …’
They turned at her next shoe and he began to understand why she’d needed markers. Without the horizon to keep you oriented, this was a maze. She marched onwards then peered to her right—straight into another container from where he stood—paused and turned back to him, looking for all the world like a delighted child.
Was it a coincidence that he’d only been able to remember her after she’d shed the Shiloh mask?
She grinned at him. ‘What’s the thing least likely to be around this corner? In the whole world?’
The rapid mental shift that question required took him a moment to adjust. He thought of the craziest and most unlikely thing he could conceive. ‘My parents having high tea.’
The delight fell from her face just slightly and her slim fingers rested gently on the edge of the container as she frowned at him. She wouldn’t know—about them, about why that was such a ludicrous concept, whether they were at sea or not—but she was smart enough to read between the lines.
‘I assume it’s not that,’ he said to cover the silence. To mask his sudden pain.
She straightened and backed up, holding one hand out as though to take his across the emptiness between them, keeping her eyes firmly locked on his. Warm. Beckoning.
A true Siren …
It was only as he stepped towards her that he realised it wasn’t a solid wall of sea containers to her left; it was another turn. A turn which opened out to—
‘What the—?’
Her face split into a radiant smile and he stumbled to a halt, utterly and genuinely dumbfounded for the first time in his entire life.
A giraffe.
It stood, munching happily on straw and staring at him with a general sort of curiosity as he stood gaping at it. It was housed in the biggest animal crate he’d ever seen, with an opening large enough for it to stretch its long neck and head out of and get a whiff of the sea. A large sort of container clearing had been built around it at the heart of the ship to shelter it from rough weather but give it some sense of air and space.
The strangest sense washed through him—alien and long-forgotten.
Wonder.
Had it really been that long since something had amazed him? Moved him the way those enormous thick-lashed, liquid mercury eyes did. This extraordinary creature standing in this extraordinary place.
Maybe
