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Once we were on the elevator and the doors slid together, I asked, “How long have you been on the boat?”
“I boarded seven people behind you,” he answered with a grin. “Trust me, babe. You’ve never been out of my sight.”
It pissed me off that I hadn’t noticed him, especially since I’d thought I was being overly careful and superbly sneaky. It pissed me off even more that he apparently hadn’t been troubled with the fact that I’d drunk enough to make myself so inebriated that I’d even consider taking Mr. Stubble back to my room for a romp and tumble. So much for holding out any hopes of ever making him jealous by flirting with another man.
“So, you just stood back and let me nearly drink myself to death? Thanks for all your protectiveness, Mr. Bodyguard of the fucking year.”
He leaned back against the glass wall of the elevator and said, “I thought about stepping in and putting a stop to it, but then changed my mind.”
Ouch. “Why? What changed your mind?” No lying, my tongue really felt like shag carpet.
He shrugged. “What you just did, Ari, is something practically every man, woman, and teenager has done at one point in their life. While I watched you, I started to think it was your first time at getting shit-faced to the point of puking.”
I glared at him, or at least gave it my best attempt at glaring when the throbbing in my head pounded louder than the island music that had been blasting on deck earlier. “So, you thought it would be funny to watch me get sick in front of everybody?”
“No, Ari. I thought you deserved to live a little. You’ve been so reserved your entire damn life, so much like a newborn foal trying to get comfortable with its beautiful, powerful legs, but never quite getting there for some reason. In college, I sat back and watched you experience life by only looking through a window pane, not participating, just watching. At the time, I didn’t know why. Once I learned your age, all the things I’d questioned became easier to understand.” He brushed some damp hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. “I’d hoped that over the past three years, you would have many opportunities to step out of your comfort zone and do all the silly, stupid things the rest of us do. Watching you drink like a boss when I suspect your association with liquor is limited, at best, made me wonder if I was mistaken—that you’re still the same sweet, innocent, reserved boy who stole my heart years ago.”
The elevator doors slid open on the ninth floor and he ushered us out. “I’m not a boy,” I growled in frustration. I didn’t like being called a boy, sweet, reserved, or innocent by Eli…especially by Eli. I wanted him to view me as his equal—the man he threw away when he should have held on tightly. Yet, it looked like I was, as always, viewed like a child.
The story of my entire fucking life.
As we walked down the hallway, Eli answered with a whispered challenge of, “Prove it.”
I wanted, more than I even wanted to brush my teeth, to slam his body against the wall, pin him there with brute strength I knew I didn’t possess, and plunder his mouth with a kiss powerful enough to give him a taste of what he’d been missing and would never get again. I wanted to set his blood on fire, cause it to bubble and boil with need, just the way he did mine with no more effort on his part than a glance in my direction. Everything in me wanted to do something to prove my worth and to make him finally open his fucking eyes and see me. Sure, I wanted all that and even had some seriously hot ideas on how to succeed in the mission, but when the hallway floor moved in a way that reminded me of a crowd performing the wave at a football game, the only thing I could do was slam my hand over my mouth, shove him aside and start running toward my cabin.
Well, fuck. I was either still pickled or sea sick. Neither was a good thing.Chapter FourEliWell, I supposed I could probably say that day one of the cruise could have gone worse, but in order to achieve a lower level of worse, I would have had to dig pretty deep into the shit pile. Things had gone rather smoothly in my efforts to counter Ari’s determination to ditch me. I’d seen that one coming a mile away and had effectively shut it down. I’d managed to catch a different flight that put me at the port in Galveston a couple of hours before Ari, so following him after he exited the plane had been simple. I’d already hacked into his computer and learned which cruise he’d sneaked onto and booked after hearing I’d be traveling with him, and then I’d borrowed company skills to get me on the same boat…in the same room.
