“I heard that if we don’t get back to the ship the captain will have us walking the plank all the way to Davy Jones’s locker,” someone retorts. “Or worse, he’ll hand you over to the mermaids.”
“Ugh.” I swear I can feel the disgust in the other man’s voice. “No, thank you. The last time we ran into them, I lost a chunk from my back.”
“Now, Cecco, if I remember correctly, you didn’t lose that in a fight.” The other one chuckles. “You lost that after a night with Marinda.”
“Ahhh.” Cecco sighs. “And what a night that was. A beauty. The sea.Magnifico.”
“You barely made it out alive,” the other says dryly.
“True, but for a night with a mermaid, I suppose it was worth it.”
“Leave it to an Italian to put love over life. Now, come on. We need to get back to the ship. We’ve enough coconuts to have a proper snack for the crew.”
I lift my head a bit, peering into the moonlit dark, and see two shapes moving away from me down the beach, a large sling—presumably full of coconuts—lifted between them.
When I push up farther, a heavy weight lands on my back, and a hand claps over my mouth. “Not a sound, Moira. Not a single fucking sound.”
Chapter
Four
Surely you know what a kiss is?
Ican’t struggle much with the brute on my back, but I wiggle some and try to kick my heel up to smack him on the leg. None of it works. I’m trapped.
“Why did you leave? We were making you supper,” my kidnapper whispers, his breath warm against my ear.
This guy can’t be serious. I wriggle more, but he lets all his weight bear down on me, the scent of woods and earth filling my nose, as if he rose from the forest behind me like one of the trees.
He puts his other hand by my head and lifts up, looking out at the sparkling sea. “All right, I think they’ve headed back. Come on. That was close.”
When he finally gets off me, I roll over and kick out at him.
He dodges it with ease and stares down at me. “Are you nuts?”
“Stay away from me!” I scramble to my feet, spitting sand as I go.
“Moira.” He shakes his head. “I brought you to Neverland, saved you from that boring grownup school. What’s gotten into you?”
I freeze, years’ worth of my family’s tall tales filtering through my mind as I stare at the young man with his head cocked to the side. “Neverland?”
“Neverland.” He nods. “Surely Wendy told you all about it.”
“Wendy?”
“Why do you keep repeating me?” He smiles. “Is this a game? I love games.”
I swallow hard, sand crunching between my teeth as I do. My hands go clammy as my neck seems to heat. The stars above me are still sparkling happily, as if this little drama beneath them is quite the show and they’ve had tickets for ages. “I need to go. Take me back to my dorm. Now.”
“I can’t do that, Moira.” He steps toward me right as more figures appear along the ridge above us. “We need you.”
“What?”
“Just come back to the cave. We’ll have supper. We can talk there where it’s safe.” As if on cue, some fearsome beast roars in the forest, the ferocious sound of it shaking the chambers of my heart.
“Moon’s getting high, Peter,” one of the shadows calls. “We need to go.”
“Peter?” I stare at the handsome man with eyes of a deep, warm brown and skin the color of honey. “Peter Pan?”
