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8
ACE OF SPADES
I wokeup with no tongue.
There couldn’t be one, since the entirety of my mouth felt like it’d been stuccoed together.
“She’s waking up.”
There it was, the Betrayer’s voice.
Kai put his hands on me, but I shoved them aside, eyes still closed. “Go away.”
“There’s not many places to go around here, hun,” Kai said. Despite my continuedthwacksagainst his arms, he helped me upright.
I blinked, slowly at first. The stucco had traveled from my mouth to my eyelids. Everything was grit.
“Here.” Kai held a bottle of water in my eyeline, which I accepted and shoved to my mouth before I registered it as a suspicious act of kindness.
Choking mid-swallow, I spat it out.
“Ah—Christ, Scar!” Kai wiped at his face.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t “accidentally” aim the spray at his face. While he was still wiping with the back of his hand, I shoved the bottle at his chest. “Thanks, but I’m maxed out on drugs today.”
“It’s not …spuh.” He rubbed his mouth, spitting out my detritus. “It’s just water.”
But I wasn’t attuned to Kai anymore. I took in my surroundings, somewhere small and wooden, my palms pressing into a thin, cot-like mattress. A circular hole was to my left, a window of sorts, and there was a sway, unrelated to my cotton-cloud mind, that had my body gently swinging.
Damn. I was still on a boat.
Chuckling came from my right, and I noted the crossed suit-legs of the person in the chair, the rest of his form hidden from view, but I didn’t need to see the rest of this man to know.
The last scene I remember was facing Theo on theHatari, the man of my dreams who crept his seduction into my nightmares, the way I’d been forced to remember him for so long. He wasn’t one for photos or social media. There was nothing I could look to in reminder during times of deep loneliness. All I had was memories, snippets, flashback pain. To have Theo close by again caused the worst kind of love, the pull of him nearly driving me to forget the nights I only had his ghost for company.
Then, so clearly, reality crashed down, and his scarred face forced the reckoning that his time away may not have been too peachy, either.
I cleared my throat and said to him, “You stalk me, corner me, turn Kai against me, then drug me in order to toss my unconscious body onto another ship. You might as well face me.”
Theo leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. I expected it, but he still took my breath away. Not simply because of his new flaw. He was the same beautiful demon I’d engraved onto my heart. The sheer sight of him smacked me awake in a way that made it seem these past few years without him were just a dream. Scar tissue served only to frame the old wound and create a tangible pain while looking at him.
“There was only one way to get you off Neri’s property safely,” Theo said.
Funny, his lips were moving, but all I heard wasblah blah you’re a girl who I had to step in to save blabby blah.
“I had my own exit,” I bit out. Then, glancing at Kai who still stood at my elbow, I yanked the water out of his hand and glugged.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“I haven’t even started with you yet,” I said after swallowing. “Marcus is getting a call as soon as I get my hands on a phone.”
Kai’s eyes formed into slits. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I’m going to tattle to your boyfriend that you’re a terrible person who drugged his best friend and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Theo ignored the two of us, saying instead, “Yes, we both know you were going toTitanicyour way out of there and float away on a lifeboat.”
He said it with such a wry tone, like it was a crime caper I’d never succeed in.
