Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
What happened in the dream varied, but the sense of foreboding and danger never did. Sometimes my family would be there. Gabe or Becca or one of my dads. Sometimes it would be my grandmother. My boss. One time, it was the young woman who’d sold me a sandwich a few days earlier.
In the dream, they’d been taken. Or murdered. Or shoved into the impossibly deep port waters, never to be seen again.
I startled awake, as I always did—gasping. An aborted scream of agony on my lips. Sweat covering my body.
But this time when it happened, strong male arms banded around me, exacerbating the terror.
I struggled, sucking in as much air as possible so I could cry for help.
“Jesus fuck. Jett. Jett! It’s me, Locke. Stop fighting me. For fuck’s sake.” The sleep-hoarse voice was familiar, and a wave of relief washed over me.
“S-sorry,” I said, choking on an inhaled breath while simultaneously trying to huff out a laugh to assure him I was fine. The result was a coughing fit.
Locke loosened his hold, allowing the chill of the room to hit my warm skin where our chests had been pressed together.
I blew out a breath and started to move toward the far side of the bed, but then I realized Locke had only moved away to grab a bottle of water for me. “Drink this.”
The water was cool and clean. I gulped down several sips before handing it back to him to put back on the table. “Thanks.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Definitely not.”
“Suit yourself. Go back to sleep, then.”
I stared at the dark shape of him, only faintly visible in the city lights coming around the edge of one curtain. “You’re bossy as fuck. Do you think you run the entire world? Because you sure act like it sometimes.”
He rolled flat on the bed beside me and laughed hollowly. “Feel like it sometimes, too.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, wondering if I could gather any kind of intel while I was here. Might as well, since the whole sex thing was off the table, and the idea of returning to the murder pier in my dreams was not welcome.
“Nothing to talk about. I manage an arm of my family business. Someday—hopefully no time soon—I’ll run the whole thing. And running Maris comes with serious responsibilities.”
Calling Maris a “family business” was a massive understatement. Hell, half the ships in the Hamburg port during my mission had been Maris ships, the equipment stamped with Maris logos. His family was so wealthy, I was surprised he didn’t travel with personal security.
“Is that why you were in Amsterdam?” I pressed. “Big ruler-of-the-world meetings?”
“Not exactly.” After a brief hesitation, he added, “I was here for a chess tournament.”
Unbelievable as this statement seemed, it had the ring of truth. For a moment, I gaped at his shadow in the darkness. Then I scrambled to turn on the bedside lamp.
Locke threw an arm over his eyes with a muffled curse.
“A chess tournament? What the fuck?” I demanded with a laugh. “I’ve been around plenty of chess. No way are you a chess nerd.”
Locke pushed himself up to sit against the headboard, rubbing his eyes and glaring at me all the while. His face was adorably sleep-rumpled with a red splotch on his cheek where it must have been pressed against some part of me while we slept.
“It’s an old-world variant of chess called Paxis,” he explained. “More complicated than regular chess. And I wasn’t playing, I was watching. My grandfather’s the Paxis player in our family.”
My fingers itched to look it up online, but I resisted the urge. “Let me understand. You travel the world to cheer on your grandfather while he plays ultra-nerdy chess?” I teased.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest, and I tried not to appreciate the broad spread of his shoulders and curved muscles of his pecs. Or the masculine hair on his forearms. Or the happy trail I could now see disappearing from his belly button down into the sheets.
“Something like that, yes.” He eyed me. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a nerd hobby because I won’t believe you. Everyone has one.”
I blinked at him and blurted out the truth. “S-seashells.” I cleared my throat. “I’m on the hunt for the tiniest perfect specimen. Specifically, spiral or conch-shaped. So, like, a triton or tulip would work. I like tritons, but they’re rare. I’ve heard they’re more common in Hawaii, but I’ve never been.”
“Where have you found them so far?” he asked, looking surprised. “Rockaway Beach in Queens? I’ve heard of people searching for shells there.”
“No, South Carolina. I grew up on the coast there, I think I told you?”
Shit. Had I told him that?
After so many months as Jonas Vogel, it was hard to remember Jethro’s backstory period, let alone which bits of it Locke and I had discussed.