and guided me onto the steps at the stern of his yacht on the right-hand side. As we stepped up onto the vessel, my chest tightened when I was confronted with the magnitude of opulence. Even though I’d just been on his private jet, this…this was something else. I could rationalize a private jet. It was for travel, for business.
But a yacht?
A yacht was supreme luxury, a toy for the elite.
There was seating for eight people and a table for dining outside, all lit up perfectly to showcase expert craftsmanship and a real teak deck. A man appeared from a staircase just to the right of a set of sliding glass doors and he began to speak to Hadrian in low tones before disappearing again.
“I know just as much about yachts as I do jets,” I said to him, gliding my hand across the sleek stainless-steel handrail I’d been gripping.
Hadrian smiled. “Then I won’t bore you with too many specifics. This is Aegir. She’s an 80 Sunreef power catamaran, one of only seven like her in the world, and fully customized for me. But I promised you dinner. Take off your boots. I have deck shoes for you, or you can go barefoot.”
“Yes. Food and then bed, I think,” I said, my body tired from travel. I quickly pulled off my boots and followed Hadrian’s massive form across the deck.
Hadrian opened the sliding glass doors and we walked into a magnificent salon and dining room area with its own helm in the corner of the room, complete with a captain’s chair and all sorts of gadgets for navigation. He guided me toward a seat at a dining table and I slid into it, completely overwhelmed.
“You don’t even look tired. How is that possible?” I asked.
“I don’t sleep much to begin with,” he said with a rueful smile. “Maybe four hours a night.”
“Four hours?” I marveled. “How do you even function?”
“I’m a machine.”
One of the yacht crew came from below deck up a flight of stairs into the salon. He placed two steaming, unshelled lobsters in front of us along with a container of freshly melted butter. He then poured us two glasses of white wine from a bottle that had been chilling in an ice bucket on the table.
“I figured, why bother with salads?” Hadrian said.
I nodded. “Good, vegetables are gross anyway.”
Hadrian started to laugh, a booming sound that echoed off the walls of the dining area.
I derived a strange sort of pleasure from making him laugh. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who laughed a lot and the thought made my heart lurch in sadness.
“Do you have friends, Hadrian?” I asked suddenly.
“Do you?” he countered.
I smiled.
He glowered. “What’s that smile for?”
“It’s not fun being on the receiving end of personal questions, is it?”
Hadrian leaned back in his chair and played with the stem of his wine glass while he surveyed me. “I think I may have underestimated you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you’re as tenacious as I am. So, you’re a talented linguist. How did you learn to speak three languages?”
“How did you learn to speak five?” I countered.
He sighed. “And here I’d hoped that after a long day of travel you’d be a little more…”
“Malleable?”
“Forthcoming,” he corrected. “You’re a conundrum. The day we met at the Bar and Restaurant, you were flirtatious and confident. The night at The Mansion you were terrified—which I now know was because it was your first event. You said there wasn’t money growing up for you to enjoy the finer things in life, and yet your table manners are perfect, like you come from a wealthy family.”
He leaned forward. “You’re evasive in conversation, and the only time I feel like I truly have a grasp on who you are is when you’re in my bed. And for a man who reads people, for a man who knows when people are lying, I know there’s something you’re not saying. Something big.”
His words terrified me. No matter how much I thought I could bury my past and have it stay there, I seemed to wear it like a badge for Hadrian to see. And even though he didn’t know exactly what I was hiding from him—from the world—Hadrian wasn’t a man who would let it go.
He was relentless, and he wouldn’t be happy with anything less than my complete and utter surrender. Not just in his bed, but in life, too. He’d never stop asking questions, he’d never stop digging. I was