Steele-Faced (Daggers & Steele Book 6) (21 page)

“Well, you saved me from that werewolf and from those brain-hungry zombies, which put me down oh-two, but I’ve since rescued you from the clutches of a vicious gang of smugglers and pulled you out of the ocean, so by my count we’re even.”

Shay smirked. “Oh. Well, I’d thought those first two were more joint efforts, but I’ll go ahead and take credit. Although when framed that way, your rescues seem rather pedestrian as compared to mine.”

“I play the hands I’m dealt,” I said. “And no, that’s not an intentional poker metaphor. But I don’t mind if you get the fearsome creatures and I get the rest. As long as you’re here. As long as you’re safe. That’s all I care about.”

“You risked everything for me.”

I smiled. “It’s what partners do.”

“Come on, Jake,” said Shay. “Diving into the ocean after me? Putting your life on the line without hesitation? It’s more than what partners do. You and I both know it. So thank you.”

Shay set her mug down near the fire and leaned over to kiss me. As she did so, her blanket began to fall open, revealing the length of her arm and her shoulder and more.

“I… Uh… Shay? Your blanket.”

Shay’s mouth parted, and I felt her hot breath on my face. “I know, Jake.”

I leaned forward and met her kiss, tasting the sea salt on her lips and rejoicing in their warmth and softness. Shay’s tongue flicked out, brushing against the tip of my own and sending a surge of desire through me. Her blanket fell away. The flickering flames sent shadows dancing over her body, illuminating the supple curve of her breasts, the wave of her hips, and the long, smooth lines of her thighs.

Shay sucked on my lower lip and pulled away. She eyed me hungrily.

“Shay…”

“What?” she said. “Zander said we should engage in physical activity. I’m following the doctor’s orders.”

She slid her hands into my blanket, pushing it back over my shoulders. Her hands slid down my chest, then down my abdomen before she ran them over the hair of my thighs. I felt myself harden.

I planted my hands on her hips, my fingers gripping her tight and my thumbs trailing along the crease of her thighs down into the space between her legs. I ran my eyes over her smooth, naked form, her perked nipples and flat stomach, enjoying every inch. Despite the hypothermia, heat rolled off her.

“You’re…sure you’re not still confused? The doc said that can happen with hypothermia.”

Shay leaned in and kissed the side of my neck, moving up toward my earlobe. Her voice came hot and breathy. “What do you want me to do? Solve math problems? Recite a passage from one of your silly mystery novels?
I want this, Daggers.”

I felt a surge of desire flow through me. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Good enough for me.”

I wrapped an arm around her midsection and slid the other under her thigh, my fingers pressed hard against her smooth skin. Shay wrapped her legs around me and hooked her arms over my neck as I picked her up. Slowly I laid her back against the rug, then pressed my body up into her own. She welcomed me, and together, we sunk into the warm embrace of the fur.

32

I heard a knock, somewhere distant in the far off reaches of my mind, followed by a muffled call. Steck’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Waters?”

I cracked an eyelid. Bright sunshine filtered through the porthole windows, filling the living room with light. The fire had long since died, but its warmth still filled the room, along with the sooty scents it left behind.

I shifted and turned my head, laying eyes on my partner beside me. She lay with her breasts and stomach pressed into the thick fur of the rug, asleep with her head cradled against her crossed arms. The light played off her bare skin, illuminating the curve of her shoulder blades, the dip of her lower back, and the pleasant bump of her buttocks. I’d rested my eyes on it on more than one occasion but always with a dress or a pair of slacks to hide it. Sprung from behind those walls of fabric, it was rounder and fuller than I’d expected. I yearned to reach out and grab ahold of it, but the knocking continued.

I rose, grabbing one of the discarded blankets from nearby. I wrapped it around my waist before heading to the door.

I cracked it. Steck stood just outside as I’d guessed based on the voice.

“Ah, Mr. Waters. There you…” His voice trailed off and his lips puckered as he took note of my state of undress.

“What’s up, Steck?” I probably should’ve lowered my voice in the event of nearby prying ears, but I figured that ship had more or less sailed.

Steck blinked. “Oh. Uh…I was just stopping by to check on you two. Make sure you were feeling all right and that you’d be ready for the start of the tournament.”

“Poker. Right. I’d almost forgotten about that. What time is it?”

“Half past seven, roughly.”

“And the tournament starts at…?”

“Eight, theoretically,” said Steck. “Although I might be able to have the crew push it back by thirty minutes.”

“Try for an hour,” I said, tugging on my blanket to make sure it stayed in place. “And to assuage your fears, Shay and I are fine. More than fine. But could you send up some room service? I don’t know about Shay, but I’m
famished,
and I’m not sure we’ll have time to visit the dining room.”

“Sure,” said Steck. “No problem.”

“One more thing before you go. How bad is it?”

“How bad is what?”

“Everything,” I said. “The rumors. The gossip. Our covers. I can’t remember everything due to the hypothermia, but I’m pretty sure we all let the veil slip last night.”

Steck shrugged. “You’re the hot topic of conversation. Everyone’s heard about the rescue, but nobody seems to know what happened. As to your names? I’m not sure, really.”

“Right. We’ll hope for the best. Thanks.”

I closed the door and returned to the living room. Shay had stirred, but she hadn’t risen. She still lay on the rug belly down, propped up on her elbows with her knees bent and her feet kicked up into the air.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I said.

She brushed back a lock of hair that had strayed into her face. “Who was that?”

“Steck, checking to make sure we’re still alive.”

Shay glanced at the grandfather clock. “Is it seven thirty already?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” I said. “I didn’t think we went to bed that late.”

“Went to bed is a bit of a misnomer seeing as we never made it past the rug,” said Shay. “And while we may have turned in early, I’m not sure when either of us actually fell asleep. We got distracted.
Over and over
again.”

“There’s no shame in that,” I said. “Or in sleeping in. I’ve made a habit of it. I think we both needed it. We had a lot of rigorous physical activity yesterday.”

Shay smiled. “You mean you saving me from the ocean?”

“Yeah…let’s go with that.”

Shay gave me a nod. “What happened to your chest?”

I looked down and found a bruise blossoming from my ribs, on my right side near my sternum. “This? It must’ve happened during my fight down in the engine room. Didn’t even notice it until now. Honestly I thought if anything it would be the knee to the face that would leave a mark. How’s my cheek?”

Shay blinked and shook her head. “Wait,
what?
Fight?
Engine room?”

Right. Shay still didn’t know. We’d never really found an opportune moment to talk about it, although to be fair, we hadn’t talked about much of anything. Most of our communication over the past ten hours had come in the form of grunts, moans, sighs of relief, and the occasional ecstasy-induced expletive.

I sat down next to her on the rug. “Yeah, we might want to talk about what happened last night. After you went to find Zander, Steck popped by claiming he’d followed Wanda into the engine room. Instead of
continuing
to follow her, he came to get me, and we hustled back down there together. I thought I caught a glimpse of her, but it turned out to be someone else, someone who attacked me in the dark. I have no idea who. Someone big and strong and who’d been drinking. I managed to lay into them with a length of rebar and drive them off, but we didn’t catch them.

“It wasn’t until after Steck and I returned to the room that I noticed your absence, so I took Steck and headed to Zander’s office. When he said you’d never showed, I went looking for you. Thankfully I stopped by the lounge where I met the bartender you befriended, because if I hadn’t I probably never would’ve found you in time.”

“So…you disobeyed my orders to stay in the room,” said Shay.

“Only because I had no other choice. We needed to track Wanda. And speaking of bruises and people who didn’t do what they claimed they were going to do…” I nodded at Shay’s right hip.

Shay glanced at the spot which featured a purple splotch. “Huh. Well, apparently you’re not the only one who didn’t realize they were sporting a nice shiner.”

“The firelight was uneven,” I said. “And I know I was more focused on other parts of your body. You want to tell me your side of the story?”

“Right. Well, I
did
set out with the intention of seeking out Zander and bringing him back, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I was being followed. If I’d thought you were truly in danger from the drugs you’d been given, I would’ve ignored it and soldiered on, but since you’d insisted you were feeling better, I tried to out the tail. I headed into the lounge, had the bartender mix me a drink, and scoped out the crowd for any anomalies.”

“Speaking of which,” I said. “You opted for a drink, knowing the one I’d
just consumed
had been spiked?”

Shay lifted an eyebrow. “Come on, Daggers. This was an entirely different bartender, in a different part of the ship. I watched him make it. I wasn’t about to be caught off guard. That said though, my strategy didn’t particularly work. After fifteen or twenty minutes and a few sips of my drink, I got the impression I’d imagined it all, so I left, but not before trying one more tactic to unearth the identity of my tail.”

“You headed outside to the deserted deck.”

Shay nodded. “As soon as I got out there, I got that creepy feeling of being watched again. I walked along the deck slowly, keeping my eyes peeled, when all of a sudden, I suffered a…
brain freeze,
for lack of a better term.”

“So someone
did
spike your drink.”

Shay shook her head. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t that. Not that I know what being drugged feels like. To my knowledge, I’ve never been. And to be fair, the symptoms I suffered were somewhat similar to those you described. Headache, dizziness, confusion. But the symptoms came on strong, and incredibly fast. Way faster than a drug onset. One moment I was fine and the next I felt myself doubling over with sharp needlelike pains driving into my skull. And as soon as they came they were gone.”

“So what happened?” I said.

“That one moment was enough. Someone blasted me in the side while I swooned—and before you ask, I have no idea who. I didn’t get a look at them, not even a poor one. I smacked my hip on the railing and tipped over. I remember falling and a blossom of pain as I hit the water, and that’s about it. The next thing I recall was seeing you in that boat and being rushed back into our room.”

“So to recap,” I said, “someone tried to murder each of us, possibly the same person, possibly not. We can’t know since neither one of us got a good glimpse of our attacker. There was more than enough time for my assailant to come after you on the boat deck, but I suspect it was two different people if you’re right about the tail. The question is, why come after us?”

“Well,
you’re
still in the poker tournament.”

“Right, but you’re not, which can only mean the attackers targeted us for personal reasons. They must know we’re cops, and they’re trying to eliminate us before we figure out who’s behind it all.”

“But who is
they?”

I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I let my silence speak for me.

Shay, being the bright gal she was, picked up on my non-answer. “So…how do you want to play this?”

“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said. “I have to keep going in the tournament. Since both of our assailants managed to strike without revealing their identities, we don’t have enough evidence to go after anyone at the moment, and whatever happens today could provide valuable clues. Besides, we still haven’t seen evidence of the fraud Steck initially was worried about—unless you count my spiked drink.”

“Fair enough,” said Shay. “I suppose that means we should get dressed.”

“We?”

“Well, yes. For one thing, I need to be clothed to perform the sorts of regular tasks I do on a day to day basis. For another, I plan on attending the rest of the poker tournament. I’m the one with the exceptional observations skills, in case you’d forgotten, and after someone tossed me in the ocean last night, I don’t particularly want to let my knight in shining armor out of my sight.”

Shay sat up on her knees. She tossed her hair and drew her fingers through it, trying to disentangle the knots that had set up residence. The position gave me a wonderful view of her breasts and stomach. The creamy skin of her thighs pressed together, hinting at what lay between them.

I glanced at the clock. “I wonder how long it’ll take Steck to get food and bring it up here. What do you think? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?”

Shay glanced at me. “Worked up an appetite last night, did you?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “And I never ate dinner, either. But that wasn’t why I was concerned about the time.”

“The poker tournament, then?”

I shook my head.

Shay’s eyebrows rose and her lips puckered as she understood my meaning. “Oh. Well, then. I guess I’m down for seconds. Or fourths, or fifths, or whatever we’re on now. It all depends on how quick you can be.”

“Trust me woman, that won’t be a problem. No man in the history of time has ever turned down sex due to time constraints.”

Shay tugged my blanket from my waist.
“Well.
I see you’re ready to go.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “And, to answer your previous question honestly, I figure we have at least ten minutes. So you don’t have to be
that
fast.”