Their Virgin Princess (Masters of Ménage #4)(82)

       
         
       
        

He stayed perfectly still. She was like a deer he didn't want to scare off. So beautiful and fragile and ready to bolt at the slightest sign of danger. He kept his voice quiet, tender. "Wonder what, baby?"

"If they had used me the way they did the other girls, maybe it would have been easier on them. Maybe some of them wouldn't have died. The girl in the room next to me … " Her voice cracked a little, and her hand found his, linking them together. "I could hear her. She was forced to service so many men. So many. They used her until she died. I'm not sure of what, but I know she was dead in her bed one morning a few days before I was rescued. What if I had taken some of her burden?"

Tears made his vision a blurry mess, and he tightened his hand around hers, willing his love and comfort into her. She didn't need his strength. She was so damn strong. This guilt had to be a heavy burden to bear. "Baby, you didn't get to make that choice." And he was so happy she hadn't been forced to make the sacrifice. "And you have no idea whether it would have helped or not. You didn't force those men on her."

"I felt so helpless. So small and meaningless."

That was the true horror of what those bastards had done to her, Cooper realized. She'd had her identity and her whole worldview torn apart and ground into the dirt. Alea was a woman who had been taught to reach out to people. It had been bred into her bones. Royalty in Bezakistan worked for the country and for their people. Tal, Rafe, and Kade were constantly in the oil fields and scoping out the work at the site of the new green project. Alea's aunt still visited hospitals, her days filled with charity work. Alea had been born to do the same. Then she'd been forced into a situation where she could do nothing but watch the women around her suffer.

He sat up and forced her to look at him, gently tilting her head up. Tears streaked down her face. "You did everything you could. But you aren't there anymore … "

Alea turned suddenly, her gaze taking in the ocean. "Cooper, I … What is that?"

A sound like a buzzing, and then a loud splash, followed by another. Cooper looked out over the water and felt his eyes widen. There in the sun and surf was a mirage. It had to be. It couldn't be a boat coming their way. No. Not a boat because he wasn't ready. They weren't ready. He'd just started making real progress with Alea.

"It's a boat. Oh my god. Someone's found us." Alea stood up, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I have to get dressed. We have to find Lan and Dane. I don't know what to do."

Now it was getting closer, and he could see two men in the body of the boat, their figures still in the distance. He stood with Alea and hugged her because she was close to panic. He could feel it, see it in the way her body stiffened and her eyes became tight. 

She looked up at him. "Make them go away, Coop. Make them go away."

He held her close, but his heart sank. He couldn't hold her for long, couldn't make the moment last because every second brought the boat closer and closer to shore. Reality was encroaching, and they couldn't meet it like this. They had to find their clothes and get ready for what came next.

Their time in paradise was over.





Chapter Twelve




"This is Nix. Talk to me." Lan picked up the phone with absolutely no regard to the fact that the person on the other end of the line had probably called to talk to Dane. He wasn't willing to let Dominic Anthony wait until Dane got out of what seemed like the longest shower of all time.

Of course, Dane and Cooper were in the shower with Alea, so it could still be a while.

A deep voice came over the satellite phone. "Nice to know you're alive, Nix. Have you talked to the sheikh yet, or am I your first call now that you're back from the dead?"

Back from the dead? If that had been death, he didn't want to be alive again. All he could think about was how closed off Alea had become, as though she was shutting down a little more with every mile that stupid boat had put between them and paradise. He'd been surprised she'd allowed Dane and Cooper to usher her into the bathroom of their hotel on Koror, an island in the Palau chain. "Her Highness has already spoken with her cousins."

"I assume the plane crash was an attempt on the princess's life." There was no uncertainty in Dominic Anthony's voice.

Why question an undeniable truth? "Oh, yes. There's no doubt about that."

"I've already worked up a profile on the pilot. He was being treated for chronic back pain. It wasn't life threatening, but several members of his family had heard him talk about not wanting to live with it anymore. Surprisingly enough, his wife said she found twenty thousand in euros in a safe at their house the night he died."