When he woke me at seven a.m., I responded by rolling back over in an effort to go back to sleep. Considering the circumstances, there was nothing that would have warranted his treating me with such disrespect.

“Rhory, you must get up.”

“No. Not likely.” I grunted and pulled the pillow over my head, but that did nothing to stop him, and he just yanked me out of the bed like I weighed nothing.

“We have plans today, Rhory, and unfortunately I can’t change the time we fly out.” He spoke. I stopped moving.

“Fly out?” I asked, confused. “Fly out where?”

He stopped walking and chuckled, “We have a date, you could say, with an arms dealer in Mexico.”

“Mexico! Are you nuts? There’s no way!” I yelled, trying to get out of his arms now.

“Once the short flight is complete, we will go directly to my private yacht, so don’t worry, because the reality is you do not have a say in this, Rhory.”

“Right, no choice…” I hiss, still trying to fight out of his arms.

“All you have to do is get ready. I’ve had a suitcase and all the proper documents prepared for you.” He said, and I felt the need to tell him I didn’t have a passport or anything like that, but his eyes told me he had already delt with that.

Once I was dressed, it was house to car, car to airport and airport to plane. When the plane when from ground to sky, my stomach went from torso to throat.

As the view shifted, the world beneath appeared to shrink, and then it blurred, becoming a map that was impossible to distinguish. With my hands feeling clammy and completely useless, I gripped the armrests. Despite the surrounding chaos, he stayed calm next to me, like a statue of stone within the shaking airplane. Above the engine’s drone, his voice a low rumble, he commanded, “Relax”. “Expect more bad things.” The rapid, forceful beating of my heart against my ribs felt like a frantic drum, amplifying my anxiety as I faced the unknown. The clouds beneath us were swirling, forming a dense, unclear ocean which hid from our view whatever might be present on the opposite side.

Sebastian leaned over after popping something into his mouth and kissed me, shoving the item into my mouth, and I swallowed, unable to resist the urge. He didn’t look the least bit worried when I turned to him, ready to crawl down his throat about whatever it was he gave me. He called for the attendant to bring a blanket and pillow before he smiled at me. “You’ll just have a soft little nap, and when you wake up, we’ll be there.”

“What! Like hell.” I yelled.

“Hush. The sleeping pill you ingested says otherwise.”

Anger surged inside of me, but honestly it was short-lived as a soft feeling of relaxation crept over me and I found the time between my blinking getting longer, the blanket and pillow coming just five minutes before I passed out. My dreams were vivid, but I didn’t remember them when Sebastian woke me up when it was time to land.

The landing process was smoother than the takeoff, and for that I was grateful. Getting our things was just as easy; the only hard part was when we got to customs and I couldn’t understand a word that was spoken, but I was grateful for Sebastian because he played the role of translator. After a thirty-minute banter with the agent, we were on our way. We took a fancy cab to a car rental place before he picked up a car and put our things inside, and then we took off.

“So where do we get on your boat?” I asked, not really seeing much water where we were. He snorted before he corrected me. “It’s a yacht, and we have another twenty minutes before we get to the marina and board the smaller boat, my boat is much too large to come into these waters and the only port large enough to dock is out of the way.”

With a nod of my head, I shifted my attention to the view outside the window, taking in the surrounding scenery. I laid my head against the window, still a little drowsy from the sleeping pill. As the car sped up rapidly, the surrounding landscape transformed into a series of unclear, streaked shades. Despite my best efforts to concentrate and commit the shifting scenery to memory, the effects of the medication persisted, refusing to loosen their grip. It was as though the world had become quieter, like everything was being viewed through a pane of blurry glass. The car was filled with a low hum, a subtle vibration that felt as though it originated from somewhere deep inside my being. As my eyelids became heavy, I could not resist the lure of sleep, and with every moment, I drifted farther from the world around me.

As the car took a turn, I woke up once more, and Sebastian instinctively put his arm out to keep me from moving around in my seat, although I was wearing my seat belt. Blinking a few times to take in the surrounding scene, the countryside and trees had given way to water, and finally a marina. Sebastian left me in the car while he went and spoke to someone before he returned.  

“Our boat has docked, and the captain is waiting for us to board.”

“Alright.” I was so not ready for this, but I kept my mouth shut. I was too far from home to cause any problems now. Sebastian took both the suitcases even after I said I would get the one packed for me; I sighed and just followed along. One thing was super clear though as I followed behind Sebastian. It was way too hot for the current outfit I had on, and the minute we got on the larger boat and settled, I was going to find something else to wear.

Sebastian helped me onto the smaller boat and got me settled in a seat before he handed out suitcases to another man on the boat. Sebastian sat there on the seat beside me after speaking with the captain for a few minutes, and he leaned over, his lips brushing my ear. “When you get on the yacht, change; you’re not wearing clothing appropriate for this weather. You’ll get heatstroke.”

Even though I wanted to snap at him, I was far from home, and the thought of dying in a remote area stopped me. I was learning to pick my battles quickly here. By the time we got to the yacht, I had removed everything but my t-shirt and pants, though that option was still on the table if I wasn’t cooling down. Sebastian took his eyes off me for just a few seconds once the boat was docked on the back of the yacht.

After removing my jeans, I dove into the inviting warmth of the water. Rising to the surface nearby and enjoying the feeling. But it was apparent that wasn’t a mutual feeling. I watched as multiple workers on the yacht reacted with apparent panic, yelling at me in Spanish, which I unfortunately did not understand.

“Rhory, I must warn you that the waters are teeming with sharks.” After Sebastian spoke, I was overcome with panic, which caused me to immediately rush back to the boat. After being pulled from the water by two workers, I was then placed safely on the deck.

“You should have said something before!” I yelled at him, looking back at the water to indeed see a shark.

“Ask before you do something in a country you’re not familiar with, Rhory,” he said, clearly annoyed with me.

“What’s the point of all this beautiful weather if I can’t swim?” I grumbled.

“If you had waited a few minutes, I would have taken you off the platform and up on the deck and shown you the infinity pool.”

I didn’t reply to him; instead; I followed behind him to the stateroom where we were going to be staying, and he pointed me toward the shower. “Go wash up. I’ll pick you something to wear.”

I showered in lukewarm water and took my time scrubbing, but again it wasn’t really my fault; the shower had a really nice window that overlooked the water. I didn’t even want to know what the hell this thing cost; I just knew it had to be in the millions if not hundreds of millions. I knew he made money; that was a given, but this really just put it into perspective.

My shower was interrupted when Sebastian came in, placed clothing on the countertop and then told me to make haste. He immediately told me I could go out onto the deck to spend some time appreciating the view of the water. I disliked the thought, but id as he said, and got out, spending some time drying off before grabbing the clothing and immediately frowning.

The high-neck burgundy crop top wasn’t even the worst part. The pants, if you could call them that, were honestly worse. They were sheer and flowed at the bottom of the leg, in the same colour. If I thought it could get worse, it did. The black jockstrap made me grind my teeth, but something told me if I left this room to check the suitcase, the whole damn thing looked like this.

Sebastian was trying to dress me like the twink I wasn’t, and I had potent feelings about it. Angrily, I yanked the clothing on, even madder that it fit, and it was comfortable. I hated this man; he was so damn infuriating. Leaving the room, I wandered around before I ran into an enforcer who showed me to the deck, but not before he took his sweet time looking at my outfit, a smirk on his face. “I’ll show you where the don is.”

“Thanks.” I muttered.

He brought me right to Sebastian, who had changed into thin cotton-looking pants in dark green and a tank top. He spotted me and he looked me over from head to toe, not bothering to ask me how I felt about the outfit. Instead, he stood up, with his drink in right hand, and let his left hand trail down my torso. He stopped at my belly button. “Mm, I think you need a belly ring.”

“You have a perfectly good belly button.” I said, and the enforcer on the deck he was drinking with went pale. It was clear in that moment he thought Sebastian was going to blow my head off, or beat me up, and honestly that was still on the table as a possibility.

“I do, but you would wear it far better than I would, Rhory,” he said, and sat down, pulling me into his lap. His breath blew on the back of my neck as he leaned down and whispered into my ear. “You look especially eye-catching, darling.”

If that wasn’t enough, his free hand was on my hip, tucked into the waist of the pants and rubbing circles on the skin. The enforcer, who was speaking in Spanish, kept sneaking a glance at my exposed body, and I really wasn’t a fan. Turning in Sebastian’s lap, I made it so that the only part of that this guy could see was my back, and perhaps my ass, if Sebastian moved his hand that was kneading my cheeks.