nothing else. No coat, no extra clothing. Keri opened dresser drawers and found a couple packages of underwear, a package of socks and a T-shirt, also tagged from the onboard store. The receipt lay next to them, and she looked closer at the sale items listed.
One pair of pants, the shirt, a pair of runners. Toothpaste and toothbrush. Package of razors. Shampoo and soap. A gym bag.
Had he not brought a single thing onto the ship with him?
She remembered the running man back on the dockside, and once again considered if Mark could have been him. But why had he stayed on the ship?
The lack of clothing was suspicious, but as she searched further, there were no signs of any jewelry. Nothing hidden anywhere—with so little in the room that detail was simple enough to ascertain.
He wasn’t the thief, or he’d hidden the items elsewhere. Regardless, there was something fishy going on.
Keri looked longingly at the bed. The sheets were rumpled, his half-assed attempt at straightening the covers leaving it borderline messy. She gave into her longings and ditched her shoes. Her own scent was everywhere so he would already know she’d been in his quarters. Maybe a clear message would be enough to make him smarten up if he was involved in something illegal. A “don’t look now, but I’m watching you” message.
Oh, bullshit. She wasn’t trying to pass on any warning, she just wanted to root around in his bed for a minute to drive herself crazy. She crawled under the top sheet and pulled it over her head, surrounding herself in his scent like a kid diving into a swimming pool. The itching, aching, pulsing need of her wolf soothed and heated at the same time. She needed to have him come and strip her down. To bury his face between her legs and lick her until she screamed. Needed to feel him mount over her and take her, to feel his teeth sink into her flesh as he claimed her.
Keri let the sensation overwhelm her as she lay panting with desire. Only one minute more, then she’d pull herself away and get on with her search for the thief.
Jared cursed as he attempted to wiggle farther under the sink. Stupid cruise ships with their teeny tiny bathrooms. Stupid fucking cruise ships with their never-ending list of maintenance jobs, of which he seemed to get all the shitty ones—and he knew exactly who to thank for that.
Three days. He’d been stuck on this ship for three bloody days, and so far there hadn’t been any decent chance for him to escape.
The first time they’d made port he’d been tangled up with another couple of the crew repairing the pumps on the swimming pool, which luckily he knew how to fix. Unluckily, he was the only one who did, so it wasn’t as if he could abandon the other guys and flee to shore. Even though it was tempting to escape and book a ride back to Haines on a speedboat—heck, he’d buy himself a boat to get home if he had to—the others in maintenance were on the ship for a real job. They needed the money, and he wasn’t going to make them lose needed wages.
His damn martyr complex had turned this accidental excursion into a hell of a lot more work than he’d done for years. Coupled with the fact he’d rubbed Chad’s ass the wrong way that first day…
Yeah, the ability to make friends and influence people, he had it. His parents always warned him that his quirky sense of humour was going to get him in trouble someday, and it seemed someday had arrived. Chad escorted him to the dirtiest jobs and subtly gloated how if Mark was fortunate and worked hard, maybe someday he too could be one of the upper class and not the slave labour.
Jared wanted to buy the bloody cruise ship and shove it up Chad’s upper-class ass.
So now they were on day four, nearly halfway through the cruise, and he wondered if it was even worth trying to ditch the ship. The work sucked, he missed his coffee maker, but if he left, there was another concern to think about, also involving Chad.
Keri.
He’d
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