Brutal Blueblood

name because I said it first,” she realized, pushing at my chest. “God, I’m so stupid.”
Displeasure rolled through me as she pulled her hands free from my touch. “Where are you trying to go?”
“Away from you. To be alone.”
“Why? What did I say?”
“Nothing,” she said, venom overflowing in her tone. “You said nothing for the last three years. You literally had no idea who I was even though we’ve gone to school together forever. Jesus Christ.”
The panic bled back into my displeasure then, and I reached for her. “Don’t leave. Don’t walk away from this. Who cares about the last three years? I want you now—”
“It’s too late, asshole,” she said, but then before I could say anything more, a fresh crowd of people burst onto our deck, shouting and laughing. I heard Sera’s tinkling laugh, like a delicate bell, and Phin’s boyish chuckle. Tanith and I both turned at the sound of our friends, both instinctively putting space between us.
It burned—like my body had already decided it should be pressed against hers. Always.
Sera was walking toward the slide with the group, laughing. The yacht lights gleamed along her dark brown skin and caught along the delicate necklace strung at her throat, and her long, shapely legs stuck out beneath a navy blazer that she must have borrowed off one of the boat staff since when I’d seen her earlier tonight, she’d been showing off her latest Fendi swimsuit and nothing else. I assumed she’d gotten chilled on one of the inside decks; God knew most of our friendship was her stealing my sweaters or coats when she was cold. Sera hated cold the way most people hated bugs or Nickelback, with an impatient disgust.
Not that I could remember what being chilled felt like after spending the last ten minutes making out with Tanith.
I saw Rhys, tall, pale, and dark haired, moving past Sera and the group with a scotch in hand and a cold expression on his face. He was dangerous in the way that fairy kings were dangerous in old fairy tales. Or the way vampires were in classic horror novels. Beautiful and hungry.
And every once in a while, I caught him looking at Sera like . . . like I don’t know. Like he wanted to drain her dry.
But tonight, like every other night I’d known him, he seemed content to hang back in the shadows and watch everything with glittering black eyes.
“What a party!” an obnoxious voice boomed from the direction of the stairs, and then a boy I didn’t recognize, his fair skin sunburnt and his blond hair slicked back, stumbled into Sera and spilled his drink all over the blazer and the front of her new swimsuit. She slowly looked up from the stain, and I was already feeling pity for this guy, because one did not fuck with Sera’s swimsuits, when the idiot opened his mouth.
“Hey, can you get me another?” he asked her, shoving the now-empty cup into her chest. “There’s a tip in it for you if you can hurry up with it.”
The group stilled. At the edge of the crowd, Rhys’s dark eyes locked on Sera, missing nothing.
“Excuse me?” Sera asked calmly.
“You’re boat staff, right?” the idiot asked. “I spilled my drink.”
The calm surrounding Sera didn’t diminish, but the temperature on the deck still plummeted about thirty degrees. Sera deliberately dropped the empty cup to the deck, and then stepped closer to the boy.
“This. Is. My. Boat. Dickhead,” she said. “And you’re currently invited to get the fuck off it.”
“Whoa, no need to get touchy,” the idiot protested. “I just thought—”
I was already stepping forward to deal with this pillock, but Rhys beat me to it.
“And why did you just think?” he cut in coldly, stepping through the crowd.
Although Rhys was taller and stronger than this guy, that wasn’t what made the guy step back as Rhys approached. No, even from where Tanith and I stood, I could see the murder in Rhys’s face.
“Maybe you saw a girl with brown skin, and even though she was in a designer bikini, even though she was holding a drink of her own and talking with people who were obviously her friends, you thought there was no other way she could be on this yacht other than as the staff?”
“I—” The boy was flushed now, defensive. “That’s not what happened.”
“Seems like it was,” Rhys countered softly, and now the boy was backing up, right to the railing.
“It was a mistake,” the guy said. “For fuck’s sake she’s wearing a staff jacket. She didn’t have to go and be such a bitch about it—”
That was the last thing he said before Rhys’s fist connected with his face and he toppled over the railing and fell into the sea.
“Rhys—!” Sera started, but Rhys looked back to her with a glare so sharp and hot it nearly made me take a step back and I’d known him for years.
“Don’t get any ideas, princess,” he sneered.
“Ideas,” she echoed.
“He was killing the vibe, that’s all. You know I’d saw my own hand off before I’d go out of my way to help you.”
Sera’s mouth slammed shut, and fury sparked in her eyes. “Then don’t fucking bother next time. I can take care of myself.”
“You’d better,” Rhys said ominously. “Because I won’t be there to.”
And then he stalked off, his knuckles bleeding. He didn’t even look over the railing to make sure the guy he’d punched had managed to break the surface and swim to shore.
“Shit,” I muttered, stepping toward the railing to make sure the arsehole wasn’t drowning, and then remembered Tanith and I were in the middle of something.
Fuck, it sucked being the responsible one. “Don’t move,” I told Tanith. “We’re not done here.”
“Sure thing,” my blond goddess said flatly.
I gave her a quelling look and then jogged down the deck stairs to the swimming deck and ladder on the stern. The knobhead was already heaving himself up wetly onto the deck. A fat lip had started swelling on his