Prologue
POV: Ramona Cape
The teak deck of the Sirena was slick with salt spray and moonlight.
Ten miles off the coast of Monaco, the Mediterranean didn’t care about my surname, my father’s offshore trust funds, or the three-carat diamond resting in the hollow of my throat.
It only cared about gravity. And right now, gravity wore a black tactical shirt, smelled of sea salt and cedarwood, and had both hands locked around my wrists.
“You’re going to fall, Ramona.”
Trent Penn didn’t raise his voice. He never did. He didn’t have to.
His fingers were broad, calloused, and unyielding where they pinned my hands against the polished mahogany railing behind my back. My silk slip dress—a crimson piece of overpriced threads that barely reached my mid-thigh—was damp against the cool wood.
“Then catch me, Penn,” I gasped, tilting my chin up. “Isn’t that what my father pays you six figures a year for?”
A faint, dangerous twitch tightened the edge of his jaw.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he shifted his weight, crowding into my personal space until there wasn’t a single millimeter of air left between us. The heat off his chest burned straight through my thin dress.
Thirty minutes ago, I was supposed to be in the main salon, listening to a French billionaire explain his art collection.
Instead, I had slipped out to the upper deck, kicked off my heels, and stepped over the safety line just to watch Trent’s icy professional composure shatter.
It hadn’t shattered. It had transformed into something much worse.
“Your father pays me to keep you alive,” Trent said, his voice flat, perfectly measured, and entirely devoid of mercy. “He doesn’t pay me to tolerate your games.”
“You love my games.” I arched my back slightly, bringing my chest flush against his tactical vest. I felt the hard, rigid outline of his Kevlar beneath my nipples, which were tight from the brisk night wind. “Admit it. You were bored out of your mind down there.”
“I was doing my job.”
“You were staring at my back for two hours.” I dragged my knee up the side of his thigh, feeling the dense muscle beneath his cargo trousers. “I felt your eyes, Trent. Every time I drank champagne, every time I laughed at Monsieur Laurent’s terrible jokes... you wanted to drag me into the nearest stateroom.”
He didn’t deny it.
Instead, Trent lifted one hand from my wrists, leaving both of my arms pinned behind me with just a single, iron grip of his right hand.
His left hand moved.
He didn’t touch me softly. He clamped his palm over the nape of my neck, his fingers tangling into my loose blonde waves, tilting my head back until my throat was completely exposed to the night air.
The contrast between us was absurd. I was draped in ten thousand dollars of Italian silk and diamond jewelry; he was dressed for war, smelling of gun oil, leather, and pure male dominance.
“You think you’re in control because you wear expensive shoes and know how to pout for a camera,” Trent murmured, his thumb pressing firmly against the pulse point in my neck. My heart was hammering against his skin like a trapped bird. “You’re an amateur, Ramona.”
“Then show me how a professional handles it.”
My voice trembled, but I held his gaze. I refused to look down. I refused to let him see how his touch sent a liquid wave of heat pooling straight between my thighs.
“Careful what you ask for,” he said.
With one swift, effortless movement, Trent spun me around.
My palms slapped against the mahogany railing as he pressed me face-forward over the edge of the yacht. The dark ocean churned twenty feet below, white foam swirling against the hull.
Before I could draw a breath to curse him, his hand was under the hem of my dress.
The silk slid up my thighs with a soft, brutal rustle.
“Trent—”
“Quiet.”
His hand cupped my rear through my lace thong, his large palm warm and heavy. He squeezed, pulling my hips back until my buttocks pressed directly against the heavy buckle of his tactical belt.
I gasped, my nails digging into the damp teak wood. The cold ocean breeze hit the exposed skin of my thighs and rear, making every nerve ending sizzle.
“You wanted my attention,” Trent said near my ear. He didn’t whisper. He spoke with the quiet, absolute authority of a man who owned every inch of the space we occupied. “Now you have it.”
He hooked his fingers into the band of my thong and yanked it down.
The lace tore slightly at the seam before sliding down my legs. I kicked my feet out of the scrap of fabric, left completely bare from the waist down in the open air of the Mediterranean.
“Someone... someone could see,” I panted, looking out at the dark horizon. The lights of Monaco flickered in the distance like distant gold dust.
“No one is looking,” Trent replied smoothly. “And if they are, they’ll see a bodyguard doing his duty.”
“This isn’t duty,” I bit out, shivering as his hand trailed down the inside of my thigh.
“No,” he agreed. “This is a breach of protocol.”
His fingers found my center.
I choked back a scream as two of his thick, calloused fingers pressed straight into my wetness. I was already dripping, soaked for him, my body betraying every arrogant word I had spoken five minutes ago.
Trent groaned softly—a rare, low vibration against my shoulder—and pushed his fingers deeper.
“Look at you,” he instructed, his free hand gripping my hip to hold me still. “So arrogant in the ballroom. So eager on the deck.”
“Shut up,” I whimpered, rolling my hips back against his hand. “Just... Trent, please.”
“Please what?” He curled his fingers inside me, hitting that precise, sensitive spot that made my knees buckle. “Tell me what the heiress wants.”
“You know what I want.”
“Say it.”
“I want you inside me. Now.”
Trent pulled his hand back, leaving me empty and aching on the brink of absolute ruin.
I heard the heavy clink of his belt buckle, the sharp zip of his trousers being lowered.
He didn’t bother taking off his vest. He didn’t undo his shirt. He merely released his cock, heavy, hot, and rigid, pressing the broad head directly against my dripping slit.
“Hold onto the rail, Ramona,” he commanded, his hands settling heavy on my waist. “If you let go, you fall.”
“I won’t fall.”
He pushed forward.
The size of him stretched me open in one long, relentless slide. My eyes rolled back, a high, breathy sound escaping my lips as he filled me completely, burying his full length inside my tight, slick heat.
The contrast was staggering. The freezing sea breeze, the hard wooden rail under my knuckles, and the scalding, unyielding intrusion of Trent Penn taking everything I had been teasing him with for months.
He didn’t pause to let me adjust.
Trent established a rhythm instantly—deep, powerful, rhythmic thrusts that drove me forward against the railing with every strike. His grip on my hips was so tight I knew there would be dark, perfect bruises in the shape of his fingers by morning.
“Trent!” I cried out, unable to keep quiet as he hit my cervix with brutal accuracy.
“I have you,” he said calmly, his chest pounding against my back as he matched my rhythm. He leaned down, his teeth lightly catching the shell of my ear before he bit down just hard enough to make me gasp. “I’ve got you, Ramona. You’re not going anywhere.”
He pulled out almost entirely, executioner-slow, before slamming back in.
My hips moved instinctively, meeting his thrusts, chasing the friction. I turned my head, searching for his mouth, and he gave it to me—his lips crashing onto mine in a rough, possessive kiss that tasted of sea salt and hunger.
He thrust harder, his hips slapping against my rear with a wet, rhythmic sound that echoed over the rush of the waves.
Every time I tried to pull back, he anchored me tighter, his fingers digging into my hip bones. He was relentless, a man trained for endurance, using every ounce of his physical superiority to drive me out of my mind.
“Look at the coast,” he demanded against my lips, pulling back just enough to force my chin toward the distant lights of Monaco. “Look at it while I take you.”
“I can’t... Trent, I’m... I’m going to—”
“Not yet.”
He shifted his angle, tilting my pelvis up slightly, and rubbed his thumb in hard, circular motions against my swollen clitoris.
That was it. The absolute point of no return.
My walls clamped down around his shaft in a violent, shivering spasm. I screamed into the open air, my entire body convulsing as a white-hot orgasm ripped through me, wave after wave of intense pleasure crashing over my brain.
Trent didn’t stop. He rode through my climax with three long, heavy, desperate thrusts, his breath finally hitching as he came deep inside me, filling me with his heat while his hands locked around my waist to absorb the tremors of his own release.
For a long moment, the only sound was the engine of the yacht and our ragged breathing.
Trent remained buried inside me, his forehead resting against the back of my neck, his heavy chest rising and falling against my spine.
Slowly, deliberately, he withdrew.
The sudden emptiness made me whimper. I sagged against the railing, my legs feeling like wet straw.
Trent straightened his clothing with terrifying speed and efficiency. Within ten seconds, his belt was buckled, his trousers adjusted, and his gloves pulled back onto his hands.
He looked down at me as I tried to pull my slip dress back down over my trembling thighs.
His face was once again a mask of icy, professional detachment.
“Five minutes, Miss Cape,” Trent said, his voice completely calm, as if he hadn’t just bent me over a ship’s rail and undone my sanity. “Then I am escorting you back to your father’s guests.”
He turned on his heel and walked toward the companionway stairs, leaving me shivering in the sea breeze, completely undone by the man hired to protect me.
