Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

blinking red light on the top beeped sonic frequencies. They made her ears twitch until he dipped the device into the water.
    Under her breath, Lucia said, “Hey, Iz—now’s your chance to eat his shorts.”
    Izabel’s eyes widened, as if she were shocked Lucia was teasing her. Then she whispered, “Hold me back. That cowlick?
Muito machão
.”
    Lucia couldn’t stop a grin.
    When Schecter moved on to other parts of the ship, Izabel said, “That one’s keeping snakes, lizards, and all kinds of amphibians in his room. Poisonous ones, even. And that lure thing? I’m not a scientist, but common sense says that when you bait something, you better be able to handle its arrival.”
Smart girl.
“I know this ship up and down—it’s held together by prayers, duct tape, and Charlie—and it couldn’t take the visit of a ‘mega’ anything. So Schecter’s either very foolish or very selfish.”
    Agreed.
“What about Rossiter?”
    “Now him, I like,” Izabel answered. “But he’s sick or something. Never sleeps. And I think he’s obsessed with flowers, always drawing them—”
    Lucia’s phone vibrated then with yet another text message. She twisted around in the cramped space to view the screen.
RegRad: Got 2 level 9/ ice wrld. U always do ice wrlds 4 me.
Just as Lucia sighed—she missed Regin like crazy—another message from her arrived.
Got thru it anywy. SO SUCK IT RAW!
    “Who keeps texting you?” Izabel asked. “A twelve-year-old you met at the skating rink?”
    “How do you say ‘har-har’ in Portuguese?” Lucia asked innocently, then she added, “It’s just one of my sisters. She misses me.”
And resents my being away this long.
    “How many sisters do you have?”
    Hundreds. All over the world. “Enough,” Lucia answered.
    “I wish I had a sister.”
    “A twin brother isn’t enough?”
    “I guess,” Izabel answered with a shrug.
    Now that Lucia thought about it, she’d never seen the two display affection. Likely because they were so different. Izabel was brazen, confident. Charlie seemed unsure and awkward.
    “Hey, do you feel that?” Izabel said. “They got the ship loose.”
    Lucia glanced down just as MacRieve hauled himself from the water onto the platform, the damp muscles in his back flexing so temptingly. When he stood, shaking his wet hair in that wolfy way, his sodden jeans hung even lower on his sculpted torso.
    Lucia’s claws curled for him. Just as she was thinking,
Gods, he’s fine
, Izabel whispered, “I’d lock that one down while you can.
Esplêndido
.”
    The Scot
was
splendid. And sexy and funny. He knew how to string a recurve bow. Here was a man who treated her well, who’d proved he was understanding about her… limitations.
    “Chuck!” the captain suddenly called. “Get your ass up here!”
    Izabel jumped, knocking her head on the shelf. “I have to go!” Wide-eyed, she shimmied back.
    “Why do
you
have to go?”
    “To wake up Charlie.”
    Travis yelled, “Izabel! Where the hell is Chuck?”
    “See?”
    Lucia couldn’t believe this girl had fallen for that querulous captain. To be stuck on this bucket, with no future, no prospects. She was so young…. “Izabel, you know there are other
ships
out there for you to work on. Ships that will treat you much better.”
    Izabel met her gaze. “I’ll never want another
ship
as long as I live.” And then she was gone, leaving Lucia to her thoughts. Which almost always centered on MacRieve.
    In the last three days, Lucia had begun to fear that she was settling in with him
too
easily. She’d been fooled once before, and even after all these years, she was still deeply ashamed of succumbing to Cruach’s trickery. Her sisters would have sensed he was evil.
    Regin had. She’d taken one look at the fair-hairedman at the portal and run to tell their godparents. Who’d made her swear never to see him again. Lucia had fallen right into Cruach’s clutches, trusting in him so completely that she’d broken those vows.
    Am I being too trusting with the Scot?
As if to remind her why that’d be unwise, the nightmares were coming every night. Only now, for the first time in her life, she was sharing a bed with another, a male who’d begun questioning her, wanting to know what she dreamed of—
    “Lousha?” he called then, and she too hit her head. As she crawled from the shelf, Lucia could hear him stomping along the gangway, then to the cabin below.
    Just before she’d reached the steps, he