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There were a hundred better uses of Jill’s time and at least as many places she would have chosen to stand, none of them involving watching Kate drift effortlessly through a yacht so ostentatious it bordered on parody. It was exactly the sort of circle Jill avoided on principle whenever she had the luxury of choice, but apparently her ability to choose dwindled down to treacherous betrayal of her own compasses when it came to bloody Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.
The yacht was a thing that said a lot about its owner, who Jill hadn’t even bothered greeting properly—polished teak and egos, too much glass, champagne flowing as though it was the water they were bobbing on. The topics she had been forced to be an unwanted witness to had been pissing contests about horsepower and amenities that she couldn’t give a flying shit about.
She couldn’t have said what specifically had compelled her, what godforsaken reason had driven her to slip into a pair of high-waisted tailored trousers brushing her ankle at every step that she paced the gleaming deck for hours while quietly debating whether the damage to her reputation might be worth simply diving overboard to escape the stifling heat at her collar. All she knew was that Kate had mentioned an event, some obligation dressed up as diplomacy, and somehow Jill always found a reason to attend.
From her position near the railing, a whisky on-not-anymore-ice in hand, Jill once again felt like the dog on a tight leash. Watching the Head of UNIT hold court, while all Jill did was watch from the sidelines.
Kate, of course, was utterly in her element. Draped across conversations with men whose suits cost more than most people’s rent, laughing heavily at jokes that weren’t worth the breath it took to tell them. They leaned in a little too close, staring blatantly at the swell of her chest and the spectacular way the hydrangea blue dress clung to the curve of Kate’s arse; details Jill had noticed herself the moment Kate had stepped out of the car to meet her at the docks. Jill had been glad that the pair of sunglasses she had now pushed into her hair had sat on her nose then, and it had taken her years of police-training to school her features into something that wasn’t her jaw dropping at the swing of Kate’s hips. Her admiration had quickly turned to annoyance when Kate had barely looked at Jill and only breezed past her with an air of authority and a snappy, “What are you waiting for?” to call Jill to her heels.
Now she was watching as these men laughed loudly and self-satisfied, thick with the weight of money and the assumption that they could buy anything—anyone. One of them had the audacity to gesture broadly with a drink in hand, brushing Kate as he did, before flashing that sort of grin Jill had come to loathe on sight.
And Kate…Kate smiled.
Not for them, Jill knew that. Not really, never. Her wit was still there, sharp as ever, slipping neatly into conversation, her remarks sailing clean over their heads while they laughed anyway, eager as drooling dogs to keep her attention. She played the part flawlessly, and that made Jill’s jaw tighten.
Because while Kate threw herself into these conversations, she wasn’t looking at her.
Not once since they’d boarded and Kate had told Jill she’ll be off meeting names Jill should remember, but only heard in her mind as aggravating sounds. No, Kate let herself be guided by the elbow, her hand resting on sleeves as she responded to something that was said, tilting her head just calculated enough that it showed off her jaw and her big brown eyes.
Despite it being a show, it didn’t stop the slow burn curling low in Jill’s chest.
It was the way they looked at Kate. Like something to be bought. Like a prize to be won.
And worse, it was the way Kate let them think it.
Jill drew in a slow breath, lifting the watered-down whisky to swallow the urge to take over and possibly draw Kate’s wrath on her, cooling the heat that simmered with alcohol.
One of the men leaned in again, said something that made the group erupt into another round of heavy laughter, his gaze dipping just as much as his hand from Kate’s shoulder to her back, where the dress showed freckled, ivory skin all the way down her spine.
Jill’s hand curled around the glass with an urge to throw it at his head, when Kate elegantly stepped out of his touch and excused herself. Six pairs of eyes pinned after her arse.
Their eyes met like a damn cliché, Kate’s brow wandering high on her forehead as her heels click-clacked and carried her over to join Jill next to the railing, not saying a word, while Kate propped her forearms onto the bannister. Keeping her back to the water, Jill couldn’t help but allow herself a look down the span of Kate’s back, where the curled tips of blonde hair waved over her shoulders, tickling exposed pale skin that Jill longed to kiss her way across, over the ripples of her spine to the pushed back curve of her arse, draped in that stunning blue.
Christ.
Jill quickly averted her eyes back to the group of men who still looked after Kate, their gazes hungrily trailing over Kate’s long, crossed-at-the-ankle legs.
Jill’s gaze didn’t waver. If anything, it sharpened—something cold and unmistakably territorial flashing behind her eyes. When one of the men dared to keep looking, she met his stare head-on and, very deliberately, bared her teeth in something that was not even remotely a smile. It was enough. One by one, their attention faltered, shifting elsewhere with the quiet discomfort of men unused to being challenged.
“Enjoying your party?” Jill asked at last, her voice low and edgy.
Kate didn’t look at her immediately and seemed more interested in the stars and silver moon reflecting on the dark water. “Working, actually,” she replied coolly.
Jill huffed a quiet, humourless breath. “Could’ve fooled me.”
That earned her a glance of sharp warning. “If you have something to say, Raymond—”
“I think I just did,” she cut in, tone tightening, her grip on the glass betraying the tension running beneath her otherwise controlled posture.
Kate straightened slightly, turning just enough to face her now. The wind blew a curl away from behind her ear, and it brushed thin lips. “You’re out of line.”
“Am I?” Jill’s voice dropped. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re entertaining a pack of tax-money wankers who can’t keep their eyes off you.”
Kate’s jaw set. “That would be called doing my job.”
Oh, Jill knew that. Their cooperation itself was an epitome of keeping UNIT palatable to Whitehall and the Parliament; surviving on optics as much as it did on action, and keeping the right people pleased was often the only thing standing between authority and obsolescence. Jill had seen plenty of Kate representing UNIT in excruciatingly demanding meetings over budgets that wore the blonde down to events like these. Events that Kate despised and openly communicated so to her inner circle that Jill had access to.
Nonetheless, Jill’s armour was her obnoxious mouth, and so she all but sneered in a patronising, downright deprecating way, deliberately provoking a reaction.
“And letting them paw at you is part of it, is it?”
She knew she had landed her mark, as horrible as it settled in her stomach, when Kate’s eyes shut her out even further and she stood up, tension in her body. Kate withdrew subtly, folding the ease with which she had leaned over the railing and had looked almost whistfully over the water back into her no-bullshit-posture.
“No,” Kate said, the word clipped, “but that’s not any of your concern.”
Jill scoffed under her breath, shifting a step aside.
Kate drew herself up fully now, the softness from moments ago completely gone. The wind picked up just enough to tug at her dress, the fabric shifting against her legs as the sea stretched endlessly behind her, dark and restless. She was a vision sailors would sing songs about, her paleness glowing golden in the yacht’s light, the jewellery on her lithe body shimmering like pearlescent drops of moonlight. Her chin was slightly lifted to the side, brown eyes avoiding Jill’s as best as she could under the pretence of taking in the view.
Jill saw the fine hairs on her arms standing up, her skin pebbling in the stronger winds. Every inch of her would plague Jill for weeks to come.
“Do you ever go home with any of these wankers?”
Kate’s head snapped toward her, undisguised anger and disbelief dancing over her face. “Seriously, Raymond?”
Aware that she was threading one dental-floss-thin line and regretting the initial question, hating how quick it had slipped over her tongue, Jill pressed her tongue against her teeth. She knew she should back down, apologise for being unprofessional, without having to tuck her tail in that much. Instead, she stupidly threw the rest of her whisky back into her throat and harshly put the glass onto a sideboard that would most likely scratch.
Foot in her mouth and shovel in hand, Jill dug deeper.
“I mean… someone’s got to ask. You parade around like a prize, and I can’t help but wonder.”
By now, Kate’s cheeks were flushed a rather enticing shade of pinkish outrage; spoiled, however, by the reason for it. “Are you really asking if I’m whoring myself out for UNIT?” she hissed.
Lifting her chin to look down on Kate, to regain those few inches the heels adorning Kate’s delicate feet gave her in height, Jill let the wind tug loose a strand of her hair. “I haven’t said a thing, Stewart,” Jill said smoothly and then let her eyes wander away from the rigid stand of Kate’s body, the way her fists clenched at her side.
She waited for the comeback, for Kate to throw everything she had at Jill to put her back into place or throw her out so Jill could finally get home, smash three fingers of whisky and try to banish the image of rich hands roaming over elegant skin and wispy blue fabric.
It never came.
There was a sound instead, sharp, cracking through the air.
Jill’s ears rang faintly, the noise not quite landing where it should, dulled and distant as if it had come from somewhere else entirely. Her brow furrowed, head turning a fraction toward the water on instinct, searching for the source. A misfire, maybe. One of the smaller boats nearby. It should have made sense.
It didn’t.
She was already turning back, her body moving toward Kate before her mind caught up.
Kate’s expression had changed. The anger was still there, but it warped, pulled tight into something wrong and apparently pained. Her breath hitched, sharp and uneven, her body going stiff against the railing.
Jill frowned, confusion cutting through the lingering irritation as she stepped closer, drawn in without thinking. “Stewart? Hey—what’s the face for? Too much shrimp? Blondie?” she asked, the words coming too quickly, too lightly for what was suddenly unfolding in front of her.
No answer except for this horribly choked sound, Kate’s mouth opening as if there were words on the tip of her tongue and couldn’t form properly, and dread filled Jill right at the second as Kate’s body swayed, fully controlled by the wind, her hands coming up in an uncoordinated grasp, pressing against her chest, fingers slipping, clutching at—
Oh no.
The world seemed to snap into focus with the sharp precision of the sound, suddenly registering fully.
She lunged, catching Kate around the waist just as her weight threatened to tip her backwards. The impact knocked the air from Jill’s lungs, but she wrenched Kate forward with everything she had. “Kate—” the name tore out of her as she dragged her away from the railing, away from the dark sea, the endlessly black water.
Her hands came away wet.
Jill’s stomach dropped, and a horrific, sick feeling flooded her as she looked at the spreading stain and torn dress, at Kate’s wide eyes and porcelain face all drained from the angry flush that had sat high on those sharp cheekbones. Kate stumbled in her heels, folding as easily as the wind could snap a cardhouse apart.
“Oh, that is unfortunate,” Kate’s voice was close to Jill’s ear, the slur of it sending a shiver down Jill’s spine. Wet hands pawed at her arm to hold on closer, and Jill felt the blood seep into the white fabric of her shirt, sticking to her skin uncomfortably warm and cold altogether. “I quite liked this dress.”
Jill sank with Kate, trying to urge her down fast, one hand firm at Kate’s waist, the other bracing her shoulders as she lowered her onto the polished deck. There was still the distant thrum of music, laughter still lingering somewhere far too close for what had just happened. The lights strung along the railings cast a soft, golden glow over everything, absurdly warm against the dark stretch of open sea beyond, where nothing but black water and scattered pinpricks of distant shore lights existed.
Her head snapped from the flutter of Kate’s lashes and the confused, dazed look for a second. “Help!” she barked sharply, cutting through the murmurs of people noticing the spectacle. She fixed a man in the crowd of onlookers, pointing a finger—dripping blood, Kate’s blood—at him. “Call a fucking medic, now!”
Then she immediately returned her attention to the woman whose fingers were still wrapped around her biceps, red-painted nails and stained, glistening fingers. Ice-cold wind whipped around them, forcefully tugging at Kate’s dress, tangled around her writhing legs and blew Jill’s hair into her face. When she lifted her hands to brush it away without thought, Kate’s blood stuck it to her ear and a metallic scent mixed with the salt of the sea.
“Never,” Kate started, her head lolling to the side at an awkward angle, “never seen you so panicked, Raymond.”
“Easy—easy,” Jill rasped, though her voice had lost all its usual bite, replaced with something low and strained, thinly veiled panic, as she tried to keep pressure where her hands were already slick with blood. “Concentrate on not dying, and we can get that panic out of the way. What do you think, Stewart?”
Her entire focus narrowed onto the pallor of her skin under the artificial lights, the way Kate’s breath hitched in garbled, violent, utterly wrong laughter, the unfocused flicker of her eyes. Jill adjusted her grip, one hand coming up to cradle the side of her face. The blood that rolled and dripped from Kate’s cheek should’ve been inside her, not pooling around her head and clumping golden curls together.
Jill kept pressure on the wound, tried not to throw up at the feeling of the wound underneath her palm and the amount of blood that ruined Kate’s dress, red amaryllis’ blooming, oozing and taking over the blue like a tipped-over mug of coffee, soaking through linen and silk in a violent streak.
Kate seemed to fold further into her with every second, her weight shifting and slipping, her body going soft. Her head tipped and rolled, her breath catching in shallow, uneven pulls, her eyes fluttering—there, then not, lids dragging and drooping.
“Hey, none of that,” Jill rushed, and her hand cupped Kate’s face, thumb dragging clumsily through blood as she tried to keep her focused, to keep her here. “Stay with me, Katherine. Eyes open. Come on, don’t—don’t start that, Blondie, not now.”
Her fingers slipped from the wound for a second, pressing hard against Kate’s neck instead, searching, counting, losing track, starting all over; it was there, still there, faint and fluttering beneath her slick touch.
As Jill knelt in blood and held Kate’s frail body together with shaking hands, the inky night sky finally broke open, helicopters bearing the UNIT logo interrupting the constant stream of words that spilt out of Jill just as steadily as she pushed her hand against Kate’s chest.