by Serena Bell
“What does she know?”
“Not much.”
Grant rolled his eyes. “Not much?”
“She doesn’t know.”
Grant’s expression darkened several shades. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It was a question Kincaid had asked himself many times since the first time he’d felt Lily’s body against his, her tongue in his mouth. A question he still didn’t have the answer to. “I don’t know.”
Grant turned away, his shoulders jerking as if he were so frustrated with Kincaid’s incompetence that he couldn’t bear to look at him. Then he turned back, calmer. He regarded Kincaid for a long, steady moment. “You’ve got to tell her. Or end it.”
Some part of Kincaid had long known that those were his choices, but hearing them laid out like that still sucked.
Grant was shaking his head slowly. “I think you’d be better off ending it. There’s so much unresolved. You’re not in a position—you’re not a free man.”
Ending it would mean no more tying her up. No more holding her down. No more of her broken whimpers, his name in her mouth, muffled by his kiss, as she shattered.
It would mean no more walking on the beach, her secrets drifting to him like the scent of the ocean. No more lying in bed beside her, finding his own tongue loosened by the magic of her touch and her fearlessness.
It would mean no more dreaming with her of restaurants she would one day own, and no chance to ask her to dream with him that he might overcome his past and make a future.
It was possible no one would ever call him sweet again, or watch him eat with that kind of hunger in her eyes, or thank him for something that he had given without reservation.
“It’s going to end eventually,” Grant said. “And vengeful exes are almost as bad as cops with God complexes for fucking over parolees.”
It was going to end eventually. Of course it was. It was going to end sooner rather than later. And yet—
He wanted to argue with Grant. Why does it have to end?
“This is—this is between me and Lil.”
“I know. That’s exactly what I’m worried about. That there’s a you and Lil.”
Kincaid closed his eyes. There was. And he should be at least as worried about it as Grant was.
Grant put a hand on Kincaid’s shoulder. Squeezed.
Kincaid sighed, and Grant gave him a sympathetic look. “Let’s go inside and take a look.”
It took Kincaid a moment to remember why Grant had come. The laptop. The will.
He almost hated it, for bringing him to the point where it was impossible to ignore the fact that he had to make a decision.
Then he forced himself to remember the light in Nan’s eyes when she’d come home full of stories of the Safe Haven kids.
“Okay. I’ll figure it out.”
“I know you will,” Grant said.
Kincaid turned back to where Lily waited patiently for them. “Hey, Lil. We’re going to head inside.”
She crossed the gravel driveway. It was clear from the way her curious gaze raked him that she knew something important had passed between him and Grant, but she didn’t ask, and that made him absurdly grateful. She just reached out and stroked a finger down one of the inked rifts in his skin, brushed her touch across the mossy surface of his arm there, as if she were touching the down-deep of him. “Do you want me to stay or go? Oh, bloody hell, I can’t go—I came in your car. But I could sit in the car and wait. I don’t mind.”
I never want you to go.
After he’d left her sister’s house, he’d vowed to stay away from her. To let her get on with her life, back to her people, back to the promises she’d made herself. But he’d seen her standing in front of the diner and he hadn’t been able to stay away. He had no self-control or willpower where she was concerned. And when he’d seen it—the shame on her face because she thought she’d let herself get into this deeper than he had—he’d had to tell her it wasn’t just her. He couldn’t let her be alone, not like that, not when he knew how it would feel for her.
Once he’d said it aloud, though, it had power. Those words, in the world—how deep in I’d get—they made things happen. He’d been ready to have sex with her again. Only—not just sex. The thing that they had together, something else.
Making love, he thought. It wasn’t a phrase he’d ever used, not aloud, not in his own head. It rubbed the wrong way against the roughness, the rawness, the lack of grace or ease in what they’d done—and yet he knew those were the right words.
“Stay.” He reached for her hand. “Come inside.”
She squeezed his hand tight, and when he snuck a look at her, she was looking back, her eyes bright.
Grant sighed. “Wouldn’t hurt to have another witness.” But his eyes chastened Kincaid.
Kincaid ignored him and led them both inside. Grant set the laptop on the kitchen table, opened the lid, and hit the power button. The disk drive spun up, and Kincaid felt his stomach knot.
Lily was right, in her own way. If there was no will on the laptop, then he had to go talk to Arnie Sinclair. Talking to Arnie was expressly forbidden by the terms of his parole, and the kind of “talking” that Kincaid would have to do in order to get Arnie to admit there had once been a will would almost certainly land him back in prison.
He didn’t kid himself that Lily would make conjugal visits, either.
Please, he prayed. Please, God, if you exist, make the will be on here.
The screen arranged itself into the familiar layout of Windows XP. Neither Arnie nor Nan had updated the operating system, which gave him hope. Maybe Arnie wasn’t technologically savvy enough to know where to look for the will.
He opened the Windows menu and clicked on My Documents.
Lily made a small sound of dismay.
Empty.
—
Grant left, taking the laptop with him for, as he said, safekeeping. At the door, he spoke softly to Kincaid, but Lily could see that the words were having no effect on Kincaid’s despair. His shoulders stayed slumped, his neck bowed. As Grant went out, he threw her a pleading look. She took it to mean, Maybe you can help him.
The door shut behind Grant, and Kincaid sank onto the sofa, head in his hands.
She sat beside him and touched his shoulder gently. “I’m sorry.”
“I hate him.”
There was a cold stoniness in his voice. She’d been about to suggest that he go talk to his step-grandfather, but his tone made her swallow the suggestion. Maybe she’d bring it up again later, when his anger had had time to subside.
She touched his shoulder. “Don’t give up.”
It sounded as flat and generic as a greeting card, so she tried again. “I know how you feel.”
That was worse, and Kincaid gave no sign that he heard her.
She could feel his disappointment as deep as if it were her own. Heavy in her body, pressing her mind flat. It made her remember the way she’d felt as she fled Chicago—the guilt and sorrow of having disappointed her father, an infinite wellspring of regret for not having been able to give him back something from the life he’d lost.
That was what Kincaid was feeling now, and she wanted to do something, anything, to make him feel better.
She could cook for him. She could—
She knew. “Kincaid,” she whispered.
He looked up at her then, his eyes wild and hopeless.
“Take it out on me.”
The wildness stayed, but the hopelessness was replaced by something else, dark and hot. “No.”
For a moment, she didn’t understand. Was he refusing her?
“Not in anger.”
She nodded, slowly. How very Kincaid that was, to make such a small, important distinction. To make even more sense of the strange territory they’d discovered together, to show her yet another layer of truth in it. “Then—just—” She wasn’t sure how to say what she meant. Take what could eat you alive and turn it into
this—this thing she couldn’t quite name that was between them. “I’m here,” she said finally. Simply.
He stared at her for a moment. Then he rose to his feet, swept her off the couch, carried her into the bedroom, and set her down. “Stand up.” His voice was hard, its edges rasping along her most sensitive skin. Not angry, though. Fierce. Transmuting the awful force of his emotion, just as she’d hoped.
“Put your hands up,” he commanded, and pulled her shirt over her head. He slid her capri pants down, her underwear going with them, so the cool air brushed over her wetness and made her shiver. He unhooked her bra, the shift of lace over hard nipples twanging deep in her core. Then he undressed himself, quickly, efficiently. It undid her, the mechanical way he stripped them both, like he, too, was being marched forward by a force he couldn’t control.
He scooped her up and laid her down on the bed. For a long time he stood next to the bed and stared down at her. He towered, like this. She felt tiny in his gaze, tiny and precious and luminous.
“What are you going to do to me?” She was overpowered and overmatched. Not by him, but by what moved him, the same thing that moved her, the force of nature that boiled in his blood and rushed under her skin, hotter and faster than a pulse.
“I’m going to make it so you can never have sex with anyone again without thinking of me.” His voice was low, harsh, and certain.
She didn’t doubt it.
She could have tried to stop him. She could have protested that he had no right, that they were still in this uncertain limbo state where they had both said they didn’t want anything more, that it wasn’t fair for him to mark her or permanently change her.
She couldn’t have tried to stop him. She was so far submerged, so deeply awash in this, that there was no stopping. No stopping him, and no stopping herself, the pounding of her heart in her ears, in her wrists, between her legs. The wet heat already beckoning him, her mouth dry, her hands clenching and unclenching with the need to grip and claw, her teeth gritted against the urge to bite and suck.
He crawled over her, his eyes dark and urgent. He kissed her, and she clutched his hair, barely long enough for her to grip, held his head tight so she could control something because she couldn’t control anything about herself or the way she responded to him. She couldn’t stop the thrum of desire building in her core, couldn’t stop the tightening of her nipples and inner muscles, couldn’t stop the feeling in her chest, taut as rope pulled into a knot. He’d taken it all away, all her self-control, all her self-governance, all her self, swept it away into a swirl rising so hot and hard and thick in her, a hum in the back of her throat, her fingers clawing for purchase in his hair.
His mouth found her throat, hot and liquid, the nip of teeth in the center of sizzle and tingle. His tongue slipped down to the notch between her collarbones, and her pulse leapt to match the tender flicks of his tongue. And then he slid down her body, a rough brush of hair and tight muscle over her tender skin, caught a nipple in his mouth, and worked it until she wanted to scream, worked it so the tension rose and coiled, thickened and twisted, until she heard herself rather than knew from inside that she was calling for him to please please please please please but she didn’t know what.
He had one nipple in his mouth and the other between his fingers, and he clamped down so hard on both that she was caught on the fine edge of pleasure and pain, but her mind was not on that but on the ache between her thighs and the hard steel of him against her leg. She squirmed, trying to close the gap between them, but he only shifted and pinned her. The sensation was far finer—purer—than rope. Rope was a band around wrists and ankles. He was everything, everywhere.
Then he shifted, slid, again, mouthing a long, fiery path down her belly, until she felt his breath ruffle the curls between her legs.
He stopped, just like that. Blew warmth against her while she squirmed. Spread her and licked her so lightly it was a mean tease, and she raised her hips to try to get more, but he rested a long arm across her hips and pinned her down. Then there were those two sensations, the weight and strength of that arm so earthy and real, the flick of his tongue like something she was half-dreaming, and between them, that curl and twist and coil of tension in her belly, oncoming like the single bright light of a train barreling toward her in the night.
“Caid!”
He drew back.
Breathless, disappointed, she said, “I—”
“I know. Not yet.”
He rolled away, retrieved a condom from the night table, then rolled back and was over her again before she could register how cold and light she felt without his weight on her, like a snowflake drifting.
He slid home, filling her, stretching her. All sensation concentrated there, where not-enough met too-much. He thrust once, rocking his pubic bone against hers, more stretch, something in her finding an edge, getting a grip, and she tried to thrust back, grind against that sensation leveraging itself inside her, but he froze and lifted up. Smiling down on her, ready to play.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
She was done playing. “Fuck me.”
“No. Tell me you’ll never have sex again without thinking about me.” And he thrust again, a couple of times, pink rising in his face as he did so she knew he had no more control of himself, of this, than she did, that he was poised on that same edge, working that same thin line she was.
“Never. Never never never never never. Caid—”
It was a deluge when it found her, it submerged her and swept her away, made her a tiny tossed scrap in the swirling tangle, and she barely heard him cry out, but still, she felt his joy, his freedom, his release, like it was her own.
—
She woke late in the afternoon. Kincaid was still asleep, sprawled out as if he’d been dropped from a height on his belly, arms and legs splayed. The abandon of sleep possessed his face, not so different from what he looked like when he lost control inside her. She lay and watched him sleep for a few minutes. Then she rolled over and touched his hair. Then his cheek—the smooth part first, and after, stroking down to where five o’clock shadow prickled over his jaw.
He opened his eyes, lids still heavy.
“I have to go. I have a shift at Lefty’s.”
“Call in sick.”
She smiled. “I can’t.”
They got up and pulled on their clothes. When she was dressed, she crossed the room to where he stood and pressed her face against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and they stood there for a few minutes, the heat from his body soaking into hers.
He drove her to Lefty’s and parked in the back.
“Can I pick you up after?”
She nodded. “At two.” She leaned down and kissed him, and he grabbed her and held her tight, like he was afraid if he let her walk away from him, she’d never come back. Fat fucking chance. You’re stuck with me.
Walking across the parking lot, away from him, she remembered the night when she’d said, I have to leave, and tonight, when he’d told her to stay.
I’m not going to be able to leave. I’m not going to be able to walk away from him.
Even though she’d cast off the feeling that Fallon had driven her out of Eden, she still felt like she’d abandoned part of herself when she’d left Chicago. She’d left behind a project in progress, a dream that needed her to keep it alive. Waitressing wouldn’t make her a chef, and it wouldn’t get her a restaurant.
The longer she stayed in Kincaid’s bed, in Tierney Bay, the further the dream would recede, until all she’d have was the sensation of standing in front of the diner with him, hearing the voices of her imaginary patrons and smelling the food she’d cooked, as he helped her conjure a future that wasn’t real.
I have to walk away from him.
Some choices were impossible.
She leaned against the peeling siding near the back door and watched Kincaid’s car pull out of the parking lot. He was going to pick her up at the end of her shift. They’d go ba
ck to his house and sleep together in his bed. They’d get the rope out again. Maybe a leather belt.
Her body bloomed with anticipatory heat. It would turn Kincaid on, too. She knew it. He’d have other ideas about that belt, and she couldn’t wait to hear them.
He had taken something that had felt dark, shameful, and dirty and made it beautiful. With Fallon, it had been so tempting to compartmentalize and deny that part of herself, but Kincaid had embraced it.
And unexpectedly, he had embraced all the rest of her, too, and just as unexpectedly, she had embraced back. It was a startling gift, one that she couldn’t refuse.
For as long as she was here—and she would stay as long as she could, until the cord yanking her back to her old life tugged too hard to resist—she would give herself over to what was between them. Time enough later to mourn what she might lose.
Her cell phone rang. Feeling pleasantly languid from the sex and the nap, from the fantasy of what would happen after her shift, she pulled it from her pocket and answered. “Hey.”
“It’s Tucker.” Her friend’s voice was exuberant. “How would you like a job?”
Chapter 15
Sierra accepted another Bloody Mary (extra pickled asparagus) from Lily and leaned her elbows on the bar.
After Lily had gotten off the phone with Tucker, she’d texted Sierra, who’d left the kids with Reg and come running to keep Lily company for her Lefty’s shift. Lefty’s was a grubby sports-bar-meets-seaside-pub with a stew of tourists and townies that occasionally mixed volatilely. The dinner rush had ended. Lily’s work had tapered to the point where she could carry on a conversation with her sister between refilling IPAs for Hank-at-the-hardware-store and mixing “chick drinks” for a tourist who’d left her family in the hotel.
“What’s going on, baby sis?”
And because Sierra was leaning on her elbows on the bar, her face sympathetic, and because there was a lull in bar action, Lily told her sister the whole story of what had happened between her and Kincaid. She left out most of the details, but she did tell Sierra about the alleyway and about being tied up in Kincaid’s bed. She was done hiding who she was, and Kincaid had showed her in no uncertain terms that she didn’t have to.
