by Skye Warren
“You want more of that.” She breathes the accusation against my ear on the heels of a low laugh. “So even Joshua North needs a warm body.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. You think I’m the devil, but I’m human at the core.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Her hip under my palm, her curves against my bones. “I’ve had feelings.” The admission seems almost ridiculous in its simplicity. “I wasn’t always a cold bastard. No—I was always a cold bastard. Just not this cold.”
The energy around us, between us, shifts and changes. She keeps hold of me. Bethany’s little T-shirt rides up, and she presses flesh against flesh. I can’t get a full breath. The things I’d do to her if there were no clothes between us. If I could kick a door shut and flip the lock. Fuck the lock. Fuck the door, even.
“Feelings about what?”
Something snarky, on the edge of a lie, dies on the tip of my tongue. Truth blooms in its place. “I was pretty fucking pissed when my brother left for the army. For a while I thought I’d kill him myself if he ever came back.” The old sense betrayal is like any of my other scars from bullets or knives or fists, only invisible. “He left us with our father.” Who was a monster more terrifying than any I’ve met in the world—including traitors and bastards such as her brother. “And then I did the same thing to Elijah and came into my own as a piece of shit.”
“Nobody could blame you for that,” she murmurs into my ear.
But someone could. Elijah could. A cracking sensation at the center of my chest reminds me how much I miss them. “I blame myself for that. I’m a guilty motherfucker, sweetheart. I’m swimming in it.”
“Swim somewhere else.” Her body beckons. Bethany takes up space on the dance floor, her bends and turns forcing the world to recognize her existence. Push and pull, sway and dip. I won’t let her get farther than an arm’s length.
“Then they’d know.” The truth is a thousand stab wounds. What the ever-living fuck am I doing?
“Who’d know? And know what?”
“My brothers. They’d know that I care. Not that it matters, coming from a soulless monster.” That truth feels casual. Comfortable. I have never been anything better than I am right now, but I’ll be worse one day. Guaranteed. Bethany’s eyes lock on mine, pools of darkness against the strobe lights. She’s a fucking siren, drawing me off the edge of the ship. I could drown in the way she rolls her hips. Maybe I will, one day when she’s not a one-way ticket to prison.
“Would it be so bad?” Her body moves against mine. The dance becomes sinuous and dark. “If they knew?”
“It would be fucking terrible if anyone knew.” My heart thrashes against its bounds. “Getting close to people is a setup.” It’s an irony, because there’s nothing separating us but sweat-slick clothes. It’s a thousand degrees in here. A million. “You’re a sucker if you think they’ll do anything but leave you behind.” Bethany rocks to one side, pulling us toward the edge of the crowd. On instinct I throw my weight back, keeping her here. But it only takes one lithe step for her to make her argument.
“I need some air,” she says over the crushing bass. She doesn’t lose contact with me all the way out to the alley. Outside, the dance doesn’t stop. I can still feel the music under her skin. Bethany’s eyes search mine. “Is that why you’re buddy-buddy with my brother, then? Because you think he’ll keep you around?”
My entire body bristles. “No,” I growl. “Because when he finally gets what’s coming to him, I won’t give a fuck.” I’ve said too much. She tenses beneath my hands. My muscles react for me, and I back her against the wall of the alley. There’s the delicate line of her throat again, her pulse fluttering underneath. Exposed. One brush of my lips against her skin has Bethany panting.
“He’s not all bad,” she breathes. “You don’t have to say things like that.” Tension sings in her voice, but she doesn’t push me away.
“Is that what you give a fuck about, sweetheart? Your brother?”
Her fists curl into my shirt. Starlight echoes in her eyes. “He’s my brother. You care about your brothers. We’re the same.”
We’re not the same. We’re fucking not. She might have a preternatural grace and old understanding in her eyes, but she’s as naive as they come. My nerves feel like live wires, exposed to the air and her touch. But no matter how raw they get, this will only ever be a false closeness. I can never, never let her in. Her or anybody else. The risks are too high. They’ll always be too high. “We’re not the same.”
I can’t let go of her. The cool night air swirls around us, making the hairs on the backs of my arms rise. One of her hands curls around my wrist. She holds tight to the bone. “I know what you need, Josh.”
I can’t say it out loud. I can only take it.
This time, when she kisses me back, it’s hot and brave. It lands like a cannonball at the center of my soul. I pretend with all my might that there’s something left for Bethany to destroy, but I’m already rubble.
Bethany, present time
The sound of running water infiltrates my dream. It takes a period of time to realize that the water doesn’t fit with the dream. I’m sitting in my high school math class, trying to get the numbers on the page in front of me to make sense. The whoosh of a shower, complete with the irregular splashes that suggest a person washing their hair, has nothing to do with an algebra test.
As soon as that thought is fully formed, the dream dissolves and I’m squarely back in the center of reality. Also known as Joshua North’s personal bedroom. And his personal bed. I grab for the covers and pull them up to my neck. But…I’m fully clothed. Of course I am. He’s made it abundantly clear that intimacy is not part of the deal.
Not that I expected intimacy from him. We stumbled into its gates on the first night, and he dragged us out and slammed them shut. I don’t want that with him, anyway. I don’t want any of this. Not the threatening letters. Not Landon’s condescending treatment. He dismissed my opinions about this security team completely, and now look where it’s gotten me.
In Josh’s master suite, listening to him shower.
Unless a true apocalypse has happened, there can only be one man in the master suite’s bathroom. He wouldn’t have let anyone else walk into the bedroom. My mouth drops open. He walked past me, sleeping, to get to the en suite. Who does that? He does, obviously. Which means he doesn’t really care that I’m sleeping in his bed. At the same time, he’s ordered me to sleep in his bed. It doesn’t add up.
When I came out of the dream, I was still tired. It took forever for me to fall asleep last night, yet again. Each time I woke up, the cycle started all over again.
Now I’m wide awake but frozen in the bed. He’s in the shower.
I launch myself out of bed just to break the spell, then run my hands over my hair. I don’t toss and turn much in my sleep. Years of ingrained habit. But what do I do now? Waltz into the bathroom and act like this is my home, too? I still haven’t figured this part out. Josh would deserve it. He’s the one who wouldn’t stand for my apartment. The shower in the master suite is all modern tile with a big glass front. It takes up one entire wall of the bathroom. There’s just no earthly way I can enter that space and not look in his direction. His naked, wet direction.
This isn’t how I thought this would go. For one thing, I have class in a matter of hours. How many, I’m not sure. Where is my phone? I find it exactly where I left it on the bedside table, only it’s been plugged into a charger.
He didn’t want me out and about with a dead phone. At some point he came in here to plug it in so I wouldn’t have to go without it. I’m not one of those people who spends a lot of time on my phone. Dancing takes up most of my waking hours.
What the hell is happening?
The other piece to this equation is that I suddenly and desperately have to pee. I probably could have held it off if I’d stayed in bed, but I’m upright, and gravity is a cruel mistress. Leaving this bedroom
means I run the risk of Josh thinking I’ve disappeared. Staying means I run the risk of seeing him get out of the shower. Did he take all his clothes in there with him, or will he come out with a towel around his waist? Or no towel at all?
The phone tumbles onto the bed. I bury my face in my hands.
I’m not sixteen anymore.
I should not be acting like the man who’s kicked down the door into my life and left it hanging from its hinges is anyone to get excited about. No. The only possible way forward is to carry on with what we now call our normal routine. This is the suite he’s assigned me to, so that’s the bathroom I’ll use. I’ll brush my teeth. I’ll get dressed. I’ll go to class. Noah, I’m sure, will be waiting to drive me.
Shoulders back, head up. This is not a dilemma.
I’ve just stepped around the first corner of the king-size bed when the water shuts off. The abrupt silence freezes me in place. Shit. Shit. The average time it takes a man to dry off his hard, muscled body is going to be nothing like the time it takes me to hastily scrub off excess water in a disgusting shared bathroom. I weigh the options—get caught as a living statue at the foot of the bed or the floor of the bathroom?
The deliberations have taken too much time.
Footsteps on bathroom tile. I lurch into motion and make it around to the other side of the bed. The bathroom door cracks open, tendrils of steam reaching out and brushing against my cheek. His eyes flare when he sees me. No smile graces his lips. “You’re awake,” he comments. “Good. Noah will be waiting out front to take you to the theater.”
I’d expected a rush of heat after how long I spent pressing my thighs together underneath Josh’s sheets last night. Instead he brushes by me surrounded by a deep freeze. A thick white towel only serves to highlight his nakedness. The muscles, the hair, the maleness of him.
“Fresh towels are in the linen closet, as always,” he says over his shoulder on his way through the bedroom. I can’t help but watch him go. He must know I’m looking. He walks with his shoulders set. Every step seems planned. God, even his back looks strong.
He almost makes it out the door without looking back. At the very last moment I catch a flash of emerald. Amusement flickers at his lips. He saw me check him out.
Then he’s gone, the door shutting gently behind him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Forbidden from practicing any martial arts, slaves in 16th century Brazil developed Capoeira—fighting disguised as athletic, impassioned dance.
Josh, present time
I’ve spent nights in the mountain cold overseas.
I’ve pulled the trigger in life-or-death situations. I’ve hauled screaming men with bloodied limbs and crazed eyes into helicopters. And now I’ve done another torturous thing: walked past a sleep-rumpled Bethany without touching her.
Sleeping with her is not on the fucking table. It never has been, for a variety of reasons. Sleeping near her doesn’t seem to be an option, either. Every time I doze off with her in the house, I fall into vivid, filthy dreams involving the wide array of ways her body could bend beneath mine. So fuck sleep. I’ll try again tomorrow.
I thought I could put those thoughts out of my head. There was no way she was going to spend another night in that apartment, not even if I had to go and get her myself. That place might as well have been under a blinking neon sign that said OPEN FOR FUCKERY.
The way I feel right now, she’s not any safer in my house.
I brace one arm against the wall of the walk-in closet and rip the towel from my waist. My dick stands at full attention. Jesus, if she walks in now, if that doorknob turns, I’ll abandon the last shreds of self-control like the towel at my feet.
The doorknob stays put.
I can’t work like this.
Protecting Bethany isn’t some bullshit job that I can phone in. At North Security I don’t get those kinds of assignments. That’s not how we invest our time. I won’t say this is personal. It can’t be personal. Because letting myself get into that mind-set will get us both killed, or worse.
Sheer force of will isn’t going to rid me of this erection.
She slept in a tank top last night. It was so fucking close to the one she wore that night I went to her house for the first time. That was a big fucking risk, throwing pebbles at her window. Her grandmother could have walked in. Her brother could have shown up at home. Anything could have happened. And instead I lured her out into the dark. It must’ve been a tough decision for her—go against me, or them? Give in to goodness or the rush of knowing that life is more complicated than following the rules?
I don’t give a fuck about the rules right now. Not with my fist stroking hard and my teeth gritted to keep any sound from escaping. I’ll never forget the sensation of her lips against mine. That first glancing kiss. The things her body can do. What they would do for me if I peeled off those leotards and the breezy skirts and bared her skin to me. All her skin. Every inch. All her most secret places. They would all be mine. Mine, mine, mine.
My release spills out onto the discarded towel. My dick jerks in my hand. For the first time since last night, my head is almost clear.
Footsteps pad on the carpet outside the door.
Fuck it. Let her come in. Let her see me like this. Let her see everything. My muscles brace for the light from the bedroom to hit me like a slap. For Bethany’s wide-eyed gaze, no longer as innocent as it once was. Close. But not quite. She’s seen things, I know she has. This would be something else entirely. It would explode the cool distance I’ve so far managed to build between us. A distance that, right now, seems very fragile.
The footsteps pause. My breath stops in my lungs.
Then the footfalls continue on, moving away until I can’t hear them anymore.
Bethany, present time
Mamere lives in a green house with a red door not far from the French Quarter. You can’t see the Mississippi from her caved-in front porch, but you can smell it. You can smell everything from the tiny corner lot, including whatever the neighbors in the red house next door are cooking. Today it’s jambalaya. Easy enough to tell by the sizzle of sausage in fat and the toasty bite of spices on the breeze. My mouth waters, but I don’t so much as slow my step as I pass by Mamere’s neon sign in the window. It still announces PSYCHIC READINGS in letters dull from age. A single tarot card decorates the corner of the window. A part of me is aware of the old swing in the back, where I used to wait for Josh. Most of me is dying to hear her voice.
Maybe he’s thinking about that too. I don’t ask him.
The porch creaks under our feet. I feel a flash of anxiety that Josh’s solid weight might cause the whole thing to collapse. But no. It’ll take more than one man to put an end to Mamere’s house. It survived Katrina and it’ll survive six feet of pure muscle, so long as he doesn’t jump up and down on the old boards. He stands close enough behind me that I can feel where his body shapes the breeze. I’ve never thought of the porch as particularly large, but with him taking up all the available space, it’s tiny.
Josh wouldn’t let me come here alone. He let me get almost to the front door of his mansion before he detached himself from the shadows, spinning his car keys around one finger and whistling. Whistling. “I don’t need a ride,” I’d told him, drawing my bag in tight to my body. What I needed was five minutes without having to breathe him in. The most basic act of life is filled with him now. Every day. Every night. It’s going to give me a heart attack.
Of course he gave me a withering look and told me to get in the car, sweetheart. I felt the space he kept between us like the sharp point of a knife. I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss what Marlena said.
The red front door creaks open with the tinkle of the little shopkeeper’s bell before I can knock. A wrinkled grin splits Mamere’s face. “I knew it was you, child. Come in, come in.” Her eyes are almost completely white with cataracts. She shouldn’t be able to see that it’s me. It wouldn’t be a stretch to believe she has some othe
r sight. Especially when the smile falls away. Not quite a frown. “Ah,” she says, lifting her chin in Josh’s direction. “It’s you. You’re the one she dreams about.” She presses her lips together, and I hold my breath. Heat crawls across my cheeks. I feel, rather than see, the smirk on Josh’s face.
I should deny it, but the truth would be even more painfully obvious than it already is. Mamere isn’t wrong. “Hi, Mamere.” I step into the entryway of her house and let the burnt sage and incense engulf me. Her bones feel light beneath my arms. Smaller than I remember from the last time I saw her. But not frail. Still strong.
“Come sit. Both of you.” She shuffles into the front parlor. I can’t let myself relax—not with Josh standing here. Inside. How many times did I climb out to sneak away with him while Mamere snored down the hall? I force my thoughts away from those memories. I don’t think Mamere can read my mind, even if she thinks she can. But why take the chance?
We settle into the antique chairs at the round table, and Mamere takes her seat across from us. Josh seizes the opportunity to re-introduce himself. “Mrs. Lewis, I’m Joshua North.” His voice heats up the air around us. I know he’s not a good man, not some kind of golden boy you bring home to meet your parents, but the illusion is strong. “Bethany probably dreams about me because I’m an old friend of your grandson’s.”
I shoot him a look that has to be unmistakable disgust. What is he doing? I didn’t bring him here to act like the two of them went to Yale together.
Mamere says nothing. She merely shuffles the worn cards of her tarot deck in her hands. This is our ritual. First, the cards. Then, the kitchen. The part that isn’t going according to script is Joshua North sitting next to me on a chair that looks like it could crack under his solid muscles. It doesn’t crack. The chair holds. I sink into the whirr and snap of her shuffling. We’ve entered into a sacred space, like the moment before the music starts in a performance. Mamere spreads the deck out in the center of the table, a wide fan. “Choose.”
