19. Selena
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Selena
Thursday arrived, and so did Greg.
Greg drove a white pickup and unloaded what looked like a lawnmower’s evil cousin strapped to it—ground-penetrating radar. He set up cones, wore a cute little OSHA-approved vest, and had the unhurried nature of a man who billed by the hour and had never once been attacked by a flock of seagulls.
I watched him from the Shark Bites window with a pair of binoculars—very nonchalant.
“You know who else watches men through binoculars,” Lupe said, restocking napkins. “Serial killers.”
“I’m a bird enthusiast.”
On the windowsill, El Soldado adjusted one wing, then squawked with approval.
The situation was dire. Greg’s radar would crawl the north stretch in lanes. The nests would show up as “anomalies”—disturbed sand columns, void spaces. Exactly the destabilizations that RipTide’s insurance would want “taken care of” to approve their location.
So Greg could not finish his lanes.
“Yeah, sure. Definitely not watching the hot surfer out on the waves.” Lupe waggled her eyebrows.
I was not doing that.
I was watching Greg, not how just behind him Chase Perez paddled into a wave that had no business being as good as it was on a weekday morning in Crescent Cove.
He caught it low, almost too late, and for half a second I thought, Good. Eat it. Wipe out. Give me something to feel good about today. Then he was up. And the thing I hated most about Chase Perez—more than the grin and the tattoos and the abs—the thing I hated most was that he was good.
Really fucking good. Not flashy or loud like he was in person, good because he was built for exactly one purpose and he knew it and was doing it.
He read the wave before it finished forming.
His weight shifted a full beat ahead of where the break was going.
His back foot adjusted and the board responded like they were one.
He carved a bottom turn that used every inch of the wave face without going over, drove up through a cutback that threw a clean arc of white behind him, and his body, through all of it, was quiet.
No wasted motion, no show, no cameras.
Just a guy and the ocean having a private conversation.
He was wearing his real smile.
So, yes, I was definitely not watching him, my body recognizing that joy—where athletes made impossible things look easy. I had lived inside a body like that once. I knew what it took to get there.
I knew the hours and the salt and the tape on your fingers and the mornings you got up before the sun because you couldn’t do anything else. I knew what it meant to be that good, and I knew what it meant to give it up.
And I knew, watching him drop off the back of the wave and paddle out for another with that easy roll of his shoulders, that Chase Perez had never given up a damn thing in his life. He was a star, a world champion, because he would never have set aside his dreams for someone else.
At least, that’s what I told myself, but his sad smile kept creeping back into my mind.
No, he was a talented athlete who had everything that maybe I could have had if only I’d been brave enough to take it…
I blocked that out by thinking about the motel instead.
He had enjoyed it. Obviously. But he’d enjoyed holding that power over me. He was an asshole. A talented asshole who was thorough in bed and—
Nope.
He was a sponsored asshole. End of sentence.
He had charged my magic higher than ever before, and I’d spent it carefully. But after days of sabotage, I was already low. And now, here in daylight, with normie Greg as a witness, I could already feel the hollow ache in my chest. And to recharge—
No.
There had been am exchange. Business concluded. Even if he had lied to me about his motives on the beach last night, giving me his fake smile that made my heart ache…which was exactly what this arrangement was designed to prevent.
So, no. Today I worked alone.
“Whatever you’re deciding,” Lupe drawled, “your face is telling me an entire story.”
“Keep an eye on the shack, will you?”
She saluted me, all sarcasm.
I ran up the nearby dune, my Crescent Cove beach bag stuffed with a towel, a paperback I’d picked up from Ebb everything with him felt like both—and pinned our hands behind my back, arching me into him. He bit my nipple, hard.
“Let me bite you, baby.”
“You already did.” My thighs were burning, but it was what I craved, controlling where he hit inside me, grinding against him with every thrust.
“That was nothing. I mean a real bite.”
“That’s gonna leave a mark.”
He peered up at me, and the iris of his eyes had been swallowed by black.
“That’s the idea.”
“No way.”
He groaned, and the sand haze swirled tighter around us, his mouth finding my ear with that low, wrecked voice that wasn’t RipTide’s Chase, wasn’t El Tiburón.
“You can’t hide from me, baby. The line’s open, Selena. It’s open both ways—”
“Stop talking—”
“Make me.”
So I did. I rode him harder with the clock running and the light rising, chasing it viciously, like I used to chase match point—with a feral hunger I’d folded up and put away for years.
His eyes rolled back, and he grabbed my hips, his fingers digging in as he lifted me up and down, perfect whimpers falling from his lips.
“You want it?”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk?”
“There are exceptions.”
He reached between us, his fingers pressing against my clit in perfect, rhythmic circles, synced with the thrust of his hips.
“I want you to come so hard the whole beach knows.”
“Then give it to me, Perez.”
His hips bucked up, his fingers never stopping until my legs and ass shook so much I stopped moving. But he didn’t. He drove me until I shattered, my nails raking down his back, magic surging beneath them.
I clamped down around him, and I watched Chase Perez, brand asset, megawatt smile, come apart underneath me with my name on his lips.
The tower groaned on its pilings. The CONDEMNED sign fell off the door.
And the charge crested through me, impossibly full, sand drifting down around us like the inside of a snow globe.
“Goddamn, Selena,” Chase said hoarsely, eyes on me.
I raised one glowing hand toward the beach, him still buried deep inside me. I found the sand under the radar and Greg—my sand, every grain from here to the tideline—and asked it, sweetly, to open.
The cart sank until only the handle was visible, Greg scrambling back and cursing loudly, carrying beautifully over the water. Two gulls flew into his face just for the hell of it, and he was back at his white pickup before my legs had even stopped shaking.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I didn’t like the very human look in Chase’s eyes. I climbed off him and was met with a very different emptiness.
“It’s for the turtles.”
I tugged my suit back into place.
His lip, with that stupid ring, pouted, and I did something equally stupid.
I leaned in and kissed him. I rolled my tongue over that hostile piece of metal, and he met me.
Static flew between us, one I knew had nothing to do with magic and was therefore infinitely more terrifying.
His hands came up to my waist again, but I pulled back.
“Lucky you didn’t bring this whole place down.” His sponsored grin slipped back into place. I thought about laughing when the whole tower shuddered, and the floor gave out beneath us.
The fall wasn’t far, but sun-rotted, splintered wood reached up like jagged claws. Before I could panic, massive, strong arms wrapped around me, and he rolled us to a soft landing on a pile of sand that my magic turned into a plush cushion instead of a compacted floor.
He was on top of me again.
“You know, eventually a guy might think you are trying to kill him,” he drawled.
He was close, too close, so I shoved him off.
“If I wanted you dead, Perez, you would be.”
He pouted again, his lip ring glinting.
“You are so mean to me.”
“You like it.”
I stood, brushing the sand off my legs and back.
He followed me up, his hand finding its way to the small of my back. “That I do.”
He pulled me in for another kiss, his tongue teasing the seam of my lips. I would think back later on how quickly I opened for him, as my tongue met his and my stomach churned.
We were on solid ground now, so why did it feel like it was collapsing underneath me?