Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Jordan stormed down the sandy path toward the beach, rubbing his hands roughly over his scalp. His entire body was at war with itself. One part wanted to run as far away from her as he could. The other part, the dominant part, screamed at him to claim her the way she’d all but begged him to.
“I want you.” She’d said it with such conviction. Like she meant it.
Fuck. She’d looked so needy. So wanton. Flush cheeks, loose hair still tangled from their windy ride. So heartbroken when he’d made her believe he didn’t want the same. The lie of his fucking life.
He yelled into the cold winter air. The wind churned around him, stealing his tortured scream, eviscerating it in the roar of the crashing waves a few feet away. He should’ve been freezing, but instead his body burned.
“Jordan!” Her voice found him like a siren’s call. She was everywhere, imprinted on every piece of him.
It was excruciating. Because he knew what she didn’t. They could never be together. She was the beauty. He was the beast. But this wasn’t a fairy tale.
“Jordan!”
Her scream was louder, breaking through the sounds of the brewing winter storm, making him stop dead in his tracks.
He spun, catching sight of her slim figure chasing after him. She was barefoot, her hair whipping around her, skin pale, illuminated against the glimmer coming off the water.
“Go back,” he shouted. It was too dark outside now, too cold, too dangerous.
“No,” she shouted right back at him, stopping an inch short of colliding with him.
Tears streaked her cheeks, her inky hair sticking to the stains. “I’m sorry.” Her cry was carried away by the sea. “I know I’ve been a lot. I know I’m a mess. I know I’m probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. But please, please don’t run away from me like that.”
A tear dripped down her chin, followed by a steady stream from heartbroken eyes. And he snapped. Lost it completely.
Any control, any restraint or will he had left was carried away on a salty gust of wind. He almost collapsed to his knees under the weight of the need that thundered through him. Instead, he hauled her up against him.
“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He ground out each syllable so she couldn’t mistake the truth of his words. Before she could reply, he crushed his lips against hers and devoured her.
The kiss was something beyond them both, like a deity from another universe controlling their fate. Open mouths, tongues tangling, freezing air melting under their desire. His hand snaked around the nape of her neck. Her fingers clawed at the fabric of his shirt, clutching him as close as possible.
Angling their heads, he took the kiss deeper, sinking his tongue into her mouth and drinking her sweetness like it was the fountain of eternal life.
She pulled back a fraction, catching his gaze for one long beat, then with a brilliant smile, she jumped, and he caught her under the ass as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Before he could say a word, her mouth found his again, and he held onto her, not letting her fall, not letting go.
The tightening of her arms around his neck left no room for air, only her. Long fingers caressed his head, and he moaned from the exquisite torture of her hips pressing against his groin.
Finally, she reared back an inch, her million-dollar smile beaming. “The very best thing, right?” Her eyes twinkled, relief sparkling in the gold flecks of her irises, and his heart bottomed out.
Yes, he wanted her. And yes, she was the best damn, unexpected thing that had ever entered his sorry life, but the truth remained.
He didn’t deserve her. Anything romantic between them was already doomed.
He knew that. Even if he took everything she was willing to give him tonight, he knew there was no happy ending for them.
“Vanessa.” He hated how some of the light drained from her when he said her name.
Her smile faltered. “Uh-oh.”
“I’m not a good man.”
She rolled her eyes at that. An exaggerated roll that had him biting the inside of his cheek despite himself.
“Don’t start with that, Zeus. We’ve all made mistakes. They don’t define us.”
“Don’t they?”
She shook her head before sliding off his body. Her feet touched the sand, but she didn’t let go of his shoulders.
“The things I’ve done—” He gritted his teeth through the shame. “Before I was your age, I’d already killed half a dozen men.”
The sound of her sharp inhale was torn away with the wind. In the darkness, her eyes widened like twin winter moons. Her face paled, and her lips turned blood-dark and vivid against the shadowy swirl of her hair. She must have been freezing, but she didn’t shiver.
“I’m not a hero. I’m no one’s guardian angel.
I killed people and was celebrated for it in my crew for a very long time.
I spent time in jail for drug possession and theft.
Probably deserved a lifetime there for all the other crimes I committed.
There’s no erasing the sins of my past. They’re a scarlet stain on my soul. ”
In the face of her silence, he added, “You deserve better, Vanessa.”
She stepped back and stared past him, out to the sea. Small white flakes started to fall around them, sticking to her hair and clothing. It took a minute to recognize what they were. Snow.
After a beat, she lifted her face toward the sky. Then she mumbled something before laughing. A silent shaking of shoulders, tears glistening on her lashes.
“What?” He was genuinely confused. He’d told her how many lives he’d ended, and she was laughing up at the sky and mumbling like she had some private joke going with a higher power.
And maybe she did, because when she turned to him with wet, laughing eyes, she threw her arms up high and shouted, “They shall be white as snow.”
While his mind reeled, she caught a snowflake on her fingertip.
It melted on contact. Her laughter intensified, and before he could register what she was doing, she tugged her shirt over her head and stripped her pants off her long legs.
Standing on the dark winter beach in her black bra and panties, laughing joyfully, she looked like a goddess. Or an angel.
“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” She quoted the scripture verse she had no idea he had partially tattooed across his heart, and then, while he stood stunned and speechless, she sprinted toward the ocean.
Jordan didn’t move until she hit the water. Her screams filled the air, loud and piercing, making him sprint after her, heart hammering.
“Fuck me.” This woman. His princess, his angel.
Stripping quickly to his briefs, he took off after her. Plunging into the water, the frigid temperature pierced his skin like a thousand stabbing knives. He took a second to self-regulate.
“It’s freezing,” she shouted over the crashing waves.
The snow falling on the water only made her appear more ethereal. She was an arm’s reach away, but even that was too far, so he waded over to her, the water rolling over his hips.
The icy swells reached a bit higher for her, covering her navel. She held her arms above the water. Her chest heaved with sharp, shallow pants.
They weren’t in deep water, but the ocean was unpredictable, and with their body temperatures dropping, their reflexes slowed. One strong wave could knock her under and disorient her quickly.
Closing the space between them, he looped his arm around her waist. He barely registered her thighs brushing against his.
The cold was numbing his legs, and his feet were aching, but Vanessa was beaming up at him like she’d finished climbing Everest. He’d stay in the water forever if it meant keeping that smile on her face.
“You’re incredible,” he yelled so she could hear him over the noise of the waves.
“Incredibly reckless,” she replied with a laugh.
“Sometimes.” He tugged her closer, wrapping her legs around his waist so she was anchored to him.
“Incredibly stupid.” She draped her arms around his shoulders.
“Never,” he told her immediately.
She met his stare, like she hadn’t expected his vehemence. Then she lowered her gaze. “Incredibly brave?” Her tone was questioning, not a statement as the others had been.
“Always,” he hummed against her cheek. He hadn’t meant to say more than that, but when she tilted her head and stared up at him, eyes bright with relief, he let the rest slip out in a quiet murmur.
“My brave, smart, incredible girl.” He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him, but she hugged him closer, resting her chin on his shoulder.
A few more seconds passed, the ocean roaring around them. Her body stiffened, a violent shiver coursing through, and he nudged her chin back so he could see her face. Her lips were chalky blue, ghostly against the gleam of the snow-muted waves.
That was all the warning he needed. As much as he loved her smiling, he’d never risk her to hypothermia. He carried her slowly and carefully toward the shore.
“I-I’m s-so c-cold,” she stammered, teeth chattering so hard he worried she might bite her lip. The thought spurred him to move faster, even though his stiff muscles screamed in protest.
“I d-didn’t th-think it would b-be this c-cold,” she managed.
He let out a short, incredulous laugh. That was one hell of an understatement. The Pacific Northwest wasn’t known for its warmth. In February or any month. Hell, if his balls shrank any more, they’d retreat into his spine.
“This isn’t exactly Hawaii, princess.”
She punched him half-heartedly in the shoulder, and burrowed her face against his neck. “I r-read th-that cold dips help you s-sleep b-better and l-live longer.”
When a tremor wracked her entire body, he picked up his pace across the sand, snow swirling around them.
“What you said about cold dips is true. They clear your head. Strip everything away leaving only what really matters.” Like his feelings for her.
They now had to be so painfully obvious he half-expected emoji hearts to pulse out of his damn eye sockets.
He’d be shocked if she hadn’t already figured it out.
“Y-you’ve done cold dips before?”
“A few times.” He didn’t tell her that it had begun as self-punishment. That he’d spent years brutalizing himself as a kind of penance. Punishing his body at the gym, in the ring, at the tattoo parlor, in the prison’s courtyard, chasing some sense of atonement.
But the first time he’d plunged beneath the sea’s frigid waters, it had been more like a baptism.
Instead of castigation, he’d found renewal, like he’d been peeled down to his rawest, most exposed form.
When the blood rushed back to his extremities after that first dip, he’d had a sense of resurgence.
Then he’d felt unworthy again and still desperate for more.
He’d never experienced anything like it before. Or since. Until her.
Deciding to deal with their discarded clothing in the morning, he headed straight for the cottage. What she needed was to warm up, and fast.
Cutting around the deck to the side of the cottage, he fought his rising panic over how her entire body shuddered with cold. “Almost there,” he murmured, then unlatched the barn-style door, tugging it wide, to reveal a shower on the other side.
Slowly, he set her on her feet, but she curled against him, wrapping her shivering arms around his torso.
He twisted the shower’s jets to hot, then guided her under the stream.
When the rain-shower head he installed poured a wide flow over her head, she closed her eyes and sighed, tipping her face up to the water.
The sound melted something in his heart.
As the water continued to heat, she gradually peeled herself off him.
Standing at the edge, water streaming off his shoulder, he took a moment to admire her.
Stripped nearly bare like this, her beauty was on full display.
Her long, toned body called to him, every curve stirring something deep and urgent.
Heat surged through him. He’d never warmed up faster from a cold dip.
After a minute, her shivering subsided to a tremble, and she opened her eyes. Water droplets clung to her lashes, and her soaked hair stuck to her shoulders. “You have an outdoor shower?”
She truly never did say what he expected.
“Outdoor and indoor. It connects to the inside. I don’t like tracking sand into the house. I built two entrances, so I can rinse off before coming in.”
A small smile curved her mouth. “Smart.” She glanced past his shoulder. “It’s still snowing.”
Was it nerves that had her shifting topics again? Was she uncomfortable standing nearly nude in a shower with him? The idea sat uneasily in his gut.
“Yeah,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on hers. “It should taper off before morning.”
Time to give her privacy. He reached for the inside shower door, trying to move past her. “I’ll go—”
She caught his hand, stilling him. Her attention drifted from their joined hands to his bare torso. He became acutely aware of exactly how exposed he was.
Even at the gym, he kept his chest covered. It wasn’t just skin anymore. It was a roadmap of his past, and he’d learned to be selective about who saw it. Which, since he’d gotten out of jail, had been no one. But now, she’d stepped back and was taking in every detail.
Desire lit her gaze as she tracked over his abdomen, but he knew the exact moment she landed on the finer details etched on his physique. His heart raced. His breath lodged in his lungs.
Vanessa’s expression wavered as she registered the scars, but he forced himself to hold still and let her look, even as instinct screamed for him to turn away. It had been a long time since he’d let himself be this vulnerable. It was scary as fuck.
If she ran from what she saw, she’d have every right. The question was, would he have the will to let her go?