Chapter 11 #3
“You were a child,” I say, and my voice sounds shaky to my own ears. I reach for his hand and draw my seat closer to him. And I hold on hard, as though I can somehow pass warmth into all the years that didn’t have enough of it.
“That’s monstrous,” I whisper. “That’s not discipline. That’s evil.”
We stay like that for a long time. “I left at sixteen. Walked out with what I could carry, and never went back.”
“And nobody came after you.” I don’t know why that’s the part that breaks me, but it is. The idea of him leaving and no one loving him enough to follow or find him.
My throat burns. Before I can think better of it, I lean forward again and wrap my arms around him. He shuffles even closer in his seat, and I’m now sitting between his spread thighs.
He stills for a fraction of a second, and I press against the hard line of his body.
Then his arms come around me once more, and God, I didn’t know how badly I wanted that until it happened.
He’s solid everywhere, hot and muscular. My whole body registers him, his scent engulfing me, and even with my heart aching for the boy he was, there’s still a deep, helpless pull low in my belly because being this close to him feels insane and perfect and dangerous all at once.
I breathe him in anyway.
His chest rises under my cheek. One of his hands spreads across the middle of my back, steady and protective, and I swear the entire world narrows to that touch.
“You just broke my heart,” I say into his shoulder. “I hope you know that.”
His arms tighten around me, not enough to trap, just enough to make me feel held. “You did a number on mine too.”
That nearly undoes me. I pull back just enough to glance up at him, and we’re close. I hear the crowds around us, the chatter, the laughter, yet I’m in a different place. Just North and me. My hands remain on him, one on his forearm, the other now tangled with his.
“You shouldn’t be this easy to touch,” I murmur, because apparently my mouth has given up on self-preservation entirely.
His eyes drop to my mouth. “You think this is easy for me?”
Heat instantly flashes through me, and the realization of what is blooming between us sits heavily, breathing.
His hand comes up, and his thumb holds under my chin, tipping my face toward him. The gesture is gentle.
“You are not made by what they did to you,” he says, and every word is clear and deliberate, as if he wants no room left for me to hide from it. “None of that gets to claim you.”
My eyes sting again. Damn him. “I’d really prefer not to cry in front of the hottest man at the table,” I whisper.
His thumb brushes once along the line of my jaw. “Then I’ll count it as an honor if you do.”
That pulls a broken little laugh out of me, and he smiles, small and devastating and too intimate for the middle of a crowded luau.
“The person I’ve seen today,” he says, “is sharp, funny, brave, and carrying more than she should have had to for a long time. That’s who I’m looking at.”
My breath catches. There’s no performance in him when he says things like this. He just means it. And somehow that makes it even harder to swallow.
“If I were to ever meet those girls now,” he continues, “I’d stand beside you and let them see exactly who you became after they failed to break you.”
I laugh again, watery this time. “You’d terrify them.”
His mouth curves. “I’d be delighted to.”
“That is an incredibly Alpha answer.”
“And an honest one.”
I shake my head and blink hard, trying to get myself under control while he watches me with that same steady intensity where I could hand him every worst part of me and he’d know what to do with it.
Around us, the whole place has filled. Tables are packed now, the torches burning bright, the sky a deep purple with the first stars starting to show. I missed all of it. Sat here in this one tiny pocket of the world with North and forgot there was anything else.
“Oh,” I say, glancing around. “We are in the middle of an entire event.”
North follows my gaze, then looks back at me, still in his arms. “We are.” So I pull back, figuring that as much as I want to remain here, we’re drawing attention.
Almost immediately, a woman in a floral dress appears with two plates, setting them down in front of us. Kalua pork, lomi lomi salmon, rice, poi, haupia, bread rolls with butter. Another woman follows with smaller plates of meat that looks slow-cooked and smells so good I’m salivating.
“Mahalo,” North says to the women, then he’s staring at me. “Think you can survive dinner?” He’s moved his chair back across from me now. One of his boots finds my sandal under the table and stays there, the side of his foot pressed against mine like it belongs there.
I laugh at the beautiful, broken, impossible man beside me, and then let out one last shaky breath. “Dinner, yes,” I say. “You, I’m still not sure about.”
I take one bite of the kalua pork and make a sound no woman should make in public unless she’s trying to start rumors. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
He’s grinning, not smug exactly, just far too satisfied with himself. “That delicious?”
I’m nodding crazily.
North takes a bite of his own food, calm as anything. “It never disappoints.” He just keeps eating, steady and composed, while I try to act as if the fact that both of his feet are now caging mine under the table isn’t sending a slow, wicked heat up my legs.
The stage host is saying something about tradition and history and welcoming the guests, but I’m only hearing every few words because North is across from me appearing unfairly attractive in the torchlight.
Music starts to roll out across the crowd then, and women in grass skirts and coconut bras move onto the stage, beautiful enough to make the whole place feel unreal. The firelight catches on their skin and flowers, and the audience melts into it immediately.
I do too. And after several incredible dances and most of our plates are empty, the beat of the drums changes. It drops lower, heavier.
The dancers clear, and two men step onto the stage, one from each side.
Ace and Luca.
They’re bare from the waist up, all heat-bronzed skin and hard muscle in the torchlight, the deep red of their malo skirts hanging low on their hips, green grass tied at their ankles.
The skirts are very short, and a sharp twist gives me a glimpse of powerful thighs, the flex of their hips, the dangerous suggestion of what’s barely hidden underneath.
Luca is wider through the chest and shoulders, carved like a god, while Ace is all fluid strength, leaner through the waist but no less devastating for it and almost as big.
Each carries a staff lit at both ends with crackling flames.
I’m already on the edge of my seat, excitement fizzing low in my stomach. The crowd loses its mind, which feels completely reasonable. I’m whistling and clapping.
Then they start moving, and it’s over for everyone.
Fire blurs into circles and whips of light as they spin the staffs so fast the flames seem suspended in the dark.
Luca drives his through a brutal overhead arc, catches it behind his back, and then snaps it low across his body in a move that makes every muscle in his stomach tighten.
Ace turns through his own spin with terrifying grace, staff flashing from one hand to the other, shoulders and arms working in smooth, lethal control.
The malo skirts flutter with every turn, and I get the briefest, most distracting look at the heavy shape of what those skirts are trying and failing to hide.
I should not be this focused on their packages in a cultural performance, and yet here I am.
They move together, then apart, fire crossing between them in sharp burning patterns that look like half dance, half threat.
Luca throws his staff high, clean and perfect, and Ace catches it one-handed without even looking, already spinning through his own turn, the flames chasing the line of his body.
The crowd screams, and I scream with them.
“Hot!” I yell, because it needs saying.
Ace glances straight at me through the spinning fire and winks.
My stomach flips so hard it’s embarrassing.
North is beside me now. I don’t even know when he moved his chair, only that he’s there, solid at my side, one hand low at my waist and close enough that if I leaned back, he’d catch me without effort.
Luca drops onto his back, facing away from us, his legs in the air, and he balances the spinning staff on his feet, heels lifted. His abs flex, his thighs tense, and the skirt rides up just enough to make me briefly lose the ability to think in complete sentences.
This is outrageous.
Ace circles him, fire slicing the air, then both of them surge into the end of the sequence in a blaze of heat and speed.
They land on their knees with the staffs between their legs, thighs clenching them tight enough to hold them, flames in front of and behind them.
Their chests heave, skin gleaming, skirts barely settled back into place, and the whole place erupts.
Everyone’s on their feet.
The stage goes dark for a beat, except for the torchlights. Then spotlights appear, revealing Ace and Luca facing each other, maybe five feet between them. They’re both holding a blade in each hand. My heart is in my throat, curious about what they’re going to do now.
North’s hand settles at my back just as Ace flicks one into the air.
The blade spins once, twice, and Luca catches it by the handle, then throws it back.
Ace grabs that one behind his back, and I almost stop breathing.
It’s terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
Luca ducks one throw and sends the next blade high enough to make half the audience unleash an “oohhh” sound.
Ace twists and catches it in one hand. Then they start doing this faster, and I’m tense all over, watching how easily they catch them correctly.
Blades flash so fast that my heart is thumping against my rib cage. Then suddenly both of them are tossing their blades high at the same time, spinning beneath them, and catching them clean in crossed grips as the drums hit once. The audience goes wild.
My face hurts from smiling and whistling while my pulse is nowhere near normal.
Once I flop down into my seat, North bends to my ear, his chest brushing my shoulder, his hand flattening more firmly at the small of my back. “You like what you see?”
His deep, sexy voice goes straight through me. “You know I do,” I answer, still watching the stage where the men are standing now, breathing hard, grinning like they know exactly what they’ve done to the crowd. “I wish you were up there.”
North’s mouth brushes close enough to my ear that it covers me in delicious shivers. “I can give you a private show anytime you want.”
I turn my head toward him. Bad idea. His face is right there, eyes dark in the torchlight, mouth close enough to want to taste him, and my whole body lights up at once. “Yeah?” I manage, which comes out far softer than I intended.
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Anytime.”
I face the stage again because that’s safer, and even that isn’t saying much. I lean back. Onstage, Luca finds me in the front row and throws his arms wide like, Well?
I give him the biggest thumbs-up I have.
He laughs, head tipping back, and Ace’s grin flashes bright enough to be seen from ten feet away.
I sit there with my skin still hot from the show, my drink sweating in my hand, and I am, very genuinely, turned on.
Which feels rude, considering the emotional breakthrough I had with North less than an hour ago, but my body is clearly not interested in behaving with nuance tonight.
The crowd is still roaring, the torches blazing, and I lean into North just a little more, letting the warmth of him hold me there.
Daniel used to tell me I was too much. Too quick with a comeback. I spent time shaving myself down for a man who turned out to be poison wrapped in a smile.
Never doing that again.
And for the first time since Los Angeles, staying no longer feels like the dangerous choice.