Chapter 12
ADELAIDE
We step off the veranda back at North’s place, the night air soft with salt and the hush of the ocean just beyond the sand. The shack is only a few steps from the house, close enough that walking me here is ridiculous.
North does it anyway.
I stop at the door and turn, one hand still wrapped around the key he gave me earlier. “Well,” I say, because my pulse is already going wild and apparently I’ve decided that making it worse is the move. “This is me. Safe and sound.”
His mouth curves, slow and dangerous. “Yep,” he says, stepping in closer. “Looks like it.”
The wall meets my back before I fully register that I’ve moved. One second there’s air between us, and the next there’s hardly any at all. North braces one hand against the wall above my shoulder, his body close enough that I can feel the heat of him without him touching me anywhere else.
My breath speeds up.
This close, he smells even better, that dark, rich pull of him that gets into me and stays there. My heart is fluttering so hard it feels ridiculous, and the lower half of my body already made up its mind about him hours ago because my panties are drenched.
He stares at me for a long moment, not speaking, and the silence is worse than words, as it feels loaded.
“I had an amazing night,” I say softly.
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second. “I’ll never forget it.”
That doesn’t help. “Me either,” I whisper. “Which is honestly inconvenient, because I’m already having a hard time thinking straight.”
That gets the faintest flicker of a smile out of him. North’s free hand lifts, slow enough to give me every chance to stop him. I don’t. He takes my hand and places it flat against his chest.
The heat of him goes straight through my palm. Hard muscle. Steady heartbeat. The rise and fall of his breath.
My own heartbeat stumbles so badly I’m amazed I stay standing.
“If you want,” he says, voice low enough to feel like a touch all by itself, “the night doesn’t have to be over.”
God. I swallow and keep my hand where he put it. “You have no idea how much I want that,” I admit, and the honesty of it leaves me feeling raw and dangerously exposed. “But I’m still going to say no.”
North leans in, not enough to kiss me, just enough that the air changes. If I tipped up onto my toes, I could do something reckless and probably unforgettable.
“I know,” he says. “And that’s the only reason I’m still behaving like a gentleman.”
Heat curls low in my belly.
“You’re going to destroy me,” I say.
His gaze flicks down my body and back up, slow and deliberate, and my panties are already damp enough that I feel almost angry at myself for it.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing to me?
” he asks quietly. “Standing here looking like that, touching me and saying no like it costs you something.”
It costs me plenty. My fingers flex against his chest. “You’re not exactly making this easy.”
“I’m trying very hard,” he murmurs, “not to find out what you taste like when I kiss you.” There’s a rough honesty in his response that nearly undoes me.
My lips part. No answer. Not one useful, sane answer in sight.
North bends his head, not closing the distance, just letting me feel how close his mouth is to mine when he says, “Go inside, Adelaide.”
The words should feel like a dismissal. Instead, they feel like restraint and the only reason I’m not being kissed senseless against the wall of this shack is because he’s letting me keep the line I drew.
And somehow that makes it worse.
I slip out from under his arm before I lose the ability to do it at all, my breath shaky, my whole body hot and humming. My fingers fumble once on the key before I get it into the lock.
“Sleep well,” I say without looking back yet, because I know exactly how breathless I sound.
“I doubt I’ll get a wink.”
That makes me smile despite everything. I open the door, risk one glance over my shoulder, and nearly regret it. He’s still there, one hand braced on the wall, watching me like I’m the hardest thing he’s had to walk away from in a long time.
Then I slip inside and shut the door, heart pounding, back pressed to the blinds.
For a second, I just stand there in the dark, breathing.
North is outside, or was two seconds ago. Close enough that if I opened the door again, I could probably still find the heat of him in the air, the one that said he was holding himself back by sheer force of will.
My whole body is still humming from it.
I need a minute. Several minutes. Possibly a priest.
I push away from the door, switch on the light, and pace once across the room, dragging both hands through my hair, trying to get myself under control because this has already been the most insane day of my life and I refuse to completely lose my mind before midnight.
I run a hand across my potted plant on the side table, the little thing already in its new, larger pot that Luca got for me. The guy has a pure heart of gold.
Yep, thinking that doesn’t help either, because once my breathing starts to even out, my traitorous brain moves right on to him and Ace in the malo skirts.
The way the firelight caught every hard line of their stomachs, every flex of thigh and chest and shoulder as they moved. The crowd lost its mind, and I was right there with them, shouting like I’d forgotten my own name.
I press a hand over my eyes.
North against the wall. Ace and Luca half naked in the firelight. This is not a manageable situation, and somehow, impossibly, it’s my situation now.
I drop onto the couch. Through the French doors, the beach is doing its moonlit thing, waves coming in steady and silver. I switch on the TV to a cooking show, as silence and I aren’t getting along tonight.
I dial Clio’s number because I need to say all of this out loud to someone who will understand and also judge me appropriately.
She picks up on the second ring. “You alive?” she asks.
“Very much,” I say, tucking my feet up on the couch. “Though, emotionally? Questionable. You should’ve seen what I just watched and experienced tonight.”
“Tell me everything.”
“I will, but first, are you okay? Should I have called earlier?”
Clio lets out a breath. “I’ve been refreshing my phone for six hours like a psycho with Wi-Fi. I’m much better now that you’re talking. Go.”
So I do.
I explain the whole day, in order. The beach, the men in black, me paddling out to three strangers, and then Ace reappearing on a surfboard.
Lunch, the tires slashed, Luca’s motorcycle, which was hot, their mansion house, which I tell her we’ll come back to because it requires its own segment. Then the luau.
“Wait,” Clio cuts in. “Back up. Fire dancing?”
“You should have seen them,” I confirm, sinking deeper into the cushions. “Malo skirts and nothing else on. Torches on both ends of the staff, but their muscles, girl, I might have been drooling.”
“And by ‘they,’ ” she says slowly, “you mean…?”
“Ace and Luca.” I press the back of my hand to my cheek.
Clio makes a strangled noise.
“And North?” she asks.
I hesitate for half a second, still burning from him, how close he got, and the way the night ended with me pinned against the wall.
And I definitely don’t tell Clio about the deeper stuff.
It feels too new and too private, like taking something warm and living and exposing it to cold air before it’s ready.
“He had dinner with me while the other two worked,” I say instead.
“And somehow he turned into this super sexy, dark, quietly dominant menace in an open shirt who kept touching me like he knew exactly what it was doing to me. We got way too close, I very nearly kissed him, and I am still not remotely normal about it.”
Clio bursts out laughing. “Why does that not surprise me at all? You spent the day with three hot Alphas, and now you’re sleeping in a beach shack on their property.”
“That is, unfortunately, a very accurate summary.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I do. I sound unwell.”
“It sounds like the beginning of a deeply unsafe romance novel.”
I laugh. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m trying to understand the level of trouble we’re working with.” I pause. “Are you okay, though? Really. The van, the tires, all of it. I need the real answer, not your hot-men-on-fire summary.”
That quickly removes the shine from the whole day.
“I’m worried that Daniel found me. I mean, he must know that I heard him have that conversation about getting rid of Thomas Cassidy, and then two days later, that name was all over the news when his body was found.
It has to be him, and now he wants to silence me before I report him or something,” I say, quieter now.
“Random creeps don’t slash four tires. That takes planning.
Someone wanting me to know they can still find me. It has Daniel written all over it.”
Clio exhales hard. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“And what happens if he tracks you to that house?” she asks.
I press my mouth thin. “I’d rather not build that scenario out in my head tonight.”
“You still need to think about it.”
“I know.” I grab a throw pillow and press it tight to my chest. “Which is why I’m thinking maybe I should tell them all of it. About Daniel and Lumen. Everything.”
Clio doesn’t answer straight away. That’s when I know she’s taking it seriously, not just reacting. Finally she says, “You trust them?”
I glance around the little guest place. Solid locks. Ocean beyond the doors. The quiet weight of that house behind me. Three men who stepped in without making me beg for help.
“More than I trust anyone else who can keep me protected,” I say.
“And the house?”
I rub a hand over my forehead. “Clio, these men are not just surfers.”
“No?”