Chapter 1 #2
That pack wasn’t my forever. It was never even mine to begin with. Yet, I let them own pieces of me they never earned.
A gust of wind whips across the deck, catching strands of my hair.
I glance back over my shoulder, and my stomach sinks. Leon is following me outside on the deck. “Anita, wait. Just hear me out…”
“No.” I don’t even face him fully. “You’re in my past, and I don’t care what you have to say.”
I speed up, scanning the deck for an exit, anywhere to escape this conversation. The cold is brutal out here, wind cutting through my coat like it’s made of paper, but I don’t care.
Laughter—low, masculine, confident—comes from the far corner of the deck.
Three men standing near the railing at the rear of the ferry, half distracted by whatever’s happening with the engine below.
One of them is an older man and has his coat sleeves pushed up despite the cold, a wrench in one hand, grease smeared on his forearm.
Another, in the captain’s uniform, might be as old as my father.
And a tall, dark-haired man in a long coat has his back to me.
They’re not Leon, and right now, that’s all I care about.
Without thinking, I head straight for them.
“Hey, can you believe this?” I say with a fake laugh, loud and casual, slipping right into the space beside the man closest to me. I don’t look at any of them directly. Just keep my focus behind me, on Leon, who’s slowing his approach, uncertainty written all over his face.
“Unbelievable,” I add, laughter bubbling in my throat like I’m part of their group, like we’ve been standing here together the whole time. I don’t know what the hell I’m pretending to talk about. Engine trouble? Weather? The general cycle of existence? It doesn’t matter.
Leon stops a few feet away, watching, clearly unsure how to proceed. I lift my brows at him, giving him a look that screams, Move along.
He exhales hard through his nose, jaw tight, and finally turns back toward the cabin doors. I wait until he disappears inside before allowing my shoulders to drop, tension draining out of me.
Crisis averted.
“That was smooth.” The male’s voice comes from my right, and everything inside me stops.
Because I know that voice. Rough. Deep. Sin dipped in gravel. That slow, masculine drawl that’s narrated every dark, depraved, toe-curling fantasy I’ve indulged in for the last year. The voice that’s lived in my earbuds, in my most private moments, in the space between waking and sleeping.
Joe Hamilton.
It can’t be. That’s ridiculous. What are the odds?
But what if…
I turn slowly, and my breath catches.
He towers over me, and he’s unfairly attractive.
Like, aggressively, offensively attractive in a way that feels almost rude.
Early thirties, maybe, with a strong jaw covered in dark stubble that’s somewhere between intentional and forgot-to-shave-for-three-days.
His eyes are steel gray, sharp, assessing, intelligent, and they’re studying me with an expression that’s half curiosity, half amusement.
His black hair is slightly messy, sticking out from the upturned collar of his coat. It hangs open at the front, giving me a perfect view of a fitted black shirt that stretches tight across his chest and shoulders, not hiding any of his muscles.
He’s easily over six feet, and ridiculously handsome.
Heat floods my cheeks. My thighs clench involuntarily. I’m practically buzzing, my body already ahead of my brain, slick heat pooling low and urgent. My pulse is thudding wildly.
This could actually be him.
The two men he’d been talking to are glancing over the railing toward the back of the ferry, murmuring something about the smoke rising from below, ignoring me. One of them points down, clearly involved in trying to fix whatever’s gone wrong.
Joe, or whatever his real name is, doesn’t look away from me. He tilts his head slightly, expression curious, assessing. “You okay?”
God, that voice. My body doesn’t hear the question, just his tone. That deep, unhurried rumble. Warm and wrecked and ridiculously real. It slides right beneath my skin like it owns me, like it’s always owned me.
No, I am not okay. Not in the slightest. “Uh… yes. No. Probably not.”
A slow grin curves his mouth. Dangerous and knowing and entirely too appealing. “Rough day?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, at least the ferry should be cooperating soon.” He glances toward the smoke still wisping up from below. “Mostly.”
“Is it actually broken, or is this just part of the scenic experience?”
His grin widens. “Little of both. These old boats have personality. Sometimes they throw tantrums.” He shifts his weight, and I catch the way his muscles move under that shirt. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
God help me, I’m sweating through my layers despite the freezing wind.
One of the other men, older, weathered, with the look of someone who’s spent his entire life on boats, chuckles and nudges Joe’s arm. “You sure you want to help with this?”
Joe hesitates for just a second, his gaze locked on mine, lingering too long, too intense, like he’s trying to figure something out about me. Then he finally tears his gaze away.
“Yeah. I’m in.” He gives me a small nod, polite, almost apologetic, and then jogs after the other two men, disappearing down the side of the boat and vanishing out of sight.
And just like that, I’m alone again.
Reeling. Breathless. Pulse hammering so hard I feel it in my throat. I stare after him, trying to process what just happened. Was that really Joe?
Cold wind brushes against my face, the lingering smoke clinging to the air. My suitcase wheels clunk softly against the metal as I turn slightly, needing a moment to breathe.
That’s when I spot Leon through the windows to the cabin where I was sitting earlier. He’s standing there, angled toward the glass, watching me this whole time. My stomach knots.
I linger there too long, pretending I haven’t noticed, hoping maybe he’ll look away. But he doesn’t. So I turn sharply and drag my suitcase behind me, moving toward the side of the ferry, boots clanging against the deck. The wind is fiercer here, howling off the open water.
My suitcase bumps along behind me, the cold metal handle biting at my palm.
There are two benches at the side of the boat, half sheltered by a bulkhead and mostly free of snow. It’s private enough, tucked just out of Leon’s line of sight.
I sink onto the wood, jaw tight, hands clenched.
Just breathe.
So I lean back against the cool metal behind me, then dig into my coat pocket and pull out my earbuds. If there’s one voice that can drown all of this out, it’s Joe’s. My favorite narrator. My shameless obsession. I press Play.
“That’s it, Omega. Let me hear you. Let me hear what you need.” That sinful voice fills my head again, picking up right where I left off.
The heroine moans, and what I wouldn’t give to be her.
“You’re soaked. Already dripping for me, and I’ve barely touched you. What do you think will happen when I actually make you mine? When I pin you down and take everything you’ve been saving for me?”
I close my eyes, and now that I might have seen him and have a face to attach to this voice, it’s so much worse.
Or better.
I can’t decide.
“Say my name,” he commands, voice rough with desire. “I want to hear it on your lips when you come apart. Want to know you’re thinking of me when your body can’t take any more.”
My thighs press together involuntarily. My breath speeds up.
What did he think when he said those words? Was he alone in a recording booth, reading from a script with clinical detachment? Or did he feel it, let himself sink into the character, into the fantasy?
“I don’t want to just fuck you. I want to unravel you, learn every sound you make, until you’re mine in ways you can’t undo.”
I’m on fire despite the cold. Every nerve ending is singing. I’m acutely, painfully aware of the ache between my thighs, the way my nipples have tightened against my bra, the way my breath is coming in short gasps.
I shift on the bench, trying to focus on literally anything else.
The water. The sky. The distant shoreline growing closer.
But all I can think about is him. The way he stared at me. Time passes the way it does when your thoughts won’t settle—slowly and all at once.
I’m still on the bench when the ferry’s engine roars back to life, smooth and steady. A cheer goes up from somewhere inside the cabin. The boat picks up speed again, cutting through the water with renewed purpose.
I pull one earbud out and watch as the men emerge from inside. They’re all grinning, clapping each other on the back, clearly pleased with themselves. Someone hands Joe a rag, and he wipes his hands, then tosses it into a bucket without looking.
He did that. Whatever went wrong, he fixed it.
Good with his hands indeed.
My gaze drifts shamelessly, and I don’t even try to stop it. He’s talking to the older man, gesturing toward something on the deck, and I watch the way he moves, confident, sexy as hell, like someone who knows his own strength and doesn’t need to prove it.
It doesn’t make sense.
Why would a romance narrator be out here? In the middle of nowhere. On a freezing ferry. Fixing engines like it’s second nature.
Stranger still, why does my gut keep insisting it’s him?
I replay his voice in my head, comparing it to the audiobook still playing softly in one ear. The cadence. The tone. That low, deliberate way of speaking that sinks straight into bone.
Voices don’t lie. Bodies can change. Names can be fake.
But voices… they are the truth. Plus, with my job in radio, I pay close attention to the tone of callers and anything little in their voices to read them right.
The ferry hums steadily beneath me as the landscape begins to shift ahead of us from within the gathering fog.
Buildings emerge from the mist like something half remembered from a dream.