Chapter 7
AMELIA
Ishould have locked the door.
I knew it the second I heard the knock—one, two, three steady hits that vibrated through the cheap hotel wood and into my bones.
I stood there in the middle of the room, barefoot on carpet, heart pounding hard enough to make the lamp shade tremble in my peripheral vision.
I could’ve ignored it. Pretended I was asleep. Pretended I wasn’t the idiot who’d just told Levi Dane my room number like I was handing a lit match to a man soaked in gasoline.
The knock came again.
I crossed the room.
Every step felt like an argument I was losing with myself.
When I opened the door, he was there—broad shoulders filling the frame, T-shirt clinging to his chest, eyes darker than they’d been in the lobby. He smelled like coffee and the faintest hint of jet fuel, like he’d carried the morning with him.
We stared at each other for a beat that stretched too long.
“You took your time,” I said.
“You ran,” he replied. “I gave you a head start.”
I should’ve slammed the door.
Instead, I stepped back.
“Get in or get out,” I said. “The hallway isn’t my preferred place for bad decisions.”
His mouth ticked, just once. Then he stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind him with a soft finality that made my skin prickle. Suddenly, the room felt smaller—king bed, generic art, window framing a slice of Charleston sky—and all of it crowded by him.
We were close. Too close. Not touching, but almost. The air between us pulsed with everything we hadn’t said and everything we’d done before.
“This is stupid,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “It is.”
He didn’t move toward me.
I hated that. Hated that he was giving me space when all I could remember was the way he once pressed me into a canvas wall and took it away.
My hands curled into fists. “Then why are you here?”
“You invited me,” he said. “Room 481, remember?”
“That was a moment of temporary insanity.”
His gaze swept over my face, my throat, the soft cotton tank I’d thrown on that clung in places I wished it didn’t. “Are you sane now?”
“Not even a little,” I said.
We stood, the silence between us thick and alive. The last of my excuses fluttered uselessly in my head. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t lonely in the desert. I wasn’t high on adrenaline from incoming mortar fire.
I was just a woman in a hotel room with the one person I had sworn I would never let touch me again.
And I wanted him so badly I could taste it.
He took a slow step closer. Then another. Patient, like he was approaching something wounded and cornered.
“Say no,” he murmured. “And I’ll leave.”
I knew he meant it.
That was the worst part.
“I hate you,” I said, because it was easier than admitting anything else.
His jaw tightened. “You’re allowed.”
“I hate what you did. I hate what you took from me. I hate that you think you get to show up here and ask for anything.”
“I didn’t ask,” he said. “I offered. There’s a difference.”
My chest felt too tight. “I hate that my body doesn’t give a damn about the difference.”
His eyes flared.
There it was—the crack in his control.
“Emerson,” he said, voice rough.
The sound of my name, that tone—it scraped something raw and hungry inside me.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you remember what it sounded like when I—” My voice broke. I swallowed the rest.
We stared at each other, every argument hanging unsaid.
Then I closed the distance.
I grabbed the front of his T-shirt and yanked him down, my mouth crashing into his like I was trying to punish us both. The kiss hit like an explosion—heat and teeth and fury, his hands coming up hard to catch my waist, my back, pulling me flush.
I tasted coffee and something darker. His stubble scraped my skin, his breath hot against my tongue, and the first rough sound he made into my mouth shot straight through me.
This was a bad idea. The worst.
I opened to him, anyway.
He kissed me back like a man who’d been starving and just found water in a desert. No hesitation. No apology. Just taking and giving all at once, like he’d been holding himself back from this since the minute he saw me in the lobby.
My back hit the wall. I didn’t remember moving. His body crowded mine, all hard muscle and heat, and my fingers dug into his shoulders through the worn cotton of his shirt.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” I gasped against his mouth.
“I know,” he said, lips brushing mine. “Say no.”
He was infuriating.
I dragged his lower lip between my teeth instead of answering. He groaned, low and rough, and his hands tightened on my hips, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh just above my waistband.
Everything inside me clenched.
He broke the kiss long enough to look at me—really look. My breathing ragged, my eyes probably broadcasting exactly how far gone I was.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “But I’m not stopping.”
That was consent in the only language my body was speaking.
He swore under his breath. Then he was kissing me again, deeper, slower for a moment—like he was memorizing the shape of my mouth. One hand slid up my side, fingertips skimming my ribs, the edge of my bra. Even over fabric, the contact burned.
I pushed them higher, impatient, and he laughed against my lips—a hoarse, disbelieving sound—before obliging.
We stumbled toward the bed in a tangle of limbs and half-checked control. I caught sight of us in the mirror over the dresser—a dark-haired woman practically climbing a man who looked like he’d been carved out of every bad decision she’d ever made—and my heart jumped into my throat.
“Last chance to reconsider,” I muttered.
“Pretty sure that ship sailed when you invited me up,” he said.
We hit the mattress, me on my back, him braced above me, arms caging my head. For a second, he just hovered there, chest rising and falling, eyes searching my face.
I hated how much I liked the weight of him.
“Levi,” I warned.
He dipped his head and kissed my throat instead of answering, mouth hot against the spot that made my breath catch. His stubble rasped along my skin, and my hands slid up under his shirt, palms flattening against the hard plane of his back, greedy for more contact.
His skin was hot. Smooth over muscle that shifted and flexed under my touch.
Memories slammed into me—canvas walls, cot springs creaking, his heartbeat pounding against my chest. I shoved them away. This was now. This was different.
Except it wasn’t.
It was us. It had always been us.
I dragged his shirt up, breaking the kiss long enough to shove the fabric over his head. He helped, impatient, and then it was gone, tossed somewhere to the floor. His chest was more defined than I remembered, new scars mapping stories I didn’t know.
For a moment, my journalist brain surfaced, wanting to catalog. To ask. To investigate.
Later, I told it.
Right now, I was documenting something else.
His hands slid under my tank, callused fingers skimming my stomach before pushing higher. The sensation was almost too much after months of nothing but my own hand and my imagination.
He hesitated when he reached the band of my bra, fingers flexing.
“You sure?” he asked again, voice rougher. “Because—”
I arched into his touch. “If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to bite you.”
His eyes darkened. “Promises, Emerson?”
I glared at him. Then I sat up, shoved his hands away, and pulled my own top off.
His breath hitched.
Good. Let him feel off-balance for once.
“You want to stop?” I asked sweetly. “Because I’d hate to—”
He cut me off with a kiss that stole the rest of the sentence and whatever oxygen I had left.
After that, thought got fuzzy.
Clothes went, piece by piece, in between kisses that were too rough to be tender and too desperate to be anything but honest. His mouth wandered, his hands mapping out a body he’d already known once and apparently hadn’t forgotten.
Mine did the same, rediscovering the lines of him, the way he shuddered when I dragged my nails lightly down his spine.
We moved like two people who knew exactly how dangerous this was and chose it, anyway. Every touch was an argument, every gasp a counterpoint. I hated him. I wanted him. I hated that I wanted him. I wanted to crawl inside his skin just to see if he hurt the way I did.
When he finally pushed inside me, the world narrowed to the heat and ache and the way my body welcomed him like it had been made for this exact shape.
I bit down on my own knuckles to keep from crying out.
He caught my hand, laced our fingers together, pressed them into the mattress by my head.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “I want to hear you.”
I turned my head away, eyes squeezed shut, because it was too much—his voice, his body, the way he was looking at me like I was both salvation and punishment.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I rasped.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m not just a mistake,” I said. “We’re a mistake. That’s all we’ve ever been.”
He thrust deeper, and my argument broke on a gasp.
“Speak for yourself,” he said.
After that, words stopped making sense.
There was only rhythm and friction and the relentless slide of skin on skin. His mouth found mine, stole my breath, gave it back. His hands held me down and held me together, and every time I thought I’d found the edge, he dragged me further.
When release finally hit, it tore through me so hard I saw white. My back arched, my fingers digging into his shoulders, his name punched out of my chest like it had a right to be there.
He followed a heartbeat later, body tensing above me, a rough groan ripped from his throat. For a moment, he stayed there, braced, breathing hard, forehead dropping to the crook of my neck.
We lay like that, tangled and shaking, hotel air conditioner humming uselessly in the background.
I hated how right it felt.
Eventually, he rolled to the side, collapsing onto his back, one arm still hooked loosely around my waist like he couldn’t quite let go.
Silence settled between us. Not the screaming silence of the lobby, or the brittle one at breakfast. This was heavier. Softer. Like a blanket I didn’t want but couldn’t shake off.
I stared at the ceiling, catching my breath.
This is what it could have been, whispered a traitorous voice in my head. If he hadn’t vanished. If he’d chosen you and the truth instead of—
“Don’t,” I told myself under my breath.
“Don’t what?” he asked, voice low and hoarse.
“Don’t talk to me,” I said.
He was quiet for a beat. “That’s going to make pillow talk awkward.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
“This isn’t pillow talk,” I said. “This is … stress relief.”
He hummed, fingers tracing idle patterns on my hip. “If you say so.”
I should’ve pushed his hand away. Instead, I let it rest there, heavy and warm, grounding me in a body I wasn’t sure I trusted anymore.
What if it had been different? the same voice pressed. What if he’d kept his promise?
A version of my life flickered across my mind like a documentary montage—stories written without that particular scar in the middle of them, a heart less guarded.
Maybe in that version, I didn’t walk into every new assignment already braced for betrayal.
Maybe in that version, we didn’t meet in a hotel room like this, full of anger and history.
Maybe.
But this was the version I had.
I rolled away from him, putting a few inches of space between our bare skin. It felt like miles.
“I need a shower,” I said.
He didn’t argue.
I slid out of bed, muscles trembling in ways that had nothing to do with cardio and everything to do with him. I found my tank on the floor, pulled it on, then stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.
I turned on the shower and leaned both hands on the sink, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was wild. My lips were swollen. There was a faint mark on my throat that hadn’t been there before.
“Idiot,” I told myself.
The water steamed up the room. I stood under it longer than I needed to, letting it pound against my skin, trying to rinse away the way his hands had felt, the sound of his voice in my ear when I’d come undone around him.
It didn’t work.
When I finally stepped out, wrapped in a towel, my phone was buzzing on the bathroom counter where I’d left it.
Unknown number. D.C. area code.
My journalist gut kicked in.
I swiped to open the message.
A single line of text waited for me, followed by a blurry photo of what looked like a document laid out on someone’s desk.
Got something on your Charleston ghosts, the message read. Thought you’d like to know: those ex-military billionaires? All same family. Last name Dane.
My pulse stuttered.
I zoomed in on the photo with damp fingers. The words swam for a second, then sharpened—corporate registrations, a list of board members.
Dane.
Dane.
Dane.
Adrenaline doused whatever leftover warmth the shower hadn’t chased away.
Levi Dane.
Of course.
I stepped back into the bedroom, towel knotted tight, phone still in my hand.
He was propped up against the headboard now, sheet slung low across his hips, watching me with that unreadable expression that drove me insane.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I studied him—broad chest, scars, the body I’d just let inside mine—and then the screen of my phone.
“Tell me something, Levi,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “Where are you interviewing?”
His eyes narrowed just slightly. “Why?”
“Because,” I said, climbing onto the edge of the bed but staying out of reach. “I just got a message about the men at Dominion Hall.”
His posture changed. Subtle. Tension coiling low.
“And?” he asked carefully.
“And it turns out you share a last name,” I said. “Dane.”