Zain
I wait until Kaia closes the bedroom door before I move.
Then I stand in the middle of my cabin and stare at the floor, trying to remember how to breathe like a normal man.
My cock is hard as a rock.
Kaia walked out of my bathroom wearing my T-shirt and nothing but bare legs beneath it, looked me straight in the eye, and explained that the sweatpants weren’t a fit.
As if I had not noticed.
As if I had been capable of noticing anything except the hem of my shirt brushing her thighs.
I drag a hand over my face.
This is a serious problem.
I have spent four months keeping my distance from Kaia Evans because wanting her is a bad idea for reasons I can list without effort.
She is twenty-four. I am thirty-eight. She is warm and bright and still believes people deserve second chances, while I wake some nights with dead men in my head and scars across my body from the day I failed to bring everyone home.
She deserves someone who does not carry a graveyard around inside him. Someone who can look at her without imagining every filthy thing he wants to do to her.
Tonight, I failed at that too.
The second she stepped into the room wearing my shirt, every decent thought left my head.
I wanted my hands on her. I wanted to lift the hem and find out whether the soft curves I have spent months trying not to stare at feel as good beneath my palms as I know they would.
I wanted to put her on the kitchen counter, spread those bare thighs, and kiss her until she forgot every smart comment she has ever made in my direction.
Then there was the fact that she was wearing my shirt, standing in my cabin with my bed waiting down the hall.
The sight hit some primitive part of me I have kept chained for years.
She looked like she belonged here.
She looked like mine.
“Fuck.”
I head for the bathroom and turn the shower cold enough to hurt.
Water pounds across my shoulders and runs over the old scars covering one side of my back as I brace both hands against the tile and lower my head.
It does nothing.
I still see her.
The collar slipping toward one shoulder, the shirt hanging against her thighs, the blush rising across her face when she caught me looking.
Then the way she thanked me.
For pulling me out and saving my life.
My jaw locks, and I turn the water colder.
She is asleep in my bed because her home burned tonight. Everything she owns is gone or close to it, and I am standing under a freezing shower with my cock hard because I saw her legs.
I stay there until my skin is numb and my body finally remembers I am supposed to have some control.
When I step out, I dry off, pull on clean sweatpants, and leave the bathroom without looking toward the bedroom door.
The couch waits for me. I have slept in worse places.
I sit down with my phone in my hand.
Three messages wait.
The first is from Gabriel.
Fire is out. Structure is a total loss.
My thumb stills.
The second came four minutes later.
We checked what we could safely reach. Nothing salvageable so far.
I look toward the hallway.
Kaia had carried four months of her new life into that house. Paintings. Plants she named. Boxes she packed when she left whatever came before Whispering Pines. Every little thing she chose because it was hers.
Gone.
My chest tightens.
The third message is shorter.
Cause team will look in daylight. Get some sleep, Chief.
I almost laugh.
Gabriel knows better.
I type back.
Any change, call me.
His reply comes quickly.
I will. She okay?
I stare at the question.
Through the wall, the cabin is silent.
Cleared by paramedic. Sleeping.
Three dots appear, disappear, then return.
Good.
I set the phone facedown on the table.
The couch is wide enough for me if I angle one leg over the edge. I lie back and close my eyes.
Sleep does not come.
Every time the cabin settles, I hear it. Every time wind moves through the pines outside, I think of fire finding another wall. Every time I breathe, I smell smoke that is no longer there.
Then I think of Kaia in my bed.
That does not help.
I roll onto my side and picture my shirt against her skin, bare legs beneath my sheets.
“Enough.”
The word sounds too loud in the dark.
I close my eyes again, and at some point exhaustion finally drags me under.
I do not know how long I sleep before a sound wakes me.
Soft and broken.
I sit up before I understand what I heard.
The cabin is dark except for the faint glow of the clock near the kitchen.
I listen.
Nothing.
Then it comes again.
“No.”
Kaia.
I am off the couch before the thought finishes.
Another sound reaches me before I make it to the hallway.
“Please.”
Something cold moves through my chest.
I open the bedroom door.
Moonlight falls across the bed in a pale strip. Kaia is tangled in the sheets, one hand clenched near her face and the other gripping the blanket. Her breathing is too fast.
“No,” she whispers again.
I cross the room.
“Kaia.”
She does not wake.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and touch her shoulder carefully.
“Kaia.”
Her face tightens.
“Wake up, sweetheart.”
The word leaves me before I can stop it.
Her eyes fly open.
For one second, she does not see me. She is still somewhere else.
Then her gaze finds mine.
“Zain.”
“I’m here.”
She throws herself at me.
I catch her on instinct.
Her arms lock around my neck so fast I barely have time to shift before she is pressed against my chest, shaking hard enough that I feel it through both our clothes.
“I’m here,” I say again, moving one hand over her back.
She buries her face against my neck.
“I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Her fingers twist into my skin.
I hold her tighter.
There is nothing sexual about this, and there should not be.
She is frightened, half asleep, still trapped somewhere between this room and a house filling with smoke.
So I keep one hand at the back of her head and the other around her waist, holding her until her breathing begins to slow.
“That’s it,” I murmur. “Breathe.”
She takes one unsteady breath, then another, and her body softens by degrees.
I should let go.
I do not.
Neither does she.
Her cheek rests against my shoulder, and my hand is spread across the small of her back beneath the loose fabric of my shirt.
The room is quiet again.
Too quiet.
“Was it the fire?” I ask.
She nods against me.
I close my eyes for a second.
“I kept trying to get out,” she whispers. “But every door opened into the same room.”
My grip tightens.
“You’re out.”
“I know.”
“You’re here.”
“I know.”
Her voice breaks on the last word.
I pull back enough to look at her.
Her hair is tangled from sleep. Her eyes are wet. My shirt has slipped lower on one shoulder, exposing a soft line of skin I have no business noticing right now.
My thumb moves beneath her eye and catches the beginning of a tear.
“You’re safe.”
She looks at me.
Something changes, and I feel it before I understand it.
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
Every muscle in my body locks.
“Kaia.”
She kisses me.
There is no warning.
One second I am holding her face, and the next her mouth is on mine, soft and warm and desperate enough to destroy me.
I should stop.
I know that.
I know it in the same distant part of my mind that knows fire needs oxygen and buildings fail when heat weakens the structure.
Then her fingers slide into my hair.
My control is gone.
I kiss her back hard.
My hand closes around the back of her neck while the other locks around her waist and pulls her onto me. She makes a small sound against my mouth, and it tears through whatever restraint I had left.
I deepen the kiss.
She opens for me.
Fuck.
I taste her slowly for half a second, then lose any claim to patience. My tongue sweeps into her mouth, and she meets me with a hunger that makes my cock go hard all over again.
Her body fits against mine, soft breasts pressed to my chest while warm thighs shift across my lap and my shirt rides higher.
Every instinct I own turns vicious.
Mine.
The thought hits harder than before.
I drag my mouth from hers just long enough to breathe, then kiss her again because one taste was never going to be enough.
Kaia grips my shoulders.
“Zain.”
The sound of my name in that voice nearly ends me.
I kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw, then find her lips again as my hand moves from her waist to her thigh.
Bare skin.
Warm and soft beneath my palm.
My fingers tighten.
She gasps.
That sound clears my head.
Not completely.
Enough.
I freeze.
Kaia is in my lap, wearing my shirt, in my bed, only hours after losing her home.
“Fuck.”
I pull away.
Her lips are swollen and her breathing uneven, and the sight nearly drags me back.
I lift her from my lap and set her carefully on the mattress before getting to my feet.
Kaia stares at me as confusion replaces the heat in her eyes.
“I should not have done that.”
Her brows pull together. “What?”
“I should have stopped.”
She sits straighter, clutching the sheet near her lap.
“But… I kissed you.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you acting like you attacked me?”
“I’m not.”
“It sounds like you are.”
I drag both hands over my face.
My body is still hard. My mouth still tastes like her. Every part of me wants to get back on that bed and finish what she started.
That is exactly why I stay where I am.
“You’ve been through too much tonight.”
Her expression changes.
I hate it immediately.
“Zain.”
“You lost your house. You woke up from a nightmare. You’re scared and exhausted.”
“So?”
“So I am not taking advantage of that.”
Her eyes flash. “You think that is what just happened?”
“No.”
“It sounds like you do.”
I move closer despite myself and crouch in front of her.
“Kaia.”
She looks away.
I cup her face, turning her gently back toward me.
“You have been through hell tonight.”
“I know what happened to me.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
The question lands harder than it should.
I force myself to keep my voice calm.
“You are hurting. You are shaken. Right now, you do not know how much of what you feel is because I was the one who carried you out of that house.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I chose wrong.
Kaia goes completely still, and her eyes harden.
“Do not tell me what I feel.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
“No.”
“You think I kissed you because I am confused.”
“I think tonight changed everything.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
“And somehow that means you know what is happening inside my head better than I do?”
I release her face.
“Kaia.”
“Stop saying my name like that.”
Her voice breaks.
A tear slips down her cheek.
Something inside me tears open.
I would rather take another burn than watch that.
My hand lifts before I can stop it.
She turns her face away.
That hurts more than it should.
“I want to be alone.”
Every instinct in me rejects the words.
I want to stay. I want to wipe the tear from her face, pull her back into my arms, and explain this until she understands that I am trying to protect her from me.
But she asked me to leave.
So I stand.
“All right.”
Her eyes stay lowered.
I wait one second longer than I should, then walk to the door.
My hand closes around the knob.
“Kaia.”
She does not look at me.
I swallow whatever I was going to say.
Nothing I have tried tonight has made this better.
I step into the hallway and close the door quietly behind me.
Then I lean back against it.
On the other side, Kaia is crying because of me.
I lower my head and close my eyes.
I went into a burning house without hesitation. I got her out alive.
Somehow, I still found a way to hurt her.