Chapter 25
Water beaded on her skin, dripping against the towel clutched at her chest. Remi froze mid-step, heart kicking in her chest as the door flung open, banging against the outer wall.
“Reming …” Her name faded away on Everett’s lips as he stopped in the doorway.
He wore the same clothes she’d seen him in this morning, jeans and a plain black Henley that had no business fitting him the way it did, sleeves taut across his biceps, the fabric pulling across his chest with every breath.
None of it should have hit her the way it did.
But for some reason, she wasn’t prepared.
He was unfairly and inconveniently sexy as hell.
Everett braced one hand against the doorframe, his gray eyes darkening as he took one ragged breath.
She felt the inch-by-inch slide of his gaze from her lips to the hollow of her throat, where a single drop of water traced a slow line down to her collarbone, her wet hair curling dark against her bare shoulder.
His eyes moved lower, to where her fingers gripped the towel, and lower still, past the hem where it cut across her thighs, all the way down to her toes, painted a pale coral.
Goosebumps streaked across her skin. She couldn’t tell if it was the wind or his stare blazing over every part of her that had once belonged to him.
That still belonged to him. Hadn’t he proven last night that the scars, gashes, and deformities on her body did nothing to stop his attraction to her?
What she saw as hideous and worth hiding, he saw as strength worth adoring.
In one night, he’d shifted everything she thought about herself and about her future.
The future she wanted with Everett. There was no way she could maintain the same cool distance they’d managed over the past few years.
Go on pretending that she didn’t love him and want him as much as she had before.
Maybe even more. She was tired of pretending. She wanted Everett. Now and forever.
Remi’s pulse drummed in her ears so loudly she barely registered the broken timbre of his voice.
“I didn’t know you were—” He stopped, flexing the fingers pressed to the frame like he was anchoring himself against the pull between them.
She swallowed. “I’m finished.”
Finished keeping him out, finished thinking distance would shrink the need coiling inside her like a live wire. Her thighs trembled beneath the towel as she loosened her grip on the terry cloth.
He stood there breathing through parted lips. Gray irises locked onto her hands. She dropped one to her side, holding the towel loosely in one hand. He flinched, inhaling sharply.
It was time to let go.
She flexed her hand. The towel brushed against her damp skin as it crumpled to the floor.
Everett’s lips parted, but no sound escaped.
Heat flared in his cheeks, a flush so sudden and fierce it reached the tips of his ears.
She recognized the look—insatiable hunger mixed with something raw, sensual yet tender.
The same look he’d worn the morning after she lost her virginity to him as a teenager.
Back when their biggest worry was how to sneak her back into her house without her mom finding out she’d spent all night on the beach with him … again.
She felt naked—no, she was naked—and yet everything inside her pulsed with an odd bravery. The same reckless certainty had once made her jump off the cliffside into fifteen feet of black water because Everett was already below, arms open, promising to catch her.
His nostrils flared as his eyes devoured her again, dragging slowly up her legs to the inside of her thighs, then to the braided scars that zigzagged across her left hip like a lightning strike.
Higher, to where the deep gouges in her stomach caught shadow, and to the puckered, uneven skin where her navel had been.
His gaze moved over the raised slashes along her ribs, deliberate and unhurried, as though he were reading something written there, before slowing over the tight nipples of her breasts and then meeting her eyes.
“Remington,” he said, a stony resistance battling with the desire wafting from him. “What are you doing?”
Now it was her turn.
“Proving you wrong.” A smile played at the corners of her lips. “Everything has changed between us.”
She took one step. The floorboard creaked under bare sole.
He didn’t wait for the second. Three long strides and he was inches from her. The air between them felt flammable, thick with hibiscus and coconut.
His hand lifted, knuckles brushing a damp strand of hair from her collarbone. The simple touch lit every nerve she owned.
He lowered his head, his inhale coasting over her shoulder, hot enough to lift every fine hair. Gooseflesh stormed her arms, raced across her breasts.
“You shouldn’t say things like that unless you mean them,” he murmured, voice low enough that the words burrowed straight between her thighs. She felt the echo everywhere, tight nipples, clenched stomach, slick gathering at her core that had nothing to do with water.
She rose onto the balls of her feet because she didn’t have the patience for waiting, not anymore, and kissed him.
Her tongue flicked against the seam of his lips, and they opened at once, hot, tasting faintly of mint.
He kissed back like the last thread of his control had burned clean through.
One big hand slid into her damp hair, the other clamped at the small of her back, pressing her flush to the ridge straining his jeans.
A low grunt tore from his throat when she hooked one thigh around his hip. The friction hit her clit, wet, swollen, starving, and she rolled her hips to feel the vicious shiver that went through him. Rigid and undeniable proof of how badly he wanted her.
“Remington.” Her name broke across his tongue like a plea. She answered it by catching his lower lip between her teeth. She moaned as she kissed him harder, her hands sliding up the firm planes of his chest to his throat, where his pulse jackhammered under her thumb.
He broke the kiss long enough to yank his shirt off, fabric catching on his shoulders, before joining her towel on the floor. Then his bare skin was against hers—burning, velvet over sculpted steel—and the shock of contact slammed need so sharp through her she thought her knees would fold.
She grabbed his waistband, fumbling with the button, but he pulled her arms around his neck, then lifted her as though she weighed nothing.
Heat pooled deep within her, urgent and reckless.
Her legs wrapped around his waist on instinct.
He walked her into the shower until cool tile kissed her back.
A misty rain settled over the jungle, turning everything soft-focus.
Water droplets clung to her lashes. He kissed one away, then another.
His hand skimmed down until fingertips brushed her soft creases, dipping into the slick heat.
A moan scraped from her like a match being struck.
She needed him, inside her. Now.
“Everett,” she whimpered.
He pinned both wrists above her head, linked in one broad hand. Water sluiced between them, down the valley of her breasts, over his chest. She caught one drop on her tongue as it dripped off his collarbone, rain-salted. He jerked against the seam of her body.
He eased his hips back an inch enough to reach between them.
The rasp of his zipper sliced the air. Her leg tightened around his waist. The muscle in his jaw jumped.
Then the thick cock pressed against her belly, stealing her breath.
She felt him pulse against her like a living promise.
Everett’s grip cinched higher on her wrists.
“Hold on to me,” he ordered, his voice a rasp she felt in her bones.
She did, fingers digging hard into the flex of his shoulders, legs cinching tighter.
The head of him nudged her entrance once, twice, teasing her with slow, sweet torture.
He rocked shallow, measured, letting her remember the feel of him, the stretch, the burn, how perfectly he’d always fit as if their bodies had rehearsed this in secret memory.
Yet nothing about this belonged to the past. A broken sound escaped her, something shameless and begging.
Her head fell back, rain caught open lips, salt mingling with the taste of mint still on her tongue.
Then he sank halfway inside in a single slick glide that stole every atom from the air.
Her back arched, knees clamping harder around his waist. An invitation for him to go all in.
He pushed deep inside her with one rough thrust. Pleasure spiked so fierce she bit down on his shoulder to muffle the cry.
The scars along her hip scraped against his knuckles as he shifted, and instead of flinching, she welcomed the burn.
Tonight, every mark reminded her she was alive.
She arched up, heels hooking the small of his back, chasing friction.
Everett’s free hand smoothed over her stomach, palm sweeping across the ridged scar tissue before sliding lower, thumb stroking the swollen knot where their bodies joined.
Lightning zapped through her limbs. Her hips jerked hard against his, a plea she couldn’t speak.
“Slow, baby,” he rasped against her neck.
It was a promise, not a command. He drew out, both of them shuddering at the loss, then his cock slid through her folds with brutal patience, teasing over her clit until every nerve short-circuited and she opened her legs wider, writhing against him.
He eased in again, slow as a tide rolling in, eyes never leaving hers.
Gray had gone dark as storm water. She saw apology there, forgiveness, hunger.
He pushed until their hips met, then held still, pulsing inside her where she was so swollen she could feel her heartbeat echoing around him. Every inch took her higher, until tremors started low in her thighs, coiling tighter and tighter. Her inner walls fluttered around his rigid length.
He released her wrists then, skimming both hands down her sides with a tenderness that contrasted the brutal snap of his hips.
Thumbs traced the raised edge of her worst scar—the silver lightning that curved beneath her left breast—and his mouth followed, kissing water from the ridge.
The adoration in the touch was unbearable.
She twisted her fingers into his dripping hair to anchor the feeling before it swept her away.
He nudged her with a roll of his hips, lifting her so the next thrust dragged deliciously across new places.
She felt her mind unravel. She cried out when he rocked.
Every last coherent thought seeped from her brain as his movements became harder, thrusts deeper.
He rolled his hips again, dragging velvet friction over the spot that made her moans send birds skittering from the trees.
“Remington,” he rasped, mouth against her ear. “Tell me what’s changed between us.” His voice vibrated through her chest.
She barely recognized the broken sound leaving her throat. “Please, Everett?—”
“Tell me.”
She felt the scrape of teeth.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I’m yours, Everett. I never stopped being yours.”
“And whose am I?”
“You’re … mine.”
He drove in on the word in one long, relentless stroke.
He filled her so completely her vision flashed white.
The stretch bordered on unbearable, but she tilted her hips to take him deeper.
She twisted her hips in an impatient circle.
The sound he gave back was feral, almost hurt.
Then he moved. A steady, relentless rhythm that made her thighs shake against his waist. She hooked her ankles behind him, opening, begging for each surge.
His breath faltered. She felt it in the hitch of his ribcage sliding against her nipple.
Heat gathered low, tight, electric. A thrumming started behind her navel, winding tighter and tighter.
She chased it mindlessly, rolling pelvis against pelvis.
Everett shifted angle, blunt crown dragging past that secret spot inside.
Stars burst hot along her bloodstream. She heard her voice rising in broken whimpers.
He let go of one hand long enough to slip his between them, finding the swollen bud neglected for years, and circled.
Once. Twice. The room tilted. She bit into the curve of his shoulder, tasting rainwater and skin, salt musk and him.
Another swipe of his thumb and the coil snapped.
Muscles clamped, convulsing with fierce spasms around his length.
Pleasure crashed, shattered, left her shaking around him, muscles clenching, dragging a low groan from his chest like he felt every pulse in her soul.
Before the aftershocks stopped, he pulled out long enough to slam her body full again, faster, harder.
Her back scraped slick tile; the sting felt perfect.
She couldn’t breathe, didn’t care. All she saw was gray eyes blazing, jaw locked, the cords of his neck straining as he lost himself inside her.
His thrusts turned ragged, animal. She wrung each one out of him until he staggered, buried deep, growling her name against her lips like a prayer and a curse.
Water still fell, soft on them now. They slid down the wall together, her legs still locked around him, sticky and soaked.
She felt him throbbing in little echoes inside her, slower, gentler, like waves pulling remnants of storms back out to sea.
When air found her lungs again, she lifted her head from his shoulder, met his gaze, and owned everything she’d been terrified to believe: I’m here.
I’m yours. And I’m not letting go this time.
Everett raised her hands to his lips, kissing her fingers gently. But there was a question in his stare. Like he wasn’t sure what was happening between them was real. She hated to see the hesitation in his eyes. The doubt. It was breaking her heart.
“Everett, I meant every word I said to you. You’ve always had my heart.
That never changed … at least not for me.
” She closed her eyes, not yet ready to say those three little words.
She opened her eyes and saw the face of the man who was devoted to her staring back at her. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“What about … Bobby? You married him. You fell in love with him?—”
“No, no, no. I never loved Bobby like that. Like a wife should. He was my friend. At least I thought he was.” She sucked in a deep breath. “But that was it. At least for me. I only cared deeply for him as a friend. Nothing more.”
Everett’s frown grew deeper. “Then I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand … what?”
“Why you did it?” Everett said, the pain dragging his voice into frustration. “Why did you kill Bobby … and his mistress?”