Dredge #3
“I’m saving it for when I take that tight ass of yours,” Nolan whispers when we part. “But right now, I want to watch you fall apart. I want to hear my name tumble past those pretty lips like a prayer.”
Nolan’s thumb drags over my bottom lip. Voices pass the mouth of the alley, and my gaze darts toward a group of tourists who take no notice of us as they head in the direction of the Buoy and Beacon Pub. “Someone could see us.”
“Yeah. They could. And something makes me think you don’t really care.”
“Pretty much.” I grab the back of Nolan’s neck and crush his lips to mine, sinking back into a kiss that’s all heat, all want.
And he’s right. Someone could walk down this alley and I wouldn’t fucking care.
Not when he touches me the way no one else has, gripping my waist like he knows just how many bruises to leave in my skin for me to feel truly satisfied.
Not when he swirls that toy over my clit with just the right amount of force to detonate every cell in my body.
He breaks the kiss to stare down at me. Not just at my eyes or my lips or my flushed skin, but right into the depths of me. He sinks beneath my layers to inhabit the shadows I hide from the rest of the world. He’s the only man who could find sanctuary there.
And I’m afraid I can’t live without his presence in my darkest corners.
“You’d better soak my hand and chant my name,” Nolan whispers. “Every time I catch your scent on my skin, I want your voice in my mind.”
He commands. My body obeys. Dampness soaks my panties.
I hear his name on my lips as though I don’t even need to think it.
It just happens. And then my muscles coil.
My core tenses. My nails dig into Nolan’s skin.
His eyes never leave mine as I unravel in his grip, my heart thundering and my legs trembling.
Nolan is the only thing anchoring me in this dimension, the only thing holding me up when all the world seems to crash right through me.
He doesn’t stop chasing my pleasure until every ounce is spent.
“So you can obey me,” Nolan says with a smirk as he snaps the magnet of the vibe back into place with one hand and turns off the toys on the app with the other. “When you want to.”
“Don’t get used to it, Rhodes.”
“We’ll see.” When Nolan withdraws his fingers from my shorts, he runs their glistening tips over the ouroboros tattoo on his arm.
He makes a point of raising it to his nose and taking a deep inhale.
“Smells like heaven. And obedience.” I roll my eyes and slap his shoulder, and he laughs as I squirm out of his hold.
“I’d better get back to the search before Tylor and Emma cause too much trouble.
Three more days and then they should be gone.
Hopefully when they go, we’ll officially move from ‘rescue’ to ‘recovery,’ and the rest of those assholes will get bored and leave too. ”
“Speaking of which,” I say as I whip out my phone from my pocket, opening a new web browser, “I think we have an opportunity here with Sharkimedes, as long as we can get to it fast. Has anyone mentioned Jake surfing? Yates maybe? Anyone at all?”
“No,” he replies, shaking his head. “Bert’s comment is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Excellent.” I bring up the surf report from the month of June, finding the information for the sixth and seventh. “What time was Jake’s shift at the gym supposed to start on the seventh?”
“Noon. Why?”
“There were hardly any waves on the afternoon of the sixth,” I say as I show him the details on the screen. “The conditions weren’t great the next morning—but still good enough that he could have surfed.”
Nolan hums a thoughtful note. “What about his board and wetsuit? Wouldn’t Yates have seen his equipment already if he checked his home?”
“Jake didn’t keep it at home. He kept it in a locker at Wallie’s Watersports.
So if Yates isn’t thinking about surfing as a possibility, then maybe this gives us a plausible story.
But we’ll have to act fast before the rumor reaches him too,” I say.
Nolan nods, his brow furrowed. “The lockers are at the back of the building. No cameras on them, nothing but padlocks.”
“Do you know which one?”
I shake my head. “No, but I’m sure there are records in the shop office. I made a key—”
“You made a key?”
“Yes, Nolan. I made a key. Some of us are pro-level murderers, not amateurs who get handcuffed by loser frat boys—”
“For fucksakes—”
“It’s in the cottage, so it won’t be a problem for us to get into Wallie’s.
” I turn to face Nolan fully, my snide grin turning conspiratorial.
“Jake didn’t go surfing often—maybe a handful of times a summer.
But when he did, he walked. His license was still suspended following his DUI.
It’s only a fifteen-minute hike from Wallie’s on the shortcut path across the cape promontory to Melmurby.
No one would have seen him, except maybe Julio, but he’s been away traveling for the last few months.
I’m sure Jake would have had the beach to himself that early in the season. ”
“How sure?”
“Sure enough that if we snap the fin off his board and you find it on the shore tomorrow, people will draw the conclusions we want them to.”
“I can do one better. I still have part of his leg from the night that I killed him.”
I blink at Nolan. “You still have Jake’s leg? Why?”
“Maybe some of us aren’t as amateur-level as you think,” he says with a smirk. “Honestly, at first I thought I might leave more Creepy Jakey presents in your bird feeder to fuck with you.”
My cheeks heat as I narrow my eyes at him. “Fabulous.”
“But then I reburied it in a safer place. The new grave is still on the Ballantyne River, but farther from town where it’s more remote,” Nolan says, his expression softening. “I’ll dig up the leg and deflesh it. Shatter a piece of bone off and put it somewhere on the shore where it’ll be found.”
Our gazes lock. For a breath of time, I can feel the tether that stitches us together.
It pulls on my chest. I used to think we were different beasts entirely, but now I know I was wrong.
We’re the same kind of animal, two predators who climbed out of hell and brought a piece of it with them.
I can feel his gruesome thoughts and twisted machinations as though they’re my own.
“This could blow up in our fucking faces,” Nolan says.
“Or it could be the simplest explanation for one of the disappearances, at least. And that’s bait that I’m sure Yates must be desperate to take by now. This has all gotta be weighing on him between the public pressure and the town council and the Sleuthseekers.”
Nolan’s gaze drifts toward Main Street as though Yates could be hovering at the mouth of the alley.
I have a momentary urge to tell him about Yates’s unplanned visit and how unsettling it was, but I don’t.
Not when it looks like he’s already worried about him too.
“He actually seems to be holding up okay, surprisingly.” When his eyes return to mine, an echo of worry remains that he tries to mask but fails. “But I’m sure he needs the win.”
“So do we,” I say, and Nolan’s expression softens. He takes my jaw in a gentle grip, tilting my head to lay a lingering kiss on my lips. When we part, a slow smile blooms across Nolan’s face.
“I already did win—”
“That’s so cheesy.”
“—when I got the brat in you to obey.”
“Fuck you, Ballmeat.”
Nolan laughs, kissing my cheek a final time before he takes a step back. “I’ve gotta run. Take that toy out for a while. But put it back in before you come home. I’ll see you around dusk.”
“Yeah,” I reply, though a little pang of longing hits my chest like a dart. “See you later. Keep me posted if anything comes up, I guess.”
He nods, and then with a final weighted glance between us, we part, headed in opposite directions. I’m nearly at the mouth of the alley when Nolan calls out, “Oh, and Harper . . . ?”
I turn, a silent question in my raised brows.
“This . . . ?” he says, gesturing at the shadows between us.
A pause lingers in that empty chasm, as though there’s so much more he wants to say but won’t.
And I realize in this moment how breakable I still am.
How dangerous he still is. Because it would be so easy for him to shatter my heart, if he wanted to. “It’s not fucking complicated.”
A sting burns at the back of my throat. “But Tennessee—”
“It’s not. Fucking. Complicated. I’m your boyfriend,” Nolan says, his intensity drilling into me. “And I love you.”
I swallow a thick knot and nod.
It used to be easy to say those words back to someone without worrying about how the universe might punish me for unleashing something so simple but so precious.
And maybe that’s the problem. I don’t just love Nolan.
I’m afraid that I could love him so much that I’ll never be allowed to keep it if I let it out.
The force that’s always waiting in the shadows will take it away.
And if it does, it will destroy us both.
“I know,” I say. But only once he’s gone.