Kai
Ialmost laughed.
It wasn’t a soft laugh, the kind of sound a man makes when he’s amused; it wasn’t a surprised one either.
It was a bark—low, sharp, and ugly—ripping through my throat like a serrated blade.
Because watching Noah try to play island warlord, dragging her into some mossy, decrepit ruin to smear his own pathetic blood on her like he’d actually invented the concept of ownership, was the most amateur, pathetic fucking theatre I’ve seen in years.
A knife? A speech? A goddamn altar?
Jesus Christ, the man was a walking cliché.
I crouch in the tree line where the jungle canopy knits together like a bruised ceiling, one boot braced against a root thick as a corpse’s thigh and slick with the rot of a thousand fallen leaves.
Binoculars hang loose in my hand, useless now that they’re so close I can see the pulse jumping in her throat, and I shake my head slowly, with the weary disdain of a man who has just watched a drunk trip over his own dick in public.
“You stupid, arrogant cunt,” I mutter, the words tasting like the copper air and the smoke from the market.
I watch him through the fractured sunlight as he presses that bleeding palm to her chest, staining that pristine silk like that singular act meant something—like blood makes you a king instead of just a liability with a hole in his hand.
He thinks he scared her. He thinks terror is the same thing as loyalty.
He did scare her, but fear doesn’t make her his; fear is a compass, and it only ever points her toward the one person who can actually handle the dark.
Fear makes her look for me.
And she does. Even as he’s posturing, even as he’s breathing his stale, expensive breath into her face, I see it—the frantic, subtle flick of her eyes toward the tree line, the way her breath stutters in a rhythm only I know how to read, the way her spine locks like she’s bracing for an impact she knows is coming from the right fucking direction.
She doesn’t look at him when the “sacrifice” is over. She looks at the trees. She looks at the suffocating weight of the dark. She looks exactly where I am, peering through the veil of the island’s teeth.
I grin so hard my jaw aches, a feral, jagged expression that would make a saint pray for lightning.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I breathe into the humid air, my voice a rasp that gets swallowed by the rustle of the palms. “You should’ve seen your face. You looked like you were waiting for me to tear his head off right then and there.”
Noah talks. Noah postures. Noah threatens like a man who has never had to actually bleed for what he wants. I watch. I plan. I wait with the patience of a landslide. That’s the fundamental difference between men who buy power with contracts and men who are power because they’ve survived the gutter.
By the time they leave that rotted temple, I’m already moving through the brush, a ghost in the machine of the island’s design.
The villa’s security is a joke—a collection of expensive toys placed for deterrence, not for a reality where I exist. The motion sensors are tuned for stray dogs and clumsy tourists, not for someone who knows how to breathe in sync with the dark instead of fighting against it.
I slip along the perimeter, barefoot now, my boots slung over my shoulder by the laces, the stone of the terrace cool and slick as a snake’s belly under my feet.
I don’t rush. I don’t fucking need to.
She’s shaken to her core, and he’s smug with a false sense of victory; the rhythm of their evening is as predictable as a heartbeat before a stroke.
I time my entry to the shower.
Of course she showers. She always does when she’s trying to scrub something off her skin that won’t come off—guilt, memory, or the literal stain of a man she loathes.
Steam begins to bloom behind the frosted glass of the master suite, turning the bathroom into a glowing, translucent white lung that heaves with the heat.
The water hisses against the tile, constant and loud, a beautiful, violent white noise that masks the sound of my movement, masks the scent of the jungle on my skin, masks every goddamn sin I’m about to commit.
It’s perfect. It’s a fucking invitation.
I slide the heavy glass door open just enough to slip inside, the air hitting me like a physical blow, thick with the scent of her and the humid weight of the spray.
I ease it shut behind me, holding the handle until the latch barely kisses the metal with a whisper of a click.
The room smells like her soap—something floral, something clean, something that tries so fucking hard to lie about the ruin she’s hiding inside.
I lean back against the cool, vein-streaked marble wall and fold my arms, my eyes fixed on the silhouette behind the curtain.
The water. Her breath. The faint, broken hitch she makes when she tilts her head back into the spray, letting the heat scald the place where Noah’s blood touched her.
My mouth twitches, a dark, hungry little movement.
He marked her. He actually thinks he marked her.
I reach out and drag two fingers through the condensation on the mirror, slow and deliberate, the glass squealing under my touch. I write nothing at all—I just want to remind the glass, the room, and the very air she’s breathing that they answer to my touch, not his.
“Blood on your dress?” I murmur under my breath, my voice vibrating in my chest as I shake my head. “That’s the best the prick’s got? A little stain on a piece of silk?”
The shower curtain shifts.
It isn’t enough for her to see me, but it’s enough for me to see the blurred, agonisingly beautiful outline of her shoulder, the elegant curve of her neck, and the way her head tilts as she exhales a long, shaky breath like the water is the only thing holding her upright.
She doesn’t know I’m here. Not yet.
I stay exactly where I am, a predator in her sanctuary. I breathe her air, letting the room learn the scent of me—salt, sweat, and the iron-will of a man who hasn’t slept in three days because he was too busy imagining this exact moment.
Bursting in would be crude. Bursting in is Noah’s style—all noise and no substance.
No—I want her to feel me first. I want her to feel the way the temperature in the room changes when a monster enters it.
I want her to feel the way the silence starts to press wrong against her ears, the way her instincts start screaming in her blood long before her brain can catch up to the reality of the shadow standing three feet away.
I tilt my head, listening to the water beat against the tile like a frantic pulse, a countdown to the moment she realises the door is locked and I’m the one with the key.
“Enjoy your shower, little sister,” I whisper, so quiet the steam barely carries the sound to her. “Your husband-to-be just painted a target on himself. And I’m a fucking marksman.”
I push off the wall silently, my movement fluid and lethal, and step closer until I’m stopping just outside the curtain.
I’m close enough to feel the radiant heat rolling off her damp skin; I’m close enough that if she reached out her hand to grab the soap, she’d touch the rough denim of my jeans instead.
I grin, the expression feeling like a scar opening up.
Hilarious. This is absolutely fucking hilarious.
Noah thinks he’s in control because he has a ring and a piece of land, and here I am, standing in his bathroom, in his house, breathing his fiancée’s steam, waiting for the exact second she realises she isn’t alone and never will be again.
God, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed the way her fear tastes when it turns into a need only I can satisfy.
The steam is a suffocating weight now, a thick, white shroud that has turned this marble box into a sensory vacuum.
She’s vulnerable, blinded by the scalding spray and the soap stinging her eyes, her head tilted back in a moment of false peace that I’m about to shatter into a thousand jagged pieces.
I don’t wait for her to find me. I don’t give her the mercy of a warning.
I reach through the curtain, my hand snapping out like a viper to catch her throat—not to choke, but to anchor. My palm is cold, a shocking contrast to her heated skin, and I feel her entire world stop in a single, terrified gasp.
“Eyes shut, Scarlett,” I growl, my voice a low, vibrating rasp that cuts through the hiss of the water. “Keep them closed, or I’ll give you something real to cry about. Don’t you fucking move.”
She freezes, her breath coming in frantic, shallow hitches as I step into the spray with her, my clothes instantly heavy and soaked, clinging to me like a second skin.
I move behind her, my chest a wall of wet denim and muscle pressing against her slick, trembling back.
I lean down, my lips grazing the shell of her ear, tasting the salt and the heat of her.
“I told you I’d be back, little sister,” I purr, the word sister sounding like a profanity, a dirty secret we’ve been burying for years. “You didn’t really think I’d let that pathetic bastard keep you, did you? That I’d let him put his name on what already belongs to my blood?”
My hand slides down from her throat, tracing the curve of her ribs, down the dip of her stomach, until I reach the wet, aching heat between her thighs.
She’s already slick, her body betraying her the second my shadow touched the floor.
I find her, my fingers blunt and demanding as I sink them into her, a low groan vibrating in my chest at how tight she is—how much she’s been starving for a touch that actually leaves a mark.
“Shh,” I hiss when she lets out a broken sound, her head falling back against my shoulder.
I catch her jaw, forcing her to stay still.
“Keep that pretty mouth shut. You don’t want the little husband-to-be to hear what a mess you are for me, do you?
Or maybe that’s what makes this so much more fun for you—the idea of him standing right out there while I claim every inch of you. ”