9. Brynn
brYNN
The thing about the Van Alstein brothers is that they travel like a weather system.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Tristan says, leaning over my shoulder.
“I’m doing it exactly how the recipe card says.”
“The recipe card is a liar.” He plucks the silver spoon out of my hand. “Moon-honey doesn’t dissolve. You have to flirt with it.”
We’re in the resort kitchens because Dominic decided, an hour ago, that the official dessert menu was “an insult to dessert.” Now there’s flour on three marble counters and something glowing faintly purple in a copper pot.
“Flirt with it,” I repeat.
“Watch.” Tristan winks at the honey jar. “Hello, gorgeous.”
The honey does absolutely nothing.
Dominic snorts from where he’s perched on the counter, swinging his legs like he’s twelve and not thirty-one. “Your charm’s losing potency, brother. Must be the gray hairs.”
“I don’t have gray hairs.”
“You have one. I named him.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, and Tristan beams at me like I’ve handed him a trophy. That’s the thing I’ve figured out about Tristan in a couple of days. He doesn’t want to be charming. He wants to be liked. There’s a difference, and it makes my chest ache a little.
“Okay, sunshine.” Dominic hops down and bumps his hip against mine, nudging me sideways. “Show us this magic everyone keeps whispering about. Make the honey behave.”
“I don’t do party tricks.”
“Liar. You blew up a compatibility mirror on day one. That’s a party trick with commitment.”
I hold my hand over the pot. I don’t mean to. My magic’s been twitchy all morning, restless under my skin like it’s waiting for something.
The honey swirls. Lifts. Forms a slow, lazy ribbon in the air.
Both brothers go quiet.
“Okay,” Tristan breathes. “That’s not fair. That’s so much cooler than my thing.”
“What’s your thing?”
“I can make people cry with my voice. It’s very romantic and slightly horrifying.”
The kitchen door opens.
I don’t have to look. I feel it. The temperature drops about ten degrees, and every hair on my arms stands up, and the honey ribbon collapses back into the pot with a wet plop.
Leo fills the doorway. Black shirt. Sleeves rolled. Jaw set like he’s been clenching it for a year.
His eyes go straight to Dominic’s hand, still resting on my hip.
“Get off her,” Leo says.
Dominic doesn’t move. He grins wider. “Make me.”
The growl that comes out of Leo isn’t human. It rolls through the room low and rough, and I feel it land somewhere deep in my stomach, somewhere I’d really prefer it didn’t.
I step away from Dominic. Not because Leo told anyone to. Because my legs decided, and I hate that they decided.
“We were making dessert,” I say.
“You were making a mess. The matchmaking office needs you.” His voice goes flat. “Now.”
“Does it, though?”
“Brynn.”
Tristan looks between us, and his stupid charming face goes soft and knowing. “We’ll save you some dessert, sunshine.”
“There’s no dessert,” Dominic says. “We ruined it.”
“We’ll save you the trauma, then.”
I follow Leo into the hall. Right up until the kitchen noise dies behind us. Then I stop walking.
“No,” I say.
He turns. “No?”
“There’s no emergency. So no. I’m not a parcel you redirect when you don’t like the delivery address.”
“My brother had his hands on you.”
“His hand. On my hip.” I cross my arms. “For three seconds.”
“Four.”
“You counted.” Not a question now. An accusation. “You stood in that doorway and counted the seconds another man touched me, and you growled like I’m yours.” I step into him. “I’m not. You made very sure of that.”
His jaw works. “Brynn...”
“Don’t even start.” My voice climbs and I let it climb.
“You did the ceremony. You stood across from me, let the magic show you whatever it showed you, and then you walked out and you’ve barely looked at me in two days.
Two days, Leo. And now you bare your teeth at your own brother for standing too close to the problem. ”
“You’re not a problem.”
“That’s not the part I’d lead with.”
He drags a hand down his face. For a second he looks less like a billionaire and more like a man who hasn’t slept in a week.
“You think someone built this,” I say, quieter. “The match. You think I’m a thing that got arranged and slid across a desk to you.” My throat goes tight. “So you decided it wasn’t safe to want me, and you went cold. Fine. But you don’t get to be cold and possessive. Pick one.”
He opens his mouth.
That’s when the floor moves.
Not an earthquake. Something older. The whole resort inhales, and through the tall windows the sky has gone the color of a bruise, clouds spinning where there shouldn’t be clouds.
A staff voice crackles over the enchanted speakers, calm and clipped. Guests to interior rooms. Lower levels sealing in ten minutes.
Leo grabs my wrist. “Moon pools. They’re shielded. Let’s go. Move.”
“This conversation isn’t over.”
“I know.” He’s already running. “Believe me. I know.”
We make the cave entrance as the first wards slam shut behind us with a sound like a struck bell.
And then it’s just us.
The moon pool caves are the most beautiful place I’ve ever been afraid in. Black stone arches overhead. The pools glow soft blue from below, light rippling across the walls so the whole cave breathes. Above us, sealed off now, the storm howls like something hunting.
Leo lets go of my wrist and puts the width of the cave between us like distance is a strategy.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
“Retreat. You’re so good at it.” I sit on the warm stone because my legs are still shaking from the run. “Go on. Stand over there and brood at the water. Big leader of men.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Something true. I hear it’s good for the soul.”
He’s quiet a long time. Then he crosses the cave and sits. Close, this time.
“I went cold,” he says, “because the ceremony showed me you beside a throne that isn’t mine yet.
Because my wolf has already decided you’re his, and I can’t tell if that’s real or if someone built it to look real.
” He stares at the pool. “I’ve spent my whole life knowing the difference between what’s true and what’s strategy. With you I can’t. It terrifies me.”
I pull my knees up. “So you ran.”
“I didn’t know how to be near you and not want you. So I chose not to be near you.” He finally looks at me, silver creeping into his eyes. “It was the wrong choice. I’ve known it every hour.”
“That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Work on your closing.”
He almost smiles. It’s a near thing.
I should leave it there. I don’t.
“You want the worst part?” I say. “I’ve been asking the same question. My magic amplifies bonds, Leo. That’s the whole trick. What if I built this? What if I did it to you and didn’t mean to?” My voice cracks on the last word. “At least you get to be angry at someone else.”
He goes very still.
“I notice every time you laugh half a second too late,” he says. “I noticed it before any ceremony. No magic told me to.”
“Oh, man. Don’t see me. I’m not good at being seen.”
“Too bad.”
The cave gets very small.
His hand comes up slow, giving me time to bolt. His knuckles brush my jaw. The pools flare brighter in answer, and I stop pretending I’m going anywhere.
I close the distance.
He kisses me like an argument he’s losing.
We’ve done this before. It hasn’t gotten safer. If anything it’s worse, because now I know exactly how much trouble his mouth is, and I open for him anyway.
One hand fists in my hair. The other drags me off the stone and into his lap until I’m straddling his thighs with nothing between us but two layers of cotton and a lot of bad decisions.
“This doesn’t fix it,” I tell his mouth.
“I know.” He bites my lower lip. Soothes it. “Let me try anyway.”
“That’s not how apologies work.”
“Then stop me.”
I don’t.
His mouth drags down my throat. The pools climb the walls in ribbons of light. His hands find the hem of my shirt and pause. Wait. Even now, even wrecked, he waits.
“If you ask permission one more time,” I breathe, “I’m pushing you in that pool.”
He laughs against my collarbone, low and rough, and shoves my shirt up.
Cold cave air. Then his hands. Then his mouth.
He palms my breasts through my bra. Then he tugs it down and his mouth closes over one nipple and I make a sound that bounces off the stone.
“Oh, Leo.”
“I’ve got you.” Tongue licking. Careful teeth. Sucking. “For two days I pretended I wasn’t thinking about this.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“Only about this.” He switches to the other side and sucks as much of my breast into his mouth as he can. When he finally just focuses on my nipple and bites down gently and then sucks, I lose the thread of whatever clever thing I was thinking.
His hands are everywhere, reverent and greedy at once rolling both my nipples between his fingers while he watches my face. He pinches a little harder until my head goes back and I’m grinding down against him without deciding to. He’s hard beneath me and we’re both done pretending.
I get my hands under his shirt. Heat and muscle and the old scar riding his ribs. I drag my nails up his chest and he shudders, and that sound goes straight through me.
“My turn,” I say.
“Brynn...”
“You had two days to be in charge. You wasted them.”
I get his belt open. The button. His breath stutters against my hair, and for once Leo Van Alstein has nothing controlled to say. I slide my hand into his waistband and wrap my fist around him.
“Damn, he’s huge!” I think as I can barely fit my hand around him.
I rub the precum around on the tip of his cock with my thumb and then begin to stroke him. All of his muscles lock and his forehead drops hard to my shoulder as he holds his breath.
“Mmmmm….Brynn.”
“Now who can’t talk?”
His hips push up into my hand. Once.
Then everything goes black.
Not just the pools. Everything. The soft light, the hum of the wards, the warmth bleeding off the stone. Gone all at once, like a hand closing over the world.
Above us, the storm stops howling.
The silence is worse.
Leo goes rigid under me, and not the good kind. His hand clamps over mine and stills it. His other arm hauls me into his chest, and every line of him shifts from man to predator between one breath and the next.
“Don’t move,” he says into the dark. Low. Lethal.
“Leo, what’s going on?”
“The resort.” His mouth at my ear, barely any sound. “Eclipse just lost all its power.”