8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
~LILLY~
“Come on,” I mutter under my breath.
The kids need a ring-toss game, which seemed like a nice idea until I found myself standing in the grass with a painted wooden board, a box of nails, and no way to hold the thing steady and hammer pegs into it at the same time.
The board is leaning against two overturned crates in a patch of shade beside the path, far enough from the others that the noise of the camp reaches us dulled. I brace the board with one hand and try to line up a peg with the other.
It slips.
“Here,” Noah says, stepping in closer. “Let me help.”
“I’ve got it.”
“I’m sure you do.” He smiles, easy and boyish. “Just... maybe let me be useful?”
I look over at him. Noah is one of the counselors, young and sweet. He’s been hovering for the last few minutes with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. Subtle flirting. It’s obvious enough that I can feel it sitting in the space between us. But there’s nothing in me reaching back.
He takes the board from my hands before I can argue again, steadying it against the crates with both palms. “Like this.”
I pick up one of the pegs and a nail, kneeling slightly to line it up.
“You think we can sue the team if we take a hammer to the hand?” Noah looks down at me.
“I’m sure my dad would love that.” I glance up at him.
“Right,” he laughs. “Forgot I’m standing next to a nepo baby.”
He winces at his own words the moment they come out of his mouth.
“Thanks.” I nod sarcastically, cracking a smile.
“I can recover. Give me another chance.” He tries again.
I shake my head with a laugh, looking back down at the board.
“Just hold it still.” I adjust the nail and avoid his eyes.
“Yes, ma’am.” The words are light, but he says them with a grin I can feel without looking at him.
“I’ll take it from here.” A deep voice behind me cuts through.
It travels through me, pooling low in my gut. My head snaps to the side to see Zed looking at Noah. My stomach gives one sharp little drop at the sight of him.
I have no idea how long he’s been close enough to hear us. He’s towering over Noah by such a margin it looks ridiculous. Noah had seemed perfectly normal-sized five seconds ago. Now he looks like a house cat next to a panther.
“Uh...” Noah straightens, still holding the board as he looks up at Zed.
I recover just enough to say, “We don’t need help.”
I make sure to say we.
Noah and me. Same side.
Zed’s gaze shifts to me for one second, then back to Noah.
“Yeah. We’re good.” Noah gives a small, uncertain laugh. “I’m a huge fan, by the way. You were a beast last season.”
“Thank you.” Zed steps closer, and the air tightens around all three of us. “Now, as I said, I’ll take it from here.”
Noah glances at me like I might smooth this over and tell the giant, psychotic man to leave us alone.
I try. “We’re fine, Mr. Mercer.”
Zed shoots me a look, no doubt for the use of his last name, then takes the board out of Noah’s grip. The toolbox too.
Noah hesitates for a second longer before turning to me. “I’ll be close if you need anything, Lilly.”
“She won’t,” Zed says.
Noah goes quiet. Then he backs off with an awkward nod and heads toward the main grounds without another word. I watch him go, then turn slowly back to Zed. He’s already looking at the crates and the pegs in the grass.
My pulse is too high. Again.
“If you keep following me around,” I say quietly, “I’m going to run.”
That gets his pale eyes back on me.
“Try it.”
Something hot and electric moves down my spine. He looks exactly like a man who would love the chase.
He drops the toolbox and takes the hammer from me, then reaches for one of the pegs and holds it out toward the board. “Hold it up.”
For a second, I just look at him. At the tattoos on his hand. The hammer in the other one. The complete absence of anything gentle in the way he’s built.
I lift the board and brace it against the crates again. He steps in close enough to set the peg where it needs to go. He starts hammering with sharp, measured strikes. The board jolts under my hands with each hit, and I tighten my grip automatically.
His gaze flicks to my fingers, then up to my face, and I have the awful sense that he can somehow feel every beat of my racing heart. Near us, the camp keeps going, the ocean moving steadily beyond all of it. But here, in the shade at the side of the lawn, it feels like the world narrowed again.
He lines up another peg, another nail, and drives it in.
And I can’t stop looking at him. His focus is on the pegs, and it feels less suffocating to look at him when he’s not looking back at me.
I welcome every jolt of the board against me as my eyes scan the tattoos covering almost every inch of his skin.
I wonder what it’s like to be his tattoo artist. To get to work on his body for hours, touching him.
Is it a woman? Why does the thought bother me so much?
The board wobbles again when he shifts closer to reach a lower mark, taking me out of my thoughts.
He looks under his long lashes to check whether I’m still holding the board the way he told me to. He drives the next peg in, then another, building the ring-toss board. A breeze moves across the lawn, carrying the scent of him closer to me.
Of course he smells incredible. God forbid this man arrive with one manageable flaw.
The whole bright afternoon keeps going while I stand in the shade with a six-foot-seven problem and a wooden game board between us.
“This is not helping your case, by the way,” I mutter.
He glances at me, pale-eyed and calm. “Wasn’t aware I was making one.”
He straightens slowly after the final peg, setting the hammer down in the grass beside the nail box.
“There,” he says.
I look at the board. It’s done, the pegs perfectly aligned. All we need is the sign at the top.
“Great,” I say. “You can add children’s camp infrastructure to your resume.”
His gaze slides back to my face, amusement dancing in his eyes.
“I’ll put it under stalking.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. Of course, he also has to be funny.
“Community service is next, then?” I ask, raising a brow at him.
The corner of his mouth pulls up. He’s already beautiful when he looks like he wants to ruin somebody’s life. Smiling makes him something else entirely. Boyish, almost. It puts faint lines beside his eyes and changes his whole face so quickly that I forget what I was going to say.
My fingers loosen from the board, but before I can step back properly, he plants one hand on the top edge beside mine and leans in to grab the sign.
“Pass me another nail.”
He says it without looking at me, one hand braced on the sign while the other hangs off the board. I crouch near the open tool bag in the grass and reach into it without looking properly.
That’s my first mistake. My fingers close around something sharp, and the sting is immediate.
“Ow!” I jerk back on instinct, and the second I do, the board slips.
The painted wood lurches sideways off the crates, and before I can even flinch, Zed drops the hammer and catches the whole thing with his free hand.
His forearms flex with the movement, veins standing out under muscle as he stops the board from crashing into me and props it back upright.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” I pull my hand back automatically, curling my fingers in. “I’m fine.”
“Let me see.” He leaves the board balanced against one crate and steps in.
“It’s just a cut. It’s fine,” I repeat.
He reaches for my hand anyway, and electricity runs straight up my arm the second his fingers close around mine.
I go still. He turns my hand over carefully, his thumb brushing the underside of my finger until he finds the cut.
It’s small. A clean little slice at the side of my index finger, already beading bright red.
“I said I’m okay.”
His eyes lift to mine for one brief second. Then, to my complete disbelief, he brings my finger to his mouth. My stomach drops clean out of me when he parts his lips and closes them around the tip of my finger. Hot, soft, and wet.
I stop breathing. All I can feel is his mouth on my skin. The slick warmth of his tongue as it drags once over the cut while his eyes stay on mine the entire time, pale and absolutely not gentle, no matter how careful his hands and tongue are being.
Heat flashes low through my stomach so fast it feels like panic. My lips part on a tiny inhale I can’t stop. The pulse between my thighs turns sharp, humiliating in its speed.
He lets my finger go his mouth leaves a wet heat behind that my whole nervous system seems to fixate on at once.
I stare at him. I have no language for what just happened. His thumb brushes once over the side of my finger, checking the cut.
“What are you building?” A bright little voice explodes into the moment.
We both turn. One of the younger kids has run up from the lawn with sun-reddened cheeks, staring first at the half-finished ring-toss board and then at Zed.
The change in Zed is immediate. He drops my hand and steps back, almost recoiling.
All the heat, all the stillness, all that dark focus that had just pinned me in place vanishes behind something else entirely.
The kid doesn’t notice. He’s too busy vibrating with excitement.
“Can I help too?” he asks, eyes huge.
Zed doesn’t answer. His gaze cuts back to mine, and what’s left in it is hot enough to make my stomach twist all over again.
This is not over. I see that much clearly.
Then he’s moving. He turns and walks toward the main villa without another word, putting distance between himself and the kid fast. I stand there with the ring-toss board wobbling against the crate, my pulse still in my throat, my finger still tingling where his mouth was, and watch him leave.
It takes another fifteen minutes to finish the ring-toss board.
The little boy who scared Zed off turns out to be an enthusiastic but terrible assistant. By the time I hand him the finished set of rings and send him running back toward the others, I’ve forgotten almost entirely about the cut on my finger.