Chapter 4 Sunlight and Shadows #2
My technical-writer brain—the one that catches discrepancies in data sets, the one that noticed the cardiac irregularities in MediVista's Phase III trials—files this alongside the body temperature, the scars, the way he moves too quietly for someone his size.
We're three feet apart. The water between us is a temperature gradient—cool on my side, warm on his, the boundary shifting toward me as his body heat bleeds outward.
"You really do run hot," I say. My voice sounds strange. Breathless in a way that has nothing to do with swimming.
"It's a condition." He moves closer—one stroke, effortless, and suddenly we're in touching distance.
The heat coming off his skin wraps around me through the water like a second current, warm and encompassing, and my body responds to it in ways I can't govern.
My skin prickles. My breathing shallows.
Something low in my abdomen tightens, a slow coil of warmth that has nothing to do with pool temperature.
His eyes drop to my shoulders, my collarbones, the water lapping at the edge of my bikini top. When they come back to my face, the amber is darker. Richer. Like honey held up to firelight.
"Does it bother you?" he asks. "The heat?"
"No." The opposite, actually. His warmth feels like standing near a bonfire on a cold night—the kind of heat that makes you lean in rather than pull away, that your body craves before your brain can weigh in. "It feels good."
Something shifts in his expression. A crack in the careful control, showing something underneath that's hungrier and less polite than the resort owner he's performing.
"Good," he says, and the word sounds different in his mouth. Lower. Rougher. Like it means something else entirely.
I should put distance between us. Should swim to the other end of the pool and do another twenty laps and stop noticing the way his wet skin catches the dawn light, the way the scars I traced last night look silver in water, the way his eyes keep dropping to my mouth like he's remembering the fig.
Instead I float closer. Close enough that if I extended my hand, my fingers would find his chest. Close enough that his heat is a physical pressure against my skin, turning the water around me tropical.
"Kaz." My voice is barely above a whisper. "Last night, when I asked about the scars—"
"You asked if they hurt."
"And you said 'don't stop' when I was touching them." The memory of his voice—wrecked, stripped, the sound of a man whose defenses collapsed—makes my pulse spike. "Did you mean that?"
His chest rises and falls. Water runs down the lines of muscle, collecting in the valleys between scars.
"I meant it." Delivered like a confession. "No one touches them. Not—" He stops. Recalibrates. "It's been a long time since anyone touched me like that."
The admission costs him something. I can see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his hands go still at his sides in the water, the careful neutrality he's forcing onto features that want to show something raw.
Five years. Thysa mentioned something about that yesterday—a throwaway comment I wasn't supposed to hear, something about him being wound tight.
Five years of no one touching him. Of carrying those scars without anyone tracing them, without anyone asking does this hurt.
"That's a long time," I say softly.
"It is."
"Why?"
He holds my gaze. The question vibrates between us, and I watch him decide how much truth to offer—weighing what he can say against what he's hiding, measuring the distance between honesty and safety.
"Because I'm not—" He pauses. Chooses a different word. "Careful. I'm not always careful enough. With my strength. My—" His jaw works. "If I'm not paying attention, I can hurt people without meaning to. So I stopped. Touching. Being touched."
The weight of that lands in my chest. Not pity—he'd hate pity, I can tell from the way he's bracing for it. Understanding. The recognition of a cage someone built around themselves for good reasons that are slowly becoming a prison.
"You were pretty careful with me last night," I say. "The fig. My hands on your scars. You didn't hurt me."
"I was concentrating."
"On what?"
"On you." His eyes burn. "Every second. Every breath. Making sure I—" He stops himself. Looks away, toward the horizon where the sun is climbing higher. "We should get out. Before it gets hot."
The pivot is deliberate. I've pushed to the edge of what he'll give me, and he's stepping back behind the wall. But the wall has cracks now. Last night's dinner put the first ones there. This conversation widened them.
"Kaz."
He looks back.
"Thank you. For telling me."
His expression softens. Just for a second—a flash of something open and vulnerable and fiercely grateful—before the careful composure reassembles.
He hauls himself out of the pool in one fluid motion.
Water cascades off him, running down the atlas of scars, pooling on warm stone.
The morning light hits his back and I see them clearly in full light: more scars, running from shoulder blade to hip.
Deep ones. The kind that come from something with edges, wielded with intent.
Not a war. Something worse. Something prolonged.
I climb out after him, and the morning air hits my wet skin like a slap. The bikini that felt sensible in the privacy of the villa now feels like tissue paper. I reach for my towel and wrap it around my waist, hyperaware of his gaze following the motion.
His eyes linger on my legs, my hips, the curve where the towel sits. When he looks back up, he doesn't pretend he wasn't looking.
"I made breakfast," he says. "Fig yogurt. Honey from a local apiary. Bread I baked this morning."
"You baked bread? This morning? What time did you get up?"
"I don't sleep much."
"Ever?"
"Not when there are things worth being awake for." He says it plainly, without flirtation, and it hits harder for the lack of performance.
I'm staring. I know I'm staring. But he's standing there dripping wet in board shorts with the sunrise turning his skin to gold, and he baked me bread, and he told me no one's touched him in five years, and I am in so much trouble.
"Edith?" Thysa materializes from somewhere with the supernatural timing of a woman who was definitely eavesdropping. She's carrying a tray of food and wearing a grin that could power a small city. "Morning, love. Sleep well?"
"Great, thanks."
"Mmm." Her eyes flick between me and Kaz—me in a wet bikini, him shirtless and dripping, both of us doing a terrible job of pretending we weren't just having an intimate conversation in a swimming pool.
"Breakfast on the terrace? Boss made his famous fig yogurt.
It's life-changing. Possibly marriage-proposal-inducing. His words."
"I never said that," Kaz says.
"You heavily implied it. With your eyes." She sets the tray down and winks at me. "Eat up, love. You'll need your strength today."
"Why?"
"Private tour of Santorini with a man who gets up at three AM to bake you bread." She pours coffee with the serene confidence of someone who has assessed a situation and found it hilarious. "You're going to need the calories."
Kaz gives her a look that would freeze lava. Thysa absorbs it like sunlight.
"I thought I'd go into Oia today," I say, reaching for coffee. "See the famous sunset. Maybe do some shopping."
The change in Kaz is instantaneous.
He goes rigid. Not the subtle tension of a man choosing his words—the full-body lock of someone whose threat assessment spiked. His eyes sharpen, his shoulders square, and for one unguarded second his expression flattens into something I've only seen in documentaries about combat veterans.
"You can't." The words come out hard. He catches himself, softens. "It's not a good idea. Oia is a nightmare this time of year. Crowds, pickpockets, aggressive vendors. You'd spend the whole day fighting through tourists."
"I think I can handle tourists."
"Let me show you Santorini properly." He steps closer, and I have to angle my head back to meet his eyes.
The height difference is pronounced—he's six-three minimum, I'm five-six without shoes, and the sheer physical scale of him this close is something my body registers before my brain can intervene.
My pulse picks up. My skin warms. The places where his heat radiates against me feel like standing in a beam of concentrated sunlight.
"The real island. Not the postcard version.
I know the hidden places. The villages tourists don't find. "
"Kaz—"
"Please." The word costs him something. His hand comes up—reaches toward my arm, hesitates, drops. Like he's fighting an instinct he doesn't trust. "One day. Let me give you one day."
There's something in his voice. Not charm—something underneath it, something almost desperate. The same thing I heard last night when he said "don't stop." The sound of a man who wants something he doesn't think he's allowed to have.
I should say no. Should assert my independence. Should definitely not spend an entire day alone in a car with a man whose scars tell a story I can't read and whose body runs at temperatures that defy physiology.
But the villa is quiet, and the morning is warm, and he baked me bread at three AM because he doesn't sleep much because there are things worth being awake for.
"Okay," I say. "One day."
The relief on his face is so naked it makes my chest ache. His whole body unlocks—shoulders dropping, jaw releasing, something almost like a smile breaking through the careful composure.
"Good. I'll pick you up at ten. Wear comfortable shoes." He's already backing away, putting distance between us with the precision of a man who's measured exactly how close is too close. "And sunscreen. The interior is brutal."
He turns and walks toward the main building—long strides, that quiet efficiency of movement that speaks of training so deep it's become biology. Water still glistens on his back, catching light in the valleys of old wounds.