I took the opposite route, circling toward the back of the property, behind Selene’s office in the carriage house. The afternoon air was thick with lake humidity, the earth still soft from yesterday’s rain. My boots made almost no sound against the moss and mulch as I slipped into the narrow gap between the brick wall and the wooden fence. It was tighter than I would have guessed, overgrown with ivy, and shadowed in a way that made it feel like stepping into a pocket of time.
I crouched, breath steady. My heart wasn’t pounding from running. It was thumping hard from what this felt like—how easily the three of us played house. How quickly this place, these routines, had become mine too.
Somewhere behind me, I heard Winnie call, “Thirty! Ready or not!”
Then the thump of her feet pounded across the yard. I smiled, ducking lower into the darkness.
And then—a soft sound. A whisper, not much more than the hush of fabric against skin, “Is she close?”
That voice.Selene.
I turned just as she ducked in beside me, nearly brushing her forehead against mine.
“Jesus,” I muttered, shifting back a hair. “You scared the hell out of me.”
She grinned, unbothered. “You’re hiding like a criminal.”
I smirked. “I’m hiding like a man who doesn’t want to get caught by a five-year-old with no mercy.”
“Scooch over,” she whispered again, shifting her body as we crouched against one another in the too-small space.
I didn’t move. “I am scooched. I’m six foot three.”
Selene smiled but stayed quiet as her eyes darted, searching for Winnie. I studied her profile.
“She’s ruthless,” Selene whispered. “I swear I don’t know where she gets it from.”
“She’s strong ... just like her mother,” I murmured, my eyes landing on Selene’s lips.
We stayed there, still and pressed close in the space that barely held us both. I could feel the heat coming off her body, her figure just brushing mine again, like a live wire.
It would’ve been easy enough to shift or step away, but neither of us did.
Her arm was bare, pressed lightly against mine. The afternoon sunlight filtered through the slats in the fence, casting her face in warm shadows. I could smell her—something green and sharp from her perfume, humidity in her hair from the lake breeze, and the warm, almost sweet scent of her skin. My body tightened in response, involuntary and insistent. My cock thickened against the zipper of my jeans, and I shifted to ease the ache.
I could’ve sworn the air got thicker between us, like time was holding its breath.
I couldn’t look away from her mouth. The words were soft, but her lips were so close I could almost taste them. My entire body responded before my brain could catch up, lighting up like she was the sun and I was pulled into her orbit.
The brush of her thigh near mine, the way her chest lifted when she took a breath—I registered all of it with painfulprecision. It was too much, too close, too easy to imagine what would happen if I just leaned in and pressed my mouth to hers.
Not until she exhaled a shaky laugh and shook her head. “This is insane.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Probably.”
Winnie was circling the lawn, jumping behind bushes and peeking under the porch. She was dangerously close to finding us, but I didn’t move, and neither did Selene.
Her gaze slid to me and her expression shifted—barely, but I caught it. Something flickered behind her eyes, a mix of uncertainty and something else she wasn’t ready to name. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered.
The silence between us stretched, pulling tighter.
Somewhere across the yard, Winnie shouted something about bunnies in the hydrangeas.
But there, in this sliver of shadowed space, the world narrowed to the sound of Selene breathing beside me and the roar of my own pulse.
She turned to look at me again, slower this time. Her face tipped up toward mine, her breath brushing my jaw. My hands twitched at my sides. I wanted to touch her.
God, how I want to touch her.
