Something is carved into the dark wood, lighter splinters spelling out a single word.
Goodbye.
My body is rigid, my heart racing.
Then the figure looks up, directly at the camera, and brushes their hood off.
And my own father looks back at me at the same time a text flickers on my phone.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
SLOANE
The bathroom door creaks open, and Storm’s voice cuts through the air like a blade.
“Where are you going, Princess?” It isn’t sweet, the way he asks the question.
His voice is gravely and low and my heart thuds fast in my chest.
What perfect timing he has.
I let myself smile even though my stomach is full of nerves. I won’t tell him I saw a shadow. In my family, complaints without substance were fuel for fights.
I turn to look at him and my blood heats.
He has a white towel around his neck, gray boxers on, and nothing else.
The lines of his abs, the tattoos on his thighs, the damp curl to his black hair…fuck, he is gorgeous. Evil, maybe, a criminal, definitely, but absolutely beautiful.
“No where,” I tell him, and my voice cracks a little.
In the dimness of our suite, a single small light on pressed flush to the wall in the middle of the room, we are both cast in shadow. But I can see every inch of him that isn’t covered, and Iimagine he can see the way my nipples harden beneath the silk of my gown.
I let my fingers fall from the balcony handle.
He tilts his head.
It’s predatory, I decide. That move. That gesture. I wonder if he knows how often he does it, or if he simply is always the hunter.
“Then come here,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a question.
I take a breath in. The hotel scent and the strawberry of my shampoo and my perfume that I spritzed on my wrist, my collarbone, and my thigh, it fills my nose. But so does the soap scent coming from him. From the shower.
I take a step and try to appear confident.
Another.
I keep my chin lifted and my shoulders back. Heather was never into makeup or hair or fashion or posture but I studied it all. I wanted to be soft. Different from my parents. Gentler. It broke me, in some ways, trying to be that girl in a hurricane, but now I can bend without breaking.
I don’t break as I walk to Storm.
Before I reach him, he takes the towel from around his neck and lets it drop to the floor. I’m so close, I can see that blue vein in his throat.
And before I can reach him entirely, he grabs my wrist and jerks me closer in his impatience. His fingers tangle in my damp hair and he circles his arm around my waist. But as he stares down at me, he doesn’t kiss me.
My palm is planted over his heart, and I don’t look away from his eyes.
