Though striking, his smile is strained, defeated almost. “Some days,” he says roughly. “Then on another, a sexy-as-hell therapist gets herself stranded on a shoreline boulder, and when you look into her eyes, you hear the most beautiful, melancholic song. For that brief moment, the harsh light dampens, and you can breathe.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes. I blink quickly to clear the moisture, blaming the salty wind. Mercifully, Orion casts his gaze back toward the deepening skyline, and I push my hand into his jacket pocket in search of something to wipe my face?—
And my fingers connect with something solid.
Turning my back to the wind, I withdraw the circular object. As soon as I see the brass device with spinning dials and plates, I instinctively know this is where the piece I found came from.
Blood roaring as loud as the wind in my ears, I dig out my phone and snap a picture before I quickly wipe the brass of any prints or residue, and drop the instrument back into his pocket.
When I face Orion again, he’s scooping ocean water into his bare palm. Rising slowly, he turns my way. “Hold out your hand.”
A flutter of nervous energy quickens my pulse as I edge closer, unconcerned by the water washing over my boots. “What are you doing,” I ask, pushing the leather sleeve up as I extend my hand toward him.
Orion positions his hand above mine, close enough I can feel the charged heat of his skin. He tilts his palm until water spills, bridging the fragile space between us as seawater drips from his hand to mine.
A strained smile curves his mouth. “Water isn’t just a substance,” he says, “it’s a quantum dance. Molecules vibrating, seeking connection.” His eyes trap mine. “Stay still.”
Carefully, he skates his fingertips just above the beaded water along my knuckles, trailing upward along the backs of my fingers, evoking a current across my nerves without ever making contact.
“It feels like you’re touching me,” I say, voice a little breathless.
“No distance can prevent the energy exchange between our bodies.” A blaze captures me in the heated depths of his gaze. “Saline is a conductor. Charged particles allow electricity to flow between us.” His voice lowers into a rasp. “Movement, heat, friction—stimulating nerves. That’s all touch is really.”
A frisson covers my skin, at the near touch, at the fierceness in his voice. I’m holding my breath, struck by the contrast of our hands—the size of his compared to mine. The roughness I can see and nearly feel as his long fingers ghost over my skin.
And here, saline and molecules form a bond. An anchor. That impossible connection I’ve been seeking to create.
As my gaze trails the beautiful ink across his hand, I desperately want to ask the meaning—but stop myself. Not because I don’t want to know him that much deeper. But because if I do, it will only make what I have to do that much harder.
His fingertips hover closer, tension radiating as though daring himself to close the last sliver of distance. In this gap of charged space, every nerve hums with anticipation, yearning, drawn toward the moment our skin might collide.
My hand begins to tremble, and as the water runs dry, Orion’s hand falls away. The near touch of him fading like the last embers of burnt sunlight beyond the horizon.
“I just needed to know what it’s like,” he admits, gravel roughing his tone. The unspokenjust oncelingers beneath the misty air, summoning a blade of pain between the costal cartilage of my ribs.
The desire to reach out and touch him becomes an unbearable ache in the center of my chest.
He brushes his thumb absently across his knuckles, and I’m once again drawn to the shadowed bruises. The wind tosses his hair, exposing the deep scar along his forehead. A stark reminder of the pain I sometimes see between his splintered cracks.
All the subtle details that make himhim.
Achingly real. Beautiful. Dangerous.
Sometimes, it’s impossible to fathom how Orion kills so ruthlessly and methodically—hunting his victims, dismantling their skulls. In tender moments like this, the man and monster blur, and I can glimpse a shade of who he once was.
His before?—
And what could have existed for us in ours.
Before I took my last breath. Before he stole his first.
What Prescott said drifts back to me, threading tightly through my chest as a low rumble rolls over the water, making me question just how deep Orion’s wounds cut.
He casts a glance toward the looming clouds. “We should head back.”
“We should,” I agree quietly. “Before we’re caught in the storm.”
I drop my gaze, arms folding across my waist, letting his leather jacket shelter me from the elements, suddenly feeling too fragile against the storm he stirs all around and within.
