Gottwas believed the Great Spirit placed souls within each other’s paths for specific reasons. Had She placed Remo in mine so that he’d save my life in this world, or had She done it because we were meant to be together?
“Will you continue seeing each other once we get home, or is this some . . .holidayfling?”
“Holiday?” My lips quirked into a pitiful smile. “Some holiday we’re all having.” I drew a heart in the wet sand.
Giya laughed softly. “Yeah . . . next time I’m picking the destination.”
A splash sent a wave hurtling over my sketch, erasing the curved lines. Holding my breath, I stumbled upright. And then I waited. When the popping bubbles were replaced by a head crowned with dark amber hair, my breath left me in a shallow burst.
Giya stood too, dusting the sand off her wet suede leggings. “Who’s always right?”
My pulse scudded against the lining of my throat.
“What took you so long, Farrow?” she asked.
A smile made his eyes sparkle like the iridescent fall behind him. “Just being thorough.”
I scrubbed the incessant flow of tears, but the act was pointless.
His shoulders broke the surface of the water, the cream fabric ensconcing them stretched as tight as my inhales. And then the pillar of his torso emerged, slabs of muscle visible behind knitted skin and torn fabric edged in the pinkish ochre of old blood. “Patience is a virtue.”
Giya hooked her thumb toward me. “Not one of hers.”
When the water cinched his trim waist, I finally moved. I sprinted toward him and threw myself into his arms, and like always, he caught me.
“Don’t do that again,” I growled, gorging on the mud-and-musk-scent of his skin. “Don’t die anddon’tmake me wait.” My thunderous pulse lashed at my skin. At his, too.
The circle of his arms firmed. After dropping kisses along the frame of my face, he set me down. A fearsome scowl ripped away his smile as he took in my ruined face. “I almost wish he’d resuscitated.” At my frown, he added, “So I could gut him—slowly—like the swine he was.”
Instead of repulsing me, his evocative thirst for vengeance seduced me. Perhaps I should’ve mourned the death of my innocence. Perhaps I would, later.
He traced the edges of my bruise with his eyes, and then with his thumb. In a voice roughened by emotion, he asked, “Why were you worried I wouldn’t come back?”
“You used the machete on the apple and then on yourself.”
“Ah.” He raised a brazen smile. “Remember what I told you about the effectiveness of pens?”
My breaths tangled, and I choked on my exhale, nausea battling with relief.
“Don’t picture it.” He leaned over and smoothed his mouth over my own as though to root out my distress. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No secrets. Ever.”
He kissed me harder, and I answered him with a deep, debilitating hunger. When my split lip began to throb, sense knocked into me, and I jolted away, darting my tongue out on the hunt for fresh blood.
His chest turned to marble beneath my heaving one. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. I was just afraid to get blood—”
“Your blood doesn’t scare me, Trifecta.”
“My blood might not scare you, but it’ll hurt you.”
“You forget.” A smile softened his body and expression. “I’m a big strong man.”
A smile cracked my defenses as I recalled the moment I’d teased him with those words. “I forget nothing, and apparently, you don’t either.”
He nudged my nose aside before aligning his smirk with my smile. “Besides, you’re no longer bleeding.”
