That pulls a broken little laugh out of me, and he smiles, small and devastating and too intimate for the middle of a crowded luau.
“The person I’ve seen today,” he says, “is sharp, funny, brave, and carrying more than she should have had to for a long time. That’s who I’m looking at.”
My breath catches. There’s no performance in him when he says things like this. He just means it. And somehow that makes it even harder to swallow.
“If I were to ever meet those girls now,” he continues, “I’d stand beside you and let them see exactly who you became after they failed to break you.”
I laugh again, watery this time. “You’d terrify them.”
His mouth curves. “I’d be delighted to.”
“That is an incredibly Alpha answer.”
“And an honest one.”
I shake my head and blink hard, trying to get myself under control while he watches me with that same steady intensity where I could hand him every worst part of me and he’d know what to do with it.
Around us, the whole place has filled. Tables are packed now, the torches burning bright, the sky a deep purple with the first stars starting to show. I missed all of it. Sat here in this one tiny pocket of the world with North and forgot there was anything else.
“Oh,” I say, glancing around. “We are in the middle of an entire event.”
North follows my gaze, then looks back at me, still in his arms. “We are.” So I pull back, figuring that as much as I want to remain here, we’re drawing attention.
Almost immediately, a woman in a floral dress appears with two plates, setting them down in front of us. Kalua pork, lomi lomi salmon, rice, poi, haupia, bread rolls with butter. Another woman follows with smaller plates of meat that looks slow-cooked and smells so good I’m salivating.
“Mahalo,” North says to the women, then he’s staring at me. “Think you can survive dinner?” He’s moved his chair back across from me now. One of his boots finds my sandal under the table and stays there, the side of his foot pressed against mine like it belongs there.
I laugh at the beautiful, broken, impossible man beside me, and then let out one last shaky breath. “Dinner, yes,” I say. “You, I’m still not sure about.”
I take one bite of the kalua pork and make a sound no woman should make in public unless she’s trying to start rumors. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
He’s grinning, not smug exactly, just far too satisfied with himself. “That delicious?”
I’m nodding crazily.
North takes a bite of his own food, calm as anything. “It never disappoints.” He just keeps eating, steady and composed, while I try to act as if the fact that both of his feet are now caging mine under the table isn’t sending a slow, wicked heat up my legs.
The stage host is saying something about tradition and history and welcoming the guests, but I’m only hearing every few words because North is across from me appearing unfairly attractive in the torchlight.
Music starts to roll out across the crowd then, and women in grass skirts and coconut bras move onto the stage, beautiful enough to make the whole place feel unreal. The firelight catches on their skin and flowers, and the audience melts into it immediately.
I do too. And after several incredible dances and most of our plates are empty, the beat of the drums changes. It drops lower, heavier.
The dancers clear, and two men step onto the stage, one from each side.
Ace and Luca.
They’re bare from the waist up, all heat-bronzed skin and hard muscle in the torchlight, the deep red of their malo skirts hanging low on their hips, green grass tied at their ankles. The skirts are very short, and a sharp twist gives me a glimpse of powerful thighs, the flex of their hips, the dangerous suggestionof what’s barely hidden underneath. Luca is wider through the chest and shoulders, carved like a god, while Ace is all fluid strength, leaner through the waist but no less devastating for it and almost as big.
Each carries a staff lit at both ends with crackling flames.
I’m already on the edge of my seat, excitement fizzing low in my stomach. The crowd loses its mind, which feels completely reasonable. I’m whistling and clapping.
Then they start moving, and it’s over for everyone.
Fire blurs into circles and whips of light as they spin the staffs so fast the flames seem suspended in the dark. Luca drives his through a brutal overhead arc, catches it behind his back, and then snaps it low across his body in a move that makes every muscle in his stomach tighten. Ace turns through his own spin with terrifying grace, staff flashing from one hand to the other, shoulders and arms working in smooth, lethal control. The malo skirts flutter with every turn, and I get the briefest, most distracting look at the heavy shape of what those skirts are trying and failing to hide.
I should not be this focused on their packages in a cultural performance, and yet here I am.
