“I doubt I’ll get a wink.”
That makes me smile despite everything. I open the door, risk one glance over my shoulder, and nearly regret it. He’s still there, one hand braced on the wall, watching me like I’m the hardest thing he’s had to walk away from in a long time.
Then I slip inside and shut the door, heart pounding, back pressed to the blinds.
For a second, I just stand there in the dark, breathing.
North is outside, or was two seconds ago. Close enough that if I opened the door again, I could probably still find the heat of him in the air, the one that said he was holding himself back by sheer force of will.
My whole body is still humming from it.
I need a minute. Several minutes. Possibly a priest.
I push away from the door, switch on the light, and pace once across the room, dragging both hands through my hair, trying to get myself under control because this has already been the most insane day of my life and I refuse to completely lose my mind before midnight. I run a hand across my potted plant on the side table, the little thing already in its new, larger pot that Luca got for me. The guy has a pure heart of gold.
Yep, thinking that doesn’t help either, because once my breathing starts to even out, my traitorous brain moves right on to him and Ace in the malo skirts.
The way the firelight caught every hard line of their stomachs, every flex of thigh and chest and shoulder as they moved. The crowd lost its mind, and I was right there with them, shouting like I’d forgotten my own name.
I press a hand over my eyes.
North against the wall. Ace and Luca half naked in the firelight. This is not a manageable situation, and somehow, impossibly, it’s my situation now.
I drop onto the couch. Through the French doors, the beach is doing its moonlit thing, waves coming in steady and silver. I switch on the TV to a cooking show, as silence and I aren’t getting along tonight.
I dial Clio’s number because I need to say all of this out loud to someone who will understand and also judge me appropriately.
She picks up on the second ring. “You alive?” she asks.
“Very much,” I say, tucking my feet up on the couch. “Though, emotionally? Questionable. You should’ve seen what I just watched and experienced tonight.”
“Tell me everything.”
“I will, but first, are you okay? Should I have called earlier?”
Clio lets out a breath. “I’ve been refreshing my phone for six hours like a psycho with Wi-Fi. I’m much better now that you’re talking. Go.”
So I do.
I explain the whole day, in order. The beach, the men in black, me paddling out to three strangers, and then Ace reappearing on a surfboard. Lunch, the tires slashed, Luca’s motorcycle, which was hot, their mansion house, which I tell her we’ll come back to because it requires its own segment. Then the luau.
“Wait,” Clio cuts in. “Back up. Fire dancing?”
“You should have seen them,” I confirm, sinking deeper into the cushions. “Malo skirts and nothing else on. Torches on both ends of the staff, but their muscles, girl, I might have been drooling.”
“And by ‘they,’?” she says slowly, “you mean…?”
“Ace and Luca.” I press the back of my hand to my cheek.
Clio makes a strangled noise.
“And North?” she asks.
I hesitate for half a second, still burning from him, how close he got, and the way the night ended with me pinned against the wall. And I definitely don’t tell Clio about the deeper stuff. It feels too new and too private, like taking something warm and living and exposing it to cold air before it’s ready.
“He had dinner with me while the other two worked,” I say instead. “And somehow he turned into this super sexy, dark, quietly dominant menace in an open shirt who kept touching me like he knew exactly what it was doing to me. We got way too close, I very nearly kissed him, and I am still not remotely normal about it.”
Clio bursts out laughing. “Why does that not surprise me at all? You spent the day with three hot Alphas, and now you’re sleeping in a beach shack on their property.”
