Covet (Sinful Secrets 3)

I freeze as he scoops me up and sets me on a nearby boulder, at the edge so that my legs hang off the side. He wraps his hands around my elbows and stands so close, my knees are forced to part around his waist.

He blows a breath out, strokes his warm hands down my shoulders. “Jesus, Finley.” He leans closer, wraps an arm around me. “Think of who you’re talking to.” He holds me fast against him as his hand crawls up my back, stroking over my nape into my hair. I feel him inhale as he tucks my head against his shoulder.

“I know who,” I whisper. “Homer Carnegie.”

It’s a catty thing to say, I know, but I can’t seem to help myself.

I feel his diaphragm expand on a deep breath. He steps slightly away, so that a cool breeze twists between us. When I look up at him, I find his face hard. “Have I ever said that’s my name? Homer?”

I look down, and his hand cups the side of my face. “C’mon, Finley,” he groans. “You don’t know the half of it

with me.” I feel a tremor move through him. “I’ve been trying to outrun myself since I was fucking thirteen years old.”

I blink down at the space between us: a swatch of dirt where an ant hauls a bit of leaf atop its back. My eyes well with relief at his desperate tone. I’m not the only damaged one for once.

Tell me more. Please, Sailor. I send a prayer up to that effect, but as I watch his shoes and feel him breathing, he says nothing. Finally he leans in closer, smoothing his hand down the back of my hair, caressing the nape of my neck.

“Don’t ever worry, Finley. Not with me.”

Something moves through me, a sort of dark force. I’d like to lash out at him, shove him away. What I’d really like to say is “you’ll soon be gone.” But I do none of that. I feel like a statue in a snow globe as I hear myself say, “All right, then.”

He lifts me off the rock and sets me back on the ground. Even now, when I’m so agitated, standing near him makes me feel like a lamb near its shepherd. I steal a glance at his face. I’m tired of resisting him. But when our eyes catch, his blue orbs are remote, as if he’s locked himself away a bit.

Something throbs below my throat—a sort of tightening sensation. Because I want to know—I feel I even need to know—about him. I feel like sand at low tide as I walk beside him: thirsty.

For his part, his strides are long and slightly brisk. His handsome face is perfectly impassive. He seems focused on the path ahead, which tilts more vertically as misty rain drifts over us. For not the first time in his presence, I don’t feel quite real as I trod near him. I need his eyes, his hands on me to be corporeal.

Finally, as the path cuts leftward in a zigzag toward the summit, he looks over his shoulder. Now his face is clearer…perhaps calmer. He reaches for my hand, his fingers catching mine and lacing with them as if nothing heated passed between us. We walk on, and I think oddly of the animals in Noah’s Ark. Two of each kind…

“Tell me something,” he says, low.

“What sort of something?”

His mouth is solemn, but it curves a bit as his warm eyes reach for mine. “What’s your favorite color?”

I can’t help a small laugh. “What?”

“Tell me all your favorites, Siren. Tell me everything.”

My body warms from scalp to soles as I smile at him. “Everything? I’m not sure there’s so much to me.” I feel my cheeks burn, and I hate that I can blush at my age.

“Everybody has a favorite color.” His brows waggle. “Mine is gray.”

“Gray?” I snort. “It can’t be gray. That’s not a color!”

He grins. “Tell that to the good folks at Crayola.”

“It’s a color, but it’s…”

“Gray.” He tilts his head.

“It’s flat and sad.”

He smiles with dimples. “Not to me.”

“It can’t be your favorite. Choose another.”

“Gray.”