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Lucian was in the kitchen with Xavier, and Zane was behind the bar, with Bax carding at the front door.
And me, alone in the booth, hopelessly watching Zane shake martinis and cosmos, pull pints, pour shots, uncork wine, and sling mixers. Wishing I didn’t have to go. Wishing he’d ask me to stay. Wishing I knew what the fuck to do. Because, god, it’d be crazy if I just stayed, right? Like, I’ve known the guy a week. It’s infatuation. And even if it was something more, I’ve known him a week. Seven days. Seven magical, glorious days. Six nights—and five mornings—of the most incredible sex of my entire life. One week, and I was gaga on this guy.
But I had a job back in SF, and a possible new job lined up in Seattle working with Claire, not to mention an apartment with a lease through October. My life was in San Francisco. I had friends there. I had memories there. Dad had visited me there before he got busted and sent to the federal penitentiary in Terra Haute, Indiana. Mom spent every Christmas with me in San Francisco. It was home.
Although, lately the idea of moving to Seattle sounded nice, being with Claire again, a new job, a new city….
But Ketchikan?
Fuck. Ketchikan had Zane. Ketchikan had the mountains and the hiking trails, and the cute bars and seafood places Zane and I had frequented. It also had Brock and Bax, the twins, Lucian, and Xavier. And Zane.
Did I mention Ketchikan had Zane?
But…who just upends their entire life for a guy they met a week ago?
And if Zane didn’t ask me to stay, it’s not like I could bust out with, “So hey, um, I was thinking I could just stay here with you in Ketchikan…forever.” Yeah, that’d work.
We’d agreed on a week. We’d agreed this was practice, that we’d spend this week together, and then I’d go home and find another man to have a real relationship with, and he’d find a woman to have a real relationship with, and we’d never see each other again.
But…god, the thought of Zane with another woman in that bed, another woman with her hands on him? Gah, no. I couldn’t even think about it, or I’d go crazy. Just thinking about it right now made me want to throw the salt and pepper shakers at Zane for cheating on me in my own head, or start crying, or run out of here so fast I’d leave a Mara-shaped hole in the wall, Looney Toons style.
And the thought of being with another man? That wasn’t any more appealing. I tried to picture someone else kissing me, someone else stripping my clothes off, someone else sinking into me…and my stomach revolted and my brain insisted on replacing the mental image of the mystery man with one of Zane, as he’d kissed me, as he’d stripped me naked, as he’d sunk into me.
I was desperately trying to create some semblance of mental and emotional stability inside myself, when a body slumped into the booth opposite me. Lucian, smelling of restaurant kitchen, his hair braided, folded in half, and tied off into a thick club between his shoulder blades, wearing a black T-shirt stained and spotted and smeared with kitchen yuck. He had a bowl of stew in one hand and a pint of beer in the other.
I sniffled. “Hi, Luce.”
He eyed me warily, hearing the sniffle. “Hey.” He spooned some stew into his mouth and chewed, still eying me thoughtfully. “Leaving tomorrow?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Well, speaking for at least five of us, we’ll miss you. It’s been nice having you around.”
“It’s been great meeting you all.” I swirled my beer at the bottom of the glass, watched bubbles form a scrim on the surface. “But why only five of you?”
“Well, Bast isn’t here, and I can’t speak for Zane.”
“Why wouldn’t Zane miss me?”
Lucian ate a few bites before responding. “Not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with beer. “Maybe he doesn’t want to have to miss you.”
“Oh.” I finished my beer. “Think he’ll…say something?”
Lucian shrugged. “Dunno. Might, might not.” He poked at the stew with his spoon. “You’re better off talking to him about this than me, though.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
Lucian shrugged. “Usually things are exactly that simple.” He finally met my eyes, his own dark and intense and unreadable. “Simple and easy aren’t the same thing, though.”
At that moment, Zane slid into the booth beside me, reached out and snagged Lucian’s bowl of stew and devoured half of it in three bites, then washed it down with a long pull on Lucian’s beer. “You boring her with your mystic nonsense, Luce?”
Lucian just lifted a wry eyebrow. “By all means, help yourself.” He took his bowl and beer back and continued eating as if nothing had happened, then eyed his brother. “What mystic nonsense?”
“Your sparsely-worded nuggets of wisdom.”
“That’s hardly mystic nonsense.”
Zane laughed. “Sure it is.”
Lucian just shook his head, and went back to eating in silence.
I found Zane’s hand under the table and threaded my fingers through his. “No mysticism, just…”
“Lucian being Lucian?” Zane supplied. “Knocking apart whatever you think you know about life in a dozen words or less?”
I bobbed my head to one side. “Kind of.”
“I’m convinced he’s an ancient Eastern mystic disguised in the body of a sullen teenager,” Zane said. “It’s the only possible explanation for how he knows half the shit he does.”
“I watch, and I listen, and I ask questions. I pay attention. I read.” Lucian finished his stew and knocked his beer back. “It’s not mysticism, it’s called being a keen observer of human nature.”
“Yeah, whatever, Confucius.” Zane leaned back in the booth and slung his arm around me. “Get back in the kitchen, you slacker.”
Lucian shook his head again, a small but genuine grin on his lips, and then flipped Zane the bird. “Shouldn’t you be behind the bar?”
“Brock got bored being by himself upstairs, so he came down to relieve me.”
Lucian just nodded and went back into the kitchen, whistling the theme to Kung Fu.
Zane watched him, and then grinned at me. “That kid is something else.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Nineteen, almost twenty.”
“He’s not really a kid, though, is he?”
Zane shook his head. “No, you’re right, he’s not. But then, he never has been. Even when he was a little kid he was quiet to the point of silence. He didn’t speak until he was more than two, but then he was speaking full sentences. Mom thought he might have developmental problems, but the doctor said he was physically capable of speech, fully capable mentally, and developing normally, he just…didn’t want to speak for whatever reason.”
“Huh. Well, he’s a wise young man.”
Zane laughed, nodding. “No shit. You forget he’s there, and you’ll be having this conversation or whatever, and then he’ll just bust out with a sentence or two that’s so…insightful, I guess, that it makes everyone just go, ‘Huh, he’s right. I’ll be damned.’”
I leaned against Zane’s shoulder. “Want to, um, go upstairs? Or downtown? Something?”
He eyed me. “When’s your flight out, again?”
I blinked back some kind of weird, hot, salty wetness that was gathering in the corners of my eyes. Not sure what it was about, but I didn’t like it very much. “Ten tomorrow morning.”
“This week went by way too fast, didn’t it?” His arm, slung around my shoulders, tightened. “I’m kind of just feeling one more night together in my bed. Whatcha say, babe?”
I nodded. “I’d like that.”
He threaded his fingers into mine, swung his legs out of the booth, stood up, and then bent to lift me bodily out of the booth. Effortlessly, he carried me to the stairs leading up to the apartment, pausing to let me open the door for him. Before ascending the stairs, he kissed me.
Right there in full view of the ent
ire, packed bar, eliciting a chorus of wolf whistles and cat calls from his brothers and several of the bar patrons. I laughed though the kiss, unable to keep a grin from spreading across my lips, despite my melancholy.
To his room, then.
And his bed.
Clothes came off, and he settled above me, kissing me breathless, kissing me senseless, kissing me into teary-eyed oblivion. He backed away, his thumb brushing under my eyes.
“Hey, none of that,” he murmured.
Ask me to stay, ask me to stay, ask me to stay—the plea rang through my mind, but didn’t pass my lips. I wouldn’t beg, couldn’t.
“This has just…it’s been the most amazing week of my life,” I whispered.
He slid into me, bare, his erection hot and hard inside me. “It has been for me, too.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and I kissed him as we began moving together in perfect synchronicity. Our hips met, our tongues tangled, our breaths mated, and I couldn’t help another tear from sliding down my cheek. Zane didn’t wipe that one away, even though he saw it. His eyes locked on mine as we moved together. He didn’t shush me as I began moaning, a sound lost somewhere between a groan of rapture and a sob of sorrow.
His eyes reflected his own deep well of intense emotion, none of which he expressed verbally. He showed me, though, in the desperate fervor of his thrusting, in the tremble of his lips as he held off his climax, in the clench of his jaw and lowering of his brow, in the rippling of his arms on either side of my face like solid iron-hard bars of flesh and muscle.
I pressed my face into his shoulder and ground up against him, whimpering.
We came together, his face buried between my breasts, his hair soft against my cheek. I let a few tears drip into his hair as I came, clinging to him, shuddering beneath him, still silently begging him to ask me to stay.
He never did.
Not before we fell asleep.
Not when we woke in the small dark hours of the morning to make love again, bare once more.
Not when my alarm went off at seven-thirty, and we found each other one last time, skin sliding against skin, breathing shuddering in the new light of dawn. We didn’t speak a word as we reached climax together faster than we ever had, coming more desperately than ever before, eyes locked, knowing it was the last time.
My heartbeat pounded in my chest as I rested on Zane’s shoulder—stay—stay—stay—stay—the beat of my heart said.
But I couldn’t.
My life wasn’t here.
Zane wasn’t mine.
How can I upend my entire life for a man I’ve known a week? It would be the height of foolishness, no matter how intensely I may feel. Emotions change, feelings change, desires change. This was temporary, a fleeting thing created in the vacuum of a vacation. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t meant to be.
Minutes passed, and the digital red numerals on Zane’s alarm clock ticked over from 7:30 to 7:45, and then to 8:00.
Finally, I knew I had to go or risk losing my tenuous grip on my stupid, ridiculous, nonsensical emotions.
I had to go.
I forced myself to move, to roll away from Zane. I tugged on Zane’s T-shirt and brought my carry-on bag across the hall to the bathroom, took a quick shower and dressed in clean clothes. Brushed my teeth, combed through my hair and bound it up still damp in a tight bun at back of my head.
When I emerged, it was twenty after eight and Zane was dressed in white gym shorts, a blue SEALs hoodie, and a white ball cap bearing the outline of an assault rifle with the letters HK in red. He had the truck keys in one hand, and two paper cups of coffee in the other.
“I’ve got your bags loaded into the truck,” he said, handing me the coffee.
“Okay,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
The drive to the airport was quiet.
He accompanied me to the security checkpoint, and then handed me my carry-on.
“So.” He sipped his coffee, his dark brown eyes opaque and unreadable to me, now. “This is it.”
I nodded, hating the sudden, painful awkwardness between us. “Guess so.”
One tense moment, then another. It was 8:50 a.m., and I still had to go through security and find my gate. But how could I leave without any kind of goodbye? This wasn’t goodbye; this was an awkward, tense, uncomfortable parting.
“Zane, I—”
He kissed me. Hard, intense, one hand on the back of my head, his huge hard body pressed against mine. His tongue swept my mouth again and again, and I delved into the kiss, drowned in it, reveled in it, hoped hoped hoped it meant he’d—
He pulled away, stumbling backward a step. “Bye, Mara.”
I blinked hard. “See ya, Zane.”
Fucking awkward. Fucking painful. Fucking stupid.
I went through security and stopped on the other side, turning back. Zane was still standing where I’d left him, one hand on the back of his neck, brows drawn, shoulders rising and falling heavily, his jaw tensing and releasing. He forced a smile when I turned back, waved at me, and then abruptly pivoted on his heel and left the airport, almost angrily.
I didn’t cry on the flight home.
Nope, nope, nope.
Chapter 11
Zane
It had been almost two months since Mara left, and I was still fucking miserable. I was a complete bastard to my brothers and a jackass to the customers, to the point that when Bast and Dru got back from their honeymoon, Bast told me to cut the bullshit attitude or find a new job. So I dug deep, and pretended like shit was hunky fucking dory.
But it wasn’t.
I shouldn’t have let Mara leave like that. I knew it in my heart, in my soul. But how could I have asked her to stay? What would she do? You can’t base an entire life, a whole new relationship on knowing someone for a week. That’s stupid. I may not know dick about relationships, but I know they don’t work like that.
They just don’t.
To make matters worse, after the first month of misery, I finally broke down at three a.m. and drunk texted Mara. Spent a fucking hour composing that message, deleting and starting over, reading and re-reading a thousand times, tweaking it until it felt right.
Me: I miss you. What if I said I regret letting you leave?
When I finally hit the blue send arrow, the message popped up in the thread in the blue bubble; “Delivered.”
I stared at the screen for twenty fucking minutes, and it never changed to “read.” I passed out, and when I woke up, it was still delivered but not read.
Two days later, still unread.
A week, two weeks, and she never read the fucking message.
I called her, right on the two-month mark. The phone rang and rang and rang.
“Hey, this is Mara. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
I let out a sigh right as the voicemail beeped. “Hey. Um, this is Zane. I—just call me back, okay? Please?”
I threw my phone across the living room of the apartment so hard it smashed against the wall. Bast, in the kitchen pouring a mug of coffee, glared at me.
“What the fuck is your goddamn problem, Zane? You’ve been a complete shithead for two months. What happened?”
“She left, and I let her. And now she’s not returning texts or answering calls.”
“Then it’s done, man. I’m sorry.” He came into the living room and handed me a mug. “Can’t really say much to make you feel better or to fix it. Other fish in the sea, time heals all wounds, all that is just bullshit. Hurt is hurt, man.”
“Fuck the other fish, I want her,” I growled.
“Then go get her?”
“How? I don’t know where she lives, I don’t have her address, and she’s not answering her phone.”
Bast snorted. “Did you forget about your youngest brother? You know, the one who was recruited by the NSA?”
“Oh. Right.” I stood up and kicked at Xavier’s door. He opened the door and blinked at me sleepily.
“Xavier, I need you to—”
He turned away from me without a word, rummaged through some papers on his desk, and returned with a printout bearing Mara’s full name—Amarantha Lucille Quinn—and a San Francisco address.
“About time, you pussy,” Xavier groused, shoving the paper at me. “Printed this two and a half weeks ago.”
And then he shut the door in my face.
Bast was smirking over his coffee. “He may not need much sleep, but when he is sleeping, he really doesn’t like being woken up.”
“Clearly,” I said, reading the address over and over again, compulsively, as if I could conjure the woman out of the words.
“Suggestion?” Bast said.
“What?”
He pointed at the window, indicating the docks, where the sound of an airplane’s propeller could be heard coughing into life. “Go catch Brock. He’s headed to Seattle to see that mystery girl of his. He’d probably take you to San Francisco if you asked him really nicely.”
Barefoot, shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, I jogged outside into a cold early fall rain. Brock was in the pilot’s seat of a single engine seaplane, flicking switches and glancing at a clipboard, a headset over his ears. I jumped onto the float and threw myself into the passenger seat.
Brock didn’t look up, didn’t miss a beat. “Need a ride to Frisco?”
I nodded. “I can chip in on the gas.”
He flipped another switch. “Might I suggest a shirt and shoes, at least?” He shot a grin at me. “I promise I won’t leave without you.”
I ran back home, changed into jeans, a T-shirt, hoodie, and combat boots, and stuffed a few things into a backpack and then ran back to the seaplane. When I was seated, Brock indicated to the second headset and then backed the aircraft away from the dock.
When we were airborne, I glanced at Brock. “So…your girl lives in Seattle, huh?”
He nodded. “Still not talking about her. I don’t want to jinx it. This is my first visit to her. Maybe if this goes well, I’ll share. Until then, I’m keeping her to myself.”
I shrugged. “I get that. You been talking to her?