“Don’t bullshit me, Rhys Manning.” Her voice was venom. She was most definitely not playin’. “I think I’ve seen you in action enough times to know when you’re undressin’ someone with your eyes, and you already had her clothes strewn across the room. Maggie is special. Different. Off-limits. Do you hear me?”
Melanie was right on all accounts.
She’d seen me in action more times than I could count.
More than that, she was right about Maggie.
She was special.
Different.
One-hundred-fucking-percent off-limits.
I lifted my hands higher. This time in surrender. “I hear you. Loud and clear.”
Loud and clear.
Eleven
Rhys
With the crash of the waves on the beach below, I sat out on the balcony plucking the strings of my guitar. It made it so I barely heard the timid tapping against the inside wall of my room.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel it.
That didn’t mean the ground didn’t tremble and the air didn’t shift.
I gave myself a beat to pull my shit together. To remember the warning Mel had dished out earlier today. Rein in the direction my thoughts immediately went stampeding.
Night pressed down, time set to slow.
The canopy of stars hung like ripe fruit waitin’ to be plucked where they were strewn over the horizon.
Like each was holding a wish waitin’ to be granted.
Faint sounds of the house echoed through the walls and drifted through the opened windows, my crew, my family, settling in for the night.
I sat propped against the wall, the French doors to my bedroom wide open, sheer curtains dancing in the breeze and lulling me into some kinda dream as I tried to find the melody for the song I needed to write.
Dream took a sharp turn when I angled around to peer into the darkened shadows of my room.
Maggie stood just inside the bathroom door.
Unsure.
Wary.
Bold.
She edged in a step farther like she was worried she was ignoring a sign that read danger.
With what she was wearing? It made that endeavor all the riskier considerin’ she was wearing the tiniest sleep shorts I’d ever seen and a skin-tight tank.
Every muscle in my body took note.
That river of black was coiled on her head, a little wild and untamed, a few errant pieces dripping down around her slender shoulders like all those stars.
Girl nothing but a motherfuckin’ wish.
The impossible kind that I knew better than longing for.
Didn’t matter.
Longing smacked me right across the face. Something that just came fiercer each time she stepped into my space.
“Hey there, Sweet Thing. Whatcha up to?”
I went for casual when my heart was thrashing a riot in the middle of my chest.
“Hey. I hope I’m not interrupting.”
I chuckled. “I think we already established there is nothin’ to interrupt.”
So what if I couldn’t help bring attention to the awkwardness downstairs earlier. Needing to clear up any runaway thoughts about me and Mel she might be having. Which was fucked in itself.
Maggie laughed a small sound, her gaze enchanting me in the night. “I did just walk into your room without an invitation.”
“Well then, Sweet Thing, consider yourself invited. Seems to me we might be crossin’ paths a bit this summer, yeah?” I said it as playfully as I could, doing my best not to imagine all the types of crossin’ paths I was aching to do. “No need for us to tiptoe. You good with that?”
Maggie gnawed at that plump bottom lip. “Yeah. I think I’m good with that.”
My fingers continued to move across the frets, the melody barely breakin’ the dense atmosphere. Couldn’t look away as she came closer.
The girl was a sculpture written in the shadows.
Art hung on the wall.
Place was decked in luxury. Extravagance and wealth. No doubt, she was the most precious, priceless piece.
I kept plucking at the strings, and she kept moving across my room like the bare-boned song had her enraptured.
Tendrils of it wrapping her in that same dream.
She stepped all the way out onto the balcony on bare feet.
I gulped, staring up at her where she stood.
Beneath the stars.
Beneath the darkness.
Beauty.
That’s what this girl was.
The raw, untarnished version of it.
My gaze got stuck on her, wondering how the hell to wade through this.
How to ignore the energy that crackled in the sea breeze. To ignore the lure that I couldn’t understand.
She slipped onto the ground to sit opposite me. She rested her back on the half wall, and she stretched out her feet.
Shit.
Even those were cute.
She rocked her heels where they rested about an inch from mine.
Like we were drawn again.
Needing to get closer in any way.
For a bit, we just rested in the song I was weaving.
Way too comfortable.
Finally, she whispered, “Then why does it feel like we’re tiptoeing, Rhys?”
I blew out a sigh. Since I was going gold with the foolhardy confessions today, I might as well break the record. “Probably because I’ve been thinking all sorts of things I shouldn’t be thinking about you.”