Something shifts in his face.
“Night, Kaia.”
I step into his bedroom and close the door behind me before I can stand there staring at him until sunrise.
The room is exactly what I expected and somehow more intimate than I am prepared for. A large bed. Dark wooden furniture. One lamp. No clutter. No photographs here either.
The sheets are clean.
I know the second I climb beneath them.
They smell faintly of laundry detergent, fresh enough that I picture Zain changing them recently, smoothing every corner with that same relentless order he applies to everything else.
The pillow is cool against my cheek.
I close my eyes, not sure if I’ll be able to sleep.
Chapter 4
Zain
IwaituntilKaiacloses the bedroom door before I move.
Then I stand in the middle of my cabin and stare at the floor, trying to remember how to breathe like a normal man.
My cock is hard as a rock.
Kaia walked out of my bathroom wearing my T-shirt and nothing but bare legs beneath it, looked me straight in the eye, and explained that the sweatpants weren’t a fit.
As if I had not noticed.
As if I had been capable of noticing anything except the hem of my shirt brushing her thighs.
I drag a hand over my face.
This is a serious problem.
I have spent four months keeping my distance from Kaia Evans because wanting her is a bad idea for reasons I can list without effort. She is twenty-four. I am thirty-eight. She is warmand bright and still believes people deserve second chances, while I wake some nights with dead men in my head and scars across my body from the day I failed to bring everyone home.
She deserves someone who does not carry a graveyard around inside him. Someone who can look at her without imagining every filthy thing he wants to do to her.
Tonight, I failed at that too.
The second she stepped into the room wearing my shirt, every decent thought left my head.
I wanted my hands on her. I wanted to lift the hem and find out whether the soft curves I have spent months trying not to stare at feel as good beneath my palms as I know they would. I wanted to put her on the kitchen counter, spread those bare thighs, and kiss her until she forgot every smart comment she has ever made in my direction.
Then there was the fact that she was wearing my shirt, standing in my cabin with my bed waiting down the hall.
The sight hit some primitive part of me I have kept chained for years.
She looked like she belonged here.
She looked like mine.
“Fuck.”
I head for the bathroom and turn the shower cold enough to hurt.
