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Wes

Fuckme.Ifithadn’t been for the rain, I would’ve ended up coming in my pants like a goddamned teenager. Audrey darted between the thick foliage of the forest while I stood there with a handful of electricity glowing off my hand like I’d come straight out of a comic book. The hem of that fucking T-shirt—the one I wanted to light on fire—skimmed the back of her toned thighs, barely concealing her perfect ass as she ran. The emerald light I’d been holding dimmed and extinguished. I didn’t chase her. My cock strongly disagreed with that decision, but I’d give her whatever she wanted, and what she wanted was distance from me.

Audrey Raynor was my brother’s ex and the star of every one of my dirtiest fantasies over the last ten years.

She hadn’t been wrong when she called me an asshole.

The taste of her apple-scented skin lingered on my tongue. I’d been hard enough to hammer railroad spikes from the moment she stepped out of the spring, all creamy curves and puckered pink nipples. I wanted to take those pointed peaks between my teeth, licking and sucking until she cried out my name, but when those baby blues filled with heat and she moved that tight little body against mine…

I scrubbed my hands over my face. Christ. I needed to get my shit together and forget about wanting to bury myself inside her. It had just been the earthquake, one of those momentary lapses in judgment people experienced after a traumatic event. There would be no chance of a repeat. She hated my guts. A feeling that wasn’t entirely unjustified.

For a minute, it felt like it used to between us. No one knew which of my buttons to push like Audrey. Hope was a cruel bastard, though, and it wasn’t long before she’d shut down and shoved me out again. We’d been doing this dance for going on four years now.

An animal howled in the distance, and the clouds blocked part of the moon, casting eerie shadows over the forest. A hazy fog the color of soot hovered on the fringes of the spring’s enclosure. The moment I focused my attention on it, a crackling sound, like insects scuttling over dead leaves, filtered through the trees. The dark fog rolled away.

The way I saw it, I had two choices. I could either spend the rest of the night standing around with my dick in my hand, or I could look into how much wreckage we’d need to clean up in town. A third, more appealing, option would be to check on Audrey, but I stamped out that idea real quick. My presence at her front door would not be welcomed.

Taking a right instead of going straight, I cut through the fallen trees and smattering of broken boulders to survey the condition of the businesses that backed up to the woods. Most of them were two stories, with shops and restaurants on the first floor and condos and apartments on the second. Keeping in line with the town’s building code, all the storefronts were painted in saltwater taffy colors. The sidewalks were lined with clay Valencia planters and overflowed with a riot of rich-smelling flowers.

Most of the residents had cars, but the city didn’t allow them on Stardust Parkway, the main road through town, from the last weekend in May through Labor Day.

My family owned a few of the buildings over this way. We had insurance, but getting materials on the island for a rebuild would still be costly and time consuming. I didn’t have anything to worry about, though. Not even the fragile striped awnings had been disturbed.

I knocked a fist against Capricorn’s Coffeeshop. Solid as a rock. Not a single brick out of alignment. The exteriors of Sagittarius Surf Shop, Vino by Virgo, and Gemini’s Gems also had no issues. The windows were dark above Audrey’s new age consignment shop, Secondhand Scorpio. She must’ve gone to bed, which meant it was time for me to move along. The last thing she needed was for me to be spotted outside her condo at this hour. People talked enough as it was when they had nothing to go on.

After a quick check of her walls and foundation, I made my way toward the section of town that housed my family’s cornerstone business, the Zodiac Hotel. We also owned the grocery store, Constellations, both of which were fine, as were the credit union, library, and the only bar on the island, the Leo’s Den.

While the destruction appeared to be confined to the island’s dense forest, that didn’t do a lot to set my mind at ease. There should’ve been some evidence of the earthquake in town. Audrey claimed it had been magic, but I didn’t believe that for a second. If a bird shit on her shoulder, she would’ve called it magic. She’d been that way since we were kids.

Like most of the residents on the island, I respected the zodiac. The tourism in the summer had been providing for my family for generations. But I could be grateful the legend existed without wholly buying into the fantasy behind it.

Audrey’s grandmother, Selene, had raised her to treat the legend as fact, though. She refused to listen to anything that resembled science, choosing instead to see signs of magic in everything. And she said I was stubborn.

But the light that came from our hands, with the rain and electricity…

I shook my head. We’d been under stress. If I’d been half a second slower, that branch would’ve taken Audrey out, and the adrenaline caused us to see things that weren’t there. The legend was just a fairytale. Something we used to draw in vacationers from the mainland to keep our island running during the sparse winter months.

That still didn’t explain how my T-shirt remained wet from a phantom rainfall. Or how the ground had rolled like a blanket being shaken out on a wild wind, but not a single building had suffered any damage. And why the hell weren’t people pouring into the street to check on their neighbors or businesses?

None of this sat right with me.

It was well after two in the morning by the time I reached the opposite end of Stardust Parkway, where the ferry was docked. Despite the summer season being in full swing, the streets were quiet. Zodiac Cove didn’t have much of a nightlife to speak of. Aside from bonfires or the occasional house party, most of the people who spent their vacations here turned in early so they could take advantage of the daytime hours to go hiking, snorkeling, or lie out on the beach.

The lights were still on down at the dock. Hank Wilder must’ve been doing a special run to Salem or Boston for something. I started to head down there to see what he had to say about the earthquake when a dark figure stepped out of the mist that curled against the rocky shore. My muscles tensed, then relaxed as my best friend came into view.

Meeting Finn halfway, I clapped him on the shoulder. “What are you doing out so late on this side of the island? Did Paige finally kick your ass to the curb and make you walk home?”

“You know I stopped seeing Paige a month ago.”

“She know that?”

He rubbed a hand over his short dark hair. “Hell, I don’t know.”

Paige Newcomb grew up mean and spoiled. She didn’t understand the meaning of the word no. I tried to tell Finn she’d be straight-up trouble, but when Thora Chase left the island seven years ago, he decided to fuck his way through half of Zodiac Cove’s population and more than a few tourists. When Paige showed up at his house wearing nothing but high heels and red lipstick, he got himself stuck like a fly to that deadly honey. Every time he tried to cut her loose, she’d make a scene, and there were few things he hated more than drama.

I let out a laugh. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself for that. Did the chief call you out for the earthquake then?”

Finn volunteered for the fire department. I was surprised they’d sent just one guy down here, a natural disaster should’ve been an all-hands-on-deck occasion, but maybe they already knew there hadn’t been much damage outside the woods, if they’d even gotten a heads-up about it in the first place. Strange that I hadn’t heard a single siren go off, though.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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