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PROLOGUE
Kenzi
A few months ago…
My flip-flop covered feet smack against the sterile white tiles of the hospital hallway, my friend, Laia on my heels. My heart feels like it’s clawing its way out of my chest at the familiarity of this moment. I’ve done this before. Ran through the hallways of this hospital before to be met with nothing good. Nothing ever good. Tears sting behind my eyes, tears I don’t dare let loose, because once they start there will be no holding the shit storm of panic rolling around inside of me in.
The scent of bleach in my nose and the fact I’m soaked to the skin does nothing to help the spinning of my head as I round yet another corner.
And then I see him. Mylo. Leaning against the wall, staring down at massive, bandaged hands like they hold the answers to the universe. If I didn’t know better it looks like he’s just wrapped his hands for boxing, but I do. There was an accident. A bad one.
We’ve known each other all of five minutes, but the sight of him standing there on his own two feet, battered, but not at all dead, rushes relief up the back of my neck. When I got the call, it was like being thrust back a decade, to a different time,a different accident.
He looks up, and man-ban or not, I don’t slow down until I’m crashing into his huge chest and those bandaged-wrapped palms are cupping my face.
“He’s awake.” His big thumbs brush at my damp cheeks. “In a shitter of a mood, but he’s awake.”
That does it. God knows why but, that totally does it. Felix is my friend. More than my friend, he’s like family, and that shit storm of panic I was doing such a stellar job of wrangling, blasts right through whatever semblance of control I had on it. My knees threaten to buckle, and my breaths shunt out of me in painful hiccups I can’t quite manage to get a handle on, my mind stuck somewhere between the past and the now. “He’s okay.” I grip his wrists, a semi-hysterical burst of what might be a laugh escaping my lips. “He’s okay.” I stutter out, my teeth chattering with the adrenaline pumping through my veins. The last time I got a call like this, I lost one of my favorite people. Gone. Dead.
“Kenzi.” Mylo grips my face a little tighter. “Kenzi, look at me. He’s okay. Felix is okay.”
Chest lifting and falling in rapid succession, I force my gaze up to his steady gray eyes. He’s okay. It’s okay. Lightheadedness floods in regardless, tears, hot against my rain drenched skin as they track down my cheeks, eyes squinting against the too-bright strip lights buzzing over-head.
“Slow your breathing, Kenzi.” Concern flashes over his usually unflappable face.
“I can’t,” I pant out, fear of a different kind clinging onto the nerves in the base of my skull. I swear I’m not usually this dramatic. I just. Can’t. Stop.
“You’re having a panic attack” He glances up from my face, over the top of my head, back over his shoulder. “Fuck. Come on.” He drops his grip from my face to my shoulders and guides me back through the door beside the one Laia just walked through.
The darkness of the empty room, the cool press of the wall he pushes me against, and the soothing tone of his deep voice telling me to focus on him. To focus on my breaths, in, out, in, out. None of it makes a difference. I’m still hyperventilating like a champ.
“Kenzi. Focus!” One of his hands slide up to cup my neck, the other, the only thing holding me up against the wall, “Focus on me.”
I do. I focus on the way the dim light, picks out his strong straight nose, and the hairs that have escaped the knot on the top of his head, I concentrate on the fine smile lines that fan out from his intense gray eyes and the thick dark eyelashes that surround them. My breaths don’t care though. Nothing slows, nothing recedes.
“It’s not working, I can’t…” I grip his solid biceps, my fingers finding purchase in the jersey of his green hoodie, eyes so wide they must look like they’re about to fall out of my head.
“Fuck, Kenzi, you need to focus on something else!” Worry flashes in his stare a second before he curses out something under his breath, then crashes his lips against mine.
I still. It all stills, even my wayward breathing and spinning head. Mylo. Is kissing me. Lips soft, but with a pressure that won’t be ignored, head angled, full body tight against the shivering mess that is me. He’s kissing me hard.
New details pulse in past the pins and needles blanketing my senses. The scent of freshly laundered cotton and beach days. The tickle of thick stubble against my chin. The distant sound of the storm still raging outside the window. The ragged in-out of the massive chest crushed against mine.
He pulls back before I can force myself to react, his hand cupping my neck, gaze traveling my face, concern still written in the tightness around his eyes and the lack of the perpetual slight upward curve to his lips that always makes him look like he’s on the verge of grinning.
Seconds tick by and my breaths come easier with the passing of each one. I’m in a dark room. Alone. With Mylo the man-mountain. Mylo, the only man that could give Thor a run for his money. Mylo, my new neighbor, and the un-witting star of many, many of my late night… my tongue slips across my bottom lip and I straighten, just… whatever. It’s Mylo, and he’s looking at me like I’m not doing a sterling impression of a mystified meerkat, dragged from the white waters, wrung out and plastered to the wall in front of him. His face is so close, his breath so warm, his gaze so hyper-focused as it flicks down to my lips.
Relief, elation, awareness, what-the-fuck-was-that-ness, they all roll into this undeniable need to do something I promised myself, literallysworeto myself I would not—
—I’m kissing him before I let my brain finish the thought.
His grip tightens on the thin cotton of my button-down sun dress with a rough moan and zero hesitation. The buttons give, the back of my head hits the wall behind me and his tongue swipes into my mouth in a kiss that buzzes down my spine and fizzes in my belly. It’s rough and intense and grounding, and, right now, insane as it is, it’s exactly what I had no idea I needed.
His hand slips from my hip to my thigh, mine slide from his biceps to his neck, fingers threading into the thick mane of hair, only barely restrained in the knot on the top of his head.
There’s no carefulness to this kiss, no rhyme or reason or control, it’s teeth, and tongues, and lips. It’s a living, breathing, writhing beast. His fingers digging into my ass cheeks is the only warning I get before my feet leave the ground and he spins us around until I’m perched on the hospital bed behind him, mouth still devouring mine with an unabashed force I was pretty sure only existed in the books I read and the movies I claim I’m too cool to watch. It’sthatgood. It’s Massimo-in-the-shower-neck-grab-kiss good. It’s forget-all-about-your-self-imposed-man-ban good.
The cool, smoothness of the hospital beds sheets against my fevered skin, the hugeness of him wedged between my spread thighs, his massive body curved over mine. I’m kinda pissed I haven’t been doing this since the first night we met.
