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Something like humor with a shot of desire flashes in Heath’s eyes. For a moment, I see the boy I once knew. He strides toward me, calculating movements a predator makes when stalking their prey. His blood-stained hand roughly caresses my face, and when he looks into my eyes, I see the battle, a war between the bitter hate he now feels against the beautiful past we share.
My skin pricks with goose flesh as he roughly rubs my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. He doesn’t say a word, just locks me into his stare as if proving he knows the hold he still has on me. Silently telling me it will always be there.
“I’m not the naive, helpless boy you knew before.”
“It doesn’t matter how important you are now. They still have all the power. They’ll ruin you, Heath. Just run. Get away from here, they can’t hurt you if they can’t find you. The gravest mistake you could ever make is to return to Wainscott Hollow.”
Heath tugs at my lower lip and moves in until I feel his halted breath on my cheek. Being this close to him makes my heart accelerate to full speed. His scent, the feel of his rough skin.
Before I can react and push him away, his mouth is on mine in a collision of explosive passion. His teeth gently graze my lips before he sinks them into my flesh, and the metallic taste of the blood invades my mouth.
He pulls back, and blood trickles from his full lower lip.
“Thing is, Kat, I don’t run with my tail between my legs anymore. Now, I bite back.”
Chapter 10
Heath
Five years sober, and at the first chance of a hit, I couldn’t resist. Because of all the temptations in this world, the only one that can bring me to my knees is Katelyn Shaw. If soulmates are a reality, she’s mine as I am hers, and not time, nor distance, not even the devil himself, can truly keep us apart.
I flex my hands, desperate to get the memory of her off my skin. I shouldn’t have touched her. I should have left Eddie there for her to collect and be done with it. But my dreams never prepared me for the pull that surged through my body when I saw the wind tangle in her long, dark hair. I wanted to kill Eddie and had she not been there I would have, but the idea of killing him and hurting her did me in. I don’t want her to look at me the way most people in New York do. I want her to see me the way she did when we were kids, to gaze upon me as if I’m her everything.
Everything I’ve done has been for her. To be good enough for her, to show her that I’m capable of giving her everything she could dream of. While it’s not necessarily clean money I’ve made, these rich fuckers didn’t get their fortunes by being virtuous either. I’ve committed my share of atrocious crimes to get what I have, including the occasional hit when absolutely necessary. But don’t try to tell me these one percent assholes don’t have blood on their hands for every dollar in their possession. The difference is, I seek out and destroy evil while they slaughtered innocence. Sanctioned murder is still murder.
The entire time I was in the city, all I dreamed about was Kat. I was sure even with all the horrid shit she’d said to me that she felt the loss too. Our love was forbidden, clandestine, yet no matter what happens in our separate lives, our souls will always belong to each other. So when I saw the fuckin’ wedding announcement, I wanted to burn Wainscott Hollow and all of Montauk to the fucking ground. But that wouldn’t be prudent, so I did the next best thing. I bought everything Kat loves, every inch of space around her, because it was the only way to get close to her. She sure as hell wasn’t marrying me.
“Heath.” She calls my name.
I’m sure it’s the wind playing tricks on my mind, the dunes flooding me with repressed memories. I keep walking up to the estate to kick Henry out of his bed.
“Heath, wait.”
I stop but don’t look behind me, not caring to see the black void I’ve been living in for half a decade reflected back to me. I’m haunted simply by her voice and the memory of her love.
“Heath,” she whispers as she nears. Her sweet touch alights on my shoulder. “What are you doing back here?”
“To recover everything that was taken from me.”
“What was taken from you?” She moves fluidly like the waves and stands in front of me.
I don’t want to look at her because the pain is so acute. Yet, I’m fueled by her beauty, and I breathe her in as if she’s my only source of oxygen, and without her, I’d die a thousand deaths.
