Hot-Blooded (21 page)

Full and giving, rich and eager, her lips told him things her words never would. They spoke of a forbidden connection. A fatal attraction that inched closer to disaster the longer they played this game. Control surrendered on her terms, but submitted nonetheless.

Pinballing between the drugs and the closeness, Blake’s treacherous thoughts bounced through the rock tumbler of their afterglow. His rough edges smoothed. His dull matte façade sharpened to a brilliant luster. And unsightly, ugly spots buffed away to reveal the shine beneath the surface.

She did that to him. Kea made him shine from the inside out.

Did
he love her?

When his lips left hers, the soft lines of her usually hard face tamed him. Or maybe shamed him. Yes. He should be ashamed of himself for using her like this.

“I—” She started to speak, but something stopped her.

The truth.

She didn’t want to admit it, but the lost, confused look confirmed his new greatest fear.

She loved him.

Chapter Nineteen

“I … I’m tired.” Keahilani covered her near admission with a forced yawn. She was way too high. And she absolutely positively did not love Blake. No way, no how, no chance.

And even if she did, she didn’t have time for love, so it was irrelevant.

He grasped her shoulder and rubbed circles with his thumb. “Relax,” he said. “You don’t have to say it back. Just bask in the knowledge that you have something to hold over my head for tonight, and we can forget I ever said it tomorrow when we’re sober.”

She barely laughed. Ridiculous how similar this situation was to the one between her parents all those years ago. “Yeah, good plan. Just like Mom and Dad.” Shit. Shouldn’t have said that. Yet, it felt strangely freeing to let go of the family secrets she’d kept bottled inside for so long.

“Divorced?”

“Never married.”

Breezy swirls of misinformed reason drifted around her head. A wave of verbosity settled on her tongue like a hit of acid. Bitter at first, but sweet when the tracers started doing their thing. God, his hands worked magic on her tired limbs.

“Must’ve been tough on your mom, raising so many kids.”

“I was always the best kid,” Keahilani joked. “The only girl too, so Mahina and I were best friends. While the boys did their boy things, we bonded over surfing and hula and Hawaiian culture.” God, how she missed her mother.

“You inherited the surf shop from her?” He dug in to the sore shoulder muscle. She flinched before relaxing into his strong hands.

“No. Long story. None of your business.” It wasn’t. So why did she want to tell him all about it? High. Right.
Shut up, Keahilani.

“Okay, what about your brothers, then? Three of them? Or more I don’t know about?”

“Isn’t three enough?” She rolled her neck back and forth a few times. He took the cue and shifted his focus there, kneading with just enough pressure to loosen the clamp on her inhibitions. God, the weed did wonders not only for her sex drive, but also for her too-tight muscles. Maybe she should smoke more often. Might be a great stress reliever.

“Four’s a handful.”

“She was stupid.”

Blake paused. “Why do you say that?”

“She kept letting my dad back in after he continually screwed her over. I wasn’t old enough to understand the dynamics of their relationship, but I knew deep down that something wasn’t right. I could see it in Mahina’s expression every time someone mentioned him. He pretended to love her to get what he wanted: sex. Which, of course, led to more babies.” Her vision fuzzed out as she stared at the close-up orange and black photograph on the wall beside the bed. Looked kinda like a butterfly.

“One day, after she found out she was pregnant with my little brother, she said, ‘Keahilani, never give a boy the opportunity to break your heart.’ This sad, sad look came over her.” She swept a hand from her forehead to her chin. “That’s when I knew my dad wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.” Afraid to relive the moment alone, she turned to face Blake.

Lines of concern entrenched his brow. “What happened to him?”

She laughed bitterly. “Karma. The ocean took him. Served him right for surfing his way into Mahina’s bed, trolling her uterus for a convenient spot to leave some babies, and packing up shop when the responsibility got too heavy to bear. Loser haole deserved worse than he got, if you ask me.”

Blake barely winced at the slur. Keahilani didn’t apologize.

“Is that how you feel about me? I’m a white dude.” He held up a hand for her inspection and clasped hers when she stared at it. “Or maybe you didn’t notice.” Oh, that damn dimple-smile tugged at the corners of her control yet again.

“I don’t feel anything about you,” she lied and rolled on to her back.

Blake snagged the pipe from the nightstand and burned another hit. He sucked, kissed her, and exhaled through their connection.

She accepted his gift without thinking. He really had to stop doing that. She rubbed her forehead. So dizzy. She held her breath several seconds, then blew the smoke through her nose.

“You feel something.” He slid a hand over her breasts and lowered it to her belly. “Here. I’ll bet I give you butterflies.” He exerted slight pressure, and warmth consumed her.

Yep. Butterflies. Like the ones that kept her connected to Mahina.

“No, you probably gave me an STD.” She stretched her back and relaxed more deeply into the mattress.

“Maybe.” He grinned.

She slapped his arm. “Asshole.”

“Asshole in love,” he murmured in her ear. The heat from his breath roused the fine hairs along her neck. The words might’ve had something to do with it too. Maybe.

“If you’re so in love, why are you leaving?” The sharp stab of a memory from Mahina’s journal shattered the mirror staring her in the face. History repeating itself? Not if Keahilani had anything to say about it.

He sighed the sigh of a man tripped by his own lie. “I’m just an island away. I can come back any time.”

“But you won’t.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Not one bit.” Man, she wished she could, though. It was hard living a life of crime and never knowing what hell lurked around the corner, ready to make a meal of you. Honest people were hard to come by.

Blake stared down at her, steady as steel. Maybe a little eager and a little disappointed at the same time. “Ask me one question, Kea, and I swear to God, I’ll tell you the truth. But one’s all you get. Anything after that is up for debate.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Is this a trick to get me to tell you something in return? Because you aren’t getting shit out of me.” Well, aside from the shit she’d already blabbed earlier.
God, put a lid on it.

“Nope. No tricks. One question.”

Keahilani mulled over her options. She wanted to know what his boss’s plans were regarding Pāhoehoe. When the boss planned to strike. Whether he knew where their farm was. A thousand questions about business invaded her mind, but the thing she least needed to know was the itch she most wanted scratched. Ego was a terrible thing. But she was very much like Pele. Passionate, powerful, quick to anger, and jealous about the men she took seriously. She guessed it was time to admit Blake had gotten under her skin.

“Who else are you sleeping with besides me?”

A shroud of intrigue clouded his face for a split second. She couldn’t tell if he meant to cover up the truth he’d so proudly proclaimed he would profess, or if he was proud that his sexual prowess was the subject of her musings. Or maybe he was relieved she didn’t ask about work.

Naturally, she now wished she had. His silence was uncomfortable.

He lit up the dregs of weed in the pipe and leaned in to give her the puff. She started to resist, but at this point, it might be better to have it. The buzz would diffuse some of her embarrassment at having asked a revealing question he refused to answer.

She opened her mouth and sucked the resinous vapor from his lips. He smiled down at her. When she blew out the smoke, he swirled his nose through it, closed his lids and inhaled.

When he reopened his eyes and targeted them on hers, his words flayed her. “I’m not fucking anyone but you, Keahilani.”

She smiled her relief as the drug haze reclaimed her. “You said my name.” It sounded so pretty coming out of his mouth.

“Keahilani.” Stretched down the length of her body, he dipped into her lips, and she tasted love.

Maybe he hadn’t lied about his feelings for her.

Their kiss was the gentle ease of a bow across the strings of a violin. The ensuing notes captivated not only her ears, but also her heart, mind, and soul. A warm splash of sunshine while navigating the surf. An escape from the bonds of work and worries and wars with distant, unknown drug lords. An embrace between two beings from separate universes, slathered in history, entrenched in the past, yet dying to escape it.

The lip lock lingered for longer than she expected and intensified as the seconds rolled on. There was that connection again. That sameness, almost like she felt with Kai, but sexual rather than familial.

She and Blake were criminals. Killers. Lovers. The pull of the bungee cord between them stretched to its limit. She tried to resist, but it was too strong. She let herself rebound into him. He devoured her, ground against her body, sparked a hiccup in her chest.

Blake convinced her. He did love her.

She didn’t love him.

She broke the lie of the kiss. Pushed him off. Turned away. He sighed and settled in tentatively behind her. Worried he might upset her, or bummed that she snubbed him, she wasn’t sure.

An arm fell across the dip of her waist, trapping her inside his bubble. Too tired. Too messed up to protest. And if she was honest with herself, she liked the closeness.

But sex and love didn’t mix for Keahilani, especially after all she’d read from her mother’s journal. She would not be a foolish, naïve dreamer like Mahina.

“It’s a good thing you’re leaving tomorrow,” she whispered as sleep wormed its way into her head. Again, with the misspoken words.

The arm around her tightened protectively. Blake’s soft breath in her hair lulled her away from reality into the land of dreams …

A handsome haole surfer stood at the foot of a rumbling volcano on its way to a massive eruption. The ground shook. The skies thickened with black ash and clouds and fog. “Come with me, Kea.” Blake crooked his finger and beckoned her. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Distant drumbeats matched the rhythm of her heart, calling to her. Lured by the energy of the volcano and obscure, dancing black shapes overhead, she followed. Butterflies mobbed her with desperate flapping pleas, blocking her view to the smoking mountain. Keahilani waved them away.

Lava erupted from the rock with a violent tremor. Blood shot into the sky, staining the clouds and slopes. Blake pushed her into the swelling crimson arms of the flow.

As she fought to keep her head up, black-winged forms made of night dive-bombed her. She should’ve been petrified, but instead, she was fascinated. They slowed and hovered as if studying her. They seemed to recognize her. A switch tripped in her chest. She didn’t know what those things were, but they made her … hungry.

Screaming a battle cry, she opened her mouth and inhaled them, sucking their tainted spirits from the night, swallowing them. Darkness surged within her, and the lava no longer burned. As her soul reveled in the newfound nourishment, she realized where she was.

The slopes of Haleakalā.

Mahina’s garden—the Pāhoehoe farm—disappeared under a sea of searing red.

Chapter Twenty

Wednesday, October 1

The vibrating phone on Manō’s bedside table woke him from a sound, dreamless sleep. Glancing at the white skin rolling over beside him, he sat up and snatched the cell to his ear. “Yeah?” he said softly.

“Manō, Blake hacked my phone. Goddamn it, he had access to everything. Phone numbers, texts, messages, email. Everything!” Keahilani’s panic didn’t faze him, though such frenzied behavior was unusual for her.

Manō eased out of bed, careful not to disturb his companion. Naked, he padded across the carpet, shut the bedroom door behind him, and slipped into the kitchen. “Start from the beginning.”