I laughed dryly.
Raine turned to look at me. She stared into my eyes, and I watched her expression go from annoyance at my harshness to something softer. She reached out and ran her finger from my elbow up to my shoulder.
“Sebastian,” Raine whispered, “when you look at me, I can feel how much you love me. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming—like a tidal wave—and it can make me feel like I’ve been turned inside out. I can feel it in my skin and in the pit of my stomach. When you look at me like that, I can feel your love for me in my soul. When you wrap your arms around me at night, I can feel your desire for me, and I don’t think there is any woman alive who has ever felt more wanted than I do when you’re close to me.”
She touched the side if my face.
“Dad would have seen that in you, too.”
Her point was made. At least for now, I wouldn’t argue with her.
Chapter Four
“Lilliana,” John Paul said as he slid into the booth seat across from me. He had to duck his head a bit to keep from hitting the low-hanging lamp poised above the middle of the table.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s her name,” he said.
“Whose name?”
“The chick I was banging last night.”
John Paul was my one and only true friend. We’d both fought for Landon in the tournaments, and when I had to go into hiding, John Paul came with me. Now that I was beached in the south of Florida, he’d taken up residence in North Miami Beach, which wasn’t too far from our condo, and we tried to meet up regularly.
I rolled my eyes and sucked the straw in my glass of iced tea while John Paul ordered a beer and a pile of nachos.
“Since when do you eat that shit?” I asked.
“I worked it all off already,” he claimed. “She was fucking phenomenal. Luscious Lilliana. She’s got one of those nice, round asses you just want to squeeze and bite. I hate how skinny most of the chicks around here are. I need a woman with some meat on her bones.”
“Like that bro-hemoth you dated in Seattle?”
“Stacey?” John Paul leaned back in his seat. “She was a beast.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I replied as I remembered the dark-skinned woman who was all muscle and no tits. She wasn’t that tall, but you couldn’t tell it by her attitude. John Paul had dated her for a couple of months, which was probably a record for him. “She took more steroids than half the guys we worked out with.”
“Ah, you’re just pissed she could squat more than you could.”
“She fucking could not!”
“She did that one day.”
“Fluke,” I waved my hand dismissively. “I was off one day, and you started all that bullshit just to fuck with me.”
John Paul laughed and adjusted his black cowboy hat as he leaned over the table and looked more closely at me. His eyes narrowed slightly as his lips smashed together.
“You look like shit, ya know.”
“Fuck you,” I replied.
“Just sayin’.” He leaned back again and started drumming his fingers on the table. He watched me for a minute as the server deposited a huge plate of nachos with all the extras in the center of the table. “So what’s up with you?”
“Meh.” I shrugged. “Been fighting with Raine a bit.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
His choice of words vibrated in my ears and sent unwelcomed tingles down my back. In paradise there hadn’t been any trouble.
All right, that was total bullshit, but it was the sort of trouble I could handle. Raine had been attacked by a bunch of shit-bag human traffickers who promptly died by my hand. Aside from that, there had been bad storms and my ever-present grumpiness. I’d always been moody, and Raine had to put up with my shitty attitude on a regular basis while we were stranded, but now it was worse. I still had a shitty attitude, but here I also had five thousand extraneous variables to set me off instead of just the fucked up shit inside my head. I had no idea how Raine put up with me at all.
“I’m an asshole,” I said with a shrug.
“No shit! Really?” John Paul placed his hand in the center of his chest and made his mouth into a big “O” before he started laughing. “Is she tired of your crap?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Probably.”
“So what did you do?”
I shrugged again. I didn’t really want to get into it, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about the whole situation. Maybe it would be better to tell him everything.
“Lindsay and Nick came over for dinner,” I finally said. “That dude pisses me off. I was a dick, Raine got mad, and I left.”
“Sounds like you handled that superbly.”
“You can shove your sarcasm up your ass, you know.”
“You going to argue the point?”
I wasn’t, but I also wasn’t going to justify the remark with a response. I was still thinking about what I had revealed to Raine and—quite frankly—to myself. I didn’t like talking to people because I didn’t have anything to say.
“It’s not them, really,” I said. “I know it’s me. I just…don’t have any purpose here, ya know?”
“What kind of purpose?”
“In Raine’s life,” I said. “She needed me there, and she doesn’t need me here. I just…exist beside her without anything to do.”
“Get a job,” he suggested.
“Yeah, right,” I snorted. “Doing what? With what resume? I’ve got a master’s degree I’ve never used and no employment history I can actually put on paper. What should I apply for? Parking attendant or McDonald’s? Oh wait…all the parking around here is automated. There’s also probably some hippie health group around here trying to make fast food illegal.”
“Bouncer?”
“You trying to get me back on the booze?” I glared at him, challenging. I wasn’t about to admit I made a trip to a bar almost every day. He didn’t need to know that shit.
John Paul tossed his hands up in the air in acknowledgement. He sat back for a moment and took a long swig of his beer before speaking again.
“Raine’s pretty into you,” he said. “I don’t think she’s looking to have you around just to bust up any dickhead that comes close to her. For some fucked-up reason, she likes you.”
He stared at me for a while.
“You want to go back there, don’t you?”
I nodded. There wasn’t any need to clarify where there was.
“She won’t have anything to do with it.”
I nodded again.
“Yeah, you’re fucked.”
“Thanks a lot.”
John Paul just grinned and scratched the dark beard on his chin. I grabbed a handful of nachos and shoved them in my face, effectively ending the conversation.
“You been going to that gym in your building?” John Paul asked.
I stared down at my glass and didn’t answer.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he snickered. “You’re getting soft, motherfucker. Get yourself in there before I beat the shit out of you.”
“Whatever.” I flipped him off. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
“Seriously, bro,” he said as he leaned forward again. “Hit the weights. Five days a week, just like we used to.”
“Why?” I looked back up into his eyes, and they flickered away from me.
“Because,” he said as he lowered his voice and looked back at my face, “you may not be in the wilds of your island paradise anymore, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t shit she needs to be protected from here. They know where you are, and they know what she knows. It’s only Landon’s reputation that’s keeping them from busting down your door and taking you both out. You go soft, forget your training, and you just might miss something.”