Into the Fading Twilight (Starlight Grove, #2) (70)

My gaze tracked over his face, landing on his mouth. I traced the line and shape the way I’d traced his fingers once. I memorized their story as I tried to imagine what they’d feel like pressed against mine, humming over my skin and running down the column of my throat. Across the line of my collarbone. Lower.

The ice-cold water pushed me closer to Kol. So close the lake wasn’t as frigid as it had been. Because I could feel Kol’s heat, from his words and from his body.

“I believe in you,” I whispered.

Pain streaked across his face, as if that knowledge hurt because so few had shared the sentiment.

My fingers reached out, ghosting over his brow. “But you’re more to me than solving this case, than tying up loose ends. You give me so much more than that every single day. And maybe it makes me greedy, but I want more.”

“You think I don’t want every moment I can get with you?” Kol croaked. “It’s never enough.”

I stared at him, the water holding me there, on that precipice. But Kol was right: I was reckless, and he made me remember I was alive.

I closed the distance, brushing my lips across his, featherlight. And for a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer my kiss. I began to pull back, but Kol surged forward. His fingers slid into my hair as his mouth took mine.

There was no hesitation now. No uncertainty. Kol was a man starved, and I wanted to give him every last part of me.

My body buzzed, my skin hummed, and as I pressed myself harder against Kol, he tore his mouth from mine. In a flash, his hand was gone from my hair, and he was swimming backward, creating distance.

“Nova.”

My name on his lips was a curse, an oath, and a vow.

My gaze shot to Kol’s.

“Don’t.”

God, it was unfair. For both of us. But he was the one who’d kept bringing us closer. If he knew those blurred lines would never be crossed, he shouldn’t have danced so close in the first place.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Kol’s voice gentled. “It’s not because I don’t want to. Trust me. If I could, I’d rip those goddamned heart panties clean off you. I’d take your mouth all over again as I sank into you so that I could feel your moans everywhere.”

Heat spread through me as my nipples pebbled and my core tightened. And then that different heat spread, the kind that came from anger because Kol was hiding behind his job and his badge and his certainty that no one could work this case as well as he could. But I knew the truth: He was scared.

Well, so was I. But I was still living. I wasn’t sure Kol was.

I met his dark stare dead-on. “Well, since you won’t, I guess you’ll just have to watch those wet heart panties march right up the side of that cliff, Boss. Good thing you’re basically in an ice bath already.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


Kol




TWO WEEKS. FOURTEEN DAYS OF BLUE-BALLED HELL. THREE hundred and thirty-six hours of missing her. Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes of feeling like I was living with a ghost.

I caught glimpses of her: playing in the yard with Skylar, Tink, and Pepper; coming with our big group to trick-or-treat on Halloween. She’d even slipped an invitation under my door for Sky, asking her to a tea party at her apartment and telling Sky to wear her very best princess dress.

Nova was making sure my daughter didn’t feel her absence, even when I was consumed by it.

But the worst? Her scent. I’d catch it on the air sometimes. Sunbaked cherries and vanilla. Sometimes, I was sure it was her. Others, I was certain it was my imagination because she’d been gone for hours.

Nova had done her interview with Roger alone. I’d gotten a call from him, asking me what the hell was up. I’d dodged and weaved.

And then I’d done what I always did: I threw myself into work. Usually, I had a minimum of two cases. One for the Forest Service and another for the Hourglass Network with my brothers. It just so happened that they were currently one and the same, and Nova was at the center of both.

So my escape was also my torment.

Fitting.

I forced my focus back to my damn paperwork instead of the back windows of my house. I could’ve told myself I was simply watching the animals roam in the fields beyond, but I knew that was a lie. I was an addict jonesing for a tiny hit of all that was Nova. Even a hint of that cherry-vanilla scent.

It didn’t come.

At least I could be thankful that there’d been no more incidents since the necklace and note. But there were also no leads. Livie had sent the same report to Roger and me. No fingerprints on the news articles, notes, or the necklace. The paper the notes had been written on was standard computer paper and impossible to track.

The blood had been a match for Heidi Ingram. I’d gone with Roger the day he’d had to tell her family. It wrecked us both.

But there wasn’t a damn thing leading us to who this monster was.

I’d gone with Roger to question Reese Gatlin because the reporter’s arrival had been a little too convenient for me. But we’d gotten nothing. He, on the other hand, had gotten another byline with a long-lens photo of Nova, arms wrapped around herself at the crime scene, looking so damn alone.

Because I’d left her that way.

A knock sounded on the front door, and I felt a twisting sensation in my chest. Like my heart was doing goddamned acrobatics. It didn’t leap, though. It was steady, predictable. Only got out of rhythm when I worried about Skylar or my brothers.