“ARE YOU AWAKE?” Chris whispered, half hoping he wasn’t.
“Mmm-hmm.” Kota tightened the arm that held her to his side.
She rubbed her cheek on his chest. If she were a cat, she’d be purring. Happiness fizzed like champagne in her belly.
Only to give way to churning anxiety.
She’d waited too long to break the news. Now that they’d bared their bodies, and even parts of their souls, her betrayal would cut Kota that much deeper.
He might cut her right out of his life.
Back in L.A., Kota had been the least of her worries. She’d worried about letting Reed down. Keeping her job. Disappointing her mother. And if she’d felt guilty about sneaking into a celebrity wedding, it was because deception didn’t come naturally to her. Her vague notions of journalistic integrity had yet to be tested.
But they’d been tested now, first by Verna and Roy, then Sasha and Tana. And most thoroughly by Kota himself. Trespassing on his island to save her own ass, she’d discovered the man behind the movie star, and she’d fallen in love with the menagerie of broken animals he’d given a second chance at life.
Nothing could justify betraying any of them.
It was time to come clean.
She cleared her throat and tiptoed in. “Um, remember how we were talking about the press? Well, about that. I—”
“Listen,” he cut in, “I know you have to defend your mom. I even respect it on a mother-daughter level. But don’t expect me to get on the bandwagon. The press killed my best friend as sure as if they shot him between the eyes, and then they tore his body apart on the front page.”
She went still. This was big. And bad. And utterly heartbreaking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, compassion prevailing over dread. “Who was he? Or she?”
“Charlie Fitz was his name.”
She searched her memory.
“Ten years ago,” he added.
“I was in college back east.” A world away from L.A. She stroked his chest lightly. “Can you talk about it?”
He covered her hand with his, pressing it over his heart. “Charlie had a history before he came to L.A. When he was fifteen, he killed his whole family. Parents, baby brother. All of ’em, all at once, with a shotgun. Boom, boom, boom.”
“Jesus.” Not what she’d expected.
“I know what you’re thinking. But he wasn’t a psychopath.” He squeezed her fingers. “He was out of his head on meth. Awake for five days straight. Hadn’t eaten. He was down to ninety pounds by then.”
Okay, meth was bad shit. But still.
“He didn’t remember it afterwards,” Kota said, “but there was no doubt. Neighbors saw him go in alone, come out soaked in blood. The cops cuffed him in under ten minutes.”
“Did he go to prison?”
“No. His buddy did, the one who gave him the gun and the meth and sent him inside. But Charlie’s public defender was a crusader, fresh out of law school and fired up with ideals. She worked her ass off to keep him from being tried as an adult. He got six years in juvie instead. And a lifetime of guilt.”
Jesus. “How did he end up in Hollywood?”
“He couldn’t stay in Vermont. The whole state knew who he was. He needed to move far away, so his NA sponsor hooked him up with a friend in L.A. An agent, who showed him the ropes.
“We met him our first day in L.A. He was ten years older than me. I always wondered if that’s why he took me and Tana under his wing. Atoning for the little brother he killed.”
Chris pushed up on her elbow. She could see his troubled face in the moonlight. “What happened?”
“A reporter, that’s what.” His jaw ticked. “She started out researching a story on me. My early days in L.A. That kind of shit. She latched onto my friendship with Charlie and figured she’d discovered my deep, dark secret.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair. “See, Charlie kept a low profile. Avoided the clubs. Only went to parties if he had to for business. So when we hung out, it was usually at his place, playing pool, watching tube. Or we’d leave town. Fly up to Yellowstone and camp out for a week, or go skiing up in Park City. All of which seemed mighty suspicious to Lois Lane. She decided I must be gay. And she figured outing badass Dakota Rain would be her big break.”
The woman hadn’t been wrong about that last part. The story would have put her on the map.
“She sniffed all over town,” he said. “Even went out to Wyoming and pestered Ma and Pops. But she couldn’t find anything to back up her theory. So she started digging into Charlie.”
He swallowed hard and went on. “Charlie wasn’t his real name. He’d changed it, taken other precautions. But he knew the risks. Hell, it’s the internet age. It took that reporter less than a day to put him together with the murders.” Kota snorted. “My story wound up as the sidebar on page three. Charlie got the front page.”
“Dear God.”
“Things went to hell fast. His clients jumped ship like rats. His neighbors petitioned him to move. And his friends”—he huffed a laugh—“what friends? They disappeared overnight.”
Kota’s skin had gone slick with sweat.
“The story went viral by lunchtime,” he said. “The sharks smelled blood and closed in. ET. 60 Minutes. The fucking Los Angeles Sentinel.”
Dear God.
“I was in the Ukraine, of all fucking places, filming some end-of-the-world piece of shit. We were twenty-four hours behind on getting the news. But for fuck’s sake, we had a satphone. He could’ve called me. I would’ve come.”
Agony laced Kota’s voice. “They found him facedown in the pool. A couple of so-called journalists. They shot a hundred pictures before they bothered to check for a pulse.”
He covered his eyes. “They couldn’t have saved him, but Jesus, they didn’t even try.”
A tear leaked over his temple. Chris pressed her lips to it. His pain was still so raw and so deep, kept alive, no doubt, by guilt and shame.
Because as much as he blamed the press, it was obvious that he blamed himself even more.
“KOTA.” CHRISTY’S VOICE was rough with emotion. “I’m sorrier than I can say. But it wasn’t your fault. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but none of it’s on you.”
He shook his head, trying to make her understand. “I heard she was asking around about Charlie and me. I should’ve seen where it was going. I could’ve diverted her. Had sex with her. Anything so she’d give up the gay angle.
“But I had to make a point,” he went on, turning the knife in his chest. “Tana said I should confront her, but I dug in. I can still hear my own voice. ‘Why go on record one way or the other, when it shouldn’t matter either way?’ ”
“You weren’t wrong about that.” She laid her cool palm on his hot cheek. “You were what, twenty-five? Practically a kid. How were you supposed to see ten moves ahead?”
He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were damp, filled with warmth and affection.
She stroked his fevered skin. Her smile was as gentle as her touch. “You stood up for your principles,” she said, “even though it could have hurt your career. Don’t beat yourself up for that. You were the good guy.”
He wanted to believe that. And she was right about the blame. There was plenty to go around, and much of it could be laid at the press’s door. From the most mercenary paparazzi to the highest reaches of the network news, they’d all made hay with Charlie’s tragedy. And even though any idiot could tie Charlie’s overdose directly to the headlines that preceded it, nobody at the Sentinel lost any sleep over a good man’s ugly end.
Christy leaned in and kissed him, sweet and tender. Her hair, a mass of glossy waves, tumbled around them, their private cocoon. A sanctuary he wouldn’t let ugliness penetrate.
He stroked her bare shoulder, cast from a mold for his palm. Pushed his hand under her hair to cup the back of her head, to cradle it, protect it.
To protect her. Keep her safe.
His chest, so tight with fury a moment before, expanded as if he’d drawn his first breath. His heart swelled so his ribs could barely contain it.
Pushing her down on her back, he caged her head with his arms and gazed into eyes so deep he’d never reach the bottom if he lived a hundred years.
“Christy Gray,” he said in a reverent whisper, “I’m falling in love with you.”
JOY AND PAIN washed through Chris in equal measure. Because—God help her—she was falling in love with him too.
She closed her eyes, afraid he’d see dismay there and misconstrue the reason. Why couldn’t this be simple? Why must this ugly secret lie between them?
There was no way she could tell him now. Not with Charlie’s story fresh on his lips.
It explained so much, some of which wasn’t clear even to him. Sure, he had good reason to distrust the press. They’d contributed to, and exploited, his best friend’s death.
But that wasn’t the whole picture by a long shot.
What Kota refused to consider was Charlie’s own role. The guy had obviously been a powder keg of guilt with a very short fuse. And who could blame him? Remorse must have hung on him like a lead suit he could never take off.
But Kota, a tender by nature, had taken his wounded friend into his keeping. Now he blamed himself for causing Charlie to be exposed, and for not being there to help him when the shit hit the fan. He believed he let Charlie down—twice—and he carried that guilt like a chain around his heart.
And guilt, as she’d learned during the past few days, was an accelerant. Dribble it on the smallest spark of recrimination, and—whoosh!—you had an inferno on your hands.
In Kota’s case, he needed someone other than Charlie to share the blame with him, so his justifiable dislike of the media had exploded into an obsession that turned him against an entire profession and drove him to turn his brother’s wedding into a siege and his own home into an armed compound.
Not that she could ever convince him of all that. The toughest thing about guilt was that you couldn’t be talked out of it. No amount of logical explanation, sympathetic understanding, or old-fashioned common sense could dislodge it once it dug its claws in.
Only a crisis could uproot it, an emotional tsunami that washed away everything in its path, opening up the landscape, clearing the sight lines.
Hers had hit twenty-four hours ago, and only because she was trapped on a desert island with three people she planned to betray. Getting to know and care about them had made writing the story so repugnant that everything in her rebelled.
Only in that pressure cooker had she realized what would surely be so clear to anyone else: Guilt at disappointing her mother had not only driven her into a career she didn’t want, but also forced her into an assignment that went against everything both of them believed in.
For her, it was a life-changing epiphany.
To Kota, though, it would mean jack shit. Because not only had she betrayed him, but her betrayal also stabbed at his deepest wound. How could he forgive her when his own guilt still had him by the throat?
If she tried to tell him now, her apology would fall on deaf ears. He’d see her deception instead, which was real and undeniable.
He’d see lies. He’d see the enemy.
He’d see a whore who sold her body for a story.
She felt his gaze on her face, the love in his eyes. She had four days to convince him she was worthy of it.
Four days.
They’d go fast.
Four days to talk and laugh and have sex on the beach.
Four days to show him all he’d come to mean to her.
Four days before she had to tell him the truth.
HE GOT IT. Gazing down into Christy’s face, at the sooty lashes fanned against pale cheeks, the red lips slightly parted as if waiting for his kiss, Kota finally got it.
This was how Tana felt.
The dopey look his brother got on his face, like the sun rose and set in Sasha eyes, used to make Kota snicker. Now he looked into Christy’s eyes, a thousand miles deep, and he tumbled in. Falling.
And that—another stunning revelation—was why they called it falling in love.
He smiled with his whole heart. At last the mysteries of the universe were solved. At last he understood why people wanted this, why they threw themselves into it, no matter the cost. Why they mourned its loss like a death.
He dropped a kiss on those lips, then rubbed his cheek along hers. Nosing the curve of her ear, he sucked gently on the silver bead in her lobe. Her breath riffled his hair so it tickled his jaw. Her breasts rose and fell against his chest, suspended above her.
His fingertips threaded her hair, tracing small circles on her scalp. His knee made a space between hers. “Christy, darlin’,” he whispered. “I’m gonna make love to you now.”
Her palms stroked down his back, a slow, tender slide. “Kota.” Her voice caught on his name. “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect to feel this way.”
“Neither did I, sweetheart. But I like it. I like everything about it.”
His other knee joined the first, and she parted her legs to give him room. He trailed kisses along her jaw, and she gave a breathy little laugh, parting her lips to take his tongue.
He meant to take it slow, the prince kissing the princess awake after twenty years under a spell. But she had other ideas. Her head lifted off the pillow, applying the pressure he’d held back. Her hips came up off the mattress, inviting him inside.
Out the window went storybook notions of lovemaking. This was real. It was now. He wanted inside her, all the way in. She was already inside him, running in his veins, swelling his heart, his balls.
In one smooth motion he caught her hips and sat back on his heels, dragging her up his thighs and onto his cock. One thrust had him seated, the next had her eyes opening wide with surprise and wonder, and a whole lot of wow. She’d unchained his animal. And she damned well liked it.
Hauling her upright, he drove deeper, taking her nipple in his teeth, scraping as she arched, sucking as she cried out. His hands cupped her gorgeous ass, helping her ride him, his fingers drenched in the hot mess they’d made.
Gripping his shoulders, she worked her thighs till she couldn’t. Then he took over again, going up on his knees, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Hang on, baby,” he murmured, and he carried her down, flat on her back, trying not to crush her, dying to crush her, to absorb her through his skin.
It was sex, and more, and the more made it better, better than ever before. She fisted his hair, dragging his lips down to hers, kissing him, and it was more than a kiss. It was molten, and it spread through every inch of them, welded every juncture until they beat with one heart, felt with one skin.
And when they came, together, there was no Kota, no Christy. There was only a flame, one flame, burning bright.