Makena

A heaviness surrounds me, a disoriented reality that grips me physically. There’s a part of my consciousness that knows I’m sleeping, but I can’t wake up. As faces and voices stir in my subconscious, tightening my chest with fear, I know my altered state isn’t real. Still, I choke on the dread that fills my throat like a black liquid trying to drown me.

“Easy, love.” A deep brogue pushes through the darkness, anchoring me back to reality.

Knuckles brush across my cheek, and when I blink, sage eyes, warmed by the fire’s glow, stare down at me.

“I…must’ve fallen asleep.” I shift, starting to sit up.

Shadows flit across the room, the blazing fire the only source of light. Outside, the sky is black.

“What time is it?” I frown.

“Late,” he murmurs. His callused fingers trail across my shoulder, sending little sparks of electricity racing down my arms.

Holding back the moan that his touch coaxes from me, I say quickly, “I need to get back.”

“Do ye have another date ye’re needing to get to?” he teases.

I grunt. “That wasn’t a date,” I remind him.

He chuckles, burying his nose in my neck and placing his palm on the back of my head. “Right. Just friends.” His lips brush against the sensitive skin along my jaw and he croons, “I think I need more friends like ye.”

A shiver of anticipation races across my skin.

I thought that sleeping with him might ease some of the chemistry between us, but if anything, it only made it stronger. I recognize the stirring in my chest, the subtle warning that I’m already falling for the man.

Better to put distance between us now than find my already damaged heart once again torn to pieces, this time discarded at the bottom of an Irish lough.

“This,” I motion between us. “Isn’t going to happen.”

He gives me a cocky grin. “Already has, love.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not sure I do.” He flips me on my back and stares down at me with a goofy grin, his fingers playing casually with my hair, twisting and tangling.

If I thought my legs would hold me, I’d push him away and get out of bed. I need to put some distance between us so that my brain can actually start working again.

“I can’t do this…again.”

“Why?” He tilts his head, giving me an amused look, like he knows he could be buried deep inside of me with a single touch. Which isn’t all that far from the truth.

The man is addicting. But, like any drug, I know he’s toxic. At least to me.

I don’t do casual hookups. My heart isn’t callused enough for it. To me, sex will always produce emotions.

“Because my life is already too complicated without you in it,” I say, holding his gaze, hoping to God he’ll have mercy on me and walk away before I do something stupid like fall for him.

He doesn’t.

His head tilts slightly, the grin that seems permanently etched on his handsome face making him seem a lot less dangerous than he really is.

“Trust me, sweetheart, I’m one of the least complicated people ye’ll ever meet.”

“I doubt that.” He may come across as a typical playboy, but I’ve already had a glimpse of the man underneath the shallow, egocentric pretense he presents to the world.

Shane chuckles. “Give me sex, alcohol, and music, and I’m the happiest fucker in the world.”

I shake my head, holding back my own laughter at the man’s candidness. “And that is exactly why I need to leave.”

He shrugs. “We can trek back up the hill, but it’s dark. Might as well stay here for the night and I can take ye back in the morning.”

“You want to sleep here?”

“I want to do a lot more than sleep.”

“I told you-”

His lips are on mine before I have time to protest, my body melting into his, already stirring with the pleasure I know he can give me.

And I’m falling back into his arms. Into his embrace. His kiss. His touch. I give into him. Give him every piece of me, as he breaks through all the inhibitions and reservations I’ve hidden behind my entire life.

Just sex, I try to warn myself. This isn’t real.

I know the truth, but it doesn’t change the shocking bursts of pleasure that burn and flame within me at his touch. I lose track of how many times his name becomes a wailing moan on my lips. And I’m grateful that there’s no one near us to hear my wild, unabashed cries of pleasure.

Hours later, curled in a stranger’s arms, in a small shack-like cabin in the middle of a foreign country, for the first time in years, maybe ever, I feel like I’m home.