Her walk took talent.

It wasn’t a strut. It wasn’t a trot. Cara Carelli was a fucking glider. She moved her hips as though there was a constant rhythm sounding in her head and her body danced to it without her knowing. Small, tiny waist. Round, perfect ass and legs that went on for days and days, as if there was time enough in the world for her to get anywhere she wanted to go.

It was those gliding movements I’d watched as she walked away after delivering a confession I’d half convinced myself was utter horseshit.

I broke the heart of this big, Protestant Samoan. Worst damn thing I’ve ever done.

That was the aforementioned shit. Cara was a Carelli, and that meant she never apologized for a fucking thing. Guilt was a commodity for the weak, and Cara was a damn strong woman. But there had been something in her eyes. It was the low, dark cast of some emotion I couldn’t quite make out.

She’d changed a lot—or maybe she hadn’t changed at all and I was only just finding out who she really was. Everything before with us had been wild and manic and so damn fast. I’d jumped from the cliff’s edge, chasing after that beautiful girl, forgetting about the jagged rocks that waited for me in the water.

I knew regret. I knew what it looked like and how hard it could shift expressions. How tight and worried it made you look. Cara’s emotion had been raw, evident, and was something I remembered. It was something I’d looked at every day in the mirror when I did yet another dumb-shit thing. Did that a hell of a lot the past five years.

It was that look that stuck with me, long after I finished watching the glide she pulled off down the sidewalk.

“Fucking talent,” I’d told no one in particular, laughing to myself as my wife walked away.

Then I’d left the coffee shop and walked to the park, taking in the tourists and the places we’d called our own forever ago. It was stupid to think about those days—how we’d been half crazed with lust, rolling around on a blanket under a low-hanging elm tree. Or hiding behind the heavy pink flowers of a Japanese magnolia, kissing and touching because that’s what you did when you were in love. That’s what you did when you thought it would go on forever and ever, and you wanted all that shit to start right then.

The walk had done nothing to clear my head. Neither had the four glasses of bourbon or the half hour of porn I tried watching when I got back to my room. At least it was high-dollar shit. Great production quality, but the woman bent over a kitchen counter had the same complexion as Cara. Round, dark eyes hidden behind an inch of eyeliner. She was made-up, fake. She wasn’t graceful. She wasn’t mysterious. I’d given up trying to get my wife off my mind and downed the rest of the bourbon, then spent the remainder of the night and all the next day ignoring Kane’s calls and the half-dozen texts from Cara.

Please, she’d written. I need an answer.

That had been the last one. I woke up this morning, staring at the message and the others like it, trying like hell to remind myself how much I hated her.

I owed that bitch nothing.

She was slick, smooth, and knew just how beautiful she was. Cara, like her father and brother, was manipulative and shrewd, only caring about people when they had something to offer.

It was the only reason I got their attention now.

She needed me.

“Fuck that,” I said to the empty room, groaning over the incessant pounding happening in my head.

The bathroom was clean. The walk-in shower massive. All marble tile with a massive rainwater shower head up top and six jets surrounding the walls. I tapped the cold water and amped up the hot before I jumped under all those sprays, leaning my arms against the farthest wall.

I wanted to drown myself. I wanted to get lost in the sensation of the scorching water and the steady pound of those pulsing sprays as they moved over my head, down my neck, and over my chest and back. I didn’t want to think about Cara and her thick, full lips. I didn’t want to remember how tight her mouth felt around my cock when she sucked me off the other night.

“Shit.” The mutter was low, barely audible over the pounding water, and it got squashed behind the low grunt of irritation I couldn’t keep in my throat. Flashes of Cara kneeling in front of me shot through my head.

The tile was cool on my forehead when I leaned against it, cursing my disloyal body for the reaction it had to those flashes. Her mouth had been tight. Her tongue soft and warm, nearly as powerful as her fingers. She worked my cock like she always had—like she was a woman who knew how to please her man.

“Fuck.”

My dick got harder then. I pushed off the tile, flattening one hand against the wet shower wall as I gripped my cock in my free hand. “To hell with it,” I groaned, giving up the weak effort I’d put up trying to keep hate and anger brimming hotter than the memory of Cara’s mouth and tongue and sweet, full lips.

It wouldn’t take long, I knew that. My fingers were tight. My strokes even and perfect as I worked my cock over and over, letting my head get thick with images of Cara’s mouth and body and the flawless contours of her face. She had me the other night, right in her hands. She could have asked for anything if I hadn’t pushed her away.

But then, Cara had always known how to touch me. She’d been the only one to ever read me and know what I wanted, what worked to get me weak.

With my fist pumping faster, the memories shifted and went deeper until I recalled one Sunday afternoon in my old apartment. It had been summer. July, I think.

The windows were open, the sun barely a blip of light against the dark sky around the city. Cara slept against my chest, her full breasts touching my ribs. Her long, smooth legs twisted between mine. She’d smelled like something sweet, reminding me of wild grass and mint. Scents I knew from the soaps and lotions my mother had always made when we were kids. She was too poor for store-bought products like that, and when I’d admitted to having a girlfriend, my mother had sent Cara a care package—homemade lotion, soap, and a few loaves of her banana bread. I’d thought Cara would turn up her nose at the care package, but she’d fallen in love with everything. We’d eaten the breads in under a week and had spent that summer weekend bathing each other in the rest.

It had felt good, holding her, feeling the weight of her body against mine, my own wrecked and sore, and a fucking smile on my face I couldn’t get rid of. There’d been the faint noise of a siren in the distance that morning and the low hum of the fan oscillating on the stand. Then Cara smiled against my chest and rubbed her nose against my ribs, humming through a yawn as she sat up to straddle me. She looked surreal. Her naked body shadowed by the peek of light but still visible, all that sweet perfection mine for the taking.

“I could stay here with you always, Kiel.” She’d stretched, back arching and breasts moving up, then slowly down as she adjusted on top of me.

I moved my hands up, smoothing over her waist, to her ribs, and higher to cup her ample breasts. I sat up and teased them, loving the purring hum Cara released and smiling to myself when that hum became a moan.

“Then let’s stay,” I told her, my voice low, a little awed. She was real and there and mine. “Stay with me inside this room. We can forget the world outside.”

“How long would that last?” she asked, curling her long arms around my shoulders.

“Forever.”

“Forever isn’t real, cuore mio.” She lowered her shoulders, trying to pull away. I stopped her, holding her face between my hands. “What?”

“Forever is real if you want it to be.” I’d held my breath. The thought of her leaving wrecked something inside me. I didn’t think. I didn’t reason. I just said the first thing that came to me. The thing I wanted and meant but only knew I did when I spoke the words. “Marry me. Right now. Today.” She went completely still, and I took her silence as the chance I needed to convince her. “I love you, Little Goddess. We’ll make our forever start right now.”

I never knew what went through her head as she watched me, eyes impossibly wide, bottom lip trembling as I waited for her to turn me down. The no I expected seemed to die on her tongue as she went on looking at me. Probably debating with herself how she’d landed in bed with an impulsive asshole who didn’t think before he spoke. The same asshole who didn’t regret the proposal after it left my mouth.

But Cara didn’t say no. She didn’t ask why I wanted her. After the longest ten seconds of my life, that beautiful woman closed her mouth, blinking her eyes like something was stuck between her lashes.

“Yeah,” she’d said finally, kissing me lightly, hand to my cheek as my chest tightened. I was sure my heart had gotten too big for my chest. Cara was calm, the smile she wore genuine, and she nodded, inhaling deeply, like she wanted to keep the moment inside her and not miss a single detail. “Yeah, Kiel. Let’s do it. You and me and a million forevers.”

That memory was sweet. It didn’t make me hate Cara. It reminded me why I never really could, no matter what she’d done to me. That recall, that summer day and how we’d been together…even that got tied up in wanting her, in needing something to push me over the edge. Then the memory went deeper, turned hotter. I pumped my dick faster, feeling the slip of composure, the sweet ache of release rising.

I remembered Cara above me that morning, riding me, squeezing me from the inside. She’d held on to my shoulders, clamping and bouncing and giving me every sweet inch of herself before she crashed. I pulled her down onto the mattress, and Cara’s low whisper went right in my ear and straight to my chest.

“I love you too,” she’d said, and just then, my world went sideways.

That was the part of the memory that stung the most. The part I couldn’t get rid of. It stuck to me like a scar, deep and jagged. Right there in that luxury shower, the water pounding in time with my fist, and I came in minutes. My head was on my forearm now as I finished myself off, feeling stupid, weak, and confused about what was real and what I wanted to believe.

She hadn’t meant it, I reminded myself, my body settling from the strong spin of orgasm as I turned off the water and stepped onto the bathroom floor, scrubbing a towel over my body.

Cara had never been real for me. She’d never been honest. I knew now those I love yous were nothing more than bullshit she said to keep me from finding out what she’d done with those donations.

No way would I help her now.

She didn’t deserve it.

I kept repeating those truths as I toweled off and went into my room. I stared at my closet and the one pair of jeans and single button-up I’d brought with me. No way would I do anything for her. Never again. Not after how she’d played me.

You and me and a million forevers.

“Fuck,” I whispered, cursing myself for being so weak.

I need you to protect me.

That she’d said with something close to worry. Maybe a little hesitancy pulling at her features. She hadn’t wanted to admit that to me but did it anyway. Fuck me, Kane wasn’t the only Kaino who was a sucker for a woman in need.

I grunted, ignoring the scream inside my own head as I dressed, brushed my teeth, and left the suite, focused on the elevator in front of me and cab ride I was about to take.