“Is that enough?”

Kaia nodded and closed the lid on the jar before she gave him the brush. His fingers grazed her own as he took it and her stomach clenched, a tight curl of sensation.

Holding her gaze in the mirror, he bent down to press a kiss to the curve of her neck. She shivered, raised her hand to run her fingertips over his cheek and jaw. “Your lip.”

“Magic ointment. Can barely feel it.” His breath whispered over her skin like a warm wind shaped for her alone.

She could see his lips in the mirror and the swelling was gone, the cut barely visible. “All right,” she said with a smile that came from the wild heart of her. “In that case, you’re permitted to use your mouth.”

His smile was so bright and so young that she knew without asking that this was a smile only she would ever see. It was too innocent for the security chief or the older brother or the trusted son. Too vulnerable for the world.

As if his shell had cracked, allowing her a glimpse of the naked core of this man.

“Tell me if I tug too hard,” he said before beginning to run the brush through her hair.

He almost immediately hit a snag. Stopping at once, he began to work to loosen it up with far more patience than Kaia; where she would have hit at the knot impatiently, he unraveled it with a care that caused no tension on her scalp.

“I used to braid Lily’s hair when she was small,” he said unexpectedly.

“My cousin Edison did it for me.” Kaia smiled. “Your sister’s hair was probably less trouble than mine.” She loved her hair, but a tiny part of her could still be jealous of the heavy silk of Lily’s, so slick that it would fall smoothly back in place no matter how turbulent the wind.

“To brush, sure,” Bowen confirmed. “But man, it was like the strands were coated in silicone—or possessed little devil minds of their own. Every time I tried to fix a braid, it’d fall apart.” He shook his head. “The only good thing was that it’d make her laugh when I tried not to swear.”

Kaia’s thoughts rolled back in time. “Before I came to live with my aunt and uncle, my mama helped me wash and oil my hair, and my papa used to do my braids.” Maybe if she’d grown into a teenager with her parents, she’d have started calling them Mom and Dad, but she’d lost them as a young girl and they were frozen in time as Mama and Papa.

Two brilliant young people whose lights had burned incandescent in their souls. They’d wanted to change the world, share that light, and they’d brought up their daughter to believe in hope, in passion, in the power of love to alter a universe.

But then the very world they’d loved had snuffed out their lights and Kaia had lost her way in fear. Shame might’ve twisted her up at the choices she’d made except that her parents had left her with a gift neither time nor death could erase, a promise that “We will love you, no matter what. Always, Kaia. Always.”

“My father was a lyricist by training and inclination, but he also loved to create other forms of art,” she told Bowen as echoes of her father’s voice filled her head. “It was never enough for him to do a simple braid. He’d do hundreds of fine braids, or a big braid across my head like an ancient queen, or a bun with a braid around it.”

“I’m starting to feel braid envy.” Light words, but his eyes were gentle in the mirror. “He’s gone?”

“They’re both gone.” It was so hard to say that even now, admit it. “I wouldn’t let my aunt or anyone else touch my hair for months after I lost my parents. I washed it and brushed it as well as I could, but I still looked half-feral.”

Bowen bent to press a kiss to her temple. “A little warrior princess.”

The bloom of warmth inside her was nothing erotic and devastatingly intimate. “I finally went up to Edison one day, brush in hand.” She laughed softly at the memory of the look on his face. “He was fifteen and had Atalina for a sister—she’s had a no-fuss bob since the day she got a voice and could make her wishes known. He had no idea what to do.”

“But he did it.”

“Yes.” Because that was what brothers did and Edison was her brother, no matter their official relationship. “He slowly got better at it and these days he tells me it helped with his hand-eye coordination.”

Bowen hit another snag, worked at it. “This beautiful hair, I dream about it.”

The deep rumble of his voice shivered through her, her breasts swelling under the airy fabric of the cover-up. But she didn’t rush him, the pleasure she received from watching him behind her, his chiseled face set in focused lines, a deeply visceral thing.

And though she had childhood memories of her father brushing her hair, that sepia-toned memory faded under the reality of today.

That had been a childhood sweetness.

This was a very adult moment, honey richness in her blood. “Bowen?”

“Hmm.”

“Give me your arm.”

Halting his smooth strokes, he stretched forward his left arm. When she put her fingers on his skin and pressed down on the muscle trainers, he gave her a curious half smile. “Testing my muscles? Trust me, I have enough to brush your hair.”

“Does it hurt if I apply pressure?”

“The bugs?” He withdrew his arm and continued with her hair. “I barely remember they’re there. Things are fucking incredible.”

His brush stopped partway. His eyes blazed at her in the mirror. “You thinking about putting pressure on my skin?”

Her own eyes dark pools of fire, Kaia said, “I think the knots are out.”

“But if I don’t dry it, it’ll get messed up when I do this.” Fisting one hand in her hair, he leaned down to kiss her neck again. It was hot and wet, the slight pull on her scalp an exquisite spice to the mix of sensation.

She twisted around and wove her own fingers into his hair, her mouth meeting his in a kiss that devoured. Kaia didn’t know who was the hunter and who the prey; the reins passed from one to the other breath by breath. Bowen slid his free hand to her throat as she bit down softly, so softly on his lower lip, a caress of teeth that came from her other side.

She wasn’t aware of rising, but she gasped a breath into the kiss when their bodies came into heated contact. His hard and lean. Hers softer and curvier. Every cell in her body sighed. Sliding her arms around his neck, she tried to get even closer, her tongue licking his and her breasts crushed against the plane of his chest.

He ran his hands down her back, gripping her hips to hold her so tight not even a molecule of air could get between them. It was only Kaia and Bowen in the here and the now. A man and a woman.

A desperate hunger in her, she tore at his shirt.

Bowen didn’t break the kiss, but he raised his hands between them and began to unbutton it. His knuckles brushed her breasts with every move until she couldn’t take the excruciating sensation of fabric tugging over needy flesh. Wrenching back, she put her hands at the bottom of her cover-up and pulled it off.

“Fuck.” Bowen halted with his shirt partly open, the pale brown of his skin exposed in a triangle against the white of his shirt.

He came at her the next moment, his mouth voracious and his hands possessive.

She was still trying to tear open his shirt, but his kiss was driving her mad and she couldn’t focus.

When the mattress hit her back, Bowen’s weight coming down on her, she wrapped her legs around him and ran her hands down his chest. The muscle trainers broke the smoothness of his skin, but she could feel the heated life of him and that was all that mattered.

He stroked her with a roughness that betrayed his own desperation, his mouth demanding kiss after kiss. Breathless, aching, she finally managed to undo the last two buttons on his shirt and shove it off. He helped her get rid of it. “Kaia. Siren. Mine.” Harsh, hot breaths against her ear before he kissed his way down her throat, his hand plumping her breast.

Dipping his head without warning, he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

Kaia arched on a moan so deep it was nearly silent. Pulling at his hair, she said, “Bowen, I want skin.” She pressed an openmouthed kiss to his shoulder, tasted salt from his swim. “Bowen.” It was an order this time, imperious and wanting and on the edge of madness.

He kissed his way back to her mouth. “You are so fucking beautiful.” A hard kiss before he pulled back just long enough to kick off his board shorts. His shoes were already long gone.

She entangled herself around him the instant he returned, this human who burned with life, his inner light so hot it scalded.

When he reached down to see if she was ready, she said, “Yes.” Another kiss. “I want you.”

Shuddering, he stroked her with his fingers regardless, that fierce concentration on his face that she’d already started to adore.

Her body was his, melting on his fingers. She orgasmed on a silent scream, her inner muscles clenching in hard pulses. She was yet humming from it, her blood as thick as lava, when he began to push into her. And the hum deep inside her began again, building and building with each rigid inch.

Their eyes met, held.

What passed between them was an unspoken and heartbreaking promise that resonated in the air, held them locked in time as they swam in a sea that belonged to them alone.

Chapter 30

Belief can move mountains. I never, not for a second, allowed myself to believe that I would fail in the peace negotiations. To start there is to not start at all. You must start with an absolute belief in success.

—From the private diaries of Adrian Kenner, peace negotiator, Territorial Wars (18th century)

BOWEN LAY ON his back with Kaia tucked up against him, his arm around her shoulders. The muscle trainers had to be irritating her skin but she seemed not to mind, and he couldn’t make himself let her go.

Contentment turned his muscles heavy, his eyelids lowering. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good.” As if he’d had a Kaia-shaped hole inside him his entire life, and now, at last, here she was.