Page 137 of Forged By Sacrifice

Her shorts barely covered those curves on her rear end, and a striped shirt was tied so that it bared her midriff, showing off more bronzed skin and muscles.

She was dancer and singer and girl all rolled into one. She hit me to my core and wouldn’t let me move. The guys were equally stunned, standing behind me, watching her perform for an audience she hadn’t even registered was there yet.

When she finally turned, mid-strum and mid-word, I was hit once more. This time by the intensity of her eyes that stared at me beneath dark lashes. One eye was as blue-green as a Caribbean island bay, while the other was almost muddy green like a Louisiana swamp. They didn’t match. And yet, they fit her perfectly.

The joy that radiated across her face from her performance slid off, just as her hand slid off her guitar at the sight of us.

“What the hell?” Her husky voice, full of surprise, washed over me in a wave that told of unsteady seas. Of beauty and desire and storms. And I knew I was in trouble.

“Who the hell are you?” Mac asked, and I had to put a hand holding a bag of groceries out to prevent him from striding toward her.

Her face had closed down, the moment of joy disappearing behind a stone wall. A beautiful stone wall.

She slid the guitar behind her, the strap emphasizing her breasts that were small and pert and barely hidden by the knot of the shirt that sat below them. Tempting me. Tempting all of us.

She should have been intimidated by three muscled men at the door. She should have been unsure and maybe a little shaky, but she wasn’t.

Instead, she climbed back onto the coffee table and, from there, stepped onto the couch so that she could get closer. She glared down at me from over the back of it. On the couch, she was barely taller than my six foot three. She put her hands on her hips, balancing on the soft cushions as if she owned it.

“Great. My dad’s asshole recruits. Did he send you to retrieve me like some AWOL cadet?” she asked.

I heard her words, but it was difficult to register them because I was still awash in the waves of emotion that she’d sent through my body. Like being tipped over in an unseen current when you swam into a wave.

“Your dad? You mean Abrams is your father?” Truck asked.

Mac started laughing. “Holy shit, that would mean someone was actually brave enough to have sex with that bastard.”

I dropped the groceries and slammed a fist into his shoulder—not hard enough to be a threat, but hard enough to make a point. “Asshole, that would be her dad you’re talking about.”

She laughed. A sound that was reminiscent of wind chimes lost inside a windstorm, muffled, but still strident. Sinking into your soul. “It’s okay. I often wonder the same thing. What must my mom have been like if she was really willing to put up with him for eight years?”

We all just continued to stare at each other—her on the couch, us with our groceries by the door. “You’ll literally have to drug and hog-tie me if you expect to take me back. Or you can just tell him you failed in your mission and enjoy the ocean view.”

There was a moment where I think uncertainty crossed her face, a flash of something that wasn’t confidence, but it was so quickly replaced with a rebellious look that I wasn’t sure I’d even seen it.

“We weren’t told you’d be here at all.” I finally found my voice.

“I mean it. I’m not—Wait. What?”

“Professor Abrams gave us the place for eight days before our summer cruise in exchange for painting it,” I explained.

She took me in then, really seeing me for the first time. She started at the top with my short hair that needed a cut, then traveled down to my hazel eyes before moving down to my snug T-shirt and tan skin from being near the sea. Once she’d traveled the length of me with her eyes, she returned them to mine, and my stomach flopped over. I wondered, vaguely, if this was how girls felt when my asshole friends looked them up and down in a bar.

She laughed, that husky tone reverberating down my spine once more. “Figures. Just my luck.”

She flung herself down on the couch, her mirth filling the air. Truck, Mac, and I all exchanged a look. We weren’t sure if she was an angel, or a demon, or just simply crazy.

Finally, she seemed to get ahold of herself, and she sat back up, her dark locks of hair swinging wildly about her face, her two-tone eyes taking in the three of us again. A smile brought her pink lips up at the edges in a way that made me want to touch them.

“I’m Ava. And it seems I’ve run away from home at the worst possible time.”

Run away. Shit.

“How old are you exactly?” I growled. I didn’t know if I was growling at her, or my own body’s reaction to her, or at the guys who were staring at her like she was the best thing since dry clothes.

She waved at me like I was asking something inconsequential. “Don’t worry. I’m not jailbait. I’m nineteen.”

That didn’t make her less jailbait in my mind. Messing with a professor’s daughter was always out of the question. No cadet would ever look at a faculty member’s child—girl, guy, or otherwise. It was the unspoken rule. You didn’t shit where you slept.

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