Page 120 of Kings & Chaos

“Going to be too cold to do this soon,” Oscar said behind me.

Rock looked over his shoulder at us. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit right now.”

It was something Reva said, and I laughed, then felt a little sad because I missed Reva and our chats in the kitchen while she cleaned.

What surprised me was that Reva was one of the only things I missed — Reva and Claire and the girls. I missed Mara too, but I’d gotten used to texting and calling her while I’d been at Aventine, and we were still able to do that as long as one of the storms didn’t knock out the Wi-Fi.

Life on the island with the Kings had been distilled to the essentials: taking walks, making food, cleaning up outside when a storm blew through and took down branches on the surrounding trees.

And of course, sex.

Lots of amazing, mind-blowing sex, both alone with Oscar or Rock, who had been totally agreeable about my sexual moods, and together.

I wasn’t mad about it.

Neo hadn’t joined us yet, and I had to admit, I wished he would. Rock and Oscar had extended the invitation, but he’d always shaken his head, disappearing into his room, or more often, outside, probably so he couldn’t hear us.

It had made me sad at first. He was the biggest asshole I knew, but he was also the loneliest person I knew, and it was hard not to want to fix that, especially after what had happened between us before we’d left Aventine.

But as the weeks went by on the island and he went back to treating me like I was invisible, I’d returned to my earlier motto.

Which was basically fuck him.

My hunger for him was still like a fever — it kept me up at night, had me twisting and turning in my bed alone, even after I’d had several orgasms with Rock and Oscar — but I wasn’t some puppet for him to use and throw away.

Rock stepped off the outcropping and onto a small stretch of sand. It wasn’t the kind of sand you got in the Caribbean, more like tiny little pebbles, but it was flat and gave us a break from picking our way over the outcroppings that ringed the island.

I looked out over the water, searching for my favorite landmark, and spotted the faded red lighthouse on another island across the water. It looked like something out of a novel, one of the ones that took place on a windswept island filled with ghosts and long-dead secrets, and I was dying to explore it even though Oscar said it was abandoned.

“Romantic huh?” Rock asked, following my gaze.

I smiled up at him. “Kind of. Do you think that’s dumb?”

He scolded. “Why would I think romance is dumb?Thatwould be dumb.”

I laughed and bent over to study the ground, looking for the sea glass and shells I’d been collecting since we got to the island. Christmas was only a week away, and my gift selections for the Kings had been limited to the little store on the mainland.

Not that I got to choose something myself. The Kings wouldn’t let me leave the island, and they’d taken turns piloting the boat across the water to resupply us with food. I’d asked each of them to send me pictures of gift options for the others and had chosen my gifts via text.

It was like a spy operation, and all I’d managed to find was a disposable camera for Oscar and an apron for Rock stitched with a bunch of shellfish and the saying,Who’s Your Crawdaddy?

I still didn’t have anything for Neo, and I was starting to think I was going to have to make something like some kind of fucking Victorian heroine waiting for her sea captain husband to come home.

“What are you going to do with all that sea glass?” Rock asked as I bent to inspect a piece of dark green glass with smooth edges.

“I’m not sure.” Walks had become part of our daily routine, and I’d amassed something of a collection. “It’s just something to do when we walk.”

“We should head back soon,” Oscar said, his gaze on the horizon.

The words had no sooner left his mouth than I felt the first fat drop of moisture fall from the sky.

The sky seemed to break open, and all at once it was pouring.

“Oh my god!” I shrieked, laughing. “You cursed us!”

“Let’s go!” Rock grabbed my hand and we bolted up the sandy slope and into the trees, then down one of the winding paths that seemed to run every which way on the island.

I knew a few of them, the ones closest to the house, but I had no idea where we were now. Luckily for me, Rock seemed to know, and I ran with him, Oscar right behind us, in the formation they seemed to take up whenever I was with them, like my stalker might step out of the woods at any second even though no one knew where we were.

---