“Yeah?” I whisper, blushing so hard my cheeks burn.
His thumb brushes over my lips, eyes searching mine. “Yeah.”
I feel vindicated, seeing the emotion in his eyes and on his face, the emotions I don’t think he knows to express—emotions catalyzed by my sweet little kiss.
He sees what I’m doing. Why I kissed him like that. And it makes him feel so much, so many things, he doesn’t know how to put it into words.
I don’t mind. I don’t need words. I just need…god, honestly? Him. I just need him.
* * *
We’re seatedin the boarding area outside our gate at San Diego International Airport, waiting for our flight to board—we got lucky and snagged the last two seats on a flight bound for Honolulu in a couple hours. Chance paid for the tickets and wouldn’t hear a word of argument from me. Not like I could afford my own ticket anyway.
“I gotta call Inez,” Chance says, bringing his phone to his ear. “Hey, Inez, it’s me. How are things at the club? Ya’ll gettin’ along okay without me?…Yeah, things with Annika are pretty much settled, but I…um, shit, this is hard.” He barks a laugh. “God, Inez, I swear to fuck you’re psychic or something. Yes, I need to go to Hawaii. I’ve got some shit I need to settle. No, no worries about that. I just…I gotta see them. I gotta…forgive them, and myself. I’ll never be able to really move on if I don’t…yeah, just a day or two…well, if you’re sure, yeah, that’d be great, honestly. All right, cool, we’ll make it three days. Nah, I’m good. You make sure you call me if anything comes up. And tell the boys they can call me if they need me. Thanks, Inez. Yeah, bye.”
He hangs up and grins at me. “How’s three days on the beach sound to you?”
“Sounds like I’ll need a bathing suit,” I answer, feeling almost embarrassingly giddy at the prospect.
His grin is wicked. “Not where we’re going, you don’t.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Um, what?”
“It’s not just my uncle and his deadbeat kids who live in Hawaii. My grandma, my great-aunt, and some other cousins all do, or did. There’s a little plot of land that’s been passed on through the family. It went to my dad, and when he passed, it went to me. It ain’t much, but I’ve been paying for a local friend of the family to keep it up for me. Uncle Joseph, Eddie, and Rico never knew I owned it. I think they just assumed it went to another cousin, of which I’ve got an actual shit-ton. And back when I was in Hawaii last time, I was…” He frowns, sighs. “I was honestly too chicken shit to go. My dad brought my mom there for their honeymoon. The only vacation they ever took. She was sober, then. My grandma passed away there—peacefully, in her sleep, so there’s nothin’ creepy, it was just where she wanted to be when she passed on. I guess it just seemed like there would be too much there, and I was…I was scared to feel it all. Joey, Eddie, and Rico, they seemed safer. They knew my dad, and I thought I could connect with him. Only, what I discovered was the reason he left in the first place. Those assholes are toxic as hell, and always have been. But now…I think I’m ready to not only face them and show them I’m not that fucked-up bastard I was, but also to visit the family property.”
“What does that have to do with not needing a bathing suit?” I ask. “I mean, I’m all about you doing what you need to do, and I’ll be there to support you every step of the way, but…if we’re going to the beach, I need a bathing suit.”
He just grins again. “The property is a tiny little place on the beach. You gotta fly into the big island and then take a puddle jumper to Kaua’i and then you need a four-by-four to get to the property itself. It’s remote, isolated, and very, very private. So, what I mean is, you won’t need a bathing suit, because we won’t be wearing a stitch of clothing for the next three days.”
“Oh,” I whisper, blushing again. “I see. Sounds…fun?”
He laughs. “Mama, you don’t even know.”
“You’ve got plans, I take it?” I meet his eyes, see the twinkle in his, mischief and arousal.
He brushes his lips against mine. “Nikki-baby, you got no fuckin’ clue.”
“I think I may have a few ideas of my own,” I murmur.
“Been dreaming of getting you alone since the day we met,” he whispers. “And baby girl, the things I want to do to you…”
I tug my fingers through his beard, and then use his beard to pull him closer, so my whisper is almost inaudible, felt more than heard. “I…can’t…wait.”
12Last of the Demons
Chance
Our rented Wrangler bounces and jounces along the rutted, muddy two-track. Mud splatters, and the suspension works overtime to absorb the deep pits and divots and ruts in the path. It’s barely a path, honestly. The only way you’d even know the two-track path is even there is if you know it’s there to begin with. Otherwise, it’s just a narrow gap in the dense tangled tropical forest way out in the middle of nowhere on the northern edge of the big island. There’s an old, faded white sign nailed to the tree near the opening, which at one time said “Kapule” on it, but at this point it’s just black paint faded into illegibility.
Annika clutches the oh-shit bar with both hands, sometimes grabbing her chest with one hand to hold her tits down when we go over a particularly nasty series of bumps and ruts.
“Jesus shits, Chance, where the fuck are we going?” She glances at me, annoyance rife on her face. “We left the main road almost half an hour ago.”
I laugh. “Almost there, mama. Uncle Joey and the boys live on the old family homestead. It’s about twenty acres in the middle of nowhere. They only got indoor plumbing and electricity a few years before I was born, and I think they got satellite internet only like five or ten years ago. It’s…rustic, let’s say.”
She eyes me, and then spies another series of ruts ahead, and braces, one hand on the oh-shit bar, the other clamped over her chest. “When I think of Hawaii, I think of beaches and surfers and Magnum PI. This…” she nods at the road with her head, “makes me think, paddle faster, I hear banjos.”
I cackle. “Understandable misapprehension for folks who’ve never been to Hawaii, or who never leave the touristy areas. That’s why they live way out here—no visitors. No tourists. And honestly, no authorities, for the most part. They get left alone, mainly because it just ain’t worth the trip all the fuckin’ way out here, even for cops. I mean, it’s a locally open secret Joey and boys are…not the best sorts. I think they cook meth, probably grow pot, too. But they keep to themselves, so they get left alone.”
