Marcus found that all he could do was to nod.
“Alright. Back to shore then.” She paused. “But not out of the water yet. I’m not ready to get out.”
He nodded again.
“On your mark, get set, go!” she hollered, diving under the water and speeding away.
He followed suit, just barely keeping up with her. He was stronger and had better cardio, but he also had a lot more mass to drag through the water and she almost had him beat. He touched down just half a second before she did, but she didn’t seem to care. She came above water, her hair a dark blonde slick down over one shoulder, grinning like a loon.
She stood and the water fell away from her. They were less than hip deep right now and Marcus asked God what he was being punished for right now. The sun caught in each water droplet that raced down Iris’s chest, over her soft stomach.
Marcus, again, chose to dive under water, rather than lose his earthly mind, or do something that he’d surely regret later. Like take this woman he was assigned to protect and make love to her in the surf of Lotus Island.
He stayed under until his lungs screamed. He came up gasping. Again, she was right beside him.
“I’ll make dinner tonight,” she said, floating on her back and looking up at the blue, blue sky that was just beginning to take on that slightly melancholy periwinkle that happened an hour or so before sunset.
“Alright,” he said, allowing his eyes to skate over her while she looked away. Jesus. It was like looking at Aphrodite. “You know I don’t mind doing it though, right?”
“Sure. But Beau brought all those fresh groceries by and you’ve been doing it all week, so I figure it’s my turn.”
Marcus nodded and dove under the water again. His life just got so much harder. So much fucking harder.
You’re not good for women, he reminded himself for the thousandth time since he’d decided to become celibate. He’d withdrawn from women because all he ever did was make them sad. He was intense with women, in ways that he didn’t even really understand. He’d just been told, over and over, that he was too much, that it was like he took all the oxygen out of the room. That it was too intense. He didn’t understand it, but he’d come to hate it about himself.
And whenever he’d tried to be more… vanilla, the woman he was with loved it. Went crazy for him. But sooner or later, he ended up getting bored and he’d leave her. And she’d cry. And he’d feel like a dick.
Something about the way he liked to have sex was not normal? Or something? Honestly, he didn’t even know. He just knew that he had no desire to make anyone else cry again. Ever. You’re not good for women, he chanted in his head again as he took more strokes under water. Away from the woman in the pink bathing suit that had made him want to untie the strings with his teeth.
She was gentle and sweet and obviously mostly an innocent. There was no way she’d be able to handle him. Even if he could have her. Which he couldn’t. Considering he was assigned to her damn case. And he was the only person in the world who knew where she was. It was completely unethical.
He needed to back off and cool down and step back. This time he counted to 120 before he allowed himself to come up for air. It wasn’t long enough.
CHAPTER SIX
Marcus stared at the ceiling of his bedroom in the blue-predawn light. Part of him wanted to roll over and just sleep in for once. But he knew that the woman one room over deserved better. In the few days since they’d gone swimming, he’d been aloof from her, doing his best to put distance between them. Because he knew that if she got any closer, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking a taste.
And he wasn’t sure he could stop with just one taste.
She was a civilian, one he was charged with protecting. She was wanted by a faction of the mob. It was unethical to get involved with her and it was unwise. It could only serve to distract him. And beyond that, he wasn’t looking to destroy another woman, which he was certain would happen with her. So there. Simple as pie. All he had to do was step back from her.
Marcus grabbed his earbuds and popped them in as he allowed himself just a few more minutes before he got up and started the day.
The problem was, the more distance he tried to put between them, the harder she seemed to be trying to get closer to him. He could tell that she was attempting to start a friendship with him. And he could sympathize with that. She barely understood why she was in this exile anyways and he was the only person she got to see every day. The woman was probably starving for human contact.
He didn’t want to be a jerk and freeze her out, but honestly, he couldn’t see any other way.
His fingers, however, moved of their own accord as he selected a song he hadn’t heard off of O Wolfgang’s latest album. Marcus was irritated as shit with Iris’s twin, and just the sound of his pitch perfect, manicured voice had Marcus wanting to punch through a wall. But he couldn’t resist the chance to experience the window into Iris’s mind. Each song was like a hidden message that she’d put out into the world through Owen.
And as many walls as he’d put up between them, Marcus found that he was still desperate to know her just a little bit better.
Marcus frowned as the lyrics of the first verse of this new song washed over him. They were sad. About betrayal. He shifted in the bed and looked out the window. Who had she been betrayed by? Her brother? No, the lyrics were unmistakably romantic. Marcus felt his hand tighten on the sheet next to him. She must have been betrayed by a lover.
He didn’t like that thought. Didn’t like it at all.
Marcus picked up his phone and scrolled through the song titles on the latest O Wolfgang album. He frowned when he realized that the first was entitled “Crush, Baby” and the last was entitled “Bittersweet Goodbye.” He realized that the album chronicled a relationship. Starting with a crush, falling in love in the middle of the album, betrayal in the last half and a few breakup songs at the end. Despite the title, “Bittersweet Goodbye” was a fast-paced, intense hard rocking break-up anthem that had been number one for damn near two months. Half the world had been able to relate to the rawness, the fury and pain and eventual acceptance of the end of a relationship.
Marcus flicked to a song at the beginning of the album. One of the bubbly, new crush songs. Yeah. This song had a compass. The lyrics were spot on and the melody accompanied perfectly. These songs were definitely written by a woman who had gone through all of this. Marcus gritted his teeth. Why did that bother him so much? Of course she’d been through this crap. She was in her late twenties and she was utterly gorgeous. Of course she’d been in relationships before.
He found himself selecting the song about betrayal again, entitled “Green Sweater.” Besides the title, the lyrics to the track were much more vague than any of the others on the album. It frustrated him because all the other songs were so specific they were almost like having a conversation with Iris. But with this one, she was guarded. There was so much emotion there that she’d obviously felt that she’d had to hold something else back, like the details. But it was the details that Marcus desperately wanted.
***
It was the first morning since they’d come to the beach house that Iris had beat Marcus downstairs. For some reason, that felt like a win.
He’d been distant from her for the last few days, since they’d gone swimming and Iris knew exactly why. She’d pushed too hard and too fast for information. Personal information. She was trying not to blame herself, because it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t really know how to make friends. But she did think it was a little bit pathetic that a 29-year-old woman had so little experience with befriending anyone. She was also a little embarrassed at how tongue-tied she kept getting around Agent Marinos. Marcus. He kept insisting that she call him by his first name.
The problem was that he was so handsome that everything, everything, felt intimate. Even calling him by his first name. She’d say it and find herself blushing, unable to look into those dark
eyes. Or he’d absently put a little cream in her coffee and she’d find herself with a racing heart, heated and thrilled at the little gesture. Not that it meant anything to him.
No, he’d proven over the last week that she was little more than a job assignment to him. He’d thrown himself headlong into his work, trying like hell to figure out what the next move for the Kutros family would be. The chasm between them was growing, and Iris felt herself more and more out of her depth at how to get closer to him.
Being able to make coffee for him felt like a good place to start.
She couldn’t help but hum as she did it and it was the tingles up her arm, the tempo at her temple that first told her she was humming a new song. She almost groaned when she realized that it was literally the tenth Marcus-inspired song she’d written since she’d met him. The first ones had been you’re-really-handsome songs and thank-you-for-taking-care-of-me songs, and let’s-be-friends songs and wow-I-really-wanna-touch-you songs. And this one was what? A let-me-make-you-coffee song? Lord. She was starting to think that she really had it bad. She had it bad for someone who barely took the time to look at her these days.
“You wrote every song on the last album?”
His voice came from behind her and Iris definitely jumped, but it didn’t escape his notice that it wasn’t nearly as much as it used to be. She was getting much more comfortable around him. That made his chest swell as much as it sent alarm bells off. She shouldn’t be comfortable around him. Getting close to him wasn’t going to be good for her.
She turned around, a bright smile on her face that hit him right in the solar plexus. Even after he’d been such a distant jerk the last few days, she was still grinning that sunny little smile right at him.
“Every single one,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee in the mug he’d come to favor since they’d been there. “Here. I finally got to make you coffee.”
For some reason this made her cheeks go pink and he wasn’t sure why. But he had other mysteries to solve at the moment. He took a swig of the coffee and leaned back on the counter to watch her. She’d taken one step toward the door of the kitchen, probably to head to the music room, but seeing that he was leaning back, about to make conversation, she reversed and mirrored his pose, leaning against the counter opposite him.
“When you write a song, are they from your imagination?”
“Um, what do you mean?”
He was frustrated with himself. He was beating around the bush when he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to ask. He knew exactly what he needed answers too. “I mean, are your songs indicative of your actual life experiences.”
“Oh,” she nodded, understanding. “Yeah, totally. I can’t write a song unless it’s about something that I’m actually feeling or experiencing. I can’t make them up out of the blue. If you look back at O Wolfgang’s discography, it’s kind of like a road map of my life.”
“So, you wrote ‘Green Sweater’?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Iris froze for a second before she set her coffee aside and planted her hands behind her, sliding herself up to sit on the counter, her socked feet swinging in front of her. She wore a longer, flowy white skirt and a petal pink sweater. The result was that she was one shapeless mass, but Marcus was grateful for that. He didn’t need any reminders of what she was shaped like under those clothes. The single glimpse he’d gotten was enough to be burned into his brain for a lifetime.
“Yeah…” she answered slowly, cocking her head to one side and picking up her coffee again.
“What’s it about?”
She furrowed a brow. “You couldn’t tell?”
He cleared his throat and crossed one ankle over the other. He could have sworn that she’d just looked at his bare feet and blushed, but that couldn’t be true, so he dismissed the thought.
“I understand that the song is about betrayal. By a lover?” The words felt like chalk in his mouth and their aftertaste went sour when she confirmed them with a short nod. “But I don’t understand why it’s called ‘Green Sweater’.”
“Oh,” she said as she pursed her lips for a second and set her coffee down. Her eyes were focused on something far away. “He was cheating on me. I found another woman’s green sweater in his bedroom. That’s, ah, how I figured it out.”
She didn’t notice that Marcus’s knuckles had gone white where he gripped the counter, or that his coffee cup shook as he set it carefully down. She was lost in her thoughts and brought one hand absently through her hair.
“I mean, honestly, now that I think back on it,” she continued. “Maybe he was right. Maybe it really wasn’t cheating.”
Marcus’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “He was with another woman and he says it wasn’t cheating?”
Iris nodded, her eyes to the side, out toward the ocean. He wanted those eyes so badly. He needed their blue. He hated when she looked away from him.
“Well, he says that we weren’t technically together together, you know? Even though,” she bit her lip, “even though I thought we were. He says I was confused. And that I was getting all hurt over nothing.” She shrugged and her hair tumbled over her shoulder. “Maybe he was right.”
Marcus growled, low and deep in his throat. “He wasn’t right.”
Iris looked up at him, surprised by the ferocity of his tone. “No, I mean, these things can be complicated.”
“Was he older than you?”
“Yeah, ten years or so.”
“Had he been in relationships before?”
“Yes.”
“Had you?”
Iris blushed, hard, and dropped her eyes to the kitchen floor. It was because of this that she didn’t notice Marcus getting closer and closer to her. “Um. No. Not really. At all.”
Iris cursed herself for being such a dork. What kind of 29 year old had only ever been in one relationship? And one that she’d fumbled so badly? It was embarrassing that she’d misread Jet’s signals so much. Maybe he’d been right. That if she’d been more worldly, more experienced, she wouldn’t have misinterpreted what was going on between them so badly. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so betrayed when she realized that he was sleeping with other people at the same time as he was with her. And now she was just laying all this out for Marcus? He was going to think she was such a naive newbie.
Iris jumped when his feet came into her line of sight, less than a foot from where she sat on the counter.
“Then he should have made it very clear for you exactly what he wanted, Iris.”
She shivered when he said her name.
“Well…” she started, fully intending to make excuses on Jet’s behalf, even though she wasn’t completely sure why.
“No,” Marcus shook his head, cutting her off. “This was not your fault.” He took another step closer. “And this guy was not right. He was older and more experienced. He should have taken care of you, Iris.”
Iris forced herself to meet his gaze, and the second that she did it was like she was trapped in his eyes. They were so dark and so much closer than they’d ever been before. She felt as if there was a surplus of gravity inside them; it was like she was getting sucked into him. She was dimly aware that she wasn’t breathing.
He was close enough now that she could feel the heat from his body on her bare knees. She wasn’t prepared for the moment when his warm, rough hand cupped her chin, but she didn’t jump. For the first time, she didn’t jump. Honestly, she melted into his touch. And it wasn’t a gentle touch. He was roughly holding her in place. His eyes burned. She felt vulnerable, exposed, and somehow, still completely safe.
“I don’t care about the technicalities of modern relationships,” he spat the words out with obvious disdain for the man who’d betrayed her. “If he had the honor of being with a woman like you, he should have been loyal at all costs. You deserve complete fidelity.”
Iris was frozen, ensnared, trapped, and she still hadn’t drawn breath. She realized, with something like a fist a
round her heart, that those dark eyes had fallen away from hers, that they were lingering somewhere near her mouth.
Oh Jesus. Was he about to kiss her? As potent as this crush on him had begun to be, it had never once occurred to her that he might kiss her. That he might want to. She suddenly had no idea what to do, how to handle that. She’d only kissed three people in her entire life and she was certain, into her bones, that kissing Marcus wasn’t going to be anything like that. Under his burning gaze, Iris suddenly felt completely naked. Observed. Caught. She was getting a lightheaded, dizzy spin and she wasn’t sure if it was his proximity or the fact that she’d apparently forgotten how to breathe.
But then his hand dropped from her chin and he was stepping away, putting a full three steps of space between them. Iris gasped in a breath and slid down from the counter immediately. Her legs were gummy beneath her and Marcus lunged forward to steady her with a strong hand at her elbow.
He cleared his throat as she tossed her eyes up to his, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Iris straightened.
“It’s complicated. What happened with Jet.”
Marcus sneered. “Jet? Yikes.”
Iris couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yeah, I always thought it was kind of a silly name.”
Her light, ringing bell of a laugh went a long way toward dulling the burning intensity inside Marcus. He couldn’t stand the idea that she blamed herself for her former lover’s shortcomings. And he also couldn’t stand the thought that whoever this dumbshit was, he’d thrown away the chance to treat her well. If things were different, if he wasn’t here with her under these circumstances. If he was a different, easier man…well, Marcus would currently be deep in the throes of worshipping this woman. From the top of her hair right down to the pink toenails he’d recently noticed she’d repainted. It infuriated him that there was someone out there who’d just thrown it all away. And what was worse, this dick had made her question herself in the process.
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