The morning air in Ben’s small house was thick with the scent of coffee and a fragile, unfamiliar peace. I stood in his kitchen, wearing one of his old Sheriff’s department t-shirts, the worn cotton soft against my skin.
It smelled of him—laundry soap and a clean, masculine scent that was the polar opposite of the swamp’s wild musk.
Last night had been… a respite. A shelter.
In Ben’s arms, I hadn’t been a woman haunted by her sister’s ghost or torn apart by a dangerous attraction. I had just been Callie, and he had just been Ben.
The boy who’d carved our initials into the old oak tree by the creek. The man who held me together when I was falling apart.
A knot of guilt twisted in my stomach, tight and cold. It felt like a betrayal, not just to Hannah’s memory, but to the raw, violent truth of my own desires.
I was trying so hard to choose the light, to choose safety. But the darkness had a gravitational pull I couldn’t seem to escape.
The screen door creaked open behind me. I turned, a soft smile ready for Ben, but it died on my lips.
It wasn’t Ben.
Nash stood on the back porch, framed by the morning sun, a silhouette of lean muscle and coiled rage.
He didn’t knock. He didn’t call out.
He was just… there. As if he’d been pulled from the shadows by the very thought of my temporary peace.
“Playing house with the law, Callie?” His voice was a low growl, laced with something that sounded dangerously like betrayal.
His eyes, the color of a stormy sea, raked over me, lingering on the faded Sheriff’s star on the shirt I wore. It felt like he was peeling the fabric from my skin with that look alone.
“What are you doing here, Nash?” I crossed my arms, a pathetic attempt to shield myself. The thin cotton of Ben’s shirt suddenly felt like a brand.
He took a step into the kitchen, and the entire room seemed to shrink, the air crackling with his presence. He moved with a predator’s grace, silent and menacing.
“I heard you were shacked up with the town hero. Came to see it for myself.” He gestured with his chin towards the coffee pot. “He make you breakfast, too?”
“Get out.” My voice was shaking, but I held his gaze.
“Not until you hear me.”
He closed the distance between us in two long strides. I was forced to crane my neck to look up at him, the scent of pine, river mud, and something uniquely him—a wild, masculine musk—overwhelming me
“You think he can protect you? You think this badge and this little house are some kind of magic circle that the Devereauxs can’t cross?”
“Ben is the sheriff. He’s a good man.” The words sounded flimsy, even to me.
Nash let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “He’s a good man in a bad world, and that’s going to get you killed. He’s playing by rules that Lucien Devereaux set on fire a long time ago.”
“And you’re any better?” I shot back, my own anger rising to meet his. “You, who was with my sister the night she died? You, who won’t tell me a damn thing?”
His jaw clenched, a muscle twitching violently. For a second, a flicker of raw pain crossed his features before being replaced by that familiar, impenetrable fury.
“You want a damn thing? Fine. I’ll give you something.” His voice dropped, intense and urgent.
“Hannah found their route. The main one. It’s not the bayou channels, not anymore. They’re too watched. It’s the old Cypress Creek shipping lane. The one that was abandoned after the hurricane in ’08.”
I stared at him, my mind racing.
The Cypress Creek lane was a graveyard of rusted barges and rotted piers, swallowed by mangrove and swamp. No one had used it in years.
“How do you know that?” I breathed.
“Because I was with her when she found it,” he bit out, his fingers digging into my arms as he grabbed me, not to hurt, but to force me to listen. The contact was a jolt, a current of pure electricity that shot straight through me.
“There’s a marker. An old channel buoy half-submerged near the third bend. They use it as a drop point. The tides are predictable there. They can move product in and out under a full moon with no one the wiser. Hannah had pictures. She was going to give them to me.”
His words hit me like a physical blow.
He wasn’t hindering the investigation. He was part of it. He was helping her.
And I had been sleeping in the bed of the man who saw him as the prime suspect. The guilt from this morning curdled into something sharp and acidic.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice was a whisper.
“Because you ran straight to him!” he snarled, his face inches from mine. I could feel the heat of his breath, see the storm raging in his eyes.
“You ran to the man who wants to put me in a cage, who thinks a search warrant and a polite conversation are going to take down an empire. You chose safety, Callie. But there is no safety.”
He was right.
The illusion of it was shattering around me. The cozy kitchen, the smell of coffee, the borrowed t-shirt—it was all a lie, a stage play I was performing for myself.
“He’s using you,” Nash continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous, persuasive murmur. His thumbs began to stroke circles on the inside of my arms, a caress that was both a comfort and a threat.
“He sees a damsel in distress, a puzzle to solve. He doesn’t see the fire in you. He wants to put it out. I want to watch it burn.”
My breath hitched.
My body, that traitor, was responding to him, leaning into his touch even as my mind screamed in protest. The air between us was a physical thing, thick and heavy with unspoken history and undeniable chemistry.
“You have to choose,” he whispered, his lips brushing against my ear. A shiver traced its way down my spine.
“His world or mine. The pretty lie or the ugly truth. You can’t have both.”
“I hate you,” I breathed, the words a confession.
“I know.” He didn’t release me.
Instead, he tugged me forward, out the back door and into the humid morning air. He didn’t stop until we were under the shade of the huge live oaks that bordered Ben’s property, the Spanish moss dripping down like silent, grey sentinels.
The woods. His territory.
He spun me around and slammed me back against the rough bark of an ancient oak. The impact jarred a gasp from my lungs.
His body pressed against mine, hard and unyielding, trapping me. One hand tangled in my hair, tilting my head back, while the other pinned my hands above my head against the tree.
I was completely at his mercy.
“Tell me you didn’t feel a goddamn thing last night when you were with him,” he demanded, his voice raw.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“Tell me he makes you feel like this,” he ground out, his hips pressing into mine, leaving no doubt of his arousal, of the effect I had on him.
“Tell me his touch makes you forget your own name. Tell me he makes you want to burn the whole world down.”
I couldn’t speak. I could only stare into his eyes, a drowning woman seeing her one, destructive chance at air.
The fight in me evaporated, replaced by a desperate, aching need that defied all logic.
He saw the surrender in my eyes. His mouth crashed down on mine.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A branding.
It was desperate and angry and punishing, a raw expression of his jealousy and his claim.
There was no tenderness, none of the gentle homecoming I’d felt with Ben. This was a wildfire, a hurricane.
His tongue plundered my mouth, and I met him with equal force, my body arching against his. My captured hands strained against his grip, not to escape, but to touch him, to hold on.
He released my hands only to fist them in the hem of Ben’s t-shirt, ripping it up and over my head in one violent motion. It fell to the mossy ground, a discarded symbol of a safety I’d only been pretending to want.
The cool air hit my bare skin, but it was nothing compared to the heat of his gaze as it devoured me.
“Mine,” he growled, the word a possessive, primal claim against my lips before he captured them again.
His hands were everywhere, rough and sure, mapping the curves of my waist, my hips, the swell of my breasts. I clawed at his shirt, needing to feel his skin against mine.
Buttons popped, fabric tore. There was no patience, only a frantic, mutual urgency.
He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, my back pressed hard against the unyielding bark. It was rough, uncomfortable, and the most intensely arousing thing I had ever felt.
This wasn’t love.
It was something far more dangerous. It was an addiction, a shared madness.
Fueled by danger and grief and a chemistry so potent it was corrosive, we moved together in a frantic rhythm under the watchful eyes of the ancient trees.
It was a fight and a surrender, a punishment and a release. Every thrust was a question, every bitten-off moan an answer.
In the depths of the woods, with the evidence of my night with another man lying discarded at our feet, Nash stripped away every one of my defenses, leaving me raw, exposed, and utterly his.
When it was over, we clung to each other, panting, our bodies slick with sweat. The silence of the forest rushed back in, broken only by our ragged breaths.
He slowly lowered me to my feet, my legs shaking too much to stand on their own. He didn’t kiss me again.
He just rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. The fury was gone, replaced by a deep, hollowed-out exhaustion that mirrored my own.
He stepped back, leaving me cold and achingly empty.
He picked up his torn shirt from the ground, not bothering to put it on. His chest was a landscape of taut muscle and shallow cuts from my nails.
“Cypress Creek lane,” he said, his voice flat, all business again. “The third bend. You’ll see the buoy. Be careful, Callie. The water’s deeper than you think.”
And with that, he turned and melted back into the shadows of the swamp, leaving me standing violated and alive, with tree bark digging into my back and the choice he had given me branded onto my very soul.