Chapter 3 · Tide and Grip

I was one step off the edge when the arm snatched me back.

It hooked my ribs like iron. The dock vanished. My sneakers kicked empty air, and black water churned straight under my soles, cold spray hitting my bare shins. I screamed, just raw noise, and drove my elbow back hard.

Solid muscle. He grunted, but his grip didn't budge.

"Done yet?" Dominic's voice scraped right against my ear.

"Let me go!"

"Not into that water."

He dragged me backward off the dock like I weighed nothing. I fought every inch. Nails, heels, whatever I could kick. It didn't do shit. My spine slammed the stone boathouse wall, and he crowded straight into me, one forearm braced over my head, hips pinning mine so tight there wasn't an inch of room left.

Fourteen minutes. That's how long my run lasted. I'd counted every second.

Danny taught me how to pick a lock when I was sixteen with a bobby pin and a filthy mouth. The brass deadbolt on the bedroom door at Cinder Point looked serious, but it dropped just as easy. Dark stairs. Pantry door nobody thought to sensor. Then a lawn wide as a football field, the cut limestone steps down the bluff, and the skiff sitting there tied to the pilings like someone wanted me to take it.

Maybe someone had. I couldn't think about that yet.

Lake wind sliced straight through the cheap knit Gia had loaned me. My teeth were clicking. But Dominic Castellane was pure heat, and that was the part that pissed me off most. No coat. White shirt open at the throat. His chest was flattened against mine so hard his heartbeat punched straight through both layers of cloth.

Heavy. Way too fast.

"Forty-eight degrees," he said, his breath ghosting my cheek. "You'd have eleven minutes before your heart gave out. Less in that sweater."

"Better than a locked room."

"The room's locked because there's one road out of this place, and three different crews would pay cash to find you on the shoulder."

"Great pitch." My voice rattled. I hated him for hearing it. "You use that on every girl you trap?"

His jaw clenched. Spray clung to his dark lashes, and he didn't even blink.

"Just you."

I shoved his chest with both hands. It was like shoving the bluff. He didn't move, just took the hit twice, and on the second shove his breath hitched right under my palms. Once. Sharp. Like I'd caught him off guard.

I froze.

"You were watching the whole time," I said.

"Camera on the stairwell. I was out the back door before you cleared the grass."

"So you let me run."

"I wanted to see where you'd head." His gaze dropped to my lips, stayed there a beat too long, then dragged back up to my eyes. "You went straight for the water. Didn't look back once."

"Should I say thank you?"

"It wasn't a compliment."

"Try this one, then." I brought my knee up hard. He twisted his hip, taking the blow on his outer thigh, and the shift wedged his thigh dead between my legs. His hand slapped the stone beside my cheek. Everything got tighter. Every part of me that wasn't freezing was crushed against him.

He was breathing through his teeth now. So was I. Wet strands of my hair whipped across his cheek.

"Mara," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "Stop."

"Or what?"

"Or you'll pull something, and I'll have to put my hands on you again."

A raw, dirty jolt shot low in my stomach. I told myself it was panic. I'd been lying to myself like that for the last ten seconds.

Behind me, paper crunched in the pocket of my jeans. The torn calendar page from the shoebox. Dominic's eyes dipped down instantly. My throat clamped up. I pressed back harder against the wet stone, trying to hide the fold with my body.

He looked back at my face. Didn't ask. Didn't reach for it.

That was worse.

"You're bleeding," he said.

I glanced down. My right palm was split open from the dock railing, a fat splinter sticking out of the meat beneath my thumb like a jagged black flag. I hadn't even felt it until he pointed it out.

"I'm fine."

"Give it here."

He held out his hand, palm up, inches from mine. He didn't grab. He just waited.

"You've already got your hands all over me," I spat. "You hauled me off the edge like luggage."

"That was keeping you alive." His voice went low and rough. "This is asking."

Every smart voice in my head yelled at me to pull away, to keep my mouth shut and back up. But I couldn't move, and the chill was making my bones shake.

I dropped my palm into his.

His fingers closed around my wrist, calloused and hot, turning my palm toward the amber yard lights from the bluff. His thumb skimmed the torn skin. I flinched. He went dead still, murmured something under his breath, then gripped the splinter with two fingers and yanked it clean.

I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper. Didn't make a sound.

"Done," he murmured.

He didn't drop my wrist.

His free hand came off the stone and slid into the damp hair at the back of my neck, warm and firm, his palm cupping the base of my skull like he already knew exactly where I'd snap. He leaned down until his mouth brushed the shell of my ear, his words so quiet they barely made it through the wind.

"Counting room. Dawn."

My chest seized. "What?"

"You decode one page of your father's ledger, and I bend one rule. Any rule you want." His warm breath hit the cold skin of my throat, sending an electric shiver straight down my spine. "One page, one rule. Every single day you work."

"And if I tell you to go to hell?"

"Then the lake is right there." His thumb stroked once over the sensitive nape of my neck, slow and deliberate. "I won't pull you off the dock twice."

I looked past his shoulder at the black water slapping the wood, cold and endless, and the skiff rocking on its line like a trap waiting to snap shut.

He still held my wrist. His chest was still crushing mine, his pulse hammering against my ribs. And the sickest part—the part I'd die before I admitted—was that my brain was already picking the first rule I was going to break.