Page 38 of Dreadful

I hum a little, pressing my mouth to the very edge of his.

“Let’s do something fun,” he says.

“Did you forget that we can’t leave?”

The corner of his mouth pulls up. “Plenty of fun things to do here, Bell.”

I sink my teeth into my bottom lip. My mind goes somewhere immediately, somewhere warm and unhelpful and specific enough that I have to look away from him.

He catches it anyway. He pulls back just far enough to watch my mouth, and his grin does something slow and unbearable. “What I wouldn’t give to be inside your head right now.”

I let my eyes drag up to his. “They’re very boring thoughts.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” He shakes his head, a strand of hair falling across his forehead. He leans closer, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his chest. “C’mon, Bell. Put me outta my misery.”

The width of his shoulders cuts the afternoon light clean in half. The shadow falls across me and my body responds to it before my brain can catch up—a pull low in my stomach, a memory my hips seem to have better access to than I do. I press my knees together.

I drag my tongue across my lower lip. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“Something—anything,” he murmurs, his lips ghosting along my jaw. “I’m gonna die of boredom long before Devil's Hand grows a pair of balls and hits us.”

“Bishop said to stay ready.”

“Fuck Bishop.” Flat, immediate, no deliberation at all. “Five days, Bell. Five days of nothing—no chatter, no movement, no whisper. This whole thing is just a precaution.”

“To keep us safe.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

The question is soft, almost lazy, but it hangs in the humid air between us, weighted with everything we aren’t saying.

“Of course I do.”

It’s not a lie. The words taste true on my tongue, even as something tightens low in my stomach—a familiar, coiled warning.

“Then let’s go swimming. I’m not on watch until later.”

My gaze drifts toward the far corner of the patio where Rafe sits motionless in what I’ve started calling the Designated Chair—a sturdy chair that faces the tree line, its back to the house. Even from here, I can see the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his attention never wavers from the perimeter.

They have motion sensors, cameras, a wrought-iron fence tall enough to keep most people out. But the back of the property is wilder—ancient oaks with heavy limbs stretching over neighboring yards, creating shadows a person could climb through.

“Don’t worry about him.” Gage’s voice drops, warm and intimate against my ear. “Just wear that purple bikini. The one with the little ties on the hips. He won’t even remember how to be pissed off.”

My eyes snap back to his. “Is that right? Couldn’t possibly be because you like that suit?”

His nose traces the line of my throat before his lips find my earlobe. “Tomato, tomahto.” Then he pulls back, grips my hand, and hauls me off the lounger.

Ten minutes later, I walk across the patio in the purple bikini.

Rafe makes a low noise in the back of his throat as I pass—something that doesn’t quite make it all the way out of his chest, and I stop walking.

“This okay?” I ask over my shoulder.

His gaze is glued to my ass,

“Tell her it’s fine, brother,” Gage says from behind me.

Rafe takes his time. His gaze climbs slowly—hips, waist, the line of my throat—unhurried in a way that feels less like looking and more like cataloguing, like he’s committing something to memory he already knows by heart. When his eyes finally find mine, a beat passes where nothing moves. Then the corner of his mouth pulls just slightly to one side.