“Are you all right?” he asked, coming to a stop right in front of me.
I nodded because I was fine. But it felt like a lie as I scanned his magnificent half-tattooed body.
I averted my eyes and cleared my throat to tell him, “I just got off the phone with Mika. She’s safe and flying back here with Rashid and Albie next week. Thank you for helping me help her.”
He grabbed the towel waiting for him on the nearby lounge chair but didn’t take his eyes off of me. “I’m glad you will get your sister back.”
“Yeah, best birthday present ever,” I said with a light laugh.
But Han didn’t laugh along. He just stared at me with that hungry wolf look in his eyes. And just like that, after three months, the kaleidoscope of butterflies was back.
“What you did? Making me marry you? That was crazy,” I found myself telling him out of the blue. “You get that, right?”
“You’ve told me that several times on our wedding day,” he answered.
But as he once told me. “That’s not an answer to my question. Do you understand that forcing me to marry you was crazy?”
“I understand that it came off that way to you,” he said, running the towel over his ink-black hair. “I understand that I should probably feel ashamed of my actions.”
“But you don’t?” I guessed out loud, resentment and anger once again rising inside of me.
Han paused. Lowered the towel. And looked to both sides. “I can’t.”
His eyes came back to me, pinning my gaze underneath his, and my heart trembled like a newbie trying to stay up on her first wave. “I’ve tried, and I can’t.”
His dark, low voice was the sea, each word crashing into me, as he told me. “I can’t regret what I did.”
Three months.
Three months in Delaware, and we didn’t talk, we didn’t have sex, we didn’t even touch.
But after just three days in Hawaii and three minutes of conversation…
We fell into each other, kissing desperately.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I said, ripping my lips away from his.
He waited, his arms still wrapped around me, dripping water and lust.
“I’m going to pay you back,” I reminded him—reminded myself. My chest heaved with the intention. “I’m almost there. Just a few more weeks. And when I do, you have to let me go. No questions asked.”
He scanned my face with the most terrible look. But in the end, he gave me a sharp nod….before adding his own declaration:
“Until then….” He stared down at me, his almost black eyes burning like moons that block the sun. “Until then, you’re mine. Nod.”
I hesitated. But only for a second. For the first time since we met, it felt like an easy choice when I nodded, pushing my chin down, then up—
He re-captured my lips in another kiss before I could complete the action.
And no, he wasn’t a Fae King. I knew that.
I knew that.
But it felt exactly like a magical pact.
30
HAN
Just a few more weeks…
Just a few more weeks until Han would have no choice but to let her go. He took her again and again. Everywhere, as if they were reclaiming the apartment, now as man and wife.
“You know when I first saw you, I thought you were this cold, totally removed Fae King,” she told him after one particularly intense session.
After some humorous back and forth about what romantic Western literature and the definition of a Fae King was, he laughed and asked, “And what do you think of me now?”
“That you’re a crazy hot Fae King,” she answered. “Like, in every sense of the word.”
She was right about him being crazy. Chen was performing exceptionally well in his position as The Silent Triad snakehead for Hawaii. So that left him with more free time than expected. He could have returned to the East Coast, where he would be useful as they established their branch in Delaware. Instead, he spent all that extra free time on Jasmine. And though she still insisted on working, his world winnowed down to her.
Workouts, eating, and business became the things he did only when she wasn’t an option. And for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, his world became absolute bliss.
But then he got the call from Victor and Phantom.
JAZZ
I was in the middle of my usual first-time surfer safety tips spiel for a class outside the Tourmaline Resort when one of my students looked at his waterproof Apple Watch and said, “Sorry, Everybody, this class is over.”
Everyone, including me, looked toward “Jason,” who was really Bui pretending to be a tourist just like them, hoping to surf for the first time
“Why does he get to decide when class ends,” one of the students, a high-maintenance groom from Seattle, whined. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, frowning at Bui myself. “Jason, what’s going on?”
