Kiss the Stars (Falling Stars #1)(24)

Yeah, that compulsion had to die. Not a fucking chance would I touch her. Not even when my body was getting all kinds of wayward ideas that this was my second-chance, the guilt it evoked threatening to slam me up against a wall.

Knew this was a mistake.

Knew it.

And there I was, anyway.

A sucker just asking for it.

She swallowed hard, her delicate throat bobbing, the girl completely flustered. A shot of redness pinked up her cheeks, and her eyes were darting everywhere but on me. Finally, she forced a smile. “Oh, goodness . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you already had company, Lyrik.”

She glanced at me, almost as wary as her . . . daughter.

I scraped a hand over my face like it might break me from the stupor, too.

Penny had to be her daughter.

If Lyrik could be her twin, the young girl was nothing but her mini-me. And the tiny boy in her arms? He was a mix of the two, caramel eyes, lighter hair, but his nose the same as his sister’s and their mom’s.

She was a mom.

Sweet and shy and bold and every-fucking-thing my fingers were itching to reach out and trace.

Touch.

Take and taste.

And I was so completely fucked.

So fucked as Lyrik looked between us, something like suspicion darkening his expression. “Leif . . . this is my baby sister, Mia. Penny and Greyson’s mom. Three of them are staying here this summer.”

I gulped around the jagged rock that was suddenly wedged at the base of my throat.

Painful and cutting off airflow.

If I listened hard enough, I could hear Karma kicked back in the lounger at the back of the room, laughing her ass off while she sipped at a frozen cocktail.

“Nice to meet you, Mia.” Came out harder than it should.

Irritation buzzed through my being. The contract I’d signed with Sunder suddenly felt like a death sentence. Blood written on the motherfucking line.

Woman a temptation I didn’t know how to bear.

If it was possible, her smile was even more faked than mine, her voice trembling when she said, “Nice to meet you, too, Leif.”

Problem was, that voice came at me like a song. Something that had been haunting me for the last week.

Calm and peace.

But peace was not meant for me.

“Waif!” The little boy in her arms pointed at me with a grin that could singlehandedly decimate an ironhanded regime.

Awesome.

“Hey, there,” I muttered, uneasiness riding free, and his mom was planting a kiss to the top of his head and then running her hand over the same spot like she was trying to get him to settle down, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t doing anything but trying to settle her racing heart that I could feel pounding through the room.

Or maybe it was just mine stampeding out of control.

Wayward and hard.

Riding with a warning.

I glanced back at Lyrik. His displeased expression had kicked into a storm. He set his daughter to her feet. “We should get you settled.”

“Sounds good.”

Needed to get the hell out of this room before I suffocated.

I went for indifferent when I threw up a hand, though the words were harsh and low, “It was very nice to meet you all.”

Lyrik punched the code into the door to open it, and I followed him out. It ran me smack into the heat, a wall of oppressive humidity instantly coating my skin in a slick of sweat.

Or maybe it was visceral.

This reaction that made me feel like I was gonna come right out of my skin. I had no fuckin’ clue how I was supposed to spend the summer living on the same property as that woman.

Come to find out, Eden was actually hell.

Now that was what was called cruel and unjust.

But I guessed if the punishment fit.

In front of me, Lyrik stalked along the sidewalk that edged the left side of the pool.

The thick, stagnant air was full of the sound of the fountains gurgling and splashing into the carved stone reservoirs, birds chirping and flitting through the trees.

It felt like a complete contradiction to the drone of the city encircling the estate. Sirens and engines and the blare of horns.

Lyrik climbed the two steps to the guest-house porch and swung open the door. “Here we go. Code is same as the house.”

“Got it.”

I angled inside, passing him and pulling my suitcase behind me. My attention bounced around, not that I really cared what my accommodations were going to be like. They could have put me up at a run-down hotel and I wouldn’t have given two fucks.

But this?

It was warm. Comfortable. The living room in the front had every luxury you could ask for. Fluffy pillows adorned the plush couch, two sitting chairs set up on either side that faced the huge TV that hung on the wall. To the far side on the right was a high-topped bar that overlooked a small kitchen on the other side. I could only assume the short hall to the left of it led to a bedroom.

But what caught my attention was the drum-set and assortment of guitars and musical instruments that were set up in a cove on the left side of the living room.

“Figured you might want to play in your downtime,” Lyrik said like it was no big deal.

“Probably going to need to practice a few new songs I don’t know.” I attempted to crack a joke, to lighten whatever this bullshit was I could feel clawing my skin, a million fire ants marching to a grim drumbeat across raw, bleeding flesh.