I don’t know what I expected from this moment. Maybe for Lachlan to quickly press his lips to mine and stalk away. Maybe even a kiss to the cheek. Hell, I’m not even sure I expected us to get this far. But I know I didn’t expect Lachlan to look so intently at me as though he’s savoring the details of my face and this bittersweet moment. I didn’t think I’d see longing hidden away in their dark blue depths. I never imagined he would sweep the end of my high ponytail away from my shoulder and let his fingertips graze my neck, or that he’d lean in slowly.

“Geallaim duit a bheith i mo fhear céile dílis duit, fad a mhairimid le chéile,” Lachlan whispers before his lips press to mine in a kiss that blankets my heart with an electric charge. Need and denial. Heartache and loss. I feel everything as his mouth slants over mine and I drown in his scent of amber and mint. He kisses me like I’m exactly what I am. His key to survival.

And I kiss him back as though I’m saying goodbye to something that was never mine in the first place. Because I’m choosing love.

Just not my own.

OceanofPDF.com

FRICTION

Lachlan

There’s a steady tension in the air, the shearing whine of friction and an electric motor wrapped in the melody of music that echoes down the concrete corridor. Lark’s voice mixes with the mayhem, a pure and precious sound, the one thread of calm within a cacophony. When I stop at the doorway, her back faces me, head bobbing in time to the song as she guides a sander across the surface of a long golden block of a coffee table on a raised cart. A huge dog rests a few paces away from her slippered feet. Its thick coat is a mix of white and dark, patches of brindle and splashes of dots, as though the universe said fuck it and just mixed all the options together. The beast senses me above the racket and stands, raising its bearlike head to let out a single, authoritative woof.

The room is plunged into sudden silence as Lark switches off the sander and music, then turns to face me.

I cross my arms and resolve to keep my eyes on Lark’s face and not on the thin sliver of exposed skin I can see between the sides of her overalls and the cropped shirt that skims her ribs. “Hi.”

Lark doesn’t smile. If anything, she looks a bit disappointed when she lowers her mask and raises the safety glasses onto her forehead to eye me as though I’ve ruined her hopes by showing up at her door. “Hi.” The dog rises to stand between us, its posture stiff as though the stocky legs have been cast in steel beneath the fur. If she gives the right command, I’m pretty sure Lark could ask the beast to rip my throat out and it would happily oblige. “Go lie down.”

The dog gives me a dirty look and takes a step closer before it drops to the floor with a huff, its legs askew.

“What is it?” I ask, shifting my attention to Lark as the beast drills its glare into the side of my face.

“Some would call it a dog.”

“What kind of dog.”

“American Akita.”

“He looks … broken,” I say, taking in his wonky legs that seem bent at uncomfortable angles.

“He’s an Akita. It’s what they do.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bentley.”

“Bentley?” I snort a laugh. “Let me guess, the last car you crashed before the Escalade?”

Lark glares at me then turns away, smoothing her hand across the table. “Bentley Beetham.” The dog lets out a long sigh as though he’s heard this explanation a thousand times before. He’s clearly just as done with me as she already is. “Ornithologist. Mountaineer. He climbed Everest in 1924. But my dad was more interested in how he’d rappel down cliffs with a rope around his waist so he could photograph gannets with a camera that probably weighed half as much as he did.”

“Bit of a twitcher, is he?” I ask, and when Lark casts me a sharp glance over her shoulder I smile. “Your dad. A bird watcher.”

“Yeah. What was your first clue?” Larks says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“When do I meet him? I’ll bring some binoculars and birdseed. Fionn should have some to spare.”

Lark shakes her head, her eyes trained on her hand as she sweeps the dust from the table’s surface. She doesn’t answer at all, so I take a few steps into the room with a wide berth around the dog, absorbing the details of what seems to be her hobby space. There are unopened cans of quick-curing epoxy resin stacked beside a steel counter where tools lay next to folded fabric and boxes of hardware. Nails. Screws. Crafting wire in gold and silver and copper and pink. Paintbrushes in mason jars stained with a rainbow of dried splashes. And glitter. Pots and pots and pots of glitter, in every color glitter can possibly be made. Gold most of all.

“Big fan of sparkles?” I ask as I pick up a pot of gold flecks and twist it in the light. The glitter sticks to the walls of the jar like a threat.

“You came down here to harass me about glitter?”

“Actually, I came to talk about the plan. We have a lot to figure out. Where do you want to start?” I set the pot down and pull a worn metal stool from beneath the table. When I’m seated facing her, I undo my custom stropping belt and loop the metal ring around my middle finger to pull the strip of leather taut.

“Umm, not with getting naked, that’s for sure.”

“You wish, duchess,” I say with a wink and a grin as I take my switchblade from my pocket and start to run the edge across the leather, sharpening the polished steel. “I mean for real. Where do you want to start? Probably best to not Blunder Barbie our way through this situation of ours, don’t you think?”

Lark eyes me over her shoulder and I feel the burn of her gaze as it slides across my face, down to the ink that covers my arms, to the new wedding band on my finger and back again. “I guess you had a point about meeting my family. We’d better get that done first before they slit your throat and cremate you in an industrial batch oven.”

“That … that escalated quickly.”

Lark shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time they tried that, according to my auntie Ethel, anyway.”

“You mean the sweet old lady Ethel from yesterday? That Ethel?”

With a dismissive flick of her hand, Lark lowers the safety glasses onto her nose. “Yeah but like, who knows with her. I don’t think the rotary batch ovens get hot enough to cremate someone. But they’d do a pretty good job at the killing part.” Lark shoots me a bright, untroubled grin before she pulls the mask over her nose and turns on the sander to scour the surface close to one end of the table. “We should go over to my parents’ place on Sunday though,” she says over the whine of the sander. “Family brunch, rain or shine.”

“Nothing like diving into the deep end. Maybe we should practice before then? You know, to be convincing and shit?”

“If you mean, ‘maybe we should have sex,’ you can fuck right off.”

I snort, though the image of my tattooed hands on her soft thighs unexpectedly bursts through my mind. “I mean, maybe we should try pretending we can stand each other in a public setting. I like not dying.”

“You’re not the one whose family is being actively killed off,” Lark says. A spike of protective rage instantly replaces the desire I just felt. “So yeah, I also don’t think it’s wise to leave it longer than we have to. For my sake or for yours.”

“Right. The batch oven.”

“Exactly.” Lark glances over her shoulder at me as she continues swirling the sander across the table. Her gaze lingers on me for a long moment and I should probably mention something about how she’s about to make the table surface uneven, but it feels like the words have slipped right off my tongue. “We’ll need to be convincing with my family,” she says before I can cobble a sentence together. “Do you think you’re capable of that?”