Page 20 of The Lightkeeper

Kit pinned me with a sharp stare. “You don’t become a lightkeeper if you’re afraid of a storm.”

“No, I guess you don’t,” I said quietly once he’d barreled through the door.

Then again, if I were the storm, I think I’d be more afraid of him.

Chapter Five

Kit

I hadto stop watching her.

I gripped the sandpaper block in my hand and scrubbed the bottom of the window frame for the millionth time. At this point, the area where I’d patched the wood couldn’t get any smoother, the only thing I was sanding now was the skin from my fingers.

But if I moved, I’d lose sight of her.

The sun was out, which meant so was she. Traipsing around the building in those ridiculous waders of hers. They were so big and clunky, it should literally be impossible for me to be attracted to her, but goddamn if my dick wasn’t as polished as the damn window frame from the number of times I’d jacked off in the shower thinking of her.

It was the pink in her cheeks. The wisps of hair that always escaped around her face. It was knowing what was under those waders. Curves on curves on curves.

It was impossible not to watch her. At first, it wasself-preservation. I refused to let her sneak up on me again like she had last week when she’d barged into the house from the rain.

It was a miracle I hadn’t dropped her damn jar with the bolt of adrenaline that injected straight into my veins. My pulse had spun like a top out of control, spots dotted my vision, and my fight or flight was so intense, it took me far too long to realize she’d caught me looking at her things.

But she hadn’t cared.

It would’ve been better if she had. Better if she’d scolded me and told me to stay away from her damn starfish—sea star.

Fuck.

This woman was getting under my skin in the way an anchor gets under the surface of the sea—by sinking suddenly and completely to the deepest goddamn parts of me.

Parts that were so dark they rivaled the bottom of the ocean. At least in the way they tormented me.

Instead, she’d shared with me about her work. The things she thought. The things that interested her. She was just a goddamn open book, and that was what infuriated me the most—how easy it would be to let myself in.

But I couldn’t.

I wasn’t like her damn sea star.Stuart.I was broken beyond repair—beyond regeneration. There weren’t enough pieces of me left to make a whole.

Her little squeal drew my attention. I knew the sound well enough by now not to be worried. It wasn’t a cry of distress but excitement.

“Dammit,” I muttered, yanked my hand off the sill, and dropped the sander into my tool bucket.

After three weeks, I knew her routine by now. She’d already stopped in for lunch—a ham and cheese sandwich, which meant she’d be out there until the sunset. Everything about her was predictable except when she was with me. When she talked to me.Touched me. I shuddered and clenched and released my fist, my fingers still able to feel the press of hers.

Hands were okay, I reminded myself, trying to recall the countless handshakes I’d exchanged in the years since I’d come home. Handshakes I could stomach. It was everything else that made my mind go haywire. My body, according to my doctor, was fine. The skin. The muscles. Everything had healed and responded normally to nerve testing. It was only my brain that continued to register touch like I was still on fire.

Aurora let out another sound, light and high-pitched with success as she couched in front of another tide pool, her hand furiously moving across her notebook.

I felt like a creep watching her from the window. Her expressions. The scrunch of her nose when she was focused. The smile she had when she found something new—she smiled and bit her lip at the same time, like it took pain to hold back her excitement.Fuck.I grunted and widened my stance, the thought always made my dick swell. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fantasized about a woman this way. I wanted to say high school, but I never imagined a woman like this in high school.

Those dark curls tangled around my fist. My other hand full of the flesh at her waist. And my cock ramming into her so hard it made those damn adorable glasses of hers bounce on the bridge of her nose. I wanted to fuck her like an animal. Like living in this damn keep hadn’t just turned me into a man on the edge of reality but a savage on the brink of sanity.

I wondered if she made those same gasps and whimpers of excitement when she was fucked. I wondered if any of the men she’d been with before had made her scream. If they hadn’t, they didn’t deserve to live. If they had…they didn’t deserve to live.

“Christ,” I muttered and ran a hand through my hair.

I was really losing it. Close proximity was like a daily dose of poison. The way my need for her felt like it was slowly killingme.I couldn’t get close to her. I knew that. But neither could I get her off my mind. So, I’d found a compromise—just like I did with everything else that haunted me; I captured the emotion in the confines of my art.

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