Page 42 of The Lightkeeper

My eyes flung open. I’d forgotten I’d even closed them, the memory was so vivid in my mind. The smoke. The acrid smell of gunpowder. The shouts.The pain.My hand was clenched so hard my knuckles were white. But Aurora’s touch… my fingers cracked open just a little.Just like the rest of me.What was it that made her touch feel like that? Like pure light rushing through me and breaking up my shadows?

“One bullet hit the back of my head, and… that’s the last thing I remember,” I told her. “Next time I was conscious, I was in a hospital bed at Walter Reed.”

“Kit.” Her breath whooshed out, and she inched closer to me.

Fuck.She was already too close. The heat of her. The comforting warmth that beckoned.The band around my chest began to tighten, and the scar along the back of my skull started to tingle. I didn’t talk about this.About then.

“Was in the hospital for seven months before I was discharged.”

“And then you came back here… to the lighthouse.”

Every nerve in my body exploded with warning. “More orless,” I croaked, and then cleared my throat. “They don’t allow civilian lighthouse keepers anymore, so I reached out to a buddy of mine in the Coast Guard and asked for the position.”

“And you’ve lived here… alone… since then?”

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to look at her, see pity steeped in her expression, and use that as a weapon to push her away. But with Aurora, there was never any pity, only understanding. She didn’t just look around and see the world for what it was, she allowed the world to show her its secrets.And I’d just shown her some of mine.

Not the worst of them, though, but who the hell knew what would happen if I let her stay any longer.

“What are you doing here, Aurora?” I growled. “You should go home.”

Color seeped into her cheeks like the finest pink gauze.

“Well, I did come to apologize,” she said, her eyes dropping to where her hand still rested on mine, neither of us making a move to break the contact. “And then I wanted to ask if it’s okay with you that I go to Lou and Frankie’s birthday party because I won’t be the reason you don’t go. I can see how much they love you—how much they love when you’re around. I won’t get in the way?—”

“Whether or not I go to their party has nothing to do with you,” I interrupted her firmly, pinning her stare so there was no question. “Promise.”

Her throat bobbed and my fingers twitched, recalling what that felt like when I’d caged my hand around her neck. Hot electricity spilled down my spine.

“Is that it then?” I demanded.

Her jaw slackened. The soft pink tip of her tongue slid out and swiped along her lips. Now I was painfully hard. Being this close to her… the heat of her breaths clashing with mine, the rapid flutter of her pulse as glaring as a neon sign… days of fantasizing about that night—about her—was quickly eating me up inside.

“No.” She dropped the word like an anchor in our storm.“I also wanted to kiss you again.”

Fuck.

My body turned to stone, every cell screaming yes—screaming for relief—but my mind refused to let go of its stronghold. “No.”

“I want to know if it was a fluke—a fevered anomaly that it felt like it did,” she explained, her words coming out in a rush like she expected me to toss her out if she didn’t talk quickly. “Don’t you want to know, too?”

“No,” I ground out, the pulse in my jaw tapping out L-I-A-R in Morse code.

Her eyelids fluttered, and her shoulders fell. “It’s just all the other times I’ve been kissed, it’s never been like that, and I just need one more experiment to know what to expect in the future.”

“What?”

“I need to know what I should be prepared for—or looking for really.” She rolled her bottom lip through her teeth, reddening the flesh like she was preparing it for me, and then let out an audible sigh. “What I mean is that when I kiss other men in the future, I need to know if what I felt the other night is possible again or if it was all in my imagination. It’s important to have realistic sexual expectations for potential boyfriends, so I’d just like to experiment with one more kiss if possible?—”

Not a fucking chance.

I saw red, and then I saw her. Her face cupped in my hands. Her eyes wide and honest and filled with surprise. She’d rambled on like she always did—fucking oblivious to the warning signs: the flare of my nostrils, the steam emitting with my exhale, the growl clawing out of my chest.

She’d gone on about future boyfriends unbelievably unawarethat the thought of another man touching her—kissing her—cut through the seams of my sanity like a hot knife through butter.

I was a protector. Always. In the army. For my family. And now. I warned of danger, of storms and destruction. But somehow, when it came to Aurora, I’d become her biggest danger, and I was doing a shit job of keeping her away from me.

I angled her head and dipped mine low, making sure I still had her eyes before I spoke.“No one will ever kiss you like this, sea star. I promise.”Not if I had anything to say about it.

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