CLOCHE
Harper
THE NIGHT IS OVERCAST, THE stars and moon hidden behind thick clouds.
There’s no breeze, just a sticky warmth that settles on my skin. Everything seems heavier than it should be. The darkness beyond the reach of my headlamp. The silence. My heart.
I pull my phone from my pocket as I walk along the path that leads to Arthur’s dumping ground along the Ballantyne River, which snakes past the outskirts of Cape Carnage on its way to the sea. It took a few hours, but I finally mustered up the courage to take my phone off Do Not Disturb mode after Nolan didn’t appear at the cottage like I thought he might. And then, I mustered up even more courage to look through the latest notifications from the Sleuthseekers Discord. More speculation about the deaths of Sam and Vinny. More talk of coming to town. More fury that churned up a torrent of worry in my guts. Finally, I set the phone down and stared at the chessboard in my living room until I forced myself to move.
I was quietly hoping Nolan would come by to argue with me about my text telling him to leave. But he hadn’t. Maybe he finally gave up trying to make us into something we could never be. After everything that’s happened, I’m not even sure he’ll be safe if he gets away, though it’s his best shot. So I hope he left. It’s not what I want—it’s what we both need, I keep telling myself. But that mantra settles with sharp edges in my thoughts. It pierces every time it repeats.
I pocket my phone, a long breath slipping past my lips.
That’s when I hear a rustling in the woods to my right.
I halt and pan my headlamp over the bushes and trees. I can’t see anything
through the thick wall of the woods. Not even the movement of branches and leaves.
With a final pass of my light over the forest, I resume my trek down the path.
I fall back into a rhythm, rounding the last corner before the stretch that leads to the road, when I hear it again.
I stop dead. I don’t even breathe. Just down the path are animal prints in the drying mud. It’s hard to tell when they were made—it could have been moments ago, or it could have been hours. But I recognize the bear tracks
immediately.
A branch cracks to my right.
“Bear,” I say in a firm voice. I keep my eyes on the woods as I let my backpack slide from one shoulder. I pull the collapsible shovel free of its straps and click the handle into place. Nothing moves around me as I curl trembling fingers around the bear spray in my pocket. “Hey, bear.”
There’s another rustle of leaves, and though I squint into the dark, I see nothing.
“Bear . . . ” I withdraw the spray canister from my pocket. “You should know that I taste like regret and broken dreams.”
Silence.
The road is within sight. I can’t outrun a bear. I should stand my ground, wait until it either makes an appearance or moves off. My knuckles blanch as I secure my grip around the handle of the shovel.
I flip the actuator tab and the safety clip on the spray. “I’ll take your silence as tacit agreement that I’m not worth eating.”
My heart hammers, blood roaring in my head. Every beat of my pulse feels like a march toward a torturous end.
“Fuck it,” I hiss, bolting down the path.
I don’t look back. I can’t hear if the bear follows. I’m not sure if I even scream. I just aim for that road and run.
My boots crunch on the gravel shoulder. I race across asphalt. I’ve just hit the opposite shoulder when a dark form emerges in front of me from the bushes next to the trail that leads to the floodplain.
I don’t even think. I just fire my spray with my left hand and swing with
my right.
A pained cry breaks the night a moment before my shovel connects with Nolan’s face.
“What the fuck,” he cries as he falls to his knees, hands splayed over his
face.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry—”
“Why are you always spraying me with shit?”
I kneel at Nolan’s side and drop my weapon and bear spray, rummaging for my water bottle. My hands are still trembling as I pour the contents across
his brow. “I thought you were a bear.”
“Clearly not.”
Though I douse him with the entire contents of my bottle, it’s not enough to stop the pain. Nolan lets a string of curses fly as I hook a hand around his elbow. “Why are you like a bazillion pounds of muscle?” I grit out as I tug
him up to his feet.
“Why are you so violent to me?”
“You came here to kill me,” I say, wrapping his heavy arm over my shoulder and guiding him toward the path that I doubt he can see. “I guess your whole ‘make no mistake, if I go down, I’m taking you with me’ speech really hit home.”
“If I remember correctly, that’s when you sprayed me in the face with that Piss-Off! shit. It actually burned even worse than this, by the way.”
I pat his chest and he growls. “Small blessings, Nolan.”
Conversation falls away to simple instructions and a slew of expletives as we make our way toward the river. When we get to the bank, Nolan ditches his backpack and strips off his shirt and dives into the water. He comes up only long enough to take a breath and go down again, over and over. The immediate need to fix his pain and the guilt for injuring him fade the longer it goes on, replaced with something else: fear.
Nolan is here. He didn’t run like I’d asked him to. And I’m going to take a guess that his shit mood from earlier today has been somewhat . . . amplified.
That fear is absolutely confirmed when he rises from the river and turns, his chest glistening with every ragged breath, a trickle of blood from his nose illuminated by the lantern on the shore.
His eyes never leave mine as he stalks from the water.
I should probably apologize again. Or help him out of the water, maybe, though the way he marches through it with his soaked pants slung low on his hips makes me think he doesn’t really need my assistance. I can’t do anything but stand motionless anyway. It feels like all my organs fall like stones to my feet. And those feet should probably be running. But they’re glued to the silty floodplain. I’m trapped by the ferocity of his gaze, too afraid to move as the predator draws closer, too enthralled by the danger that closes in.
“What—”
He swipes through the blood on his lip— “The—”
More trickles from his nose to replace it— “Fuck.”
He stops within reach, but he doesn’t touch me. He just seethes, staring down at me with such unwavering intensity that I struggle not to shrink beneath the weight of his glare.
A long moment of silence passes between us. My bottom lip slides between my teeth. This nervous habit often draws his attention. Sometimes even his touch. But not this time. And I get the sense he’s prepared to wait me out.
“You’re here,” I finally say with forced nonchalance.
Nolan snorts a mirthless laugh but doesn’t reply.
“I’m . . . surprised.”
His head tilts. “You’re ‘surprised’?”
I nod once.
“Right. Because you texted me and told me to leave.” He leans closer, as though trying to imprint the words into my brain with his relentless fury.
“Texted. Me.”
I swallow, nearly succumbing to the urge to back away. “ . . . Yep.”
Nolan closes the distance between us in a single step, halting so close that I can smell the river on his skin. “Say it to my face.”
“Okay.” I square my shoulders and lift my chin. “Get the fuck out of Cape Carnage before the Sleuthseekers show up.”
A beautifully vicious smile erupts on his face and he finally breaks his
stare to search the shadows behind me, just for a breath. He shakes his head.
Then his eyes are on me again, his glare even more brutal than it had been a moment ago. “No.”
The air thickens. I take an unsteady breath, but it still feels like I’m drowning from the inside out.
I can’t have this, I tell myself. It’s not what we both need. It will hurt me.
It will hurt us both.
Every thought cuts deeper, until my chest is scraped clean.
“You should leave,” I whisper, my voice caught in a painful knot. “You should—”
There’s a sudden heat as Nolan’s callused hand envelops my throat. My eyes snap back to his. “Stop fucking telling me to leave. I’m not going
anywhere,” he growls.
“But—”
His free hand presses across my mouth, his palm hot and damp against my lips. “Please, Harper.” There’s so much more than anger and frustration in those two words. There’s despair. Desire. Maybe even fear. I can feel the surge of his pulse against my skin. My eyes drift closed as Nolan’s touch whispers along the length of my jaw. “Just stop . . . ”
Time grinds to a halt. When I open my eyes, all I see is Nolan. The words he’s about to say burn their indelible mark on my heart before they even make their way into the night.
“I am in love with you, Harper,” he says.
My cry is lost to his palm. When I grip his wrist to pull his hand away, he doesn’t budge. When I shake my head, tears falling from my lashes, he follows the motion, not letting go.
“I don’t want to hear it. You can’t change how I feel.” Nolan’s focus drops to the tears that glisten on my cheeks. “I don’t want you to say anything in return,” he whispers, like he’s hoping a softer voice will hide the pain I can still hear in his voice. “I fucked up from the start with you. I know I’ve got work to do to make up for it. I don’t expect you to feel the same way, and even if you do, I don’t want to know.”
My head tilts, my silent question etched between my furrowed brows.
“I don’t want to wonder if you felt pressured to say it back. And
something makes me think you’re not ready if you think some fucking text message is going to send me away.” Darkness flashes across his face before it dissolves beneath the kind of longing that looks like physical pain. I can feel it, an echo in my chest, like it follows an invisible thread between us. “So promise me, Harper. Whether you love me or not, promise you won’t tell me.
Not tonight.”
I lean into his touch, laying my hand over his, trying to reassure him that I understand in ways that no one else ever could. But Nolan’s hard stare never wavers, never lifts. Not until I finally nod, humming my vow into his skin. A sliver of relief fills his eyes when they meet mine. He slowly lifts his palm away from my lips, though I’m not ready for his touch to be stripped away.
“I . . . ” I clear my throat. Steady my posture. Pass my hand over my cheeks to wipe the tears away before I start again. “I’m not sorry I hit you with that shovel,” I say, but my voice is too broken to be convincing. “You’re a fucking pain in my ass, Nolan Rhodes.”
And then I crush my lips to his.
It’s a kiss of blood and anguish. I frame Nolan’s face in my hands and pull him to me. I devour his words like they still linger on his tongue. I moan against his lips. He might not let me say what I feel. I’m not even sure I truly know. I just know I want him, like I’ve never wanted anyone. I need him, like he’s a part of me I can’t live without. So I show him, with every caress, with every bite and every whimper and shiver of desire. I hold him to me and I prove all these things I do know.
Nolan pushes us back from the water’s edge, one uncertain step at a time, until we’re on firmer ground. He breaks away to layer urgent kisses on my neck, and his hands slide beneath my shirt to grip my waist. My fingertips press into the hard planes of his back, my other hand raking into his hair. “I thought you said we needed to communicate better as bitter enemies,” I whisper against his lips.
“Fine,” he says before laying a bite to my neck that makes me gasp. “Take
off your fucking clothes. How’s that?”
“Good enough for me.”
I break away for only as long as it takes to lift my shirt over my head and toss it to the ground, but Nolan’s touch never leaves me. There’s always a
point of contact, whether it’s the unyielding grip of his fingers beneath my ribs or the gentle caress that flows up my sides. He carefully helps me lift my sports bra over the swell of my breasts, tossing it onto a patch of grass, his eyes fused to the metal bars through my nipples.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over how hot those fucking piercings are,” he says, his thumb coasting over the underside of my breast. “Are they sore?”
“A bit.” I shrug, trying to mask a shiver as his thumb makes a return pass across my skin. “I thought you were going to come by this morning before everything went to shit and look after them for me.”
Though I give him a teasing smile, there’s no amusement in his eyes when they meet mine. “I’m sorry,” he says. When I shrug again, he shakes his head. “No, I should have stayed. I felt like I needed a minute to think everything through. But it didn’t help like I thought it would. I just needed you.”
I don’t get a chance to ask a question or tell him I understand what it’s like to need time. Because he presses his lips to mine, urgent and demanding, his fingers finding the zipper on my jean shorts. He tugs them and my panties down my hips, letting them fall to my hiking boots. I only manage to fumble one foot free of the fabric before Nolan is dropping to his knees, taking me with him. In only a heartbeat, he’s lying on his back on the damp earth, my thighs spread wide around his head as he buries his face in my pussy with a feral groan.
There’s no room for inhibitions with Nolan.
He doesn’t care that I’ve spent half the day working in the garden, or that I’m covered in a film of sweat. I don’t think he’d give a shit if I were on my period, if there were blood smeared all over us both. He consumes and devours like he needs me to live.
He grips my thighs with bruising force as he sucks and bites and soothes and starts again, ruining my pussy. He is primal need personified, his desire so wild that even he can barely tame it. Like his skin is a cage, and the monster beneath it is always near the surface, one step from breaking through. When I throw my head back on a moan and let out a strained cry, he growls his approval and forces my legs wider apart. And the moment I grind my hips and ride his face, chasing an orgasm nearly within reach, his monster
breaks free.
In a wild flash of motion, I land so hard on my back that the air rushes from my lungs with a whoosh.
I suck in a breath, the silt and sparse grass a shock of cold on my skin, my clit aching with a need denied. There’s a clink of Nolan’s belt and he barely has his pants and briefs pulled over his hips before he’s gripping his erection in a tight fist. He spreads my legs, lines up to my pussy, and thrusts to the hilt in a single stroke.
“You fucking torture me,” he hisses before consuming me with a kiss laced with the flavor of my arousal. He thrusts again, long and hard, stealing a moan from my lips. “I was thinking of your sweet pussy on my face all fucking day and then you sent me that goddamn text. And before I could even finish reading it—surprise, surprise—you put your fucking phone on Do Not Disturb.”
“Yeah,” I manage, barely able to make coherent thoughts as he fucks me mercilessly. A shameless moan tumbles from my lips when his palm warms my breast, his touch just close enough to my nipple to make me aware of the piercing, but far enough away not to cause pain. “Thought it was good to not . . . talk.”
“Right. Because problems are so easily fixed by not talking.” His rhythm intensifies, the gritty silt abrading my back with every rocking stroke. The discomfort churns with the pleasure coiling in my core, an elixir of pain and rapture that only Nolan can balance. “You know what? Maybe you’re right.
Words aren’t enough.” Nolan’s hand slips down my body, making its way closer to my center with agonizing slowness. I rasp his name in a plea. “I think you owe me a scream.”
His thumb finds my clit and I gasp, losing myself to another dimension.
Even if words could be enough, there’s no hope that I’d find them. Not when he lifts my hips from the earth and drives into me, or when he swirls his touch over my clit, or when he leans down to seal his lips to mine and steal my breath in a searing kiss. He fucks me like he hates me. But with every touch, every caress, every strained whisper of my name, I know he loves me.
Any thoughts of how much that should scare me drift away as Nolan thrusts, and thrusts, and thrusts, a cadence that builds and builds until the
tension within me finally detonates. Euphoria swallows every cell in my body. My back bows from the ground. My nails dig into Nolan’s flesh. My eyes clamp shut as sparks fly across their shuttered black canvas. And just like he wanted, I scream.
Nolan is right there with me, his body shuddering over mine. It’s not until he releases my shoulder that I realize how hard he bit down on it as he filled me. He soothes my hiss of pain with a lingering kiss. The thought of seeing the marks in the mirror tomorrow sends an aftershock of pleasure shuddering through me as his strokes slow to a stop.
There’s no other sound in the night but the river and our ragged exhalations. All I see is Nolan, his skin shimmering with a sheen of sweat in the dim lantern light. All I smell and feel and want is him.
“We just fucked on a serial killer’s dumping ground,” I whisper.
He follows a breath of a laugh with a gentle kiss before he pulls away and slides out of me. A chill skates over my skin at the loss of his warmth when he kneels. “Honestly, I have no problem with it. Like, at all.”
“Yeah. Me neither,” I say, taking his offered hand as he stands and pulls me up with him. He quickly tugs his soaked briefs and pants up before he’s immediately tending to me, kneeling to place one of my feet on his thigh. I’m a fucking mess, my shorts and panties still clinging to one of my ankles and my back covered in grit. But he doesn’t care. He just unlaces my boot and takes it off, setting my clothes on top of it before moving to the other leg.
Something about his careful reverence ignites an ache in my chest. I swallow, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing until he meets my eyes. “Nolan . . . ”
Nolan searches my face. He seems to find something in it, maybe the words that aren’t clear enough in my mind to land on my tongue, and then he gently pulls my hand away. “Keep your word, Harper,” he says, and presses a
kiss to my knuckles.
And I’m not sure I want to, but I do.
Nolan undresses me fully. Then he leads me over the imprint of my body in the soil, past the graves we’ve exhumed. He takes me to the river. He only brings me as far as my shins, and then he lowers me to a kneel.
I should still beg him to leave. I don’t want him to become caught up in
the chaos I’ve created. But I just can’t seem to force him to go. Even though it might not be right, he’s still what I want.
Silently, with one palmful of water after the next, he cleans the grit from my skin. But not every sin can be washed away.
