Chapter 7: Wet Skin and Warnings

Nathaniel held the folded document between us.

Adrian stood beside me, still too close. My mouth still felt warm from his kiss, and Nathaniel's eyes knew it. They kept dropping there, like guilt had left a mark he could read.

I thought of my mother. How she'd stayed with my father through every failure, every humiliation. She'd called it loyalty. I'd watched it kill her-slowly, quietly, the way water wears down stone.

I was already becoming her.

"What clause?" I asked.

"If my wife is publicly involved with my brother during the first year of our marriage," Nathaniel said, "your father loses the protection attached to the merger."

My stomach sank.

He handed me the document.

Should the debtor's daughter fail to preserve marital fidelity during the first twelve months, all outstanding obligations shall become immediately due and payable in full, with interest compounded daily. Collateral shall be forfeit.

My father's signature at the bottom.

"You own my father's debt," I whispered, "and my body."

Nathaniel's gaze was winter glass. "Loyalty is cheaper than litigation."

His lashes flicked downward. For half a second, something almost human tightened the corner of his mouth-regret, maybe, or calculation-and then the chill returned before I could name it.

Adrian stepped toward him. "Say that to me."

"I just did."

I moved between them. "Enough."

Both brothers stopped. Maybe that was the only power I had in this house-not love, not freedom, just the ability to make two Blackwell men pause.

"Pack a bag," Nathaniel said. "We leave tonight."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You are." His voice lowered. "Because the press is outside the gates, your father's company is hanging by a signature, and my brother just kissed you in a hallway full of servants."

I hated him. I hated that he made sense.

Three hours later, I was on a private plane with my husband. Not beside him. Across from him. As far as the cabin would allow.

Nathaniel worked on his laptop like dragging his wife out of the country was just another meeting.

I was selling myself piece by piece. I just hadn't decided yet whether that made me loyal or pathetic.

"Where are we going?" I asked when he sat beside me.

"Our beach house."

"Our?"

"My family's."

"Of course."

He glanced up. For a moment, the cabin lights softened the hard lines of his face. He looked younger. Tired. The bruise near his jaw from Adrian's punch had darkened to purple.

I looked away before sympathy could become something embarrassing.

His phone lit up. Celeste.

I saw the name before he turned it over. "You dragged me away from a scandal but brought her with us."

"She is not here."

"She is always here."

His fingers stilled on the keyboard. For one second, I thought he would say something real.

Instead, he closed the laptop. "You should sleep."

"I slept enough on my wedding night, remember?"

A muscle in his jaw moved once, and then went still.

By morning, we reached the island.

The beach house sat on a cliff above water so blue it looked unreal. White walls. Wide glass windows. Empty balconies. The kind of place people visited to fall in love.

I almost laughed at that.

Nathaniel showed me to a bedroom facing the sea. Separate from his. Of course.

I didn't sleep. I lay in sheets that smelled like lavender and money, listening to the waves, and I thought about my mother. How she'd spent thirty years in rooms like this-beautiful, expensive, empty.

I was not going to become her. I repeated it until the words lost their meaning.

Days passed strangely. Fast, but heavy. We ate breakfast in silence. He took calls behind locked doors. I swam alone because the water was the only place no one was watching.

But even here, Celeste kept finding him. Her name on his phone. Her messages at midnight: Did you touch her? You promised she would never have your child.

He never answered in her front of me. But he never told her to stop either.

On the fifth afternoon, I stopped waiting for the house to feel less lonely.

Nathaniel had disappeared into another call behind another locked door, and I was done pretending the island air did not feel like a prettier prison.

So I changed.

If I was going to be trapped in a beautiful cage, I might as well stop dressing like someone's grieving bride.

The black swimsuit was bolder than anything I usually wore. The neckline dipped low, the fabric clinging to my ribs, my waist, the curve of my hips like a second skin I wasn't sure I had permission to wear. I stared at myself in the mirror until my reflection stopped looking like a stranger.

Then I lifted my chin. I needed to some fresh air.

The indoor pool room was on the west side of the house, hidden behind tall glass doors that turned the afternoon into liquid gold. Beyond the infinity edge, the sea stretched endless and bright, sky and water bleeding together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

I stepped inside.

And froze.

Nathaniel was climbing out of the pool.

Water cascaded down his body as he hauled himself over the stone edge, every muscle in his arms and shoulders flexing with the kind of effortless strength that made my breath catch. His shoulders were broad, his chest sculpted and firm, every line of him carved with the kind of precision that made my mouth dry. Black swim trunks clung to his hips, riding low enough to reveal the sharp angles of his pelvis, the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath the fabric.

I swallowed.

He hadn't seen me yet.

Nathaniel ran a hand through his wet hair, shoving it back from his forehead. The gesture was careless, almost lazy, but it exposed the column of his throat, the strong line of his jaw, the hollow of his collarbone where water still pooled. Water clung to his lashes. His lips were slightly parted. He looked like sin made flesh.

My fingers curled against my thighs.

Then his eyes found me.

His gaze sharpened, dropping from my face to my shoulders, then lower, dragging over the black swimsuit like a physical touch. His eyes paused at the curve of my chest, at the dip of my waist, at the length of my legs. He looked at me like he was memorizing the shape of me, like he was starving and I was the only thing on the menu.

And everywhere his eyes landed, my skin heated.

The air turned thick.

"I didn't know you were here," I said.

My voice sounded wrong. Too high. Too breathless.

Nathaniel stepped fully out of the pool.

Water dripped from his hair, down his throat, over the hard planes of his chest, following the ridges of his abdomen until my eyes couldn't follow without shame. He moved toward me with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he looked like, who knew exactly what that slow, predatory walk did to women who should know better.

I turned away too fast.

"I'll come back later."

"Claire." My name in his mouth, rough, quiet, and impossible to ignore.

I kept my back to him, staring at my own blurred reflection in the glass. "What?"

He didn’t say a word.

But I heard the sound of water. The slow, deliberate drip of it. Getting closer.

"Look at me," he commanded.