Wary and shy where she hung back at the base of the stairway.
Definitely one of Lyrik’s brood. Long, black hair that she had in a ponytail, though her eyes were a different shade than the rest of his kids’, like cups of black coffee had been swirled with a shot of caramel.
He sent a soft smile at her. “And this is my niece, Penny Pie. She’s spending the summer with us. Penny, this is Leif. The drummer I told you was gonna be playing with us so Uncle Zee can tour with Liam.”
Niece.
Not his kid.
I gave her a small wave.
The one she returned was leery.
Like she’d already seen straight through who I was and labeled me.
A bad guy.
Couldn’t fault her for that.
“Nice to meet you, Penny.”
Wow.
This was awkward as fuck.
Why Lyrik didn’t point me in the direction of the guest house and bypass all of this bullshit, I didn’t know. All of these introductions seemed entirely unnecessary considering I was about to split.
She nodded, seeming to contemplate what to say but stopped when someone from above called for her, “Hey, Penny. Have you seen Greyson’s bear? I can’t find it anywhere, and he needs it for his nap. I swear to God, if I left that back home, we’re all going to be in for it until grandma can get it shipped to us.”
I was slammed with what felt like a million things all at once.
A swell of energy.
Same as what I’d experienced last week.
Only this time, it came at me like a motherfucking tidal wave.
Footsteps echoed as they banged down the stairs, reverberating the floors, vibrating my legs and rocking me to the core.
Ears getting filled with a voice I’d chalked up to fantasy.
Eyes glutting on a face that nearly knocked me to my knees.
All of it damned near stopped my heart in my chest.
Seized.
A motherfucking stroke of horrible, terrible bad luck.
The angel in the attic.
The girl clamored down the stairs with a tiny boy fastened to her hip, not having the first clue that the devil had chased her to Savannah.
But I was pretty sure it was me who was in danger.
The girl a danger to my sanity. To my reality.
This girl had spun my mind in a way no one should have the ability to do.
In a way I couldn’t allow.
When she realized there was someone standing in the middle of the room, she stumbled to a stop, clinging to the railing for support.
Or maybe she’d just sensed me the same way I sensed her. Had gotten swept up by a rogue wave that could bring nothing but destruction. That fucked-up connection I didn’t want to feel stretched thin between us.
Simmering and shivering.
Crackling in the air.
Awareness pulled. A tug-of-war that demanded to be made known.
Silence descended, and that lush mouth dropped open at the same time as those sable eyes widened in shock when they landed on me.
Lust struck me.
A goddamn sledgehammer to the senses.
Clinging to the railing for support, she took me in like she was hallucinating.
If only that were the case.
I wanted to kick my own ass.
Irritation blazed through my being. One-hundred percent of it was directed at myself.
Of course, this girl was Lyrik’s sister. I mean, how the fuck hadn’t I put two and two together? The woman who’d come stumbling into that room like an apparition, demanding to know what I was doing hiding away from the party, thousands of miles away from where I belonged, but acting like she had the right to be there? Like that was her sanctuary and I’d been the one to invade it?
And shit, Lyrik and this girl could be twins.
But I guessed I’d chalked her up to being nothin’ but a figment. Too good to be true. To perfect to be real.
Eliciting things inside me that should be impossible. Something I would never allow myself to feel.
And there she stood, gaping at me from twenty feet away.
She was wearing super tight skinny jeans and a thin sweatshirt that draped off one slender shoulder.
Delicious flesh that I wanted to devour.
Black hair a river of waves tumbling around her.
A slip of her stomach exposed.
My mouth watered, and my guts fisted in want.
Yeah, that compulsion had to die. Not a fucking chance would I touch her. Not even when my body was getting all kinds of wayward ideas that this was my second-chance, the guilt it evoked threatening to slam me up against a wall.
Knew this was a mistake.
Knew it.
And there I was, anyway.
A sucker just asking for it.
She swallowed hard, her delicate throat bobbing, the girl completely flustered. A shot of redness pinked up her cheeks, and her eyes were darting everywhere but on me. Finally, she forced a smile. “Oh, goodness . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you already had company, Lyrik.”
She glanced at me, almost as wary as her . . . daughter.
I scraped a hand over my face like it might break me from the stupor, too.
Penny had to be her daughter.
If Lyrik could be her twin, the young girl was nothing but her mini-me. And the tiny boy in her arms? He was a mix of the two, caramel eyes, lighter hair, but his nose the same as his sister’s and their mom’s.
She was a mom.
Sweet and shy and bold and every-fucking-thing my fingers were itching to reach out and trace.
Touch.
Take and taste.
And I was so completely fucked.
So fucked as Lyrik looked between us, something like suspicion darkening his expression. “Leif . . . this is my baby sister, Mia. Penny and Greyson’s mom. Three of them are staying here this summer.”
I gulped around the jagged rock that was suddenly wedged at the base of my throat.
Painful and cutting off airflow.
If I listened hard enough, I could hear Karma kicked back in the lounger at the back of the room, laughing her ass off while she sipped at a frozen cocktail.
“Nice to meet you, Mia.” Came out harder than it should.
Irritation buzzed through my being. The contract I’d signed with Sunder suddenly felt like a death sentence. Blood written on the motherfucking line.
Woman a temptation I didn’t know how to bear.
If it was possible, her smile was even more faked than mine, her voice trembling when she said, “Nice to meet you, too, Leif.”
Problem was, that voice came at me like a song. Something that had been haunting me for the last week.
Calm and peace.
But peace was not meant for me.
“Waif!” The little boy in her arms pointed at me with a grin that could singlehandedly decimate an ironhanded regime.
Awesome.
“Hey, there,” I muttered, uneasiness riding free, and his mom was planting a kiss to the top of his head and then running her hand over the same spot like she was trying to get him to settle down, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t doing anything but trying to settle her racing heart that I could feel pounding through the room.
Or maybe it was just mine stampeding out of control.
Wayward and hard.
Riding with a warning.
I glanced back at Lyrik. His displeased expression had kicked into a storm. He set his daughter to her feet. “We should get you settled.”
“Sounds good.”
Needed to get the hell out of this room before I suffocated.
I went for indifferent when I threw up a hand, though the words were harsh and low, “It was very nice to meet you all.”