Zeke.
She’d once called him that before she’d fallen in love, then fallen out of favor with her family. Before her childhood had ended in a crash-and-burn that she still bore the scars from.
Before she’d erected this imaginary wall of plexiglass between her and people that protected her. But she’d slipped up at the dinner party. The pseudo-intimacy of the dark coaxing her into falling into old, familiar patterns.
An image of Zeke wavered, then solidified on the black screen of her eyelids.
Lovely.
Such an odd word to describe a man. Especially one who stood nearly a foot taller than her and possessed a lean but powerful, wide-shouldered body that stirred both desire and envy. Regardless, her description was still accurate. He’d been beautiful as a teen, but the years had honed that masculine beauty, experience had added an edge to it. The dark hair cut close to his head only emphasized the stunning bone structure that reminded her of cliffs sculpted to razor sharpness by wind and rain. A formidable face prettied by a firm mouth almost indecent in its fullness and a silken, neatly cropped beard framing his sinful lips.
Then there were those eyes.
The color of new spring grass warmed by the sun. Light green and striking against skin the color of brown sugar.
Yes, he was a lovely man. An intimidating man. A powerful, desirable man.
Zeke was a temptation that lured her to step closer. To stroke her fingers over that dark facial hair that would abrade her skin like rug burn. To pet him like the sleek but lethal panther he reminded her of. To taste that brown sugar skin and see if it was as sweet as it looked.
But he was also a warning sign that blinked Danger! in neon red. Not since Gavin, her teenage love who’d abandoned her and broken her young heart, had she been the least bit tempted to lose control again. None had poked that curious shifting inside her, stirred the dormant need to be...wild. To act without thought of consequence. To throw herself into an ocean of feeling and willingly go under.
Ten minutes with Ezekiel and that tingle deep inside her crackled, already singeing the tight ropes tying down that part of her. The last time she’d loosened those bindings, she’d hurt her family terribly.
No, she couldn’t allow that to happen again.
So, though part of her had railed at her father’s autocratic behavior that night, the other half had been relieved as she’d walked back into the house and away from him. Okay, maybe Zeke had infiltrated her dreams since then. And in those dreams, she’d remained on the shadowed balcony. He also hadn’t stopped with touching her hair. And maybe when she woke, her body trembled from unfulfilled pleasure. A pleasure that left her empty and aching.
It was okay. Because they were only dreams relegated to the darkest part of night where secret desires resided.
Didn’t matter. Not when her mind and heart agreed on one indelible truth.
Ezekiel Holloway spelled trouble with a capital T.
Best she remembered that.
And the possible consequences if she dared to forget.
Three
Ezekiel hunkered down on the still green grass, balancing on the balls of his feet. The late-afternoon sun didn’t penetrate this corner of the cemetery where the Southern live oak’s branches spread wide and reached toward the clear, blue sky. The tree provided shade over the marble headstone. And as he traced the etched lettering that hadn’t yet faded after eight years, the stone was cool to the touch. If he closed his eyes and lost himself like he did in those nebulous, gray moments just before fully wakening, he could imagine another name inscribed on the marker.
Not Melissa Evangeline Drake.
Heaving a sigh that sounded weary to his own ears, he rose, shoving his hands into his pants pockets, never tearing his gaze from the monument that failed to encapsulate the woman who had once held his heart in her petite hands.
A name. Dates of her birth and way-too-soon death. Daughter, sister, friend.
Not fiancée. Not the other half of Ezekiel Holloway’s soul.
And he didn’t blame them. After all, he’d only had her in his life four short years, while they’d had twenty-two. She belonged to them more than she ever did to him. But for a while, she’d been solely his. His joy. His life. His everything. And she’d been snatched away by a man who’d decided getting behind a wheel while drunk off his ass had been a good idea.
One moment, they’d been happy, planning their future together. The next, he’d received a devastating phone call from her father that she was gone. The only merciful blessing had been that she’d died on impact when the drunk had plowed into the driver’s side of her car.
And a part of him had died with her that night. The part that had belonged to her and only her.
“I can’t believe it’s been eight years to the day since I lost you,” he said to the tombstone, pausing as if it could answer.
Most days, he struggled to remember what her voice sounded like. Time might not heal all wounds, but it damn sure dimmed the details he tried to clutch close and hoard like a miser hiding his precious gold.
“I have to tell you this is not the anniversary I imagined we’d have.” He huffed out a humorless chuckle. “I tried to call your parents yesterday and this morning, but they didn’t answer. I understand,” he quickly added, careful not to malign the parents they’d both adored. “Losing you devastated them. And I’m a reminder of that pain. Still...” He paused, his jaw locking, trying to trap in the words he could only admit here, to his dead fiancée. “I miss them. I had Aunt Ava and Uncle Trent after Mom and Dad died, but your folks... They were good to me. And I hated losing them so soon after you. But yeah, I don’t blame them.”
They all had to do what they needed to move on, to return to the world of the living.
He’d thrown himself into work and any kind of activity that had taunted fate to come for him again—skydiving, rock climbing, rappelling.
And the women. The daredevil adventures might burn off the restlessness, but they couldn’t touch the loneliness. The emptiness. Only sex did that. Even if it was only for those few blessed hours when he was inside a woman and pleasure provided that sweet oblivion. Adrenaline and sex. They were his sometime drugs of choice. Temporary highs.
When those were his ways of coping with the past, the loss, how could he hold it against the Drakes that they’d chosen to cauterize him from their lives?
“I know it’s been several months since I’ve visited, and so damn much has happened since then—”
“Zeke?”
He jerked his head up and, spying the woman standing on the other side of the grave, blinked. Surely his brain had conjured the image to taunt him. How else could he explain Reagan Sinclair here in this cemetery?