Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 85(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 85(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
“So, did you miss it here?”
“Yeah,” I admitted roughly. “Sometimes I missed being here.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back. I missed you.”
Those words hit me hard. “Same, Juliet.” I had to turn away and fumble for a tool just to hide my face. Worse than that, I could feel my cock getting hard just from her being so close.
The guilt crashed over me immediately.
She’s your step-niece, you sick fucker. You’re disgusting. You are supposed to protect her not look at her like this.
I finished the repair as fast as humanly possible, barely speaking another word. When she thanked me and drove off with a little wave, I stood alone in the blazing heat, breathing hard and hating myself more than I ever had.
That night, I made the mistake of going to The Fisherman’s Dock, the little bar right on the water. I just wanted a cold beer and enough noise to drown out my thoughts. I sat at the bar, got my drink, and stared at the muted TV mounted to the wall.
Then I heard her.
Juliet was sitting at a high-top table with a couple of friends, laughing at something. Some local guy in a backward baseball cap leaned way too close, his arm slung over the back of her chair like he already thought he had a shot with her.
He touched her shoulder while he talked, and the sight of it made jealousy rip through me like something violent.
I gripped my beer bottle so tightly I thought it might break. I had no right to feel this way. None. I had no fucking claim to her, and I sure as hell had no right to want one.
Juliet could flirt with whoever she wanted. But the thought of his hands on her, of anyone else getting to touch her or make her laugh like that, made something dark and possessive twist deep in my gut. I wanted to walk over there and pull her away. I wanted to tell him to get his fucking hands off her. I wanted her in a way that terrified me.
Instead, I stayed at the bar like the conflicted bastard I was, watching from across the room and burning with a hunger I knew I could never satisfy.
Juliet was going to destroy me this summer.
And the scariest part was that I was starting to think I’d let her.
5
JULIET
After the afternoon at the marina, everything shifted between us.
It wasn’t obvious to anyone else, and it wasn’t anything you could put your finger on. But I felt it every time Bastian looked at me and then forced himself to look away, like he was fighting some invisible battle inside himself. That was when I knew for sure.
He wanted me, too.
The realization probably should have scared me. A smarter woman might have backed off the second she realized her feelings weren’t one-sided. But instead, I found myself leaning into the tension, not because I wanted to play games but because I was tired of pretending. I was done acting like I didn’t see what was happening between us.
So, I stopped ignoring it.
At the nightly bonfires, I started sitting right next to him instead of across from him. When we talked, I let my hand linger on his arm a little too long. I stopped calling him Uncle Bastian completely and started using just his name. That one seemed to hit him the hardest. Every single time I said “Bastian”, something in his face would tighten, like the word physically affected him.
But I realized the direct eye contact got to him even more. He could barely hold my gaze for more than a few seconds before looking away, but I kept doing it anyway.
I liked watching that small crack form in his control. Everyone else in the family saw him as this big, intimidating, apathetic man. But I had spent my whole life noticing the quieter things no one else bothered to see: the way he always showed up when someone needed help, how he fixed things without being asked, and the way he watched over all of us while pretending he didn’t care.
Especially me. That was what made this whole thing so dangerous. Bastian had always been my safe place long before he became the man I couldn’t stop thinking about late at night.
I couldn’t even pinpoint when I started seeing him differently. But somewhere along the way, everything changed.
Late that evening, after most everyone had gone to bed and the last flame in the fire had burned down to glowing embers, I slipped down to the dock looking for some quiet.
I loved the lake house, not just because it was my childhood safe place but because there were moments like this where I could find silence only feet from the back door and listen to the water lapping against the shore.