Page 19 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

Okay. This was happening.

No big deal.

He’d kissed women before.

Heaps of women.

He liked kissing.

He liked it just fine.

He definitely never felt nervous about it, like some monumental life outcome was riding on how well he did. On how she felt. On if she liked it.

Kissing was… kissing. Not rocket science.

But this was Sienna, and even the slightest touch with her was loaded with their backstory. Their history. What they’d meant to each other, once upon a time.

How he’d hurt her.

How he’d known he was hurting her, how she’d cried, and how that had only hardened his resolve to get the hell out of there.

Because if he weakened then, he would weaken forever, and his chance to escape, to get Blake and his mom out of town, to put them on the path to the future they needed to get away from their dad, it would all have disappeared.

But you’d have had Sienna , a voice that had dogged him for over a decade reminded him sharply.

That was the trade-off, back then. Sienna, and his life in Ashbury Falls, or a scholarship at a college with one of the best hockey programmes out there, the kind of programme that all but guaranteed a chance at the big time.

It had ripped him apart to hurt Sienna though, to know that she’d probably hate him forever because of the way his leaving betrayed everything they’d promised each other.

He would never make that mistake again.

‘I’m going to kiss you,’ he said, slowly, his voice deep. Dark. Gruff. Flooded with all the feelings he usually repressed. ‘But here’s the deal, Mastrangelo.’

‘I’m listening, Carter.’

‘We’re here a week. A kiss now, a kiss then. Who knows what else might happen? I am not going to hurt you again.’ He pressed a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face to his. ‘If you think, for even one second, this is getting out of hand, you tell me and we walk away then and there. Got it?’

Her eyes flashed to his, something like a warning in the depths of her gaze. ‘You’re not going to hurt me,’ she promised, inching closer, so it was Sienna who stood onto her tiptoes and pressed her wet, curvaceous body against his. ‘You just don’t have that power any more.’

He hoped to God she was right. No matter what, wild horses wouldn’t hold him back from this.

From leaning down, as she pressed up, from letting his lips get closer and closer to hers.

The weight of what they were about to do was hard against his chest, making breathing almost impossible.

Every other kiss they’d shared fractured inside his mind like a kaleidoscope of multicolour and glitter.

Their first kiss had flooded him with nerves. But it was nothing compared to this.

It’s just a kiss. Pull yourself together.

But weirdly, it didn’t feel like just a kiss. It felt important. Weighty. Like their whole past was somehow about to be reignited, in a way he desperately didn’t want, yet, despite that, he didn’t draw back. Even then, he didn’t listen to common sense and tell her this was a damned stupid idea.

How could he?

How could he when kissing her was the thing he wanted most on earth?

* * *

In the end, she had no doubts. No hesitancy.

No concerns. She was fatalistic about the need to do this, to taste him, to dip a little way back in time and see how it felt.

To see if he still stirred her body to fever pitch, if he kissed the same as she remembered.

In the end, it was Sienna who closed the distance between them and claimed his mouth with her own, who pressed her body to his, who lifted a hand to his chest and pressed it there, fingers splayed wide over the Titans tattoo, right beneath his heart.

She was intentional about it, as if to say to him: it’s just a kiss, it doesn’t matter.

But it did matter, and she realised that the second he took over, shifting his body weight so he could bring an arm around behind her back and hold her tighter against him, tilting her a little so he had better access to her mouth, so that his kiss wasn’t just a touching of lips but an invasion of every single one of her senses, as his tongue slipped into her mouth, flicking her own, teasing her, making her body tremble with the power he clearly still had – if not to hurt her, to stir her desire to an indescribable peak.

A moan rose inside her, but Sienna refused to give it voice. She refused to say anything, even his name. She refused to tell him how good this felt, how much she liked being kissed by him, even when those words were spinning around and around and around in her mind.

Rational thought was still a part of Sienna, a lifeline she clung to, when her senses were scattering into disarray.

A lifeline, a reminder that she had to control this, even when she wanted to lose control completely, to drag him to the shallows, lie down in the gently lapping waves and beg him to ravish her. To take her. To make her his.

It was an alarming thought, and it burst through her like a lightning bolt might spike the sky. She blinked, and pulled away from him abruptly, her breath ragged even when she tried to control it.

Aiden stared down at her, lips parted, eyes narrowed, cheeks slightly flushed, and where their bodies were still connected, she felt his arousal against her belly – rock-hard proof of his desire for her.

Which was precisely what she wanted, she thought, but without the sense of triumph she would have hoped to experience in such a moment. After all, kissing him and pulling away was step one, wasn’t it?

Unfortunately, though, it was a hollow victory.

For while Sienna was doing her level best to act as though she’d been completely unfazed by the kiss, she could admit, only to herself, that this was absolutely not the case.

The kiss had fazed her. A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot.

She was ridiculously, three-phase power fazed.

Super fazed. Fazed to the power of a millionty suns.

It had left her weak at the knees and tingling in her veins and eyes flooded with stars and heart – the heart she intended to keep utterly under lock and key – thundering around in her chest so she could hardly hear anything above the frantic, desperate thwomping sound.

But too much was at stake for her to let him see any of that.

This guy had shredded her self-confidence, her view of men, the world, had walked out on her like she was worthless, like their relationship was worthless.

He’d left her pregnant, alone, heartbroken and bereft, all the while going on to live his absolute best life.

Screw him. Not literally, she promised herself. Definitely not literally.

‘Well,’ she drawled, amazed that her voice only wobbled slightly. ‘I guess we’ve still got chemistry.’ She shrugged, like it was neither here nor there for her. ‘Who would have thought it, after all these years?’

He frowned, her tone obviously not what he expected. ‘Sienna…’

What was he going to say, though? He just stared down at her, face serious, like he’d never seen her before.

In a way that turned her blood to lava and her stomach to mush.

She took a step back, pulling away from him, desperate for some distance, and brain space.

‘We should keep looking for those flags,’ she said, forcing herself to smile carelessly. ‘Or give up and head back to the house. Your call.’

She didn’t wait to hear what he decided.

Instead, Sienna Mastrangelo turned on her heel and cut through the water, into the shallows, onto the shore, and as far away as she could get from Aiden without letting him realise that she’d found that whole kissing experience as discombobulating as anything.

* * *

‘I was about to send out a bloody search party for you lot,’ Astrid called, as their cart wheeled back onto the lawn nearest the house.

‘Where have you guys been?’ She jogged towards them, scanning their still-wet bodies and the assortment of flags that sat on the floor between them.

And laughed. ‘You did realise your quest was for gold flags? And that they were all on land?’

Sienna forced another smile, just like she’d been doing all afternoon, since that damned kiss.

Anything Aiden said, she’d smiled serenely, doing her level best to act like she was someone who went around getting kissed every day of the week.

NBD. Even when it was a very, very BD. She couldn’t let it be.

‘We did a little thwarting when we didn’t see gold flags.’

‘Yeah, someone else did a little thwarting of you,’ she said, with an eye roll.

‘Who?’ Sienna demanded indignantly, as Paige emerged clutching a bunch of flags – a mix of purple, gold and red.

‘Paige!’ Sienna spluttered.

Astrid grinned. ‘It’s always the ones who look like butter wouldn’t melt.’

Aiden swung out of the golf cart, eyes shifting to Sienna’s for a beat too long before moving to Astrid. ‘Who won?’

‘No one, you all bloody cheated,’ Astrid said with mock impatience. ‘Everyone came back with flags they weren’t supposed to collect. First ones back were Chuck and Bella though.’

‘That doesn’t count as a win,’ Sienna said, at the same time Aiden answered, ‘So, no one won?’

Astrid glanced heavenward. ‘You’re both as competitive as each other.’ She turned to give Aiden the full force of her attention. ‘Blake’s looking for you. Something about a suit try on.’

But Aiden didn’t move. Not right away. He stayed standing there, looking at Astrid, as if trying to think of how to reply, then at Sienna, as if searching for something to say.

Eventually, he nodded once and muttered, ‘So, I guess I’ll see you later?’

Sienna was exhausted. Spending the better part of the day with Aiden had taken a freaking toll, but she wasn’t going to show him that.

She smiled, nodded, waved, and even managed to chirrup, ‘I had fun!’ And then, backpedalling abruptly when she thought about how that probably sounded, ‘Hunting flags together, I mean.’

‘We should do it again some time,’ he replied, and now Sienna had no idea if he was talking about the flags or the kiss, but either way, her cheeks flushed.

‘No more hidden flags with you cheaters,’ Astrid interjected. ‘Next time we plan a party game, I’m gonna draft in some umpires to oversee the rules.’

Aiden grinned then, and Sienna’s breath tightened in her throat, because when he smiled, those dimples seemed to groove deep into his cheeks and his eyes crinkled in a way that spoke of humour and happiness, but also of age – lines that weren’t there when he was a teenager added to his air of maturity and charisma.

Astrid, beside her, squeezed Sienna’s upper arm as soon as Aiden had turned his back.

‘Well?’ she demanded, as soon as he was out of earshot. ‘What happened?’

His mouth on hers. Heat. Desire. His arousal.

Need. Sienna’s insides slicked with warmth as memory after memory sliced through her, forcing her to recall those passionate few seconds down on the shore.

But when she turned to Astrid to confess the whole sordid event, the words just wouldn’t come out.

Astrid was one of her best friends in the whole world, the woman who’d put her life on hold to try to mess with Aiden for the way he’d screwed Sienna around.

And it was only a kiss. But somehow, the kiss felt private, and if the girls knew about it, they’d presume it was all part of Sienna getting her revenge on Aiden.

They’d want to talk about it, to ask her questions, and Sienna didn’t know if she could answer those questions yet. Even to herself.

‘Nothing,’ she said with a shrug. ‘We looked for flags, got overheated, had a quick swim, came back.’

‘That’s it?’

His tongue tangling with hers. His hand on her back, pressing her forward. His tattoo and ass…

‘Yep. That’s it.’

Astrid pulled a face. ‘Ugh. I was sure being together for so long would shake something loose.’

‘Nope,’ Sienna denied, cheeks heating at the lie. ‘Honestly, I’m starting to want to abandon the whole idea of revenge,’ she said with a shrug. ‘At least, my part in it. I don’t think flirting with Aiden then walking away is going to pay him back for what he did then.’

Astrid put an arm around Sienna’s shoulders. ‘No, but it may make you feel a smidge better about it.’

Sienna’s eyes prickled with unshed tears. ‘Honestly, seeing him again, maybe I’m more over the whole idea of revenge than I realised.’

And somehow, she wondered if that was true.

It had been so easy to demonise Aiden when he’d just disappeared from her life.

But seeing him again, and in the context of his relationship with Blake, being here at a family wedding, she couldn’t keep seeing him as wholly bad. There was some good there, too.

So he’d run away from Ashbury Falls. What had she expected? That he’d stay there twiddling his thumbs ’til she was finished school? And then what? She’d never had the same college prospects as Aiden. He was always going to get headhunted to one of the big schools.

But they wouldn’t have necessarily broken up, she reminded herself.

They could have stayed in touch, even just as friends. It was losing him in that capacity that had hurt her almost more than anything.

‘It’s just kinda complicated,’ she finished with a shrug.

‘Hmmm.’ Astrid pursed her lips. ‘Well, it’s up to you, of course, though I will tell you, the others aren’t going to want to scale back their operations, you know.’

Sienna stopped walking. ‘What operations?’

Astrid’s grin was serene. ‘You didn’t truly think they’d let you have all the fun?’

Fun? Fun? Sienna blinked. ‘Oh no. What have they got planned?’

Astrid winked at Sienna. ‘The less you know the better, love. Plausible deniability, and all that.’

* * *

In the small slice of time Sienna had alone in her room, she googled his tattoo. Ad Meliora.

Hurt twisted around her heart like a boa constrictor. She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel any more hurt because of this jerk, but discovering that he had the Latin equivalent of ‘towards a better future’ inked into his skin was like a kick in the teeth.

Better.

Future.

Away from her.

Away from Ashbury Falls.

That’s what he’d been thinking back then.

Not missing her.

Not wondering if he’d made a mistake.

But focusing on his sparkly, wondrously bright future. Bastard.

It’s better if we stick to a clean break, Sienna. Don’t call me again.

Because Ad Meliora.

She ground her jaw, adopting the phrase, co-opting it to her own purposes.

Aiden ‘Jackass’ Carter was her past. A horrible part of her past. But after this week, she could put the ghost of him to bed and move on with her own brighter future.

Sure, her dad was in prison and she was still stuck in Ashbury Falls – no way would she leave Melanie the same way Aiden left her.

But finally, she’d be free of the grasp Aiden had held on her all these years.

Finally, she’d be her own person again. She couldn’t wait.