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My heart was running a race in my chest. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. “What are you?”
His smile was slow. Evil. He moved a step back, and I sucked in a breath.
“I told you.” One. Two. Three seconds. “The bad guy.”
Chapter 12
Arlo
Ididn’t want to frighten her. I wanted to pull her against my body and hold her head to my chest, tangle my fingers in the long fall of her hair, and whisper all the words that would let her know how safe she was.
I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted her to trust me.
She hid things about her life, her past, present, and future. I wanted to tear those secrets away until she was just as vulnerable to me as she’d made me to her. I didn’t even know how or why or fucking when it happened, but this woman had changed something monumental in my life. I hated it.
I couldn’t live without it.
Months. It had only taken a moment to look into her innocent eyes to know there was something light and different the world could offer… something that could shape me. Only a handful of months to turn my world upside down without her even having to utter a word.
A. Fucking. Look. That’s all it took to go down this rabbit hole where, for the first time in my miserable life, I questioned my very sanity. For the first time in my life, I want something just for me.
And as I stared into her blue eyes that looked so dark right now, not because of the shadows or lack of light but because she was vulnerable in my presence, I told myself there was no going back.
I’d lost it in front of Leonid, showed him a weakness in his own fucking house. He wouldn’t forget it. He’d use it against me. He’d twist it and use it to his advantage. It’s what men like him did. It’s what I did.
I’d seen it in the way he looked at me when I took Lina out of there. When he stared at her.
I turned away and stalked back to the bar, pouring myself more vodka. Too much. I tossed it back and went for glass number four. The burn wasn’t there any longer, and alcohol was the last thing I needed. My head was already fucked up without the temptation of Lina in my apartment and the cloudiness of booze in my veins.
I shouldn’t have told her I killed that fucker in the alley. But I’d taunted her, needed her to ask me so I could show her how far a man like me was willing to go for her.
“Who are you? Who are those men? What is actually going on?”
I didn’t turn around to face her. I stared at the wall straight ahead, my glass in hand, my fingers tight enough around the glass I hoped it cracked and tore my hand to shreds. It would give me something else to feel.
“I’m a ba?—”
“I know. You’re a bad man. I didn't ask what people see when they look at you, not what you see in the mirror. I want to know what’s going on, because if what you say is true?—”
“It is,” I said, cutting her off.
“Then with my life in danger, you owe me the truth.”
How could this woman utter a few words and have something tight and uncomfortable inside my chest and squeezing my vital organs? I was now regretting not looking into her past, not getting any and all information on Lina that I could. I didn’t have a moral compass, yet when it came to her and finding out who exactly Lina Michaels was—who she really was—I found myself holding back, wanting her to be the one to confide in me.
It was fucking stupid. A mistake. I ran a hand over my face.
I turned around and looked at her. She was still against the window, but her gaze was steady as she watched me. It would be so easy to go up to her and press our bodies flush together, to curl my fingers around her throat and make her look into my eyes as I tell her she’s mine.
Fuck, I envisioned myself burying my face in her hair and inhaling deeply before running my nose down the length of her throat, dragging my tongue up and down her soft skin. I could practically taste her in my mouth. Sweet. So sweet. I wanted to feel how fast her pulse would beat against my tongue, proving that she was just as affected by me as I was by her.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t really want to know the answers to.” Did she want me to admit I was involved in the crime syndicate? Did she want to know everything that touched me, everything I owned, was because of blood money?
She pushed away from the window and took a step toward me, but I didn’t miss the tremor that moved through her body. She was trying to be stronger than she felt. It was an admirable quality, but it was also a weak one. A human one that would do her no good.
Lina kept moving closer, watching me cautiously. How close would she come? Would she get so close I could reach out and curl my fingers around her waist? Close enough to where I could press her body to mine and let her feel the physical reaction she brought out of me?
“Are you part of that…?” She didn’t finish that question, but she didn’t need to. She knew what I’d say if I could have. She just wanted me to verify it. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It wasn’t even about some moral compass, wasn’t because of the Bratva or the Cosa Nostra. At this point I didn’t care about any of that. I’d never tell her, because it would put her in even more danger.
