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There’d been one flash of a moment when I’d thought I might have said yes.
His eyes darted all over my face, like he was cataloging each line and dent and scar.
Searching.
Reaching into me as if he were seeking direct access to my thoughts.
My pulse ran wild, and I panted out a shocked exhalation when he reached out and took my left hand.
A firestorm burned through me at the contact.
“What are you doing?” I choked, the words barely a wisp.
His mouth twisted in a smirk that fluttered like warmth through my belly.
“Taking a look at this tat, like I said I was going to do.” He said it simply. Like it was normal for him to have a stranger pressed up against a locker. And maybe it was for him, but I was so out of sorts, set so off kilter, I could barely stand.
He lifted my arm above my head, and he rested it on the cool metal of the locker. I could feel the material of the sleeve of my shirt skim my flesh as it slid down, exposing what had been written there.
River hesitated for a moment, attention flitting between my face and the tattoo.
“Fuckin’ perfect,” he rumbled.
I nearly crumbled when his palm slipped up my arm and he gently ran the pad of his thumb over the words, so light I wasn’t sure if he was even touching me, though it felt like he might be marking me all over again.
A shiver rocked me, head to toe, and I knew that he felt it with the deep grunt that rolled in his thick, thick throat.
A throat that was written in his own words.
No mercy.
And I knew that I was right—this guy was undefinably dangerous. To my boundaries. To my sanity. Maybe to my actual safety.
I wasn’t sure.
But still, I remained, willingly trapped.
A fool who was hinged on what he might do next.
He dipped in closer, so close that I panicked for a second that his mouth was going to press against mine, that he was going to kiss me, though he angled his head to the side and muttered, “Why’s it I fuckin’ love that I marked you?”
He kept brushing his thumb over the words, his eyes flicking between mine and the design.
“I’m sure you love making your mark on plenty of women.” I didn’t know where the rebuttal even came from.
Amused disbelief filled his grunt. “Always proud of my work, but this one hit different. Why’s that?”
He was looking at me like I might be the one to possess the answer.
“I can assure you, there is nothing special about me.” It was a defense. A wall. The need for him to look away because I wasn’t sure I could stand beneath his attention.
He was the last kind of man I should want, not that I could ever trustanyoneto hold me.
Touch me.
Wasn’t sure I could ever expose myself that way.
But still, my stomach was in knots, a throb deep inside that I’d never experienced before.
