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When she turned back around, she did a double-take when she saw me standing there before a screech of excitement flew from her tongue.
“Oh my God, you’re finally here! I was beginning to think youweren’t going to show and I was going to have to make good on that whole kidnapping threat.” She waved her hands in the air as she hurried to squeeze through a small opening she’d left between her display tables to get to me.
She threw her arms around my neck, hugging me as if she’d known me her whole life.
A breath of surprise punched from my lungs as she tightened her arms, rigid in her hold as she rocked me back and forth. It took a second before I finally gave into the embrace, letting go of some of the fear I constantly held at being seen—terrified that one day someone would recognize me—and I hugged her back, trying to allow the tease to wind into my voice. “You warned me I didn’t have another choice.”
I exhaled at the warmth that rolled through me as she gave me one more fierce squeeze, like her spirit knew mine needed soothing, before she edged back and gripped me by the outside of the arms. “You’re lucky you listened because five minutes more and you would have found yourself in the trunk of my car.”
A teasing smile pranced across her lips that today she’d painted blood red. “Come on, you need to meet my brother and his friends.”
I didn’t have time to renounce the idea and tell her I was only swinging by to see her before she had me by the hand and was dragging me between the small section separating her booth and the enormous one next to it.
I struggled to keep up, my wedges sinking into the soft grass beneath me as she hauled me along the side and to the back where a circle of four chairs had been set up.
One was empty, and the other three were occupied.
Two men sat facing our direction, lost in conversation, emitting a vibe that nearly made me trip.
Each covered in ink and radiating a foreboding ferocity that I was sure had to steal every eye, no doubt garnering attention and scrutiny and curiosity in this small town.
So out of place they stood out like menacing beacons you couldn’t look away from.
Brutally beautiful and screaming of trouble.
Exactly like the man who sat with his back to us with his attention fully focused on his cup that he held between two tattooed hands. The one who made the oxygen punch out of me on a wheeze when I was slammed with the recognition of who was sitting there.
There was no missing the crop of black hair and the tattooed tendrils of what looked like smoke that rolled up the back of his neck and disappeared into his hairline at the back of his skull.
I could feel that intensity radiating from him. Tension gripped hold of his bulging muscles and bunched his wide shoulders as he slowly swiveled around to look at me.
A blister of darkness streaked across the afternoon air. Arrows that impaled as those storm-ridden eyes devoured me from across the space.
Couldn’t get you off my mind…
His words from yesterday spun around me like a dream.
Raven only tugged at my hand when I faltered to a stop. “Come on, they’re right over here.”
She pulled me right up to where they were sitting.
“Hey guys, this is my new friend I’ve been telling you about, Charleigh Lowe.”
She waved a hand over me like she was presenting them a prize. I could feel River’s eyes penetrating me, so deep I thought they might cut through to the soul.
“Charleigh, these are a couple of my brother’s friends. Kane...” She pointed first at a man with short-brown hair and a full but trimmed beard. Tall and muscular, arrogance came off him in waves.
Raven gestured at the man sitting next to him. “And this is Theo.”
Theo jutted a sharp chin at me, his cheekbones harsh slashes that contoured his face in a way that promised he could likely seduce anyone into their destruction.
He was completely covered in tattoos, black ink that swirled and curled over his lean, packed muscle. My head dipped in a small hello.
“And this is my brother, River.”
Of course.
River was her brother.
