Page 23 of Stealing Cinder

For a long breath, neither of us speaks. The lamp hums. The old radiator ticks behind the wall. All those months of silence stretch between us, heavy with everything I left unsaid the night I walked into that elevator and never came back.

"You remember me." It isn't a question. His voice drops low, rough at the edges, and the sound of it hits a nerve I've spent months trying to kill.

"How can I forget?" The truth comes easily. My voice is steady but my nerves are wrecked.

He takes another step. Close enough now that his warmth reaches me across the shrinking space. Close enough that his scent wraps around my senses.

"You promised you were only going to see Lavender and then return to me." His jaw tightens. A muscle flexes beneath the trimmed beard. "I've been waiting."

The ache in his voice stabs through my heart and twists. I turn back to the safe and punch in the code again even though the door is already open. My fingers need something to do. My brain needs to be anywhere but here, standing three feet from the only man who has ever made my body override my brain.

"You don't understand what is going on here." I keep my voice flat and void of the pain and longing I feel soul-deep. "Just stay out of my way, Samuel."

His head tilts a fraction to the side, those dark eyes narrowing as he studies me. One hand reaches out. Scarred knuckles curl around the back of the desk chair, his grip tightening until the leather creaks under the pressure.

“I've waited too long for this moment.” He pitches the words so low and rough they pull me around to face him.

“Waited?”

He waited for me? As in he thought I would come back?

Samuel releases a growl edged with a darkness that raises the fine hairs on my arms. "You should have never run, princess."

He releases the chair and takes a step forward, closing the gap between us until I can count the silver threads in his beard.

Princess.

My heart stutters. The word punches through every wall I've constructed in the months of survival and sleepless nights spent building a case against the people who destroyed my family. My throat burns. Tears sting behind my eyes and I crush them, grinding them into nothing the way I've trained myself to do.

I cannot cry. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when the gun is three inches from my fingers and the mission is everything.

"You can't have me." I force the words out smooth and steady. "I belong to someone else."

The lie leaves my tongue smooth and rehearsed. He goes still behind me. His gaze burns into my back, searing over the wig, the ridiculous halter top, the fishnet stockings and the short skirt that barely covers what's his.

What's his? Where did that come from?

I shake my head. Focus.

I peer up at Samuel and press the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand before they can fall. Clouds of anger roll over his expression, tightening his brow, hardening the lines of his mouth. His gaze drops to my belly again, and this time his hand follows.

Warm, callused fingers spread over the curve of my bump. Gentle. Possessive. The pad of his thumb traces a slow arc across the swell where his child is growing, and the touch sends a tremor through my body so deep my knees threaten to buckle.

His lips curve into a smile. Wicked, knowing, and layered with raw hunger.

"Then I'll steal you both."

His hand stays on my belly, claiming what I tried to hide.

Behind me, the safe door hangs open, light glossing the matte finish of the gun I came here to take. And the man I ran from five months ago stands between me and everything I came to do.

CHAPTER 7

SAMUEL

This is not how tonight was supposed to go.

I came here for a signature on a piece of paper. Walk in, stroke a fragile ego, get five names on a contract and leave before anyone draws a weapon. Clean. Simple. A transaction I've run a thousand times without breaking a sweat.