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“I only have the one.”
He doesn’t crack a grin at my joke. Oh well, it was a crappy joke, anyway.
When he folds his arms over his muscular chest, I can’t help but note how they bulge, the ink stretching. The man really is huge. So big, my heart gives a quickpitter-patter when he steps closer to me. “And your ex?”
I flinch. Sharp eyes note it. “What about him?”
“What happens with him?”
“I—I—” Shame expands in my belly so massively; I feel it leaking from my pores to coat my flesh. Still, I lift my chin and tell him as bravely as I can muster, “I’m going to marry him.”
An explosion of emotion detonates in his eyes. It’s so massive, so clear, I flinch at the impossible possibility of being struck by shards of ice. Glacial daggers intended to maim—to carve the words from the space they fell between us. But that’s his only tell. Otherwise, he’s stone.
“You’re going to marry the man who had a hand in doing,” he shoves a hand toward me. “Thatto you?”
I want to cry again. I don’t get it. I’m not a crier and yet—around him I’m a mess.
I pull my lip between my teeth and bite down hard to stop the tremble. Only after I’ve somewhat wrangled my unstable emotions do I dare to speak. “I don’t have a choice.”
The words fall so quiet from my lips, he leans forward. His body coming closer. I’m hit with that scent of cigar smoke and whiskey and—despite the heat of L.A.—the scent of winter and forest. It’s as though the raw violence of a natural terrain has imbedded itself in the core of him, the winter riversrunning through his veins. This man is untamed as the land of an untouched wilderness.
I want to explore every inch of him.
Oh, hell, no. Nooooo. I did not just have that thought about this man.
My internal fuss is interrupted by a glacial tone. “Tell me how you figure that, Sunshine.”
I’m exhausted. My body has been beaten, prodded, examined. I’ve been interrogated by doctors and police—and now him. I want nothing more than to collapse into a silent, safe dark, and sleep for the next, say, millennia.
“Look, we don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” I should fear the danger that curls around those words, but I can’t muster the will to be afraid of him. I don’t know why, can’t begin to explain it, but I’m safe with him. I know it.
“This. With you.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry I brought you into this at the club. You were the first guy I saw alone I thought might help, that’s it. I don’t want or need anything else from you. You can go on with your life, conscience clear.”
Yeah, I don’t know why I feel like this man won’t hurt me. He looks enraged right now.
Really, that asshole had to have knocked a few screws loose, because my marbles are definitely not on track. Not anymore.
“You think that’s why I’m here?” Hedrops his arms from his chest, moving in to crowd me against the bed. My heart flips, but it’s not with fear. It’s with excitement.
What. The. Actual. Hell?See, loose marbles.
“Whyareyou here?”
“I’m here because I couldn’t stop thinking of you ever since I let you drive away from me. I’ve had your license plate number burned in my mind, and I’ve had to talk myself out of using it to have you found every minute of every day since. Then I saw you here—” His teeth grind behind a hard jaw as his rough voice gets low. “I saw you looking like this, andfuck, I regret ever attempting to be a man of boundaries. That’s not me, anyway. And this time, I’m not fucking letting you go. Not now that I know you’re unsafe. Especially not now that you’ve told me you’re going back to him.Marrying him.” His teeth are going to grind to dust if he doesn’t take it easy. “So, tell me again, what the fuck we don’t have to do, Sunshine.”
I’m shocked. He’s thought of me every minute of every day? Had to fight against the urge to use my license plate number to find me?He’s not letting me go?
Why do I like that? The possession—the dominance and lack of choice for me in his words should have me hightailing it far, far away from him. And yet…
My shoulders fall. “I can’t let you get involved, Kane.”
When I speak his name, those frosty eyes fall to my mouth. Heat sears away the ice.
Even in the broken state it’s in, my body responds.I’m a fool.
“Can’t let me get involved in what?”
