He was so close that I could feel his body heat. I had to resist the urge to lean into it. To offer him my lips and anything else he wanted.
“I’m an asshole. You don’t want a guy like me around.”
“Yes. I do.”
He lifted his hand and ran his knuckles over my cheek reverently.
“How did I ever think you were a boy?” he whispered, his voice filled with awe as he looked down at me.
“I like to think I was pretty convincing,” I tried to joke.
He just stared at me, his hand falling away from my face. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
“You’re a nice girl, Parker. You deserve better than all this.”
“This is the first place I’ve felt safe since I was twelve years old.”
The tender look in his eyes shuttered in an instant, replaced by something hard and unforgiving.
“What happened when you turned twelve?”
I opened my mouth and realized it was bone dry. I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want Shane to think of me that way. To see me as damaged. But I was powerless to resist the pull of his eyes.
“My mom got married,” I said breathlessly, unable to tear my eyes away.
“And?” he demanded harshly.
“My stepfather moved in. I mean, we moved in with him.”
He stared at me hard.
“He hurt you.”
“He . . . tried.”
Shane stepped closer, and I found myself backed up against the pantry door. His arms came up on either side of me.
“He touched you?”
I nodded shakily.
“I ran away. I fought him. But he never stopped trying. He had the lock taken off my door.”
I hadn’t meant to say that. It was true, but it made it all so real. Once the lock was off my door, it got harder to evade him. Impossible to get any sleep. I spent most nights waiting.
Waiting for the sound of footsteps outside my door.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid to sleep. Shane had done that for me. He’d made me feel safe.
He clenched his jaw and looked away. When he looked back, I saw that his eyes were shining.
“I just have one last question, Parker.”
“Yes?”
“Is he still alive?”
Chapter Eighteen
Shane
I’d almost kissed her. What kind of fucking monster was I? An innocent young girl tells me something like that, and I want to kiss her?
And there was a lot more than kissing that I wanted to do.
Get a fucking grip, Shane. She’s not your plaything. She’s been hurt. She’s probably just as fucked up as you. She needs safety. She needs love.
I shook off that thought. I was not the man to give her the love she needed. I could protect her, yes. I could kiss her senseless. I could take her to bed and screw her until the world went away for both of us. But love?
I was not the kind of guy for that. You needed to have a heart for love. And I’d cut mine out long ago.
What kind of bastard wants to kiss a girl who bared her soul like that? But I hadn’t just wanted to kiss her. I’d wanted to claim her. To make her mine. I’d been fighting off those feelings ever since I’d realized she was a girl and old enough to pursue.
And I wanted to pursue her. Desperately. It was pure instinct. A primal urge. Fuck, I wanted to chase her down and pounce on her like a wild animal.
Clearly, my sex drive was not dead. It wasn’t even alive and well. It felt like a fucking giant gorilla, wanting to climb the Empire State Building and knock planes out of the sky with my goddamn pinky.
But only if Parker was there, wearing a slinky white dress.
I groaned. It was not a welcome discovery. It was a disaster in every sense of the word. My body had finally woken up after all these years of turning down easy sex, and now I wanted . . . her.
But not meaningless sex. Nothing fast. I wanted something that was so much more. I wanted to bare my soul to her and for her to bare her soul to me. I wanted a physical connection too. I wanted rough sex and tender sex. I wanted breakfast in the morning.
I wanted to go for a fucking walk on the goddamn beach with her.
I wanted something real.
But I couldn’t go there. She needed protection. That’s it. That was what she needed from a guy like me. It was all I could provide. She didn’t want or need a fucking scumbag like me.
Speaking of scumbags . . . I had another murder to plan. And I really needed the fucking distraction. Sex and death. That’s what made the world go ’round.
I chose option B.
I pulled over and pulled out my phone.
“Cain. I’m coming over.”
“It’s dinner time.”