“Your father?” Doubt flooded those words. I could see him rearranging more of what he’d assumed of me, trying to figure me out, see inside, just the way I continually seemed to do with him.
But the truth was, the last week of working with him had wrapped him in a shroud of mystery. The man at the bar was at complete odds with the man who picked up his son day after day.
This man who called to me in a way he shouldn’t.
My nod was jerky. “Yes, my father owns the school and is the pastor of the church there.” The words shook, my own sadness taking over. “And if he loses them?” My shoulders slumped. “We lose everything. The school. The church. The dance studio. All the things we love.”
Things that were so incredibly important to me.
“And my daddy will lose his heart,” I whispered because the thought of it broke more of mine.
In an instant, that wraith was moving my way, a dark storm that eclipsed.
Cold and hot.
A burn that would scar.
My thready pulse skittered and shook. I inhaled, trying to fill my aching lungs, only to have my senses inundated with the man.
He smelled like alcohol and leather.
Like metal and oil.
Like trouble served straight-up.
He leaned in and inhaled, too, his nose brushing into my hair. Shivers raced, and I was afraid this man would possess me if I allowed him to get any closer.
“Goodness.” He rumbled it as if it were a sin.
“We all have good, and we all have bad, Mr. Lawson.”
“Nah, Kitten, we don’t. Some of us? Only thing we’ve got is darkness. Sin and lies and shame. And my club has a bad way of sucking all the goodness out of people. That prick—”
The words were blades.
I trembled with the slice of them.
“What’d that bastard say to you?” Trent demanded, edging back so he could read my expression.
I hugged my arms over my chest as if it could protect me from the invasion that was this man.
“He didn’t say much.” My tongue swept across my dried lips as I thought back to what had happened. “He…he’d given me a gross feeling from the beginning. There was…something off about him. I’d pushed it aside and took the order for their drinks, but when I came back, right as I was passing him his, he’d asked if all the Absolution girls were whores.”
A snarl curled Trent’s mouth, and his hands suddenly gripped my sides. Close to circling all the way around.
Heated and fierce. Powerful and relentless.
Flames licked through my body.
I was sure of it then.
It was Trent Lawson who was the danger.
Vicious. A cruel protector. A wicked savior.
A sweet warrior.
I’d seen it in his expression back at the bar. But I felt the fullness of it then, firing from his fingertips and searing my skin in possession.
I was the fool who wanted to open myself to it.
Let him brand me with his touch.
“And?” He demanded it like he knew. “That’s not all, is it, Eden? What did that motherfucker say then?”
I heaved out the words as a chill blew through. “He said he heard that’s the way the owner likes them, and he hoped you shared.”
Rage blurred his features in malice, and his fingers curled tighter. “And what do you think, Eden? You think that’s what I demand of my girls? You think that’s who I am?”
My head shook, and I attempted to swallow around the shards of glass that sat at the base of my throat. “No.”
He exhaled. Heavy. Tortured. “When he grabbed you? When I saw his hand on your wrist?” The words were a raw confession. “Wanted to end him, Eden. Wanted to put him in the ground just for touching you.”
Chills raced.
Fear.
Revulsion.
Attraction.
Feral eyes flashed, black, seething flames. “Why’s that, Kitten? Why did I want to claim you as mine?”
My mouth went dry, and he was tugging me closer, his head angling to the side as he murmured the words close to my mouth. “Why do I want to climb into this sweet little body and get lost there?” He shifted to run his nose along my jaw, inhaling at my pulse point, those full lips at my jaw when he whispered, “I bet your pussy is so sweet. Heaven. Paradise.”
Desire flashed with his brazen words.
A blight across my soul.
I struggled to breathe. To see through the haze of seduction he was lulling me into. To fortify the walls I knew better than to let down.
“I do my best not to gamble my heart, Mr. Lawson,” I forced out as I inched back enough to meet his eyes, my voice a thin wisp.
Shadows played across his striking face as he pierced me with that gaze. His cheeks sharp and his jaw sharper.
He reached out and splayed a tattooed hand across my chest.
Everything raced.
“But it’s beating so hard, isn’t it? This beautiful heart of yours. You feel it, Kitten?”