Like this want could be sated.
The sight of her that way tied my guts in knots, the chaos of thoughts that roiled through her mind tossing my body into overdrive.
Lust bottled. Need barely bridled.
Tentatively, she accepted my outstretched hand.
Motherfuck.
She singed me. Slayed me. Fire raced my flesh, this girl the kind of flame that could do me in, consume me in a flash.
Knew better than traipsing in the direction of something good. Wanting to dip my dirty fingers in the pure. Would ruin us both when we were done.
That knowledge didn’t seem to make much of a difference, though, with the way I twined her fingers through mine, not wanting to let her go, way my heart trembled in my motherfucking chest.
I led her out, and Eden cowered close to my side, although there was something brave about the way she kept squeezing my hand. Like she was the one giving me encouragement. One giving me reassurance.
Her belief.
Her goodness that shined.
We dipped out of the bar and into the sweeping darkness of the night. Sky so close where it hugged the earth. Heavens smattered with stars strung like ribbons of hope through the night. Beneath it, it was easy to get swayed into thinking there might be a bigger purpose to all of this.
A purpose I wouldn’t be graced.
Wind howled through the towering trees, stirred the ground, the night air cold where it breezed against our skin.
Eden shivered where she stood frozen at the side of my bike.
Like she had no idea where she was supposed to go from there.
Lost.
And I was the idiot who thought I could maybe show her the way. Give her a direction, a way out of wherever she’d go when her features would go sad.
To her sister who had fucked her over.
But I got the sense it went way deeper than that.
This girl’s heart strewn all over the place.
I shifted, overcome with the need to touch. To trace the goosebumps on her flesh. To watch this beautiful girl light up.
“You’re cold,” I rumbled, voice barely audible with the strain.
Eden looked at me with those eyes.
Open.
Wide.
Terrified and still giving me the kind of trust I didn’t deserve.
Her tongue swept across her lips, cautious and slow, and she was huddled so close to me that when she forced out the words, I felt the stutter of her heart. “I need to know something…is…is Gage in danger? Are you in danger?” Her head barely shook, her attention jumping around to search the silence of the shadows, at war with her fears. “Are we in danger?”
Images streaked through my mind.
Flashes of darkness.
Drums of light.
Begging. Pleading. Blood. Splatters. Shame.
Could barely breathe by the time I came back, nothing but a fuckin’ fool when I reached out and traced the chills that had pebbled on her arm, that dress whipping around her legs and her hair thrashing around the angles of her gorgeous face.
My fingertip dragged the length, and I leaned in close, figuring I had nothing else to lose. “The man who was supposed to be my father? One who wanted to send me to Hell? I sent him there first.”
Eden’s eyes pressed closed, and she exhaled a shattered breath, her sweet soul shivering with the truth.
“Only reason I’m still here in California. But that doesn’t mean we’re ever going to fully outrun it. That we’ll ever fully be safe. I made a lot of enemies back then, Eden. Did a lot of bad, bad things. But I’ll spend my life making sure that Gage won’t be affected by that bullshit. That he gets to live a semi-normal life.”
“Okay,” she whispered, giving me more of that unfound trust.
“Let’s get you home. It’s late.”
Warily, she nodded, and I swung my leg over my bike, helped her get on the back. My insides twisted in a rush of want when she shocked the shit out of me by curling those arms around me like that was what she’d been made to do. When she hugged me tighter than she ever had before.
When she held on and buried her face in the back of my neck like she needed it. Like she needed to get closer. Mold herself to my fashion. Sink inside and become one.
Invade.
Possess a piece of me the way she was possessing me.
Like she fit.
Stupid.
Couldn’t go there. Neither of us could afford it, that was clear enough.
Opposites.
Goodness and greed.
Purity and depravity.
Plus the fact that I couldn’t let down my guard. That I had to focus. Be true to the promise I’d made.
One reason.
I started the engine. The roar ricocheted through the thin air, and I struggled to get my shit together as I eased out of the spot and took to the road that was all but deserted this time of night.
I headed in the direction of her house.
The headlight from my bike speared through the lazy darkness as I zigzagged down the sleeping city streets.