Painfully.
Need racing my blood, guts twisting up in knots, lust stalking my spine like a caged lion seeking a way out.
What messed with my head was the way I was hit with another swell of that protectiveness when I saw her round the corner and step into the salon.
A river of blonde and a sea of sadness in those teal eyes.
My heart shook at my ribs when she saw me sitting there.
Energy lapped, so fucking intense I swore I could see a shiver of it racing the floor.
I should have known better than to come here.
I’d felt the tremble of it. The warning of something unknown. Of something I couldn’t afford to get involved in.
It didn’t matter.
Because sitting there?
I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Six
Grace
I froze in the middle of the salon. Just staring. Heart taking off at a sprint and my mind whirring with all the possibilities of how it was possible that man was sitting there.
Cinnamon-colored eyes pinned me to the spot.
Hot, hard need coming off him in blistering waves.
I swore I had to be chained up to something solid.
Shackled.
Unable to move.
He watched me through the mirror, the ridiculously gorgeous man from Saturday night.
The guy who’d been trying to entice me with the most wicked night of pleasure who’d instead had knelt on the hard ground at my side and helped me gather my things. The man who was so rough and raw and dangerous and somehow unbearably soft.
The way he’d watched me as if I were fragile—as if he wanted to save me and then turn around and break me a little, too.
His striking reflection was captured in the reflective glass.
So menacing and ominous and intense that it about dropped me to my knees.
A shiver of fear crawled into my belly.
A different kind of fear from the one I’d felt at the thought of facing down Reed.
This kind of fear had me taking a step in his direction. Drawn toward the darkness, a prisoner to the tethers I could feel wrapping around my wrists and yanking me forward.
Tug, tug, tug.
Right there in my belly and in my heart.
How had he found me?
Better question, why had he found me?
Knowing it was dangerous that he had. I just didn’t know who it was most dangerous for.
Lifting my chin, I edged up behind him, trying to exude as much confidence as I could, trying to pretend as if him just sitting there didn’t threaten the rise of tears back to my eyes. The way I both wanted to thank him for what he’d done and scream at him to run.
Tell him I couldn’t afford for him to get tangled up in my business, sure that a man like him would never be willing to pay the price, anyway.
What I really was aching to do was walk up behind him and press my nose to the skin exposed at his neck.
Inhale and breathe him in.
Feel him under my hands.
Decide if he was real or a hallucination my mind had conjured.
I couldn’t help it that every time I closed my eyes over the last two days, he’d popped into my mind, haunting me with the tease of a memory, adding to all the mayhem that was already wreaking havoc on my insides.
Today he was wearing suit pants and a pin-striped white button down, the jacket gone, sleeves rolled up to reveal curls of ink covering both of his forearms.
My mouth watered, and my stomach clenched. Maybe I really had let my imagination run a little too wild. Because I felt like all those fantasies were catching up.
Taking hold.
A reality I most definitely could not keep.
He appeared every bit as powerful as Saturday night. Maybe more so. As if second by second, the man continued to gain the upper hand.
For a moment, my eyes got trapped there, on the dark designs etched into his skin, hewn like shadows and mist, as if they might be a hazy screen previewing what was written on the inside of the man.
Scored and scarred and marked.
I had the sudden urge to run my fingers over them, trace the swirls of suggestion standing out in stark contrast to his strait-laced exterior.
Discover what they meant.
The man a riddle.
Then I shook myself out of the stupor.
Come on. This guy had just waltzed in off the street. From out of nowhere. And was sitting in my chair. That had to be wrong on a hundred different levels.
Yet, he didn’t give off the creeper vibe, even though I was sufficiently spun up by his presence.
This was different.
I knew it.
Was pretty sure he knew it, too.
Energy lapped in the space between us.
The same from Saturday night.
Though it was slowed. Weighed down by the questions that were clearly playing out in our minds. His coming to life in the sparks that glowed like a toss of red glitter in his cinnamon-colored eyes, mine in the way my lips parted with the concern that he’d sought me out.