His hand cups my face, and he tilts my gaze to his. “That kiss was too good not to repeat, Ana.”
My heart thunders in my chest, “Kurt has—”
Before I can warn him that there are cameras everywhere, his mouth slants over my mouth, and he’s drugging me with his mouth again. I mean to push him away, I really do, but it’s all I can do to not moan for the camera. And when he folds me close, his hand sliding up my back and between my shoulder blades, my breasts pressed to his chest, I melt, I really do.
Kurt’s voice lifts from the distance. “Ana!”
I pull my mouth from Luke’s, struggling to reclaim my own logic, especially since he’s still touching me. “You can’t just grab me and kiss me like that every time you see me.”
“Because you don’t want me to?”
“No, I—yes, I mean—” I step back, disconnect myself body from his, and do so with a shudder of regret, as I add, “Kurt.” The name should say it all. It should shut him down.
“I’ll handle him,” he says, as if Kurt is a non-issue, when Kurt is never a non-issue.
“I don’t know you, and you’ve done—that—twice.”
“Then let’s fix that. How about dinner tonight? We can get to know each other.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t date Kurt’s men. I told you that.”
“And I told you. I’m not one of his men.”
“You’re here.”
“For you.”
For me.
Good Lord, could this man say anything more right when I’m trying to convince myself he’s all wrong for me? “I’m not going to get to know someone who’s going to go off and get killed.”
“I don’t die that easily, sweetheart. I promise. I’ll go, but I’ll be back a rich man.”
“I don’t care about money and I don’t even want a man right now.”
“And yet you kiss me like you want me. As for not wanting a rich man, sorry, sweetheart, but you’ll have to settle for me and my money.”
“Ana!” Kurt calls again.
“Dinner,” Luke presses.
“Fine,” I say. “Yes. I’ll go to dinner with you.”
I blink back to the present, and I suddenly can’t take sitting here next to the man I thought I’d marry, with this much hate between us. I eye our location, which is just on the outskirts of the city. “I need to stop at a bathroom before we hit those desolate mountain roads.”
He says nothing, but he changes lanes, and it’s not long before we pull off at the next exit and pull into a truck stop. Luke parks at the side of the building, and I’m just suffocating in the man, in the memories and emotions, and even how damn good he smells. I reach for the door, but he catches my hand.
“I’m not going to let you run.”
“Running isn’t my style. You know that.”
“Shooting me instead of facing the truth about your brother was running. Let me be clear, Ana. I am not your fiancé anymore. Kissing you after I just raced against a clock to save your life, even fucking you because I damn sure still want you, is not a desire to fall asleep next to you and never wake up. I don’t trust you. You don’t trust me. But right now, we’re trying to stay alive and keep anyone else from dying.”
I try to jerk my hand away. “Let go.”
He does. He lets go and I’m so ridiculously conflicted over Luke that the very fact that he does both pleases me and destroys me. The only time in my life I’ve ever been scared has been with Luke. Scared of the next kiss, scared of him leaving and not coming back alive, scared to fall in love, scared he’ll never touch me again, and that he’ll be more okay with that than I will.
“Stay there. I’ll come around and get you.” He exits the vehicle and shuts the door.
I don’t stay. I don’t even think about staying. I get out of the car.
Chapter Fourteen
LUCIFER
Of course, she doesn’t wait. She was always hardheaded, but now that she hates me, it’s tenfold. I round the hood of the car, and she’s already walking toward the bathroom at the side of the store. I catch up with her and step to her side. She cast me a side-eyed glare. “I don’t need an escort to the bathroom.”
“You’re getting one anyway.”
“That whole ‘shooting you was running’ thing was pretty shitty.”
I halt and capture her elbow, turning her around to face me. “That whole shooting me thing was pretty shitty, Ana.”
“I called the ambulance and stopped the bleeding.”
“And that makes it better?”
Her lashes lower, and her lips tremble before she looks at me again. “There’s a lot neither of us can take back. Hard to believe that when we met, we were—”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.” I cut my gaze and release her, hands settling on my hips. Holy hell, one way or another, she’s the end of me. I look at her again. “Go to the bathroom, Ana.”