One foot in front of the other... tomorrow will be better.
Eight
Cammie
The wayhe stared at me was unnerving.
I was used to men being attracted to me. Used to seeing their eyes light up with desires I had no interest in allowing to flourish.
While I saw that in Brennan’s, I also saw a mixture of annoyance, disdain, temper, and a flash of something I couldn’t name.
I’d say it was triumph, but what about this situation was enough to make a man of his stature feel triumphant?
Nothing.
Not as far as I could see, anyway.
For days, I’d been wondering how I could meet this man, how I could start this conversation with him, and it seemed so unlikely that he was here.
Now I just had to get him to agree…
The urge to play with my bottom lip hit me, but I knew men like Brennan O’Donnelly were predators on the hunt for prey.
Any sign of weakness, even the slightest hint that the image I was projecting wasn’t as confident as I was working hard to make him believe, and I knew he’d be on me like a ton of bricks.
“Why would you be asking a silly question like that?” he rumbled, sounding so damn Irish at that moment that it made me second guess everything I’d overheard Inessa telling Victoria about our new allies.
Oh, she was smart. Not sharing anything about business or the like, but she spoke of them with fondness, with witty jokes that told me humor was a part of their fold.
Totally unlike ours.
“Because you helped get my mother killed, and left three little girls without any loving guidance in this miserable world we live in,” I told him woodenly. “I think you owe her enough to spare her daughter’s life.”
That had him rearing back, his shoulders colliding with the side of the door in surprise.
I knew it took a lot to shock a man like him—maybe I should get some kind of award?
Everything about him spoke of a cocksuredness that would, ordinarily, make me turn away from such a guy. But when the arrogance matched the man? That was like my form of heroin.
In someone who backed up their strength, their power, with every move they made, I wasn’t sure there could be anything more attractive.
Nyx wore his power around him like a cloak. It hid a lot of vulnerabilities, some I knew because I’d been around him long enough to experience them in the flesh—on the rare occasions he’d let me sleep with him, he cried out a lot in his sleep, and I knew he had terrible nightmares. On top of that, I’d been there when he’d been inked. Each new tattoo a mark of a pedophile he’d slain in his dead sister’s name.
He backed up his dominance with his lifestyle.
And Brennan was the same.
Except he wore a three-piece suit instead of a leather cut.
It felt disloyal to admit that I preferred the suit, especially how Brennan wore it.
He had close-cropped hair that was slightly tousled, in a way that had nothing to do with his hand running through it. But the cut was so good, so expensive, that it just added to his rugged appeal. He had gray-blue eyes that were shadowed by light brown brows, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel like he could see into my very soul.
They were narrowed upon me, small striations having popped up along the sides as he frowned at me, evidently not appreciating my answer. His nose was long, and it led to a wide mouth, a flat upper lip with a prominent Cupid’s bow, and a pouty bottom lip that made me think things I shouldn’t be thinking right now.
Like, how perfect it would be to bite.
His chin and jaw weren’t as stubborn as Nyx’s, but there was power there too. A force of will that was different to the man I’d loved for years, but that told me he wouldn’t take any shit.