No one would see me.
With the hand on my mouth, no one would hear me, either.
Knife.
I needed to get my knife out of my bra.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I braced myself for Kyle. For that grating voice of his, all confidence and slime.
But it wasn’t his voice.
Oh, no.
And those weren’t his hands either.
The ones spanning my face and pressing over my ribs.
Those were the hands I’d been fantasizing about since the day he came barging into my home.
As much as I’d come to be familiar with the way I reacted just to his memory, the intensity to which my body responded to his nearness damn near took my breath away.
Almost at the same time, though, was a sensation I hadn’t anticipated.
A deep wound resurfacing, splitting open.
Fear.
Anger.
Helplessness.
They all mingled into this heady cocktail that made me immediately drunk. Drunk enough to twist my body just right, to break out of his hold as my hand sought the knife, flicking it open with a little click in the alley quiet but for my heavy breathing.
“The fuck,” Crow hissed, grabbing my wrist again, pushing me back, and pinning it to the wall again. “I thought we were done with that shit,” he said, catching my other wrist when I went to dig for another weapon, too overwhelmed with conflicting thoughts and feelings and memories to think straight.
“And yet you keep assaulting me,” I shot back, glaring up at him.
That was my mistake.
When I wasn’t looking at him, it was easy for the present and the past to mingle, for that hurt animal side of me to take over.
When I looked up to find him towering over me, though, all of that past fell away. Leaving me wholly in the present.
With the man my body immediately started to respond to.
“Saving you,” he corrected.
“What?”
“Saving you,” he repeated.
“From what? From Kyle? I can handle Kyle.”
“From yourself, it seems,” he told me.
“I don’t need anyone to save me,” I snapped, insulted even if, logically, I did know I was being reckless at best. “I can handle myself.”
“Yeah? Then how was I able to grab you and drag you into this alley? If I could do it, anyone could. You just lucked out that it was me this time.”
“Lucked out,” I scoffed.
“Yeah, baby, lucked out,” he said.
I swear my damn stomach turned to mush at the pet name.
And because I absolutely, positively could not let him know that, I went ahead and snapped back at him again.
“I don’t consider being anywhere near you lucky.”
“No?” he asked, tone changing, and I felt myself tensing at it. Because it was a dangerous change.
Not because I thought he intended to hurt me.
No.
It was dangerous because it was knowledgeable.
Like he knew.
Like he knew what was going on in my mind, in my body.
Like it was written all over my face.
Hell, maybe it was.
It had been so long since I’d been near a man that I had no idea if I wore my desire on my sleeve. Judging by the way his eyes went heated, though, I was going to wager that I did, that it was right there for him to see.
The heat that was on my cheeks, neck, and chest? Yeah, that was probably a flush. And because I was so damn pale, I bet I was pink from it.
There weren’t a lot of reasons to flush like that.
And a man who walked like he knew how to fuck probably knew exactly what my body had in mind.
“No,” I confirmed, tone breathless.
“Hmm,” he said, but the sound came out almost like a growl, rumbling in his chest, then vibrating into mine, making my sex clench hard.
His hands shifted, taking both of mine in one wrist. The other slid down the underside of my bare arm, slipping in at my shoulder, moving across my clavicle.
“So this flush,” he said as his fingertips made feather-soft brushes across my chest. “This is an angry flush,” he said.
“Must be,” I said through the choked feeling of my throat.
“Must be,” he agreed as his fingers did another pass as his gaze cut to me.
I don’t know if it was the feeling itself, or the intensity in his gaze, but something in that exact moment made a shiver course through me.
Not one of those discreet, internal shivers, either.
Oh, no.
My body had to go and be all shameless about it.
And with him standing so close, there was no way he didn’t feel it.
His gaze held mine for a long moment before moving downward, looking at my lips which parted in a clear invitation.
“Dunno, baby,” he said, voice like a shiver across my skin. “Feeling pretty lucky right now myself,” he added as his head shifted, his cheek brushing mine, feeling me out, or dragging it out. Either way, my body was humming with need.
“I said stop!”