“I know you’re the man who rescues condemned dogs. You’re the man who cried when he found a dying puppy. A puppy he held to his heart and loved like she was his, even knowing she couldn’t be. You’re the man who went into a house full of gas, knowing he could die, in the slim hope he could save somebody.”
Without thinking about it, without forming an intention, Kelsey set her hand on his chest. He sucked in a quick breath as if the touch burned him. “You’re the man who saved me.”
He stared long and hard; a deep trench formed between his brows as his natural scowl deepened. Then he shook his head. “There were half a dozen men ready to save you. I’m just the guy who had the shot first.”
What Kelsey did next, shedidthink about,didform an intention. The impulse came on her suddenly, but she took a beat to examine it before proceeding.
She liked this man. He was handsome, in a severe, slightly scary way. He wasn’t a great talker, but when he spoke he showed intelligence and thoughtfulness. He was older—she wasn’t sure exactly how much older, but he’d been in a kutte while she was barely a teenager, so several years older, at least. But she didn’t think the difference was so much as to be weird.
More to the point, she trusted him.
Kelsey hadn’t even been on a date since Greg. More than a year. She didn’t trust herself to know when a ‘nice guy’ was just a façade, a disguise an abusive jerk put on so he could ensnare a woman to control, and she trusted herself even less to recognize when that disguise came off before things got so bad she needed an ice pack, or worse. So she’d canceled her dating apps and rejected every advance, reconciling herself to life as a singleton.
But Dex—Seth—didn’t wear a ‘nice guy’ disguise. He thought he was a bad man. He looked like a bad man.
She disagreed.
Rising onto her toes, she leaned in and set her mouth on his.
He reared back, so quickly and with such force, Kelsey, who’d been leaning on him, stumbled.
He caught her arms to steady her.
She looked up and met his eyes. Humiliation massed at the back of her brain, ready to overrun her, but his look was so shocked and intense she wasn’t sure what he was thinking, or what to think herself. Was he repulsed? Merely surprised? Interested? What?
“Kelsey …” he said, and she heard a warning in his tone.
Then, before her incipient shame caused her to babble, he grabbed her head in both hands and slammed his mouth on hers.