Who could I set this man against? Which person inside that house if left beaten and bloody would free me from this situation? But even if that door was suddenly open to me... would I take it? Would I walk out? Would I leave? Risk poverty? Humiliation? My sister...
“I’m fine,” I said, straightening my shoulders. “What about you? Maybe I should beat someone up foryou.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’m the one who fixes problems.”
“Me too,” I said. “I am the one who fixes problems, too.”
I turned, thinking I was ready for the sight of him. Or had some kind of expectation about what he might look like. I expected handsome. Smiling and charming. Tall, maybe. I was surrounded by handsome men quite a lot.
But I was not braced for him.
He was beautiful. I mean, like inarguably. It was simply fact. A law of nature. Dark hair. Blue eyes like the sky at noon. Dark scruff along his hard, square chin. He wore a tuxedo with the tie pulled loose. An angel kicked out of heaven for the trouble he caused.
There was blood on the collar of his white shirt. Blood from any number of wounds on his face. A black eye. A split lip. A tiny butterfly bandage over a cut on his cheekbone.
He was beautiful, and he was savage.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
He touched the cut on his lip. “You should see the other guy.”
I stepped forward, drawn by the joke attempt. His eyelashes. The sudden urge to be on a side of kindness. Either side. Any side. Just to experience it however I could. “Who hurt you?”
His eyes snapped to mine, sharp and bright, and my skin prickled. Uncomfortable and aware.
“No one,” he said, ice cold despite the blood on his collar. The black eye and split lip. “Not for a long time.”
I thought he was joking, and I smiled, but his face was resolute. Calm in its strength. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He’s been beaten, but he was telling me it didn’t hurt him.
Like he’d made a choice, and that was that. Pain didn’t matter.
“It’s that easy?” I whispered. Scared in my belly because it was only there that I could acknowledge that Iknewwhat was coming for me was going to hurt.
“No,” he said, and his hand, the one with the scar, the one I’d touched, brushed my cheek, his thumb at the edge of my lip. “It’s not easy. It’s very hard. But it’s how you survive.”
His thumb pressed against my lip, and I gasped, my lips parting. I could taste the salt of his skin and everything in me screamed to leave. This wasn’t just foolish, it was dangerous. For him.
For me. Especially for me.
But I couldn’t move. He pressed and pressed until my teeth cut into my lip and it hurt.
It hurt, and he kept pushing.
It hurt, and I stood there. Taking it.
Why was I doing this? Why was he? It felt like a warning and a lesson, and it feltreal. Like the grass under my feet. Like the booze in my belly. Not at all like the threats inside that house, whispered and insinuated. The pain, the taste of blood and salt from his finger. The look in his eye willing me to stillness.
So. Real.
“Don’t let them hurt you,” he said.
His words broke the spell and heart pounding, I stepped back, but I didn’t leave. Like a fool, I stayed.
He didn’t have to be a Morelli to be trouble. Or to get me in trouble.
This man was lethal. And so attractive it hurt. It actually hurt.
“Who are you?” I asked, licking the blood off my lip. Hoping for a lingering taste of him.