“He’s not my boyfriend,” I snapped to his broad back as he turned towards the body I was doing my best to ignore.
Keltan whirled me back to face him, ignoring the glare I gave him. “What the fuck are you doin’ at a murder scene, Lucy?” he seethed, a glare of his own looking rather unnatural but nonetheless hot as anything on his attractive face.
“There was nothing good on at the movies,” I shot back.
His dark and sculpted features hardened as he scowled at me. The hands at my forearms tightened in warning.
As if I was only just registering his touch and the fire that came with it, I jerked out of his grip. He allowed it, though I knew I wouldn’t have moved had he willed it to be. Those muscles bugling out of his white tee, covered in tribal designs, weren’t just for show. No, they were used for doing God knew what in God knew where for the New Zealand army, and now for high-risk security jobs in the City of Angels. And where there were angels, there were sure to be demons of the worst kind.
The ones who went around slitting throats.
And the ones who reminded me of what we’d had, and then didn’t have, with one single gaze into the depths of those chocolate eyes.
I shivered despite the mugginess to the air.
Keltan noted that and his eyes ran over me in concern once more. I took a beat to do the same, except my gaze was not concerned. Hunger, perhaps, but at a murder scene I reasoned it wasn’t exactly couth. I schooled my features as I ran my eyes over his powerful jean-clad thighs, the left of which had a jagged scar from almost kneecap to groin.
Roadside bomb.
I’d peppered that with gentle kisses the night he told me the story, haunted by the ripples marring his light caramel skin. It was the night of the car bomb that blew up whatever hope we had. Obviously, I hadn’t known that then; I had been too busy holding onto the life, the now, after he’d showed me some of his demons. And I’d returned the favor.
I moved my gaze up past his belt buckle, quickly so I didn’t think of what lay beneath and what I’d done once I’d finished kissing his scar. And then what I’d done when I’d finished kissing his… third leg.
I swallowed around the memory and then went back to my perusal.
The white tee was fitted, but not tight like the douches in L.A wore them, plastered to their steroid-riddled abs and dipping down to show more cleavage than I did. No, the ridges were only hinted at, the tee casual yet good quality. His broad chest filled out the upper half, hiding crisscrosses of scars gained from knife fights to bullet wounds. One half was covered by the rest of the tattoo that took up his left arm.
Maori. It told the story of his Iwi, or tribe, back home in New Zealand. He’d explained the history and meaning behind the swirls of ink as I’d traced my fingers across the smooth yet hard skin that same night, after he’d told me about the stone at his neck. Greenstone. The name of his company. The piece of stillness, of home he carried with him.
I swallowed and moved my gaze up his corded neck and sharp jaw, brushing past his angular cheekbones and crooked nose to meet the hard eyes, swirling with a lot of anger and a lot of something else.
He stepped forward, his presence both a relief and a lance of pain at the same time. He lifted his hand to lightly cup my cheek. “You okay, Snow?” he murmured, little more than a whisper.
“Define okay,” I whispered back.
He stared at me for a long while, the months passing between us. The distance. “Well, short version. For me, it’s standing in front of you,” he said. His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Without the fact that you almost got killed by a man who seems to enjoy slitting the throats of women,” he continued, voice razor-sharp.
I blinked at the response and the unrestrained fury in his gaze. My phone rang, jerking me out of his hold because I was jumpy, and then because I grasped sanity.
Which meant not letting him touch me and say things like that while looking at me the way he was.
I reached into my bag.
“Snow,” he warned.
I eyed him, daring him to stop me. “It’s my editor. I’ll have to inform him that my latest story has just become a lot more interesting,” I whispered.
I didn’t want to broadcast to a whole room of cops that I was likely going to divulge more to my editor than I did to the detectives. They were stiff like that. But I was intent on proving myself in my new job and lifting myself past the fashion and beauty section of Current, the upcoming online news and lifestyle publication forging through the new journalistic environment.