I waited for him to speak, not nervous. I should’ve been, such an extended amount of silence after a kiss between strangers was not the norm. It was usually a sign of something bad. But I knew it wasn’t bad. There was a certainty between us that shouldn’t have been there after such a short amount of time. It shouldn’t have been there, but it was.
He took a long pull of his beer, never taking his gaze from me.
“What was that for?” he asked after swallowing.
“I just felt like I needed to see what it was like to kiss you,” I replied, my voice soft.
Something flared in his eyes. “That was a bad decision, Sunshine.”
My blood ran cold with the words chilling it in a way only rejection could.
But this isn’t rejection, I told myself. The way he’d kissed me back, the way he was looking at me, devouring me with his gaze, no way in hell was that rejection.
It was something else entirely.
“Why was it a bad decision?” I asked on little more than a whisper.
“Because now I’m never gonna wanna know what it feels like to stop kissin’ you,” he growled.
My stomach dropped.
My panties dampened.
He continued to stare.
I didn’t know what to say.
His attention didn’t urge me to find the words. No, it seemed to radiate contentment, like he was perfectly happy to watch me struggling to breathe, to control my hormones and figure out how the hell to handle myself in a situation like this.
“You’re not holding much back,” I said on a whisper. “You’re showing your cards pretty early in the piece. Aren’t you meant to pretend you don’t care about me or something?”
He moved as soon as I spoke, so his body was right up in my space and his hand on my neck.
“I don’t pretend under regular circumstances,” he said. “And these circumstances are far from regular.”
His eyes went down my body and then back up, every spot under his gaze sizzling from the power of it.
“You are far from regular,” he murmured. “But I’m also not gonna sugar coat shit here. I’m not in it for a long haul, and that’s not a choice, that’s my life. Path I’ve chosen means the only choices I can make is to kill someone else to save a buddy, or to save myself.”
His thumb began to stroke the side of my neck and he held me hostage with his gaze. “I don’t get to choose to see the beautifully irregular girl again after this weekend,” he continued. “I’m showin’ my cards now, they aren’t pretty, or even the hand I wanna play, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Now you’ve gotta make your decision about whether we’re gonna play this out or if I’m gonna put you in a cab, have the memory of your lips and your smile.” He moved his hand to brush my bottom lip with his thumb.
“And trust me, places I’m gonna be, that’s gonna be enough to get me through. But if you’re willin’ to give me more, knowing what you know about what this is, more importantly, about what this isn’t, make no mistake, I’m fucking taking it.”
His words were spoken roughly, because his edges were rough, no matter how neatly his shirt was ironed, or how close cut his hair was. Whatever he’d been through chiseled and sanded down the parts you couldn’t iron, wash or shave. It made sense that his voice matched that.
But there was something beyond that. Something soft. Something I knew was for me. Something I wanted to be mine, I wanted to rouse the last soft and tender part out from this rough man, despite the fact it had a time limit.
Despite the fact that my beating heart would be a countdown to when it’d never be whole again.
Because I was falling for him.
People knew I believed in love at first sight, considering I proclaimed it every week. But that was with boys who spoke pretty words and had pretty, unblemished souls.
This man was not giving me pretty words and I could see his soul was plenty blemished from death and pain he’d both seen and administered.
This was not the kind of love at first sight I imagined. Or that I wanted.
But it was here.
“Everyone around me has always wanted to protect me from the world,” I whispered. “They don’t think I can handle it. The real one. Not the one they think I live in.”
His hand tightened on my neck. “I’m not here to protect you from the world. I want to give it to you. Because I know you’re strong enough to handle it.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, his lips inches away from mine. “You’ve only known me for a few hours.”
He grinned against my lips and the expression hit me in the stomach. Well, a lot lower than my stomach. “I’ve known you much longer than that, Little Girl. And I’ll know you much better in a few hours.”