“A bad man would never warn a woman he wanted that he wasn’t good.”
Frustrated by that, he shakes his head. “It’s not hyperbole. It’s the truth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should.”
“What if I said I didn’t care?”
“Then I’d say you were being foolish.”
We stare at each other, nose to nose, both of us breathing raggedly. It would only take a slight bend of his neck for his mouth to be on mine.
Suddenly, I want that so much, it leaves me breathless.
“You promised you’d never hurt me. Was that the truth?”
He answers instantly. “Yes.”
“So you being bad…that’s about other people?”
He struggles for a moment in silence, his brows drawn together, looking so handsome, it hurts. “It’s about my job. My lifestyle. My life.”
“You’re telling me you’re a criminal.”
Again, he answers instantly. “Yes.”
If my heart beats any faster, I’ll drop dead. “How big of a criminal?”
“The biggest. The baddest. The worst.”
“This doesn’t make sense. What kind of criminal would go around advertising he’s a baddie?”
His voice turns hard. “The kind that needs the woman he wants to understand what she’s getting herself into.”
I laugh a little, confused and frustrated. “So now you’re trying to scare me away?”
“I’m trying to educate you.”
“May I ask why?”
His voice goes rough. “Because once you’re in my bed, you’re mine. And that’s it. Once I have you, I’ll never let you go. Not even if you ask me to.”
We stare at each other. After a moment, I say, “Wow. We haven’t even had our first date yet.”
He growls, “This is who I am. The only bad thing I don’t do is lie. I’ll never lie to you, even if I know you’ll fucking hate it.”
He’s agitated, I see that clearly. Agitated and irritated, his temper high.
It doesn’t scare me. Instead, it intrigues the hell out of me. So does everything he’s said.
All that money I spent on therapy…what a waste.
I say, “Okay. Let’s say I accept what you’re telling me. Let’s say we move forward with the assumption that I know you’re on Santa’s naughty list.”
He sighs, closing his eyes. “It’s so much fucking worse than that.”
“Please stop cursing at me. I’m trying to say something.”
He opens his eyes and looks at me, his eyes blazing. A muscle twitches like crazy in his clenched jaw.
Fascinated by that rebellious muscle, I trace it with the tip of my finger.
He stills under my touch, so much so that it seems as if he’s stopped breathing.
I say softly, “My whole life, I’ve been good. I made all the right decisions. I didn’t do anything foolish or wild. Even when I was a kid, I followed all the rules. None of that protected me from the worst of what life had to offer. Being good didn’t keep me from being hurt, or being depressed, or wishing more days than not that I had the guts to kill myself to escape the pain.
“That you’re honest enough to tell me what you just did…I suppose it should make me afraid, but instead, it makes me feel safer. It makes me want to trust you. Because the truth is always so much harder than making up something pretty. I’d rather have the ugly truth than a beautiful lie.
“So let’s just go on our date like two normal people. Let’s enjoy ourselves. After that, we’ll take it one day at a time. An hour at a time if we have to. There’s no need to settle everything tonight. Okay?”
He gazes at me in tense silence for a long moment. I see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Then he nods, grudgingly, as if agreeing to keep seeing me is against his better judgment.
That makes me feel safer with him, too.
Nobody truly bad would put another person’s well-being before their own.
Narcissists and psychopaths don’t operate that way.
Feeling bold, I wrap my arms around his shoulders again and stretch against him like a cat. “So…this kiss you mentioned earlier on the phone.”
His eyes flare with heat. He grinds his back teeth together and says nothing.
I smile up at him, knowing exactly how my words have affected him, feeling a heady rush of power at the idea that something so small could make a man like him lose his grip.
“If I remember correctly, you said I’d have to ask you explicitly for what I want.”
His lashes lower. Very slowly, he exhales. It rumbles through his chest like a sound a bear might make. He growls, “Are you asking?”
I pretend to think for a moment, pursing my lips. “I don’t know. Am I?”
His eyes go black. Murderous black. Crazy-person black.
The only reaction that gets out of me is to make me smile wider.
Deadly soft, he says, “Careful, beautiful girl.”
I love it when he calls me that. It makes all my hollow spaces fill up with crackling white light and start singing.
Gazing up into his burning eyes, I whisper, “No. I think I’m done being careful. So I’d like you to kiss me n—”
Kage crushes his mouth to mine.
His kiss is savage, demanding, almost frightening in its intensity. It’s like he wants to crawl inside my soul through my mouth. He fists a hand in my hair and holds my head steady as he drinks deep, making little grunts of pleasure, his big hard body pressed against mine.
My pulse throbbing and my skin on fire, I sink my hands into his hair and let him take what he’s so greedy for.
The kiss goes on and on until I’m sure I won’t be able to remain standing.
Then he breaks away suddenly and stands holding me with his eyes closed and his chest heaving, the hand he’s got fisted in my hair not relaxing its tight grip even an inch.
When he exhales, it’s a groan.
I want to groan, too, but I’m incapable of coherent thought at the moment.
I’ve never, ever been kissed like that.
I had no idea what I’d been missing.
He slides a hand down my waist to my hip, which he squeezes. Then he slides the hand from my hip to my ass and takes a handful, squeezing that, too. He pulls me even closer, so our pelvises are pressed together, so I feel every inch of his arousal.
Breathing hard, he puts his mouth against my ear. “Fuck going out. I need to eat you for dinner tonight.”
Probably because I’m so dizzy, I start to laugh. “Oh, no, Romeo. You don’t get to skip the wining-and-dining part of this courtship. You’ll have to buy me an expensive dinner or two before you even get to second base. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m old-fashioned.”
He bites my neck.
It isn’t hard, but it makes me gasp anyway. Then he gentles the bite with a soft kiss, nuzzling my throat while making a rumbling noise very close to a purr.
His lips are like velvet. His tongue is exquisitely warm and soft. The scratch of his rough beard against my skin gives me goose bumps all over. I shiver, feeling burning hot and icy cold and so very alive.
He finds my mouth again, fitting his lips over mine. This time, the kiss is gentler, but no less passionate.