Or maybe he did just want to kill me. I wasn't quite sure.
“Give it your best shot,” I replied in response to the look. It might have been nice to know which way he was actually leaning. It wouldn't have changed the reply so I figured I had it covered either way.
“You think I couldn't?”
“No. What I'm saying is I know you couldn't.” Geez, I really wished I knew if he meant murder or sex. I wonder if there was a way to slip that question in somehow?
He stepped so close I was afraid to breathe because I knew if I took a deep inhale, my breasts would graze his chest. He could be such a jerk but to my extreme annoyance, I was attracted to him.
“You overestimate yourself.” His voice was deep and husky and wasn't helping out my attraction issue. Neither was the proximity.
I instinctively laid a hand on his chest—and a really nice chest at that—because I wanted to touch him and my body had gotten ahead of my brain.
I pushed him away to cover up my real motives for the contact and I was surprised when he acquiesced.
With a little space in between us, my brain started functioning again. Thank god he was never in the courtroom with me. It would've been ugly.
“I'm not overestimating myself at all. I know exactly who I am and I know what I'm capable of. If you think I'd be an easy mark, either as a human or as I am now, you need to brush up on your people skills. You don't know the kind of fight I have in me. I don't roll over for anybody, anytime. Ever.”
“You think you could take me on?” His eyebrows raised, disbelief written in every ounce of his being from the spacing of his feet to the set of his shoulders. “You've tried before, just in case you don't remember. You couldn't even stop me from dragging you into the car and that was when I was trying to not hurt you.”
“I was also out of my mind then.” My stance spread a bit as I eyed him, both of us undeterred by the torrential downpour. “Go ahead, try it.”
His hands went to his hips, and his deep-set eyes seemed to sink a little further, as he stared at me.
And then I started babbling like an idiot. “I have no desire to sleep with you. As you said yourself, I was going to marry Charlie. He was a good man and nothing like you. Just so we are on the same page, that will not be happening.”
I saw his chest rise and fall as if my words infuriated him even further.
“I don’t remember asking you to sleep with me.” I thought he was done talking, but then he continued. “Really? You'd say no?”
“One hundred percent. No, one thousand percent.” And it would mostly be from the guilt I felt over wanting you so soon after losing Charlie.
“First off, there is no such thing as a thousand percent and you'd melt like chocolate in my hands so you're full of it.”
“You really think I'd stoop to sleeping with you after him?”
We stood there, sopping wet and staring at each other. Then in a flash of movement, he was up against me, one arm curved around my back, the other hand in my hair angling my face to his.
I opened my mouth to protest, but it was muffled by his own. The lines of our bodies fit together like they were meant to be one. I didn't want to fit so perfectly to him but it just happened. Just like I didn't mean to soften to him but I couldn't seem to not. I had just been about to get married, I shouldn't have gotten weak over a kiss, but that's exactly what I was doing. All my blustering about Charlie fell apart the second his body touched mine.
But in my defense, to call this just a kiss was an understatement. There was nothing normal about this. I hadn't known a kiss could even be this utterly consuming. I was a grown woman, not a teenage girl. How could I be so affected? He could've taken me there in the middle of the forest, right that second, and I wouldn't have given a peep of protest. Rational thought left the minute he was pressed up against me.
He pulled back suddenly and looked even more pissed off than before he'd kissed me.
His phone rang, breaking the tension between us and interrupting any chance I had of finding out what had made him so mad now. If anyone should've been mad, it was me. He kissed me and I acted like it was my first kiss, not to mention the guilt. How could I have just done that?
Fate answered it but said nothing until he replaced it back in his jeans.
“We have to go to the office.”
He dialed another number and then spoke into the phone. “We're ready.”
The spot in front of us glittered in the dark, signaling the doors imminent appearance just as golf ball sized hail started to shoot down.
I wrapped my arms over my head and left the forest not knowing if we would've ended up rolling around on the forest floor, beating each other or with limbs tangled in the heat of passion.
It was for the best.
Chapter Twelve
It had been raining and hailing just as bad when we'd gotten back to South Carolina. What were the odds of an unexpected storm hitting both places at the same time? It was the first real inkling the powers that be were pretty pissed. I felt like a school kid in the principal’s office and I wasn't enjoying the experience. I was an adult. Being pulled out of my previous reality didn't change that.
I sat in front of Harold's desk, creating puddles with my drenched clothes and hair, as he flipped through his papers silently.
Fate stood holding up the wall off to the side, forming his own puddles. His shirt stuck to his skin, showing off the impressive physique I'd already felt first hand. The three of us were the only ones in the office – or the building, for that matter.
Fate hadn't spoken since we'd gotten back. The only contribution he was currently making to the situation was an occasional grunt of annoyance, as he'd shake his head, obviously replaying the situation over and over again in his mind. But which situation? Both had seemed to piss him off.
“Do you mind?” I asked after an especially loud grunt. “Your monosyllabic noises are very distracting.” Getting literally weak in the knees during our kiss hadn't improved my mood either. If he thought I was going to be an easy mark and that he'd walk all over me now, he was very mistaken. The sooner he knew that, the better.
He looked like he wanted to lunge at me. I smiled brightly back at him, my hands folded on my lap as if I weren't the least bit concerned.
Harold's fingers finally came to rest on a sheet that he pulled to the top of the pile in front of him.
“I've been informed you went off plan. What happened tonight can not happen again.”
“Sure,” I said and waited to see if either of them realized that wasn't technically an agreement. It was more along the lines of sure, I understand how you would feel like that. If needed, I'd do it again the moment I left this office and I wouldn't hesitate for even a second.
What else was there to do in that situation? That brute would've killed that poor woman and left her children in foster care. If I was Karma, even if it was only for a short time, I was going to do what I felt I should.
Unfortunately, such thoughts didn't help my current quandary. Time to unload some of the responsibility, if possible.
“I was surprised I even could do that. Maybe you should have informed me of how surprisingly strong I am? This might have been averted if I'd had more knowledge.”
“You leapt on the guy’s back.” Harold made a noise that was a watered down version of the ones Fate was making, and then continued. “The point is, it can't happen again. That man was not slated to move on for another fifty years.” He waved the paper at me but not close enough to read. Harold really loved his papers. “Your actions have ramifications.”
“I can see the problems that would create.” But I won't agree to not do it again. Dodged another. His patience will wear out soon enough if I kept this up. As far as Fate, I wasn't even going to think about him, right now.