“Irish, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I said that. I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.”
“I’m kidding,” he said, breaking his tough-guy routine with a sexy smile. “Besides, the Felix and Oscar thing is pretty accurate. Xan bitches at me all the time.”
He hadn’t gotten offended or angry. He hadn’t thrown back an insult of his own or kicked her out of his house to sleep with Hissing Ally under the porch. It was…not what she was used to. She actually had to stop and think how to react.
Kat settled on taking a deep breath and giving her muscles the command to relax. The breath went well. Filling her nose and lungs with the spicy scent of Irish’s home helped clear her mind, like hitting a mental reset button.
The command to her muscles was blatantly ignored, but she’d known they wouldn’t comply. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever felt relaxed. Constant muscle pain was her “normal.”
The feel of callused fingertips brushing her jawline from ear to chin sent shivers down her spine and goose bumps down her arms. But when those fingertips lifted her chin and his deep blue eyes found hers, the shivers turned to sparks, heating her from the inside out until every goose bump had melted back into her flesh.
“Kat?”
“Huh?” All coherence had fled her. She’d been lucky she’d made any sort of sound whatsoever. She’d never realized how beautiful he was. And she meant “beautiful.” Because for all of his ruggedness with the tattoos, the piercings, and the ever-present scruff he sported, Irish had very aristocratic features.
His forehead was wide and smooth until it revealed the three lines that creased from one side to the other whenever he raised his brows. High cheekbones framed a long, straight nose that refuted her assumption he’d lived a life where a few breaks from neighborhood brawls would be expected. His lips were a perfect match, equally full and tempting, and hiding in his barely there beard was a cleft in the center of his chin that deepened when he smiled.
But his eyes were the most stunning things she’d ever seen. Almond-shaped and lined with thick black lashes, they would have looked feminine if it weren’t for the hard edge emanating from them.
If someone asked her to describe the color, she’d call it “fire and ice.” Yes, she knew that wasn’t any color Crayola had ever defined, but that’s what they reminded her of.
Sometimes they were an icy blue that could freeze the biggest asshole in mid-swing and cause him to rethink his actions. Kat had thought his eyes were his secret weapon as a cooler on more than one occasion.
And other times—like right now—they reminded her of blue fire, the hottest part of a flame, with the power to melt anything in their path. Including her.
“Kitten,” he whispered, “you with me?”
Nickname, plus three simple words she’d started to believe were only for her, equaled butterflies and warmth in her chest she couldn’t remember ever having before.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’m with you.”
“Good.” His hand lowered and wrapped around her good one. “You’ve had a long coupla days. We can talk about things after you’ve gotten some rest. You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She’d barely opened her mouth to protest when he held his hand up and started leading her to the door on the left she’d thought of as Door #1. “No arguments. I might be rough around the edges, but I’m not a total asshole.”
Kat’s heart raced as they got closer and closer. His bedroom. His bed. His domain. Locked door. No escape.
She teetered dangerously between flight or freeze. Most people had flight or fight responses, but she’d learned a long time ago that fighting only made the inevitable worse. If she didn’t force herself into flight mode fast, she’d freeze, and then the safety she’d felt so far with Irish would vanish like a morning fog burned off from the sun.
Digging her heels in and yanking her hand from his, she said, “No, you don’t understand. I can’t.”
He narrowed his eyes as though trying to crack a code on an encrypted message, which was as close to the truth as anything. “You can’t?”
She took two small steps back while shaking her head. “I’ll be fine on the couch, really.”
“Kat,” he said gently, “I’m not gonna come in there, I swear. I’ll stay out here.”
She believed him, she really did. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t willingly put herself in a position of such vulnerability for bad memories to come crawling out of the shadows to haunt her.
“Please, Irish. Just let me take the couch.”
Chapter Six