Her presence hit me like a balm, but it wasn’t close to calming.
The door shut and I heard her turning the lock, felt her hesitation as she stood just inside my house, her sweet spirit clattering out for me.
I gathered myself enough to ease up to the kitchen entryway, refusing the urge to go flying out into the room to demand every answer that had been bouncing around in my head since she’d left.
Only she stole the breath from my lungs when I caught sight of her.
Left me staggered.
No way to even speak.
The woman in this pink, frilly dress that made her look like some kind of ballerina, pink pumps to match.
Had nearly died when she’d come downstairs earlier dressed that way.
“Hey.” I managed to keep it cool like I hadn’t been crawling the fucking walls waiting for her to get back.
“Hey.” It was a murmur as she peeked up at me. She seemed to war for a second before she made the decision to start my way.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Her heels quietly clicking on the hardwood floors.
And there she was again.
A landslide.
Quicksand that immediately sucked me under.
No escape from her lure.
She stopped a foot away.
“How was Kayden?” she asked, keeping the words hushed.
“He was great,” I told her, doing the same so we didn’t wake him.
She let go of a tender smile. “Well, at least the house is still standing.”
Affection bloomed, and my lips tugged with it. “Told you he was no problem at all. We played until he pretty much passed out. I read him a story, brushed his teeth, then tucked him into bed. Kid was out like a light.”
Her teeth raked those shimmery pink lips. I did my best not to groan. “I really appreciate you doing it, even though it sounds like you two had a great time.”
“We did. Love getting that kind of time with him.”
Tension pulsed, curling and crackling through the dim light that closed us in.
Redness hit her cheeks, and she looked down. Apparently neither of us knew what to do right then.
“Do you want something to drink? Have a little of that wine left over from the other night.”
She only hesitated for a beat before she nodded, and I turned and headed for the cabinet, knowing with the way I was feeling, I should have let her climb to her room and lock her door the way I’d warned her.
But I wasn’t feeling so rational right then.
So I grabbed her a glass and emptied the bottle of wine into it, set it in front of her where she’d stopped at the end of the counter again.
“You’re always taking care of me,” she whispered. Cinnamon eyes glinted beneath the bare light.
So warm.
So real.
I’d gotten too close, and I was getting inundated with her scent. Sugar and vanilla and every fucking thing sweet.
I wanted to lean in and take a bite.
Desire hit me from all sides.
Lust gathered in my guts.
I needed to cool this fire before I did something stupid, so I sent her a grin and moved to the fridge and grabbed another beer for myself. I twisted off the cap and tossed it into the trash before I moved to lean against the far counter that ran against the back wall.
Ten feet separated us, but I could still feel her heat.
I took a sip, eyeing her over the bottle. “How was dinner?”
I shouldn’t torture myself this way, but I never said I wasn’t a masochist.
Another flush, and she dipped her chin for a second, not sure what to say, and fuck, I had to rough a hand through my hair to keep from demanding to know exactly what had gone down.
“It was nice.”
My brows lifted. “Nice?”
She shrugged one of those delicate, bare shoulders. “We went to Sully’s.”
Sully’s was an upscale steakhouse in town.
It was good he took her there. My girl deserved the best. But it still pissed me off. Made me cagey. A dull rage pumping through my veins.
“Let me guess…you had lobster scampi.” I kept it a soft prodding. A teasing like this was any another night and I wasn’t coming apart inside.
A light giggle rolled free, and she took a sip of her wine. “Am I that predictable?”
“No, Dakota, not predictable. I just know you.”
The atmosphere throbbed when I said it, taking us back to those years when it was just me and Dakota. Way it’d been so easy and right.
And there was nothing I could do but move across the open area and to the counter where she stood, though I made sure to keep three feet separating us. Leaning an elbow on the countertop, I shifted to face her.
The air stirred. Heavy and dense.
She peeked at me again, her gaze softening, the swirl of brown flecked with red and gold mesmerizing. “I guess you know me better than anyone else.”
It was quiet as it hit.
Issued like a secret.
“But that’s about to change, yeah?” Keeping the spite out of it was difficult. Somehow, I managed it, following the question with a long pull of my beer.
She blinked. “I don’t know what that means, Ryder.”
“It means you’re going to find someone who can treat you better than me. Someone you can get closer to. Someone you can fully trust.”
Someone who could completely give themselves. Someone who wasn’t about to end up dead or in jail.
Doubt puffed from her nose. “I’m not sure about that.”
“Brad’s a good guy.”
He was.
Right then, I still hated the motherfucker.
“He’s very nice.” It was reedy.
I moved down the counter, around the stove until I was leaning on it a foot away from her.
A fiend who didn’t know when to stop.
Reaching out, I traced my fingertip along the soft, plush ridges of her lips. “Did he kiss you?”
Trembles rolled through her body, lifting like tiny spikes on her flesh.
Her mouth parted, but she didn’t answer.
What the hell I was doing, I didn’t know, but there was no stopping myself from leaning in, crossing a line as I murmured close to her ear, “Did he touch you?”
Her head barely shook, the word a breath. “No.”
“Did you want him to?”
“No,” she whispered again, the word a short gasp.
“Why not?” My nose brushed her jaw when I asked it.
The air that had been crackling flamed.
She met my gaze, and she lifted that chin.
In it was both surrender and defiance.
“Because the only person I want to touch me is you.”
TWENTY-TWO
DAKOTA
At my admission, Ryder heaved out a breath against the side of my face, and he reached out and took the wineglass from my hand.
The glass clanked against the counter as he set it aside, then he straightened to his full height.
I released a raspy, frantic breath.
The man loomed over me.
A dark, towering storm.
Chaos.
Mayhem.
Midnight.
I felt like I was standing in it. Drenched in darkness and light and this simmering greed that I didn’t understand.
“Is that what you want, Dakota? You want me to touch you?”
That time my nod was as frantic as my breath had been.
Terrified because this shouldn’t be happening.
I shouldn’t let it.
He and I were wrapped up in something that wasn’t real.
But I couldn’t find the logical response. Found no rationale. No sound judgment when I whispered, “I’ve wanted you to touch me since I understood what desire meant.”
He’d become the meaning of it.
The reason for it.
Shivers raced across my flesh when he set his beer aside and reached up with both hands and dragged his fingertips from my jaw down my neck.
Like every single one of them had been aching to do it.
To touch and explore.
Tingles followed in their wake.
“I shouldn’t be doing it though, should I?” he grumbled, the words scraping at the side of my face.
A shaky breath left me as I tipped my head back. That smoldering ball of need that had forever simmered in the pit of my stomach flared.
“I would have to disagree.” At least right then, I did. I couldn’t find one reason in the whole world for him not to be touching me.
He rumbled something that was a cross of a chuckle and pain, and he dragged all those fingers lower, over my chest and to where my heart was battering at my ribs.
I sagged against the counter.