When Kage knocks on my door at six, I’m calm and ready.
Ha!
I’m actually a nervous wreck, but I’m determined not to show it.
When I open up, I find him standing on my porch in his signature outlaw-meets-aristocrat ensemble of denim, leather, and luxury wool. That overcoat he’s wearing probably cost more than my car.
His unruly hair is tamed. His expression is stern. In one of his big paws, he holds a bouquet of dainty white flowers wrapped with a white satin ribbon.
It’s an unexpectedly sweet gesture. Courtly. I have a hard time imagining him at a florist, picking out individual stems, but the bouquet is obviously not one of those premade grocery-store things. It looks more like his wardrobe: simple but expensive.
This is a man who takes care when he chooses things.
“Hi,” I say, feeling shy. “You look great.”
“Not as great as you.” He holds out the flowers.
I take them from him and invite him in. “I’ll just put these in water and get my coat, and we can get going.”
Kage closes the door as I head into the kitchen in search of a vase. I find one in a cabinet over the fridge. I fill it with water, remove the plastic wrap and ribbon from the bouquet, and recut the stems of the flowers.
Then I try not to fidget as I arrange the flowers in the vase and Kage stands two feet away drinking me in like he’s a cactus in a drought-ravaged desert and I’m the first spring rain.
I’m so flustered by the intensity of his gaze, the floodgates open.
“You hung up on me before I could tell you that Sloane and her boyfriend will be joining us. Actually, I’m not sure if he’s technically her boyfriend. That’s just what I’m calling him because there’s really no polite term for ‘flavor of the month.’ She goes through men like tissues. Not that I’m judging her. I’m not. I’m just saying he’ll be there. This guy. Oh, and a few of his friends, too, apparently. I hope that’s okay. I know this was supposed to be our date, but actually, it’s a double date. I mean, it is still our date, it’s just that more people will be—”
Kage reaches out and gently grasps my wrist. “Easy,” he murmurs. “Take a breath.”
I close my eyes and do just that. “Sorry. I’m not normally this high-strung.”
“I know. Me neither.”
When I open my eyes and look at him, he’s looking back at me with so much desire burning in his eyes that for a second, I lose my breath.
He takes the kitchen shears from my hand, sets them on the counter, and pulls me toward him, his grip on my wrist still gentle. Coaxing, not demanding.
A “please,” not a command.
He winds my arms around his shoulders, grasps my waist and pulls our bodies together, and gazes down at me.
His voice low, he says, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day we met. I’m not someone who obsesses over things, but I’ve obsessed over you. To the point of distraction. To the point where it interfered with my work. I can’t get you out of my head, and I’ve tried. Hard. It was useless. So I gave up trying.
“I’m not going to play games with you. I won’t try to keep you guessing. I’ve told you what I feel and what I want. I’ll keep doing that until you feel safe enough to take the next step or you’ve had enough of it and tell me to fuck off.
“There’s no need to be nervous around me. I’m the least unpredictable man you’ve ever met. What I want from you won’t change if you say the wrong thing. It won’t change if you gain weight or cut your hair or decide to go vegan. It won’t change even if you say you never want to see me again and we go our separate ways. I’d honor that request, but it wouldn’t make me stop wanting you. But you should know…”
He hesitates. “You should know that I’m not a good man.”
I’m locked in his embrace. My heart is beating like a hammer. I feel like the floor has dropped out from under my feet, or that I’m tumbling freefall through space, and it’s all because of his words and his smell and his warm, strong body pressed against mine.
If and when he kisses me, I’m toast.
“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.
There’s a surprising depth of emotion in the way he kisses. In the way he holds me against his body, as if he doesn’t ever want to let me go.
I think he was telling the truth about not being with another woman since he met me.
He’s so hungry for me, he’s about to snap in two.
He’s the first to break the kiss again. When he does, he buries his face in my hair. He inhales deeply, then exhales with a sigh.
I whisper, “For a guy who claims to be such a bad scary criminal, you’re a big softie.”
“Only for you.”
His voice is thick and his hands are shaking, and holy hell, I’ve never felt this electric in my life. He makes me feel like I’m made of crack cocaine. Like I’ve got fire running through my veins instead of blood.
Like anything is possible.
“Kage?”
“Yes, baby?”
Baby. I’m dead. “Tell me your last name.”
“Porter.”
“Thank you. Look at us, making progress already. Pretty soon, I’ll know all your darkest secrets.”
He lifts his head and gazes at me. My smile is happy and wide.
Looking very serious, he brushes my hair off my cheek. He says in a husky voice, “I’ll have to make you fall in love with me before I tell you all my darkest secrets.”
“Make you fall in love with me.” He keeps upping the ante in this conversation. I thought I was dead ten seconds ago, but now I’m buried six feet underground.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“So you won’t leave me…even though you’ll want to.”
As I stare deeply into his eyes, my smile fades. A hot, prickling sensation, like a current of electricity, runs through me. The ground seems to be shifting underneath my feet.
I whisper, “So either don’t tell me your secrets or don’t make me fall in love with you. Because once I fall in, even death can’t make me fall out.”
He stares at me long and hard, his jaw working. When he finally speaks, his tone is curt.
“Two things.”
“Which are?”
“Number one: I’m gonna make you fall in love with me. It’s not even a question.”
I huff out a small, astonished laugh.
The nerve of this man. On behalf of feminists everywhere, I want to tell him to stick his arrogant assumptions up his ass.
But also…wow. Just wow.
Because I know it’s the God’s honest truth. He is going to make me fall in love with him.
And I don’t think there’s anything I can do to stop it from happening.
He says, “Paired with the fact that I won’t lie to you, that means I’ll be keeping a lot of information to myself. Consider this fair warning.”
I close my eyes and exhale. “God, you’re intense.”
“Number two.”
When he stays silent, I open my eyes and look at him. He’s gazing back at me with a hard, flinty look in his eyes, like the thought of something is really pissing him off.
I think it’s me, until he says, “He didn’t deserve you.”
Surprised by that, I laugh. “We weren’t really together. I mean, we only dated for like eight weeks—”
“I don’t mean Deputy Dipshit.”
He’s not talking about Chris? Then who else—
When I realize who he means, my heart skips a beat.
Seeing the expression on my face, Kage nods. “Yes. Your missing fiancé. He didn’t deserve the kind of loyalty you’ve shown him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a woman like you, five years of your life spent waiting?” He shakes his head as if in disgust. “No man deserves that.”
“Believe me, if I could’ve turned it off, I would have. I guess I’m just a loyal kind of girl.”
“So it’s not over? You’re still in love with him?”
He looks at me so closely, I feel like he sees right down into all the hidden corners of my soul.
I whisper, “It’s over. You know how I know?”
“How?”
“Because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t feel any of the things I feel for you.”
His gaze searches my face. He’s tense and silent, unmoving, until finally he releases his breath and presses a rough kiss to my lips.
“Good,” he says gruffly. “Because I don’t fucking share. Now let’s go get dinner before I tear you out of that dress.”
He takes my hand, I grab my coat from the kitchen chair, and we drive to the restaurant.
We check our coats at the door. A hostess tells us the other members of our party have already arrived and leads us to our table.
The moment we walk into the main dining room and Kage spots the three men sitting with Sloane, I know it’s going to be an interesting night.
I’ve seen his eyes go black before, but this is something else altogether.
