It’s obvious there’s some hidden meaning behind his words. This isn’t a man who sits behind a desk in a call center wearing a headset and harassing debtors over the phone to pay their past due credit card bills.
I withdraw my hand from his but maintain eye contact, feeling curious and uncomfortable and extremely turned on. It’s a confusing combination.
Aiming for nonchalant, I say, “A debt collector. That’s an interesting line of work. Is that why you moved to Lake Tahoe? For work?”
Sitting back in his chair, he picks up his cigar and thoughtfully puffs for a moment, gazing at me as if carefully choosing his words.
Finally he says, “It was supposed to be for work.”
“But now it isn’t?”
His gaze drops to my mouth again. His voice comes out husky. “I don’t know what it is now.”
I’m electrified. Every one of my nerves is standing on end, screaming, and all it took is this dark-eyed stranger looking at me in a certain way.
A certain hungry, ambivalent way. The way a starving man would look at a steak he desperately wanted to eat but also knew was filled with poison.
I recall my first impression of him when I saw him at the bar last night, how I told Sloane he looked like he walked off the set of Sons of Anarchy, and understand on a cellular level that the man sitting across from me is someone for whom the normal rules of society don’t apply.
I also understand that he’s dangerous.
And that he wants me but doesn’t want to.
And that I want him, too, but shouldn’t.
Because people who stick a hand too close to a lion’s mouth will come away with a bloody stump where that hand used to be.
The waiter arrives. Kage sends him away with a royally dismissive flick of his fingers, never taking his gaze off me.
When he’s gone, Kage says, “So your fiancé disappeared. And for the next five years, on every anniversary of what would’ve been your wedding day, you get drunk.”
“It sounds worse when you say it out loud. Do I need to be afraid of you?”
We stare at each other across the table. The silence is electric. If he’s surprised by my question, it doesn’t show.
He says softly, “What if I said yes?”
“Then I’d take you at your word and drive straight to the nearest police station. Are you saying yes?”
He hesitates. “Most people who know me are.”
My heart pounds so hard, I’m surprised he can’t hear it. “I want a yes or a no.”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
I reply instantly, without thinking. “Yes. You’re not the kind of man who hides behind lies.”
He considers me in blistering, unblinking silence, slowly turning the cigar round and round between his thumb and forefinger. Finally, he says gruffly, “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
The breath I’ve been holding comes out in a rush. “That’s not an answer.”
“I’m getting there.”
“Get there faster.”
On his lips appears that faint approximation of a smile. “I’ve already told you I’m not a knight in shining armor—”
“There’s miles between that and what I asked.”
He growls, “Interrupt me again and I’ll take you over my knee right here and spank that perfect ass of yours until you’re screaming.”
Coming from anyone else, a statement like that—spoken in such a hard, dominating tone—would make me furious.
Coming from him, it almost makes me moan out loud with desire.
I bite my tongue and glare at him, unsure which one of us I dislike more at the moment.
He crushes his cigar in the ashtray, drags a hand through his dark hair, and moistens his lips. Then he shakes his head, laughing ruefully.
“All right. You want an answer? Here it is.”
He stares into my eyes, laughter fading, until he’s all hard jaw and thinned lips and smoldering hotness. “No. You don’t have to be afraid of me. Even if I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t.”
I lift my brows. “Somehow, that’s not exactly reassuring.”
“Take it or leave it. It’s the truth.”
The waiter returns, grinning. Without looking away from me, Kage growls at him, “Come over again when you haven’t been called and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
I’ve never seen a man spin around and run away so quickly.
Feeling dangerously reckless, I say, “Since you’re in a truth-telling mood, why did you pay for your house in cash?”
“To launder the money. Don’t repeat that to anyone. Next question.”
My mouth opens. For several moments, nothing comes out. When I manage to compose myself, I say, “Why would you trust me with something like that?”
“Because I want you to trust me.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you. And I suspect getting to have you requires a certain level of trust. I can tell you’re not the type who sleeps around. Next question.”
God, my heart is beating so, so fast. So fast, I can barely breathe. Also, I think I might have whiplash.
I say, “Are you always this…”
“Direct? Yes.”
“I was going to say contradictory. Yesterday, it seemed like you hated me. I’m still not sure you don’t.”
His voice drops. “Yesterday, you weren’t under my protection. Now you are.”
His eyes are hypnotic. His voice is hypnotic. This man is putting me under a spell. “I’m pretty sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you believe you’re safe with me.”
My laugh is faint. “Safe with you? God, no. I think I’m in more danger around you than I have been with any other man before in my life.”
Something about that pleases him. His lips curve, but he shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”
“Check back with me later. My brain isn’t working right at the moment.”
His tone gently chiding, he says, “I want a yes or a no.”
“Throwing my words back at me won’t help your cause.”
“Decide soon. We don’t have much time.”
“Why is that?”
“I won’t be in town long.”
That shuts me up for a good thirty seconds. I become aware that we’ve both leaned closer toward each other over the table and are locked in a tense little bubble to the exclusion of everyone and everything else, but I feel oddly powerless to resist.
Now I understand how moths feel around open flames.
“Why did you buy a house here if you’re not going to stay?”
“I already told you that.”
He reaches across the table. Slowly and gently, he skims his thumb over my cheekbone and down to my jaw, his heated gaze following the path of his finger.
Goose bumps break out all over my arms. My nipples tingle. I lick my lips, fighting dueling urges to lunge across the table and kiss him or run away screaming.
This is insane. You’re too sensible for this. Get up from the table and walk away.
I manage to ignore the voice of reason in my head. “How long will you be here?”
“A few days. I need to kiss you.”
“No.” It’s faint and not altogether convincing.
“Then come sit on my lap and let me finger fuck you while I feed you dinner.”
To manage the explosion of shock and lust that astonishing sentence caused in my body, I sit back abruptly in my chair and look away, choking out a disbelieving laugh.
“It must be all the champagne I’ve had. There’s no possible way you just said that.”
“I said it. And you liked it.” After a pause, he demands, “Look at me.”
“I can’t. This is crazy. I’ve known you for twenty-four hours. No one has ever spoken to me like that before in my life, not even my fiancé.”
He waits in silence for me to regroup, but I doubt if that’s possible. I think this conversation is going to leave me permanently scarred.
When I finally gather enough courage to glance at him, a tremor runs through my body at what I see in his eyes.
I clear my throat. “Also, that sounds like you’d need very good coordination to pull off. And maybe an extra set of hands.”
For the first time, he smiles at me.
It comes on slow and sensual, a gradual upward curve of his mouth that ends with a show of straight white teeth. It’s a beautiful smile, and also a frightening one.
Frightening because of how much I like it.
Flustered and sweating, I jolt to my feet. “Well, this has certainly been…interesting.” My laugh sounds deranged. “Have a nice night.”
Before he can reply, I whirl around and bolt toward the exit.
I’m so beside myself, I nearly fall down the stairs on the way out. Panting like a terrier, I burst through the glass doors of the casino and throw myself at the uniformed valet at the little stand under a wide black umbrella.
“I need a taxi, please.”
“Certainly, miss.”
He picks up a handheld two-way radio and requests a cab from whoever’s listening on the other side. Normally, casinos have a parking lot nearby where the cabs wait for customers, so hopefully I won’t have to stand here long.
I’m afraid I’ll shatter into a million jagged pieces if I don’t get as far away from Kage as soon as possible.
“Then come sit on my lap and let me finger fuck you while I feed you dinner.”
His words play over and over in my head. Pure torture.
Worse? I can picture it. So can my kitty, because she’s wet and aching between my legs, plaintively mewling for Kage’s big rough hand to pet her.
When I met David at twenty, I was naive. I didn’t have the wild high school experience, or the wild college experience, or any of the shenanigans Sloane enjoyed when she went away to Arizona State. I lived at home while I went to the modest and boring University of Nevada, over the hill in Reno.
I was a good girl. A small-town girl. A virgin.
Except for that one time with my high school math tutor, but ten seconds probably doesn’t count.
The point is that I don’t have the kind of experience to deal with a handsome, dangerous, virile male in his prime saying such things to me.
I’d better stop at the convenience store on the way home and pick up an extra set of batteries. I’m going to really need to work this one out.
“I apologize if I offended you.”
I stiffen, sucking in a startled breath.
Speaking low, Kage stands behind me, close enough that I can smell him and feel his body heat. He’s not touching me, but he’s got to be mere inches away. I feel as if I’m getting burned right through my dress.
I answer without turning my body or head. “It wasn’t so much offended as stunned.”
His exhalation stirs a tendril of hair on my neck. “It’s not often I…”
He rethinks whatever he was going to say and starts over. “I’m not a patient man. But that’s not your problem. If you ask me to leave you alone, I’ll honor that request.”
I don’t know how to answer that. At least not honestly. Because if I were to tell him the truth, we’d already be naked somewhere.
I settle on, “I’m not the girl who jumps into bed with strangers. Especially not ones who are leaving town in a few days.”
Still behind me, he moves closer and puts his mouth near my ear. In a voice like velvet, he says, “I want to taste every inch of you. I want to hear you scream my name. I want to make you come so hard, you forget your own. I don’t have time to fuck around—excuse the pun—with the kind of wooing I’d usually do to win you, so that’s why I’m being so blunt.
“Ask me to leave you alone, and you have my word I will. But until I hear that, I have to tell you, Natalie, that I want to fuck your sweet cunt and your perfect ass and your luscious mouth and anything else you’ll let me fuck, because you are the single most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He inhales deeply against my neck.
I almost collapse into the street.
A big black SUV pulls to a stop in front of the valet stand. Kage brushes past me and strides around to the driver’s side, hands money to the valet who hops out, and roars off without another glance in my direction.
