Like he couldn’t feel that his presence was singlehandedly tilting the earth on its side.
The man emitting his own gravity.
He barely shifted, the rocks glass he rested on the arm of the chair glinting in a ray of light as he rolled the base in a slow circle.
“Seems to me the exact same thing as you.” His voice was gravel, controlled with a razor-sharp edge.
Intrigue billowed, wrapping me in bindings.
I’d always considered myself decently intelligent. Graduated salutatorian of my high school class. Earned a full ride scholarship even though finishing my degree had been rough considering my circumstances, but I had done it and I’d done it well.
Had started my own business.
And there I was, struck dumb.
Senseless.
Fascination taking me over like it was the only wisdom I knew.
“What’s that?” I asked instead of rushing out the door where my common sense had clearly already fled without me.
“Hiding.” The word was a deep drone. He sat forward. The air stirred. I sucked in a breath as heat gathered in the atmosphere and covered my flesh in a flashfire of anticipation.
What the hell?
“Though I doubt we’re doin’ it for the same reasons,” he said.
I could feel the flit of his gaze racing over me.
Assessing.
Calculating.
“You don’t know anything about me.” It came out a shaky defense. I didn’t even know why I was offering it. Why I was even humoring this conversation.
Although there didn’t seem to be anything humorous about it.
This feeling that had become all too real and potent.
Instant.
Urgent.
He slowly stood to his full, towering height.
Oh God. Chills streaked and sped, and I was standing there on shaking knees.
“No. But I’d say you’re pretty easy to read.” His words were gruff.
“And what is it you think you’re seein’?” My voice trembled, and God, I needed to shut my mouth and get the hell out of there. Red flags were getting thrown all over the place.
Out of bounds.
My feet carrying me in a direction I definitely did not need to be traveling.
Because Lyrik was right.
Not all of his guests could be trusted. Not all of them were good.
And this guy screamed danger.
Trouble.
But on an entirely different level than the jerk downstairs.
Because I was feeling compelled. Drawn into the darkness swarming the space. Rushing and crashing.
Somehow, I got the sense that if I got any closer, I was going to get swallowed.
“Fear.” His arrogant statement rippled the air.
I gulped.
Maybe I’d had it all wrong. Maybe he was the hunter who was scenting his prey. That he could smell the way I was drawn. Helpless to whatever the hell this attraction was—something I’d never once in all my life experienced before.
A dark lure.
I took a step backward like I could possibly get away from it.
He took one forward.
It brought him into a stream of light.
My mouth dropped open and my belly bottomed out.
I couldn’t tell if he was terrifying or beautiful.
Terrifyingly beautiful.
Yes, yes, that was it.
Tall and lean. Different than my brother, though.
Shoulders wide. Corded muscle visible, arms rippling with strength. The guy wearing a tee and tattered jeans and Vans to a gala in the Hills.
His jaw was clenched, a perfectly carved stone held so tight that I feared it might shatter and crack.
His nose straight and his brow defined. Plush lips set in a firm, hard line.
His eyes were the only part of him that could have even hinted at softness. The color of brown sugar. The edges the hardest, deepest black. Like maybe he’d witnessed too many horrible things and the grief and hatred had crystallized into slate.
And I was standing there gawking and flustered and trying to get my legs to cooperate. To knock some sense into myself because I was locked in a dark room with a stranger.
But I couldn’t move.
Stuck in a quicksand I could feel pulling me under.
His eyes traced me.
Blatantly.
Bluntly.
Something that sounded like a growl crawled up his throat when his attention fixated on where my dress was ripped at the seam. Realizing it was gaping open, I rushed to gather up the material that was split so high it was threatening to reveal my panties.
His massive hands curled at his sides.
“What happened to your dress?” His question came out sounding like a threat.
“Nothing . . . it’s fine.” It flew from my mouth at warp speed.
He surged forward, and I gasped.
He touched my chin.
A gentle prod that angled my face up into the light. He let his fingertips trace up the side of my face until his thumb was running softly over the knot that had already risen on my forehead.
Tremors rolled and I was having a hard time making sense of anything right then.
“Liar,” he grunted.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t look so fine to me.”
Those warm, sugar eyes traveled to where my hand was fisted in the skirt, his jaw ticking as he angled his face toward mine, his presence invading.
The words scraped across my cheek as he issued them. “I’m probably not the only man here who would gladly rip this dress off you, gorgeous, but it doesn’t look to me like you agreed.”
Turbulence rolled like thunder in the room.
The man too bold.
Too crass.
Too forward.
And I knew I wasn’t alone in this crazy attraction that fired and pulsed and covered me like a wicked dream.
I should run from it. No question, something that powerful was dangerous.
But I wanted it.
To feel it.
To feel alive and whole.
To stoke this spark that suddenly came to life inside me. One I’d thought had forever gone dim.
The fantasy flashed of him actually doing it. Him pushing me against the wall, hands finding my flesh under the frayed fabric, pushing it over my hips.
The clink of his belt as he freed himself.
As he took me.
Touched me and kissed me and owned me until the only thing I felt was him. Until the pain had been chased away.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I was just asking for it, wasn’t I?
Bad judgement and all of that.
I blamed it on the PTSD.
Looking for something to make me feel good in the middle of the grief, but I knew those rugged, masculine hands weren’t going to help a thing. No doubt, it wouldn’t take more than a brush of them to leave a scar.
Knowing myself, I’d be worse off than where I’d started.
“I handled it.”
A rough, disbelieving chuckle left him. “By running in here scared? Locking yourself behind a door? Hiding? Is that what you call handling it? Because I could think of plenty better ways of handling it.”
Tension bound the room, the stark violence that oozed from this man.
Something intense and protective rising up and taking over.
Urges slammed me on all sides.
Coaxing me to slip into it.
Get lost.
Maybe see if it was powerful enough to make me forget.
I swore, the man had me intoxicated.
Enraptured.
“I thought you said you were doing the exact same thing?” I challenged on a whisper, his lips so close to mine, my eyes tracing every line of his face.
Looking for something.
Trouble.
That’s what it was.
It took about all the strength I had,
but I edged back an inch, desperate to put some space between us before I did something I was going to regret.
Like it knocked him out of the daze, he took a step back, too. Frustrated, he dragged his fingers through the wayward, unruly locks of his brown-hair, the longer pieces on top hinting at a disaster but the sides trimmed around his ears. “Don’t like parties much. Especially the kind going on downstairs.”
Even though I knew better, my eyes went exploring, taking him in through the lapping shadows. The strength of his arms that peeked out beneath his rolled sleeves, wiry and vibrating.
Like his demons were crawling his flesh.
All his wrongs written in the jerks and tics of his packed, bristling muscle.
Everything about him was brutal.
No pretenses and zero fucks to give.
Exactly the kind of guy I’d sworn off years ago.
I tore my attention back to his face, doing my best to claw my way back to solid ground.
Only that wasn’t a safe place, either. One glance across those lips and up to his eyes and my stomach was clamping in a needy fist. “Then why are you here?”
He angled his head with a rumble of low, seductive laughter. “I’ve been asking that question myself.”
“Did you figure it out yet?” The words came out a breath.
The slowest grin pulled across his sexy mouth. “Starting to get an idea.” He reached up and fiddled with a lock of my black hair, eyeing me as he did, the world unsettled and vibrating around us. “How about you, gorgeous? You don’t strike me as the type who begged someone to get through that door. Don’t seem like you belong in a place like this.”
Defensiveness blustered through my being. “And what kind of place is that?”
He laughed a scornful sound. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. The greed and the gluttony running rampant downstairs. Every prick showing off what he’s got. Desperate for more. To elevate himself. Not caring who the fuck he tramples to get himself there. Money and fame fucks with your head. Or maybe they were all already fucked, and that’s what got them here in the first place.”
“And you and I somehow don’t count?” It was disbelief. Maybe disappointment. Because I was so not about lumping people into a group and labeling them.
“Didn’t say that,” he grated.
My family’s faces flashed through my mind. The rest of the band and their wives and their children. All these amazing people who had knitted themselves so intricately into my life that they’d become a permanent part of me.
Family.
“Not everyone is looking for an opportunity to take advantage of someone else. Not everyone here is bad.”
“Maybe not.” Brown eyes glimmered in the rays of murky, shimmering light. “But you sure seem to keep running into the worst of them.”
It was a warning. One I heard loud and clear. This man was lumping himself into his own pile.
Bad.
Vile.
Destructive.
But it was the bare warmth hiding in the pools of his eyes that kept me pressing.
This man nothing but a raging contradiction.
Emphasis on the raging.
Energy came off him like a storm held in the horizon. Dark and ominous.
And there I was, itching to disappear into it so I could discover why it was.
“I think you’re wrong. I bet I could ask you to hunt down the guy who got handsy with me and you’d do it without blinking. I bet you wouldn’t even care or consider the consequences.”
“I was right,” he said with a coarse chuckle, eyes skating my face.
Confusion pulled a frown to my brow. “About what?”
He was back to fiddling with that strand of my hair.
Winding me up.
“That you don’t belong here. You came running in here just as lost as me. Except you don’t have the first clue when you’re running straight for danger. You don’t make people earn your trust—you trust first and regret it later. You dig around to find the good when there is no good to be found. Sound about right?”
Air wheezed into my lungs, the room spinning with the blunt force of his words.
“Wow. You’re kind of an asshole.”
He laughed. A low roll of scorn. “You say it like I’m not already fully aware of who I am.”
It felt like he’d called me out on my every deficiency. Accused me of being weak for the sake of being kind.
But the truth was, I was begging him to give me a reason to trust. Praying that this seed of bitterness wouldn’t take hold and invade every element of my life. I didn’t want the last grains of hope I was holding to bleed through my fingers.
Gone forever.
And the scariest part was I could feel it slipping away.
On top of that, I was left asking the question—why him? Why was I always drawn to what would clearly hurt me?
He edged in so close that our noses brushed, the scent of him invading my senses.
Clove and whiskey. Warmth and sex.
Dizziness spun.
“So yeah, you want me to go after whatever prick messed with you?” he rumbled, head angled low. “Make him pay the hard way? You’re right. I’d do it in a heartbeat. Say the word, and it’s done. I’m really good at destroying whatever I come into contact with. Whatever I touch.”
He reached out and ran a fingertip down the side of my face.
Chills tumbled down my spine.
“Question is, is it gonna be him or is it gonna be you?”
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Catch Me When I Fall Page 37