David shook his head. “Work will always come first, isn’t that right?”
It was impossible to tell with David, but his good mood had me stealing peeks at him from the corner of my eye. Granted, he’d always been a little wound tight where the Kincaid’s were involved, but never this ... needy for Kieran’s attention. Whatever Kieran had that David wanted, he was doing his best to get it.
I slipped out of the room while dessert was being served. I normally would have made an effort to stay for that, but it was pitch black out and I had a whole forest to cross to get to my car.
Jameson was already waiting in the lobby for me, coat and shoes dangling from his fingertips with a delicacy of someone hiding trash.
I accepted both with a murmured thanks and slipped them on. My hair was unhooked from the collar and I buttoned up tight.
“Goodnight Jameson,” I said on my way to the door.
His features seemingly carved from granite never altered, but he bowed a stiff little nod.
“Miss.”
It was frigid outside.
The temperature had plummeted head first into the minuses with no regards for those who were forced to linger in it. It was abrasive and cruel, a pack of vicious demons tearing at flesh with razor blades. Each attack stole my breath, leaving me gasping into the buttoned collar of my coat. My skirt twisted around naked limbs, useless against the assault. The flesh had begun to go numb.
I whimpered, and wondered if I would even make it, or if someone would find my corpse half buried and frozen in the brittle leaves come morning. It was certainly possible. I was no longer even walking in a straight line, but a weaving shuffle where my knees refused to bend anymore and my feet had become blocks of ice on my slippers. Tears trickled and instantly became droplets of ice burning into skin. I couldn’t feel my hands to wipe them away.
“Gabby!”
The wind screamed my name, and I knew this was it; the devil had finally come for me. He would promise me warmth in exchange for my soul. Well, he could have it.
“Gabby.” Large hands grabbed my shoulders and spun me. “Jesus, baby, you’re frozen.”
Kieran pulled me into the folds of his coat. The open flaps were drawn right around my trembling frame and I was cocooned.
I didn’t protest.
I didn’t pull away.
I didn’t care.
I was so cold and he was a lit furnace exuding a blanket of heat I was incapable of denying.
I clung to him with greedy desperation. Numb fingers unfurled just enough to close again in his sweater. My face found a home in his collarbone, and I nearly wept in relief.
“Kieran.”
His arms tightened. “Yeah, come on. Let’s get you inside.”
I allowed myself to be guided to the car parked just a few feet behind us. Its harsh headlights cut into the darkness spilling over our feet. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it coming down the road. I hadn’t even heard it over the wailing wind.
The interior greeted me like a patient lover, embracing me with welcoming arms of heat. The leather cradled my shivering limbs. I could have curled up there and never moved again.
The driver’s side door opened. I winced at the sharp gust of wind that swung in with Kieran before he sealed the opening with a bang that rattled the frame.
He held out a thick blanket in one hand. The kind people reserved for keeping in the trunk of their car for emergencies. The flat, gray fabric was speckled with a dozen other colored threads all frayed, making the whole thing itchy, but soft. It was shaken out and folded around my shoulders.
But all I felt were his hands rubbing my back with every loving tuck and his scent pooling into my side of the car.
He was so close I could count his lashes.
I could kiss the scar on his eyebrow.
I could run the tip of my tongue along the curve of his bottom lip.
He was so close I had a hard time focusing on anything else.
“There,” he murmured, properly satisfied by his attempts. “That should warm you up.”
I didn’t have the nerve to tell him there were other ways to accomplish that task, ways that involved sliding me into his side and letting me taste his mouth.
“Thank you,” I managed instead.
He remained on my side of the car, body half bent over the console, hands gripping my arms. A dark coil had escaped its confinement and hung like a challenge over his brow, a test to my resolve.
“Okay?” he asked, mistaking my shaky exhale for pain.
I briefly wondered what he would do if I said I wasn’t okay. If I told him the only way I would ever be okay again was if he started driving and never stopped. He’d think I was crazy. He’d think the cold had permanently damaged my brain. He wouldn’t understand.
“Yeah,” I whispered, and watched him recede away from me.
He poured into his own seat, his perfect silhouette washed in shadows, masking him.
He put the car into drive and closed the rest of my walk in mere minutes. It was harmonized by the soft hum of the heater and the rhythmic crunch of tires rolling over dirt.
At the break, he rolled fluidly left. His headlights glided with a golden brush over my car, illuminating its glaring ugliness with its many deformities. Compared to his sleek, black shark, my tiny minnow was pathetic. Not even fit for the junkyard.
I cringed at the sight of it.
“Give me your keys.” Kieran held out an open palm. “I’ll start her up and you can wait here until it warms.”
The mortifications would never end. Each new one pressed into my cheeks like a lit cigarette, melting flesh and making my eyes water.
I bit my lip, willing him to put his hand away, but knowing he wouldn’t.
“The heater’s not working,” I began. “But I’ll be fine once I’m inside and start driving.”
Long, agile fingers curled inward into his square palm, the slow, deliberate furling of a hypnotic bloom in the dark. I almost caught my breath at the simple movement.
“I see.” His fingers splayed once more, collecting light from the dashboard in his palm. “May I have them anyway?”
Beneath the weight of the blanket and the folds of my own clothes, I found my purse and blindly fished for my keys. I brought them out and set them in his hand and watched him make them vanish into the shadows with him.
Light exploded in the cabin with a nudge of his shoulder against his door. It flicked off the moment it closed after him. The abrupt loss of illumination distorted my view of him. He disappeared alongside the shoulder before reappearing next to the driver’s side door of my car.
The overhead light in my Honda Civic wasn’t nearly as bright as his, but I watched his dark head disappear inside, and I prayed to God it wasn’t a mess in there. I wasn’t usually a slob. You needed to have money, to buy things, to be careless with in order to be a slob, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t tossed a sandwich wrapper into the backseat without thinking.
Whatever he was searching for, he must not have found it, because he circled the front to the other side. He stood staring at the passenger side, looking almost ethereal bathed in the natural light from the moon.
I started reaching for my door handle, my curiosity getting the better of me. But he was making his way back with wide, purposeful strides. The driver side door was yanked open and he was filling the space with his warmth and presence.
“What is it?”
He said nothing for a long moment, minutes that were lost in the deep deliberation creasing his brow and narrowing his eyes. His fingers hung loosely around the wheel, his thumbs patting a lazy pattern into the leather.
“Kieran?”
“It’s too cold in there.” One hand peeled away and disappeared into the pocket of his coat. “You need a new heater.” My keys were returned to me, warm from his touch. “I’m going to drive you home and have someone take your car to the shop.”
“No—”
My protest was silen
ced by the hand that wrapped around mine, folding my fingers over the metal teeth of my keys and noosing invisible ropes around my chest.
“Let me do this for you, Gabby.”
The insistence in his eyes made me pause. Maybe it was the pressure of his hold, but something buried in that warm baritone tenor tightened in my stomach.
“What is it?” I whispered, part of me not really wanting to know, already knowing I wouldn’t like it.
His mouth opened. I caught a glimpse of his teeth as he began to formulate words. I braced myself for whatever was to come.
But nothing did.
His attention was diverted, pulled askew from the topic by the peek of my index finger slightly extended from between his. The sight of it seemed to momentarily surprise him, as if he’d completely forgotten he was holding my hand. His gaze became a dark glimmer intensely transfixed by the novelty.
I swallowed. The sound brutally audible in the absolute silence.
He didn’t notice.
I’d lost him to the complexity of our skins touching, to the complete dwarfing of my hand in his, to that single finger rising from between his like a budding flower rising from the earth. He studied it as if he’d never seen anything like it in his life. His sheer focus terrified me, fascinated me. I didn’t know whether to pull away or...
The rough pad of his thumb grazed the vulnerable digit, an unexpected caress that scattered my thoughts and sent an army of electrical currents marching beneath my skin. It traced the two delicate bends before the round curve of my nail. In the dark, he couldn’t see the soft, pink polish, but I didn’t think he cared.
“Gabby.”
My soul trembled with that single almost reverent murmur of my name. I felt it with the warm whisper of a summer breeze wafting along my skin. I could have bathed in it.
“Please don’t.”
The plea had no consent from the rest of me when slipping from my lips. It dove between us in the dark, demolishing the fine web he’d so pain strikingly spun with a mere touch. The remains showered in rose colored shards into the abyss when he raised his head.
His hand loosened.
I hadn’t realized how firm his grip had been until the pressure lifted and threads of cold air seeped in to replace his warmth.
I almost whimpered at the loss. I almost reached for him. Instead, I watched mute and broken as he slipped away from me, sliding back into his side of the car.
“You won’t be able to drive that car anywhere tonight,” he said at long last, his focus once more on the car. “Both tires on that side have been slashed.”
My euphoria over the touch of his hand dissolved into disbelief. My gaze darted away from him to my innocent vehicle sitting alone on the side of the highway, slumped and defeated beneath the residence of Kieran’s headlights. I had never hurt more than I did in that moment. My poor car, who had never done anything to anyone, vandalized out of sheer malice, because I knew exactly who had done it. I knew why. And I hated her like I’d never hated my sister before.
Cruel.
Spiteful.
Evil.
Just a few of the names that coincided with the image of her in my head to go along with all the other names.
“Gabby?”
“Are you sure?” I forced out around congested lungs.
Kieran nodded. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to call the police?”
Drowning in rage, I didn’t understand his reasoning at first. But I realized that was what normal people did when they were hurt or needed help — they called the authorities. They involved dangerous strangers into private matters. The very idea would have had David skinning me alive.
We never called the police.
We never brought outsiders into family business.
We never snitched.
“No,” I whispered. “Thank you. I’ll take care of it.”
“Let me have my guy look at it,” he pressed. “He can have it repaired by tomorrow and brought to your place.”
I accepted because I didn’t know any mechanics. I couldn’t afford to before. Even now, I was struggling to come up with a viable excuse to explain how I managed to afford two new tires and fees if David asked.
The whole thing had demons drilling into my temples.
I hated her.
I hated all of them, but I hated Cordelia with a vigorous new flame. It ignited in my belly with an anger that was all consuming. I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Gabby?”
Air suctioned into my lungs.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Please.”
I watched the dull glint of my bumper while he drew out his phone and called someone. I studied the dark little puddles where the light didn’t dip into the dents.
Next to me, Kieran murmured to the person in the other end. I vaguely recognized the address and the description of my car. It was hilarious because in that neighborhood, cars like mine didn’t exist. They had no business being there. It stuck out, a sickly cow amongst a herd of beautiful, thoroughbred stallions. It didn’t require a description.
Nevertheless, I remained silent while he made the preparation to have my wounded baby delivered to safety.
“He’ll be here within the hour,” Kieran said, returning the phone to his pocket.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
Part of me wondered what more Cordelia could do if left with my unattended car on a dark stretch of road. An hour could stretch on forever. But I couldn’t explain to Kieran why I wanted to stay and wait for the tow. Not that he wouldn’t understand, but because I was terrified he might.
Without my protest, he pulled away. He rounded onto the road and we abandoned my only source of freedom to be dismantled and destroyed.
I wanted to weep. That car had been the only reason I was able to escape my prison. Without it, I would still be under that roof with a disinterested mother and a man who wanted things from me no father should ever want from their daughter. It had saved me. Now, I was just leaving it there for the vultures to descend and pick it apart.
“Thomas is the best,” Kieran assured me, mistaking my silence. “He’s worked on all my vehicles.”
“I’m sure he’s wonderful,” I murmured to appease his mind, but I doubted even Thomas could salvage what would remain once Cordelia finished.
We drove in silence for several miles through a spacious road laced by a thick trimming of forestry. The seemingly endless span never failed to relax me, lull my head back against the headrest. With the blanket still tucked snug around me, I could have happily stayed in that moment forever.
“Gabby?”
Something feather light kissed my cheek. It could have been nothing more than the brush of a breeze, but it skimmed my lips. The sensation was like being licked by a tongue of fire. The burn jolted me awake.
Murky darkness greeted my blurry vision. Harsh splotches of light glittered too sharply against a bed of black velvet, stinging my eyes.
I blinked several times before the empty street in front of my apartment came into view.
“Oh!” I struggled to untangle myself from the blanket and shift higher in the seat. “I’m so sorry.”
Kieran smiled, showing just a hint of teeth. “Don’t be.”
I did a quick inventory, running my hands through my hair and discreetly checking for drool. My skirt had bunched beneath me, creating deep creases, but I was still properly covered.
Kieran chuckled as if he knew exactly what I was doing.
“Please don’t laugh,” I pleaded, the heat in my face intensifying to a painful degree. “I would have been mortified.”
His laugh only deepened. “You look adorable when you’re in a panic.”
I shot him a look, nose wrinkled. But I felt my lips give into a small smile. I chuckled softly and dropped my gaze with the pretense of unhitching my purse strap from the blankets.
Something metal jingled in my movement, the familiar rattle of my keys that must have slipped from my fingers during my nap
.
“Could you...?”
I motioned with one finger towards the overhead lights, while my free hand patted blindly at my lap.
Kieran obliged.
The warm glow left patches of shadows, pockets of darkness to hide my keys.
I undid my belt and shook out the blanket. I folded it quickly and tossed it into the backseat before resuming the search.
“I’m so sorry,” I began, carelessly sweeping clumps of hair behind my ear and lifting my hips to sweep a hand underneath. “I should have put them away.”
I found them the moment I nudged them off the seat and into the crevice between seat and console with a clatter.
Kieran laughed, which I didn’t understand. How could he find any of that amusing? I wanted to crawl under my seat and join my keys I was so embarrassed.
He unsnapped his belt and leaned in as I did. The uncoordinated momentum collided our faces — his face, my forehead — but the assault drove us both back clutching at our injuries.
We both laughed.
“Are you okay?” I asked, eyeing the sharp contour of his cheekbone he was gingerly prodding at with two fingertips. “Let me see.”
There was no thought process when I moved forward, no little voice shrieking to stop. It was basic human instinct to help the person I’d hurt with my carelessness. I didn’t even consider the consequences when I brushed his fingers aside and took their place against his warm skin.
A fine carpet of fuzz had begun to grow along the taut line of his jaw. The smooth and rough sensation messed with my senses, with my attention, and I stupidly let my fingers wander.
My thumb slipped down the high ridge of his cheek into the hollow where the prickling was slightly sharper. The dark patch covered his jaw and circled his mouth, a mouth I was so close to I hurt.
I physically ached.
My core had flared to life with a pulse that seemed to control my entire body. It hummed with a deep, perverse need to feel that stubble scratching my inner thighs as he made a path with his lips to mine.
My thighs pressed together. My attempts at being subtle failed with the rustle of leather giving me away.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
For being so turned on I was leaving stains on his seats.
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