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Being with her wasn’t just good. It was elemental. Sodium and potassium when you add water. Explosive. Fire.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her hip jutted out as she slammed her hand down on it.
My lips twitched. I loved her personality. She was loud where I was quiet. She was sassy where I was submissive. She was kind where I was careless. She was everything I wasn’t. Everything I needed.
“Because you’re perfect.” She rolled her eyes, but I saw the blush tinting her cheeks as she took a seat at her kitchen island.
“I have to do some work today.” I said as I slid her the plate of food. “I’ll call Bryce to come over.”
My teeth clashed together. But I swallowed down my annoyance. Her safety came first.
She grasped my hand before I could pull away. Flipping it over, she intertwined our fingers. Her warm skin on mine calmed the emotions swirling in my gut.
“I’ll be fine.” She quirked a brow at me. “I wouldn’t want you to kill him because you got jealous.”
Ropes wrapped around my chest, tightening as I tried to decide if she was being serious or sarcastic. Murdering someone because of jealousy wasn’t unusual in my world.
My fingers flexed on hers as I cleared my throat. “I’ve never done that before.”
“Gotten jealous?” She shook her head because she’d seen me that way.
“No, killed anyone.” It was important to me that she knew. “My brothers… well, they are who they are. But they protected me. I have the same skills, but they never wanted me to use them.”
My brothers had sacrificed a lot. I wouldn’t disrespect their choices by doing the one thing they asked me not to. They saved me so I could still have a moral compass. Even if my values were skewed.
“Nathan.” Her lyrical voice snapped me out of the past. “I wouldn’t have thought differently of you. I know you’d only kill if you had to. Because there wasn’t another choice. Because they weren’t good guys.”
Her warm brown eyes sparkled as if she was seeing something in me. Something that wasn’t there. “I’m not a good guy, Songbird.”
“Yes, you are. Your morals are just… slightly off from normal.” Her smile was full of affection. “But I like different.”
By society standards, we were bad. My family stole, killed, extorted money. But we also protected, loved. We were murderers and parents. Brothers and loan sharks. I wasn’t sure it all canceled out.
But when she looked at me, it didn’t matter.
I rounded the counter, grasping her cheeks so I could bring her lips to mine. “You’re a good person, Lark.”
She helped people. Saved lives. And I protected her. I made her happy. That was enough.
“No.” She sighed, her eyes clouding with regret. “I let them scare me away from being good.”
“So go back.” She blinked like what I said was crazy. “If you miss it that much.”
Her mouth pulled down, and she wiggled out of my grasp. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
She was avoiding talking about this, but I let her. For now. I was going to keep pushing because I knew she missed it. Knew she belonged at the hospital.
I kissed the top of her head, inhaling her vanilla scent before starting towards the door. I grabbed my keys off the table. “Oh, I noticed you changed the password to the security system.”
“Yeah, I took your advice since my old one was so easy.” Her lips twitched.
“What did you change it to?” I’d tried a few things this morning while she was sleeping, but couldn’t figure it out.
“It’s the day we met. It wouldn’t mean anything to a stranger. But it’s something I’ll never forget because it was the moment my life changed.”
I was across the room in two steps, slamming her lips to mine. Before she could take her next breath, I was swallowing it down. I’d consume her if I could. Our tongues touched and my world was right.
Good. Bad. It didn’t matter as long as I had her.
