I don’t know why I eased down on the side of the bed. But then that small voice of conscience, the one I usually ignored, seemed to overrule any idea about telling Alex no. Every time Alex got remotely near me, I should bolt in the opposite direction. I’d never met a woman this dangerous—one that made me do shit I didn’t want to do, to consider shit I didn’t want to.
Stretching my legs out, I pushed myself up in the bed to where I leaned back against the headboard. Although we weren’t touching, I could still feel Alex beside me. She overwhelmed me with her presence in my bed—the smell of her perfume, the fall of her hair on the pillow, the slide of her bare thigh on the comforter.
Lacey was the last woman I’d just laid in bed with without fucking. When she wasn’t a drunken mess, there was nothing I loved more than to spoon against her. Sure, it usually led to a hard on and screwing, but just the soft feel of her body did something to me—it calmed me. I started to feel the same way with Alex.
I don’t know how long we lay there. Alex was so quiet I thought she had fallen asleep. But then she shifted in bed. Propping her head on her elbow, Alex then gazed up at me.“Tell me something about yourself—something you’ve never told anyone else.”
Scowling down at her, I replied, “You can get the fuck out of here if you think I’m going to do that.”
“Why not?”
I laced my fingers behind my head. “Because that ain’t me, babe. That ain’t who I am or who I’ll ever be.”
“Why are you so afraid to open up to someone?”
“I’m not,” I growled.
“Yes, you are.”
Giving her a hard look, I said, “If you don’t stop the emotional bullshit, I’m out of here. I swear you’re the most lucid drunk I’ve ever seen. Why can’t you be giggling and acting stupid?”
“After the initial buzz, alcohol usually makes me sharper.”
“Lucky me.”
“I just thought we could talk a little. I mean, I’m here every day, but I barely know you.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way.”
Both fury and hurt flashed in her dark eyes. “You’re such an asshole.”
“It’ll do you some good to keep remembering that,” I replied.
“Fine.You want something about me? I’ll give you something. When I was fifteen, I killed my father.”
While I thought my statement might cause her to run, to cower in fear, or at least gasp in shock, she did none of it. She simply stared at me, waiting for me to continue. “That doesn’t freak you out?”
“I always knew you were an outlaw, Jesse James,” she said, with a small smile.
“Is that right?”
She gave a slight nod of her head. “But without you telling me the history between the two of you, I can only imagine it was justified.”
The fucking eerie calm with which she said the words had the same effect as someone dousing me with a bucket of ice cold water. “How can you of all people sit there and say that I was justified? I murdered my own flesh and blood,” I countered.
Easing up in the bed, she pinned me with a stare. “You want me to be judge, jury, and executioner? Then don’t just tell me that you murdered him. I may not know you that well, but what I do know tells me you would never kill someone unless you had to.” Jerking her chin at me, she said, “Tell me what he did to you.”
“I think you’re smart enough to already know.”
“But I need to hear it from you.” Inching closer to me in the bed, she murmured, “I think you need to say it aloud, too.”
Panic pricked its way over my skin. I couldn’t help glancing at the door, anxious to make an escape. No one knew about my old man but me and Preach. There was a possibility that Preach had told Case or some of the other guys, but I doubted it.
“My adopted father, Preacher Man, left his church in the summer. That fall, he came to me one day and asked if I’d ever wanted revenge on my father. I told him of course I did—it was something I thought of each and every day. I was fucking blown away when he told me he’d been able to track my old man down—something even the cops hadn’t been able to do—and if I wanted to, he’d take me to him.”
“What happened then?” Alex prompted.
I shrugged almost apathetically. “We drove to Texas, so I could end him.”
