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My heart was racing. Each pounding beat so forceful I was sure he felt it from being pressed against me.
“Truth,” I whispered.
His hands trailed down my arms until his fingers were loosely encircling my wrists. “Do you really want me to let you go?”
I swallowed thickly before answering, “I need you to.”
Before he could respond in any way—by word, by releasing me, by pulling me closer—I jerked against his hold when loud voices suddenly came from behind and beside us.
“Dare!”
“Where’d you go?”
“We got so much food. It’s time to feast. Oh, oh.”
“Why are you just stand—?” The girl’s voice cut off abruptly when she rounded us, her eyes widening with unabashed disbelief as she took me in, standing where I didn’t belong.
The girl from Brooks Street on Monday.
As I had so often this week, I wondered if she was his girlfriend, fiancée, wife, his anything . . . but there wasn’t an ounce of jealousy or anger dripping from her.
My familiar stranger released his hold on me, his body disappearing from behind my own just before two guys came up behind the girl, carrying plates of fried foods and desserts.
Another girl followed behind them as she tapped away on a phone, a third guy trailing close to her side.
“Well, well, well. Who do we have here?” one of the first guys asked, a wicked smirk and gleam in his eye as he sauntered closer and hooked an arm around my neck.
I was too stunned from the loss of that tormenting energy that kissed my skin whenever he was near to try to prevent this new man from getting too close.
“Who are you?” the girl who was still staring at me asked.
“No one,” I answered immediately. “I was leaving—”
I tried to maneuver out of the new guy’s hold, my gaze darting around, looking for the man who had just shifted my entire world with a kiss.
“Einstein!” the guy holding on to me called out, turning us so we were facing the rest of his group as they pushed two tables together. “Pull up an extra chair. This one’s staying.”
My eyes widened in horror as I found the stranger I’d been looking for. Those dark eyes were locked on mine as he stood behind a chair, his hands gripping the back of it tightly. Too tight. As if he was forcing himself not to move from that spot.
“I’m not,” I whispered, then glanced back at the girl now standing directly in front of me again. Her curious stare bounced over me like she was trying to figure me out. “I’m not,” I assured her.
The man holding me laughed as he tightened his arm, giving my neck a gentle squeeze. “It’s just food, darlin’,” he said as he led us toward the tables. “It won’t bite you. Doesn’t mean I won’t.”
I glanced at the tables, my gaze searching out his again. The look in his eyes as he locked onto the man touching me was one I knew so well.
Because I had fallen in love with that look when others would have run.
That darkness—that had nothing to do with the color of his eyes—pulsed just beneath the surface, begging to be freed. Teasing that the man standing in front of me was dangerous.
I’d grown up surrounded by powerful and dangerous men, hating the monsters those traits turned them into. I’d wanted to put an end to every horrible thing they were involved with before I escaped them completely. And yet the danger that lay barely concealed in this man was just as enticing as the rest of him. As if the dangerous side within him called to me, begging me to touch.
“How do you know Dare?” the girl in front of me suddenly asked.
I blinked quickly as I focused on her, noting that she never once looked behind her as she took confident steps backward.
“Excuse me?”
“Dare.” She pointed behind her, directly at the guy in question. “How do you know him?”
