“I’m tired,” she said.“Why don’t we call it a night and talk about this tomorrow?”
And bytalk about this tomorrowshe, of course, meant she’d escape and pray he never darkened her doorstep again.
He shook his head furiously.“No way.I’m not falling forthatagain.I won’t let you shut me out without giving me therealreason why you don’t want to see me anymore.”
The wordagainwas doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.Just how many other women had he creeped out like this?Had he hurt any of them?Shit, were any of them the subject of horrific unsolved mysteries with Lifetime movies made about them??
She swallowed hard.“I’m not lying, Darren.We can talk tomorrow.Now, will you please unlock the door and let me out?”
“You’re just scared,” he said through clenched teeth.
You’re damned right I am!
“You’re terrified of opening yourself up to everything I make you feel,” he went on.
Well…that sentence had certainly taken an unexpected turn.She blinked at him a couple times before deciding to go with it.“May…be,” she croaked, practically choking on the lie.
He snagged her wrist in a grip so hard she felt her bones shift.Son of a bitch!She was going to die in front of her house, wasn’t she?How sad was that?Killed by a bad date because she didn’t want to invite him into her house for what was sure to be the most mediocre wiener-ing ever.
“We belong together, Hadley,” he said with a fervor she’d never felt for anyone or anything in her whole life.“I can prove it.”
Then he yanked her by her poor bruised wrist over the center console of his ancient Mercedes and slammed his mouth down on hers.
She tried to shove him off her, but he shifted his grip from her wrist to the back of her head and grabbed a fistful of her hair.Ugh, he was so freakin’ strong!And he tasted like the garlicky marinara he’d had on his pasta at dinner.Gross!
Her disgust quickly turned to panic when his hand in her hair tightened, pulling the strands hard enough to bring tears to her eyes and wrench a pained cry from her throat—a cry he muffled by shoving his tongue into her mouth.
She took a few kickboxing classes when she was in college.Her instructor always told her how great she was doing.But everything she’d ever learned evaporated in her panic.Especially when he shoved his free hand between her knees and started trying to pry them apart.
Maybe she could bite his tongue!Although she was just as likely to bite a hole in her cheek.Trying to shove him off her wasn’t doing a damn thing.Maybe if she just?—
She didn’t have time to finish that fragment of a thought, though.Because that’s when the driver’s side window exploded into a million pieces and a dinner-plate sized hand (possibly the hand of God Himself, as far as Hadley knew) grabbed Darren by the hair and dragged him through the wreckage.
Chapter3
Cole was lucky the wannabe-rapist bastard’s car had been made before the advent of laminated glass.
Newer car windows were a bitch to break.He could’ve done it, but it would’ve required tools.But this piece of shit from the late 90s?All it took was one well-placed elbow (and a shit-ton of force) to shatter it.
The dude wasn’t all that big, either, which made it much easier to drag him out by his overly styled, stupid-looking blond hair.
“What the fuck?”the guy rasped, shaking in Cole’s grip, eyes wide as saucers.“Who the fuck areyou?”
“I’m a guy who hates rapists,” Cole said dryly.
He sputtered.“I’m no rapist!This is my girlfriend!”
That’s when his neighbor seemed to find her voice.“Um, no the fuck I’m not!”She reached over the wreckage to hit the release button on the child locks, then got out of the car on wobbly legs.“I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and he grabbed me.”
Cole immediately noticed how nice her voice was.Kind of low-pitched and a little raspy.It was soothing.
And sexy as hell.
Then he saw her smeared lipstick and the way she was cradling her wrist.Her violentlyredwrist with visible prints from this fucker’s fingers.
He stayed calm, though.Rage was an emotion he’d managed to stifle over the years.It didn’t suit his profession.Angry spies were dangerous spies.He needed to be cold.Heartless.An emotional dead zone.
Revenge was well within his emotional repertoire, though.
