Page 40 of Stealing Cinder

My hand drifts to the curve of my belly and my thumb traces a slow circle. The baby is still tonight. Resting after all the chaos the poor thing had to endure. Smart kid. One of us should be sleeping.

Heat radiates at my back and I lean into Samuel. His arm wraps around my middle, his palm settling over the bump just below my hand.

I step out of his warmth.

The cold rushes back in and my skin prickles, but I hold my ground, wrapping my arms over my chest. The distance is necessary. A girl can only absorb so much in one night and my limit is a distant memory at this point.

"Is there something about my touch you don't like?" From the single arched brow, I can tell he’s being snarky.

I lift my chin. His dark brown eyes hold steady on me from four feet away, patient and unreadable, lamplight carving shadows along the ridged ink climbing his neck. He is still shirtless. Still covered in the landscape of torn-flesh tattoos that wrap his torso, the exposed rib bones so detailed they look real beneath shredded red muscle and blood. The black hole over his heart sits at the center, and in the dim light I can just make out the curve of my name scripted along its edge.

The sight of those letters pulls at a place low in my ribs. I shove the feeling down.

"No." I hold his gaze. "It's not about your touch."

He waits. Hands loose at his sides. Giving me the same kind of room he gave me outside. I'm starting to think that's deliberate, a man who could easily cage me choosing not to, over and over.

"It's guilt, Samuel. I came here to handle Edgar on my own terms, and instead I dragged four men into a war. People bled tonight because I snuck into a poker game not thinking of anyone but myself." My voice stays even but my throat burns. "I'm solving one murder, but what if more people die?"

Scarred knuckles brush down the side of my face, the touch light enough that my skin barely registers the pressure before the warmth of it seeps in.

I lean into his hand. The instinct overrides my resistance and my eyes close for one traitorous second.

"It's been a while since anyone has touched me with kindness." My voice drops. "Five months, to be exact."

His lips press against mine. Gentle. Warm. A kiss that carries no demand, only desire. My fingers curl into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for him.

He pulls back just enough to speak against my mouth. "Good to know no one has touched you since me."

"You've been my one and only."

Heat floods my cheeks at the admission. The memory of lonely nights with my hand between my thighs, reaching for the ghost of the man standing in front of me, burns across my pride.

"I wish I had never let you leave my room our first night together."

The confession cracks open a locked door inside my heart. I start to tell him I wish the same, but the words stick and I pull away instead. My fingers press against my lips where his warmth lingers.

"I left because I don't trust easily. I meant it when I told you I wanted to stay." I move toward the windows, putting some distance between us. "You looked at me with so much…love. God, that seems so silly to say when it was just a night. But that is what I felt as you watched me step into that elevator.”

I move to the kitchen and gesture to the glasses in the cabinet. “Mind if I grab some water?”

“Allow me.” He pours me a cool glass and I use that pause to gather my thoughts. My palm finds the cold of the glass.

Leaning a hip against the kitchen counter, I pick my next words carefully. "But I knew I couldn't have a happily ever after, Samuel. Not with my father's killer still out there and the cops on his payroll. I was single-minded at best."

"You’re right about that, and wrong that you can’t have a happily ever after," he urges.

"I'm not." I rest my hands on my belly. The baby shifts, a slow roll under my palm, and the movement anchors me. "Not then and not now. But..."

He takes a deep breath, his massive chest expanding, the torn-flesh tattoos stretching with the movement. "But our baby changes everything, doesn't it? Your future and mine will forever change."

The husk of his voice works through me. I am not prepared for the effect it has on me. "What do you mean?"

"Yesterday I only dreamed of having you in my arms again." He stalks toward me as he speaks, the heated concrete silent under his feet. Shadows cut across his jaw and the recessed lighting throws the scars on his knuckles into sharp relief. "And yet tonight I killed to protect the future I thought I would never have."

He walks me backward until the cold marble edge of the kitchen island presses into my lower back. The wooden knife block sits to my left, handles up, blades glinting. To my right, empty counter.

"You can try for the knives, but I'm fast, baby."