Page 23 of Safe Word

I clicked my tongue, silently praying he wouldn’t call me.

I loved Uncle Alessio – I really did – but for a man in law enforcement, his hobbies strayed into much murkier waters than I’d liked to admit. He knew things he shouldn’t about the kind of crimes he was supposed to prevent.

Blowing a kiss over the phone, I hauled myself home, grabbed my gym bag, and headed out again – only to find myself stuck in an endless sea of rush-hour traffic. By the time I reached the gym, over an hour had passed, and my nerves were frayed to the breaking point. As I parked, I slammed the car door harder than necessary, relishing the brief satisfaction of the noise.

Inside, the place buzzed with music, clanging weights, and relentless motion. I changed fast, shoved my earphones in, and climbed onto the treadmill, setting the pace punishingly high.

Each stride pummelled the frustration out of me. Sweat clung to my skin within minutes.

And despite it all, he was on my mind – Cain D’Angelo, that smirking bastard with cheekbones too sculpted to be nonfiction, and eyes too clever to ignore.

He intrigued me. Not because of the way he looked – though God help me, he looked like every dark fantasy ever written – but because something in him didn’t quite fit. There was a stillness, an aura. Something untouchable.

Wrong.

Typical of me to react to that type of man.

Tugging at my long sleeve, I regretted the shirt I had thrown on in haste. The gym was hotter than I’d thought, and the fabric clung to my skin in the worst way.

I bit back a laugh as I moved to an exercise bike – I was a mess. Complete and unforgivable mess. Luckily, Ghost would take me apart tomorrow, break me in ways only he could, and I would finally feel grounded again. But tonight, it was just me and this gym. I’d hold myself together, no matter how much the day tried to unravel me.

I paused as I caught my flushed reflection. But before I could think too hard about it, the light above me vanished. A shadow blocked it. I turned my chin.

Cain – fucking – D’Angelo.

Un…believable.

I lost all sensation in my legs, the grind of the pedals fading as they slowed to a stop.

Sweaty, breath ragged, with a shirt plastered to him, he looked nothing like the man from earlier. His black hair was pushed back in loose, effortless waves, save for one unruly strand that fell across his brow. Every part of him looked cut from shadow and bone – from the strong line of his jaw to the way his shirt strained over his chest.

He dropped onto the bench beside my bike as though gravity had made a fucking exception for him, power burning beneath the calm. But it wasn’t his body that stole the air from my lungs. It was what he was holding.

One of my books.

‘See,’ he started, scratching the back of his head with his free hand, ‘I don’t understand why Elisabeth went for Charles instead of Franklin.’ His tone was casual, almost conversational, but his amber eyes gleamed with an intensity that made it impossible to tell if he’d been serious or baiting me.

His gaze didn’t waver, and the trace of amusement pulling at one side of his mouth suggested he was clearly doing both.

Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees, the book balancing casually in one hand. His black outfit made him look every bit like the dark antihero that lived in the pages of his novels.

Tapping the book’s cover lightly with his index finger, he added, ‘I’ve been turning that over in my head.’

I blinked, stunned. Of all the sections in my book to fixate on, he had chosen that? It wasn’t even the darkest or the most twisted part of the story.

‘Really?’ I asked, trying to make myself seem nonchalant as I started pedalling again. ‘You skimmed through The Hollow Warden and got hung up on the simple love triangle?’

Cain reclined in his seat, a wolfish grin spreading across his face. ‘Haven’t read the whole thing, just flipped through it. And I’m not hung up. Just intrigued. Franklin was the plan. Dependable. But Charles was the pull. She didn’t pick him because it made sense – which it didn’t, mind you.’ He angled his head, watching me like I was the mystery he was trying to unravel.

‘Elisabeth didn’t want dependable,’ I said. ‘She wanted someone who would drag her into the dark and make her admit she liked it.’

His gaze snapped from my knees to my eyes, a dangerous spark catching behind them.

The smile faded.

The quiet between us twisted until I wasn’t sure if I’d just won something or signed a contract I couldn’t read.

Then he huffed softly, a sound that sent a ripple of irritation through me, but there was something else too – something electric.