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I could smell her shampoo from this distance and if I allowed myself to feel the silk of them against my face, I wouldn’t want to stop there. I would need to feel the silk of hereverywhere.
I wasn’t sure if the mayor of River’s Bend could get arrested in her own town.
But I was certain thatIcould be.
Worth it. Totally—
She squirmed, managed to gain an inch of distance between us. “Go away, Joel.”
I’d been thinking about silk and hair and curls and naked skin and getting arrested for public indecency.
Her tone threw me completely.
Because…it wasn’t Billie’s.
It wasn’t like that glimpse of vulnerable she’d given me before. Finally losing it after having held it together for an entire town—relief that Bailey was okay, grief at the loss of her people, anguish at the destruction of everything she’d worked hard for. This was…
Something completely different.
And…it was fucking terrifying.
I leaned around her back, got a good look at her face, her eyes, and my entire body seized.
She wasn’t in there. Not really.
Her blue irises weren’t a frosty sky blue and they sure as shit weren’t cobalt and bronze.
They were…
Well, they could have been devoid of color.
Of emotion.
My heart convulsed, lungs going tight, every muscle in my body screaming that something was very,verywrong. “Who hurt you?”
She blinked, and I watched—fuckingwatched—the shield lock down.
“You know,” she snapped, jerking out of my hold and spinning away from me, kneeling on the blanket with several feet between us. “Just because we fucked doesn’t mean you’re allowed to touch me anytime that you want.”
I inhaled.
Because, first, that pissed me off.
And second, thatpissed me off.
But I held my temper—because of the glimpse I’d gotten five seconds before.
That desolate landscape of her expression.
The vast loss of color everywhere my eyes could see.
Just because it was now covered by her playing porcupine, it didn’t mean that pain wasn’t still there.
Christ. When I’d first met Billie Rose, I couldn’t stand her. She’d come across as an open book—annoying but beautiful, demanding and fiery and intense. Some of that had been appealing. Who didn’t like a beautiful woman who was driven?
Not a real man, as far as I was concerned.
Confidence and capability were sexy.
