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“You might not be a virgin but you’re still fucking innocent. As for age? In experience, in darkness, I’m decades older than you.”
Hellie laughs and places her hand on my chest. It’s a deliberate move and it works because every nerve ending wakes and my cock stirs. She’s close, too close, and it’s been too long.
Another fucking lie.
A lack of sex due to time behind bars has nothing to do with my physical reaction to her hand. It’s her. The lonely little girl, the fire of her, the lust for life that wants freedom. Everything I heard today screams it.
She wants to fight against her fate, she wants a taste of something that I want to give, a taste before she’s locked up by another man.
It’s not my place.
Not my fight.
Not my anything.
So I squash it dead.
“I was in prison, Hellie.” I put down the wine and scoop the soup into a bowl in front of her. “I did things for your father, your future husband, others. I’ve killed. Lied. Betrayed. So trust me when I say I’m decades beyond you, and I’m also not your salvation. Eat up and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Then I turn and walk away from Hellie even though every last cell in my body is on fire with pent-up lust and need to strip that sweet innocence from her.
5
HELLIE
We’re in Ohio. It’s been another day of driving, another day closer to sealing my fate. The time is filled with the dark, warm clove and bergamot scent of him, one that lingers and weaves spells.
It’s a hint in the closed air of the car, the thickening of awareness that seems to be building between us. That, or it’s the desperation and unanswered questions about my soon-to-be husband.
The town we’re in is small and Cal pulls up to what looks like a non-descript house with a chain link fence.
We talked more on the drive. On the surface, it was about nothing, but everything at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it. Our conversation flowed easily about music, movies, books, our likes and dislikes.
But thing is, we click. Even when he tells me he hates the idea of cozy mysteries and prefers the hard-boiled edge of crime in his books there’s a familiar link. Like two sides of something.
And I don’t want this drive to end.
“If this is going to be my last couple of days of freedom,” I say, “maybe we can make it count.”
He doesn’t speak for a long moment. “This isn’t a vacation.”
“I know what it is.” I clasp my hands. “I just…I want to have some fun.”
Cal pulls out his phone and types something. When it beeps he reads the message and tucks it away before looking at me. “How about this? We order in, make it a night, pretend we’re out?”
“I’ll take it,” I say.
He’s dangerous. Not just in the way all the men I know are. He has that deadly edge all mafia have, but not the rest of it.
When Cal Quinn says he’s third party, I know that means he’s dangerous, but it’s not the danger that sings a path down my spine.
No, the danger I felt the moment we met is the one that tells me he’ll dive into darkness to protect what he loves.
He’d die for that.
Risk everything.
The moment I laid eyes on him something changed. Opened inside me. And I’m not sure I want to close that door. Not until I’ve experienced his darkness and light, exposed the secrets I don’t need spoken. Wrapped myself in his universal truth.
