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“What are you?” I rasped, the question nearly inaudible, but from the way Diggs’ body stilled against mine, I knew he heard. Swallowing thickly, I lifted my hands and scrubbed them over my face as I forced myself to think clearly. “I was warned to stay away from you. I was told you were dangerous. When I saw you—well, your brother, I guess? But when I saw him, I thought those warnings had been some sort of fabrication to save me from the mortification and hurt of knowing I’d been sleeping with a married man. Except, they weren’t.”
I propped myself on my elbows when Diggs pushed up so he was hovering over me, his expression once again a mask of nothing. The only tell that he was bothered was the slight hardening of his jaw that shifted every few seconds when I went on.
“And you accepted that I was disgusted with you. You wanted to know how I found out.” I lifted my chin at him. “But now I don’t know what you think I might’ve found out or what you are.” A frantic-sounding laugh tumbled past my lips. “I’m trying to figure out why I’m relieved you aren’t married because you’re clearly something. And I have a feeling this something is why you’re so hesitant to tell me anything about your life. I have a feeling that, whatever it is, it’s worse than if you’d been married.”
Long moments passed as he watched me without responding, seeming to take in everything about me before he pushed away from the bed and straightened to his full height. Just as his lips parted, his phone began ringing from where I’d dropped it on the bed.
He barely spared a glance at it before hurrying to scoop up the phone and answer the call as he stepped away. “Yeah?” As he listened, his face and eyes shifted into something so cold and terrifying, yet somehow, they didn’t seem to change at all. “On my way.”
I scrambled to my knees as he grabbed his shirt and started stalking away from me, a question and a plea on the tip of my tongue when he suddenly turned and erased the distance he’d just placed between us. Grasping my face in his hands and leaning close until his lips were teasing mine with every breath.
And I knew in the way that next kiss felt like possession and desire, respect and adoration, that I didn’t care about Rorie’s warnings or Cora’s theories.
I didn’t care who Diggs was at all.
“I don’t know who gave you the warning, but listen to them,” he begged, shattering my revelation.
My chest shook at the realization of what he was saying and the depth of his plea. “I know there’s something dangerous about you. I felt it that first night—every night,” I admitted, gripping at his forearms. “And, whatever it is, it isn’t enough to make me want to be farther from you than I am right now.”
His head shook as he pulled away, his jaw clenched tight as his eyes devoured me. Everything about the action and look screamed that he wanted me to take back the words. That I didn’t understand their meaning.
And just as he had that afternoon, he ran his thumb down my forearm and over my wrist instead of his usual parting. When he spoke, his voice dipped and twisted with indecision. “Gonna be hard forcing myself not to find you.”
“Diggs.” His name punched from my lungs, and I scrambled to follow him as he swiftly and silently stalked from my room, shutting the door behind him.
But when I tried wrenching it open, I fumbled over the knob, taking a second too long to realize why my door didn’t budge.
And that extra second was all he needed.
Because in the short time it took me to twist the lock he’d flipped and follow him, he was already gone. The only sign that he’d ever been there at all was the lone living room window that was still partially open. Showing me where he’d been getting in but not how, considering I’d locked it earlier. But when I hurried over to look outside it, there wasn’t a trace of him.
I didn’t go back to sleep...
I spent the rest of the night righting the furniture in my apartment and struggling through the whiplash of the past day and a half. My feelings. The information. All of it had been so much and so jarring.
And in the end, I was right back where I’d begun. Wanting nothing more than for Diggs to find his way into my apartment and slip into my bed.
Only now, I was afraid he never would.
DIGGS
“Told you it was personal,” I mumbled under my breath when Kieran neared my side about an hour later and held his stare when he slanted a lethal look my way.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the effect he had on people on any given day. Asshole already knew he was terrifying. But after this?
He could glare at me all he wanted; we both knew I’d been right. I’d warned them. But Dare hadn’t moved anyone to the Borello house because Kieran had dismissed my worries.
And now we had another body with a symbol.
After taking a quick look inside the van, Kieran stepped close, tapping my chest with a blade he’d been rolling along his knuckles. “Looks personal to Borellos. Not the rest of us.”
“Funny,” I grunted when he stepped away, “didn’t know that symbol disappeared from your skin, removing you from our family.”
An animalistic smile flashed across his face and was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t mistake my words for disloyalty,” he said, voice dripping with a cruelness I knew he didn’t mean. “But if it isn’t Tennessee Gentlemen or Moretti, then the feud’s old. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t know Conor and I are involved with the rest of you. Which means it isn’t personal to us, our wives, or our kids. That doesn’t mean we won’t be here, helping the rest of you.”
“That isn’t necessarily true,” Einstein said from where she stood near the van, rapidly tapping on her tablet. Searching for more clues, even though she’d already found out the van had been stolen from a place with no security.
With a sigh, she spared a quick glance at Kieran before saying, “You’re well known in our world, and it isn’t exactly news we came from rival families. So, even if this is an old feud, they’re more than likely watching us and have deduced that we’ve created a new family. Together. You’re just as at risk as the rest of us.”
