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I’d been around many men like him in my life, men who killed with their hands and moved on to the next task. It was their nature.
I watched him take the same seat he always did, the one at the back of the diner that faced the entrance. He always made sure the wall was at his back. That was another sign of the type of man he was… one who’d seen enough violence that he’d never be caught off guard.
The sound of the cook hitting the little bell, indicating my customer’s meal was ready, drew me out of my thoughts. After taking the plate with the burger and fries, I grabbed another beer, noticing how the drunk had already—not surprisingly—drained the first.
I set his plate down in front of him, the beer bottle to follow. He said nothing, just started digging in with disgusting, sloppy sounds leaving him. As soon as I turned and faced the dark and dangerous man sitting in the corner, my belly tightened, that internal warning urging me to run the other way, rising up almost violently.
But I was familiar with that little voice, that sixth sense, and I pushed it down and moved closer. Because although I knew this man was someone I didn’t want to get involved with, I also couldn’t lie and say my sick curiosity wasn’t far stronger.
“Welcome to Sal’s,” I said automatically. “The usual?” He always got the same. Ham and swiss sandwich on sourdough. Side of fries. Cup of coffee. Black. No sugar.
He nodded, his dark eyes locked on mine, his face giving nothing away. I felt like an animal trapped in a snare and facing off with the hungry predator. I gave a weak nod and an even weaker smile in his direction before I turned and headed toward the cook to put the order in, but Ifelthis gaze still on me, as if hewere reaching out and tearing my clothes away, baring my flesh before he took that cold, serrated knife and cut me open.
It was terrifying.
So why did I yearn for more?
4
Arlo
She was demure, innocent, with a soft voice that was pleasing to my ears, a smile that had my chest tightening, and a body that made me want to stab any other man who ever looked her way.
She was dangerous to me, the dark desire I felt, the way she made me want things a bastard like me had no business desiring. And yet I knew nothing about her.
But when I looked into her eyes, I saw a survivor staring back. I was good at reading people without knowing their story. She’d seen the ugliness and violence the world handed out freely… the kindIgave in abundance.
Lina, her name tag said, a beautiful name in an ugly city.
I’d come to Sal’s plenty of times while living in Desolation, but I couldn’t lie and say I didn’t come in here almost every fucking night because I wanted to look at her. I wanted to be close to her.
She’d most likely experienced the brutality this world had to offer personally, one that scarred her from the inside out. I felta tightening in my gut at the strange sensation of wanting to protect her, to save her from further heartache. But who the hell was I to save anyone? I took life. I cleaned up death.
I was a monster wrapped up in the visage of a man. And I shouldn’t want to shield her from anything or anyone but me.
I’d made sure to pay her already, wanting her to get her tip and not rely on someone else to hand off Lina’s money. Sal’s definitely wasn’t known for its honor system. I finished my sandwich and coffee, then I waited. I watched. I wanted Lina like a starving wolf seeing a vulnerable lamb. Every part of me looked at her and demanded I take her down to the darkest parts with me, that I destroy her in the best of ways… to tear her apart until I got my fill.
I wasn’t sure what it was about Lina that called to me… a more noble part of me, one that had never existed. One that would never be born. All I knew with a harsh truth was that she wouldn’t leave my mind. She was a constant companion in my fucked-up head, a light in the blood and murder that took up residence there.
I watched as she handed the check to the piece of shit who’d been loud since I’d come into the diner, her only other customer. I’d seen him before and could always recognize him by the scent of liquor that seeped from his pores.
He squinted at the check, then tossed a few bills on the table despite the waitress holding her hand out for the money. I could see the frustration and almost resignation on her face as she picked up the money, murmured something, and turned to walk off.
Once again, raw anger filled me on her behalf.
My hands were in tight fists on top of the old, chipped two-seater table, the need for bloodshed moving viciously through my veins, all because of the way he glared at her… disrespected her.
And the longer I stared at him, the more I recognized what kind of man he was. I’d seen countless bastards like him before, ones who looked at the women trafficked by the crime syndicate, ones who were sick and needed their dicks cut off because of the perverse things they thought about. And I could see the drunk fucker was hungry for Lina, but the only type of satiation a man like him would get was the kind coming from a begging woman.
I followed Lina with my gaze once more, and I could tell she was trying hard not to look at me by the tension in her shoulders and the way her hands tightly curled inward. Maybe I fascinated her in a sick way. Maybe I scared her so much that she was drawn to me, a girl who’d been damaged enough in her life that I was the only type of man who could pull her out of that darkness.
Because I was as black and cold as the night.
I felt a dangerous coil of… desire move through me. But I knew feelings such as those would do nothing but destroy me. My life, the world I lived in, had no business with something likethat.
I watched her mannerisms, could see the armor she wore was chinked and scarred, and that made me want to burrow myself deeper under her skin and find out who she was. Where did she come from? Who was she running from?
I’d gotten the basic information on her. Address. Name. Age. The latter two were easily faked, seeing as she had only moved to Desolation in the last couple of months. It could’ve been easy enough to gather all the information on her that was buried deep… the real information that some people went to a lot of trouble to bury. I definitely had the connections and resources. But something stopped me from searching out information on this woman.
