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Connor shielded himself from his past by throwing himself into work. By carefully walling off his heart and letting his head take control. It was a coping technique I’d personally perfected over the years, and I knew from firsthand experience that it made for a lonely existence. That little voice that had been nagging at me was silent now, but I wasn’t sure if it had been beaten, or if it was just biding its time. Connor had blood on his hands. He was a killer. I shouldn’t want to comfort him, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I took Connor’s hand in mine, and he looked down in surprise.
“You would have been great.” I placed his fingers back on the piano keys. “Youaregreat. The music comes from your heart—something so beautiful, I can hear the love and the loss so plainly. Please promise me you won’t give it up.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I’ll play for you whenever you want, Cass.”
The atmosphere in the room seemed to have increased in density. Even the clock on the wall was drowned out by the weight of the silence between us, the world poised on edge and holding its breath.
Then he reached out and touched a lock of my hair.
There was something so reverent about the way he held it, twisting it in the dim light and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb, as if it were something he’d been dying to do. I sat frozen on the piano bench, the heat of him scorching my skin as he gently tucked it behind my ear and brushed his knuckles across my cheekbone. The heat pooled low in my belly, flaring with every inch of skin he touched. I needed air. Was the room spinning, or was it just us? Connor’s eyes darkened, and he tilted my chin up to look at him fully.
“I told myself this was going to be strictly business,” he murmured. “I thought it was going to be easy. I’m a patient man, but you’re pushing the very limits of my self-restraint, lass.”
This was getting out of hand. “You don’t even know me.”
“Yes, I do. I know everything about you. Your favorite color, where you went to college, the name of your first dog—"
“Those are statistics, Connor. That’s not knowing a person, not really.”
He narrowed his eyes, and I shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his stare.
“All, right,” he said softly. “I know that you’re a kind person, though you like to put on the tough girl act. You like to help others, not because you want their gratitude and appreciation, but because it makes you happy to do it. You don’t like to see others hurt or suffering. You’re independent and strong-willed and more than a little bullheaded, but underneath you’re fragile just like everyone else. And it terrifies you.”
Connor cocked his head, holding my stare. “You don’t give your heart or your trust easily. It’s been broken too many times, and you’re afraid of getting hurt again. You like to think that you’re fearless, but what you fear most is your own vulnerability. That’s why you don’t let many people in, certainly not people who are like the ones who’ve hurt you before.”
His analysis was hitting shockingly close to home. Connor’s eyes dropped down to my lips for a second. When they flicked back up to mine, they were nearly black with naked desire.
“You’re beautiful, in a way that not many people are. You’re a stunning woman, enough to stop any man in his tracks, but what makes you different is that you’re truly beautiful on the inside.” His hand slid to my hair, his fingers tightening enough to steal the breath from my lungs. “I wanted to hate you. I prayed I would feel indifferent towards you. But you’re wrapped up in my head, and I can’t afford to be distracted like this. Because all I can think about is claiming you.”
Claimed. I’d never been spoken to like that in my life. I’d never been looked at like that, like I held some kind of power over a man quivering at the very edge of his restraint. It should have felt archaic, but instead, I just felt…empowered.
“What about me?” Connor asked. “Am I still the man you thought I was? Am I nothing more than a criminal to you?”
The smoldering darkness in his eyes was dangerous in its intensity, but that’s not what did it. It was the doubt coloring the edges, the hint of vulnerability. Connor waited for an answer, patiently but not hopefully, baring his soul to someone he was sure still despised him. That little voice in my head was still silent, but surprisingly, I found I didn’t care what it had to say, anymore.
“You are nothing like what I thought,” I whispered. Admitting it was harder than I realized. “The life you’ve chosen has hurt people I love. It has hurtme, and I can't easily forget that. I hate what you do, Connor. But I don’t hate you.”
“No?”
“No.” His thigh was brushing mine. When had that happened?
“Well, it’s definitely not hate I feel when I look at you.”
I must be a glutton for punishment. “What do you feel, then?”
Wordlessly, Connor took my hand and pressed it to his heart. It beat wildly, a caged animal thrashing against his breastbone in a desperate attempt to get to me. That couldn’t be faked.
“What does this tell you?” he said, his voice low. “Thisis what you do to me.”
My eyes dropped to his mouth. I hadn’t noticed how close he was until now. Caution and, apparently, my sanity were thrown to the wind as I leaned in, feeling his heart quicken as I breathed against his lips.Am I really doing this? Is this what I want?
Yes.
I closed the gap between us, pressed my mouth against his, and kissed him.
Connor’s lips were softer than I remembered. Warmer. He stiffened with what must have been surprise, and I started to pull back. With a small huff of disapproval, he reached up and held my face in his hands as if to saydon’t go.
The band of tension between us snapped. He bit my lip. I pulled his hair. All restraint was burnt away as the kiss became a grasping, fumbling thing, made awkward by our side-by-side position on the piano bench.
