“Aww. So sweet.” I raise my fingertips to my lips for my best cutesy pose. “Then come with me, sexy sailor.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s not safe. Your brothersare looking for you, scouring every camera across the country. If you keep going out, they’ll find you.”
Shrugging, I throw my arms out wide. “Color me confused. And that’s bad? You just said we should tell them where I am. Plus, you wanted to get to know me better. This is me. Seizing the moment. Living. We’re in freaking Vegas. We might as well have a little fun first.”
We’re a sight. Him on one side of the bed. Me on the other. Mean-mugging game faces and scanty attire. All of it laced with a hint of humor because I think he feels as alive in this moment as I do. Even in my irritation, I know fighting with Tytan Reynolds would be a lifetime of exhilarating thrills.
“No.” He drops the clothes he was holding and scrubs his hands over his scruff in a barely-hanging-on kind of hand tantrum—maybe he’s having less fun than me. “I’m not risking it. This is shitty enough. I’m not parading you around the city so that when they find us, it looks like I don’t give a shit. They’re flipping out, Rena. Sick about your safety. If you need time to work things out, I’ll give you that. But you’re not leaving here.”
I am over fucking orders and threats. Wishy-washy feelings and half-truths.
The majority of that is served daily at La Lune Noire.
“We’ll see about that,” I hiss.
He leans forward, as if there isn’t a king-size bed between us. Obstinate determination wrinkles his forehead. “I’ll cuff you to the fucking bed if I have to.”
Gone is easygoing, well-mannered Ty.
God, he’s sexy like this.
So, yes, I want to crawl across this bed and lick the beads of sweat still freckling his skin. Trail my tongue along every crevice of his sculpted abs. Slink to the floor and take those gym shorts with me. Unveil his most vital classified unit and devour him until his vision is spotty and his speech is nonsensical.
But not now because he has met his freaking match.
My brows dart for the sky as I thrust my wrists out in front of me in a cuff-me dare. “More empty promises, Reynolds. Like how your cock is going to stretch me out and steal the breath from my lungs when we both know you’ll never have the guts to do it. So it’ll be someone else filling me up. A man my brothers approve of. That’s the goal, right? Someone else erasing all the emptiness that came beforehim.”
He stalks around the bed, pupils blown as he prowls toward me with a steel jaw. Hunger and wrath appear to be battling it out for dominance, so I back up a few steps on instinct. He’s untamed and edgy, an imperious shadow of his former self.
But, fuck, am I here for it.
When he reaches me, he forms a cage around my dwarfed frame. He’s all long limbs and savage alarm bells. Shimmery sex appeal. His forearm rests above my head as my back thumps into the wall and the air whooshes out of my lungs. Even his sweat is intoxicating. A musk full of obscene promise.
As his fingers brush over the thrumming pulse point in my neck, his darkened eyes meander all over my flushed face, and his voice is raw and eerily serene. “I am hanging on by a severely tattered thread. Some might say that thread has already snapped, and yet I’m keeping it together. For you. But you are not making it easy.”
Maybe my thread is tattered, too, because all I can think about is how much fun we could have snapping together.
“I don’t want easy, Ty. Where’s the fun in that? If I did, I wouldn’t be propositioning the guy my brothers told me to stay away from. And certainly not one who’s haunted. Your scars don’t frighten me.”
“They should.” His breath fans over my heaving chest, and the heat of his body waves off him like a furnace, coiling around me to set my every pore ablaze. “You’re going to push me too far and unleash the ugliness I’m tamping down,” he warns. “But then it will be too late, Little Moon. There will be no way out of this.”
Is he giving me the space to run or himself? I’ve been planningmy future with Ty since before it was legal. If all I have to do is push, he should’ve spoken up sooner.
“Well, I do enjoy living on the edge. So, unleash the monster, sailor. I’ll hold on to the headboard like a good girl.”
For a full minute, neither of us budges. We’re a frenetic typhoon of erratic heartbeats, crashing breaths, and magnetic tethering. I couldn’t move if my life depended on it.
His bare chest grazes my covered one, and anguish coasts over his features. That’s the second every dream I’ve ever held crashes around me. The man I’ve always wanted wants me back. But it’s torturing him.
He curls his fingers into a fist, forcing them against his mouth as he begins pacing and ranting. “I swear to Christ, you’re going to be the death of me. I am between a rock andHell, Rena. Fiery. Fucking. Hell. I am trying here—”
“Yeah. Well, you’re not the only one trekking through Hell, Ty. And I am more than willing to burn with you.” My words yank him back to me.
He halts his frenzied strides, gripping my chin. “Never. I could never allow anything to … Let me in. You’re suffering. I came here to help you, not make it harder.”
“I’d love to. I want that. But you have to decide. You’re either here for my brothers or you’re here for me.”
I don’t know what I want from him. That’s not true. I know exactly what I want. All of him. Not his help.Him.His laughter and smiles. His demons and pain—not to be the cause, but the carrier. It’s unreasonable that I should expect that all to transpire in a day. I’m aware of the bratty-princess attitude enveloping me.
