I wanted there to be an imbalance between us.
I was breathing hard. My pulse was pounding. I was surprised others couldn’t hear it over the music blaring.
How was he getting away with running this club? At this hour? I almost snorted at myself because of course, he’d already have cops on his payroll. Duh. Creighton moved so fucking fast when he made the decision to take over an area.
I wanted to run from him. I wanted to hurt him, but damn him. Creighton knew I would want to run again. It’s why we made the deal we had. He stayed out of my life, kept a watcher on me, and I wouldn’t run. But that agreement was over because he tricked me into violating it.
This motherfucker.
I should run again, just to make him feelsomething.
Creighton was walking away from the last table of businessmen. He took a few steps, stopped, and seemed to rotate exactly to the direction where I was standing.
He probably had the same inside compass. A Blake compass, like I had a Creighton compass.
Right now I hated it like I hated him.
He was facing me, but I was still in the shadows. He frowned, just slightly, and moved forward. A step. Two. He was getting closer.
Jesus. He really did have a compass.
I waited, my breath held and frozen. My heart began thumping in my chest. The anger in me was a volcano, and it was close to erupting. I needed to make a choice. Right now.
Leave, make him hurt, or ...
It was too late.
I was rooted in place as he stepped into the same shadow that was hiding me. I knew the second his gaze lit onto me. A wave of awareness thundered down on me. Dammit. I sucked in oxygen, feeling as if I were breathing the wind that would rush off of an ocean wave crashing onto the beach. It was big. It was powerful. It was all-consuming, and it was threatening to completely knock me off my axis.
Goddamn. I just described Creighton. He was a storm sent by Mother Nature herself to knock out everyone and everything in his path. Except me. Orespeciallyme because I was knocked over, just from how he was looking at me right now.
His eyes darkened.
He grew eerily still, and I knew it was because he was reading me.
He didn’t say anything. I was seething at him, wanting him to say something. Anything. Because then I’d react. I didn’t know what I would do, but it’d be something.
Anything.
I had to do something.
I couldn’t keep on this way.
I closed my eyes. Sucking in some air again, becausefuckhim. One look and he knew. I didn’t know what he knew, but he just knew. He knew more than I knew myself. He understood me more than I understood myself. Why him? Why did he get this power over me? No one else could read me as seamlessly as he could. Another freak of nature power he’d been gifted.
A tear trickled down my cheek.
He tracked it, his eyes growing fierce.
He’d just been shaking hands and schmoozing with businessmen, and I could see the cut of their three-piece custom suits. They were powerful men. They weresomeonein this city. And they were here, shaking hands with Creighton, and enjoying themselves in his establishment. I don’t know what they saw when they looked at him. He was in a suit of his own. He looked so good. He rarely wore them.
I’d seen him in everything by now.
Jeans and a hoodie. A ball cap. That was my favorite look.
Jeans and a leather jacket.
A business suit.
