I grip his hand tighter.
He waits until my body softens around him before he moves again, measured at first, all restraint and tension. The storm pounds at the house. Thunder rolls through the floorboards. Every time lightning flashes, the room strobes silver-blue, his tattoos shifting beneath my palms as I touch him and touch him and can’t seem to stop.
This is not anonymous. That’s a problem.
He says my name.
He watches my face.
He kisses me when my breathing goes ragged and slows when the thunder gets too loud and speeds up when I drag my nails down his back and bite his shoulder because I need something sharp to balance the ache opening in my chest.
This is sex, yes. But it’s also comfort. And that is the thing I don’t know how to survive.
“Look at me,” he says when I close my eyes, and I do.
His expression is open—desire, restraint, something warmer I refuse to name. I can’t afford to name it.
My legs tighten around him. The pressure builds too fast, too bright, made raw by fear and adrenaline and the awful relief of not being alone in the dark.
“Shiloh—”
“I know.” His thumb strokes the inside of my wrist, right over the fresh red marks. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
I do.
It tears through me, hard enough to make my vision spot. He follows with a rough groan against my throat, hips stuttering once, twice, then stilling as thunder cracks so loud the windows shiver in their frames.
For a long moment we stay like that. Rain. Breath. Heat. The weak blue pool of phone light beside the dead lamp.
Then he eases some of his weight off me, turning on his side and pulling me into him, his hand smoothing over my side, up my ribs, down again like he’s reminding both of us where we are.
Here.
Now.
Together.
I stare at the nightstand and the two lights that define the whole room tonight—the one I count on and the one he gave me when it failed.
I came to New Orleans to kill a man.
Instead, I’m in bed with one of Noir’s monsters, letting him hold me through a storm because the dark still turns me into a little girl in a closet.
And the worst part—the most dangerous part—is that when he tucks me against his chest and keeps that phone light burning beside us, I feel safe enough to close my eyes.
I know enough.
I don’t talk to you like you’re fragile because you’re not fragile.
—Ash
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
REVA
The first timeI see Nash, my body forgets it’s supposed to be wary of men like him.
That’s the first problem.
