2. Emery
TWO
EMERY
What the hell did I think I was doing? Allowing this man—this complete freaking stranger—to pick me up off the floor, that was what.
Arms strong and sure where he had them under my legs and back.
Maybe I’d had too much to drink. Or maybe it was that my emotions were so frayed and raw that it’d left me numb in some hypersensitive way.
It was like I could feel too much and too little, both empty and like I was going to burst apart from the pressure, and I was desperate for anything to fill the void.
Well, anything except for that disgusting creep who’d come sauntering up to me like I’d actually play into his stupid pickup line. Slurring his words as he tried to get into my line of sight.
Panic had lit the second he got into my vicinity.
That instinct kicking in.
Fight.
Except I had so little fight left in me. So little fight after everything I’d been living for had been stolen away. The hole gaping and throbbing. And now, the last tattered piece was getting ready to be ripped away.
So, there I was, in this crappy dive bar where I thought I’d be isolated enough to drown in my sorrows, only instead, I had wound up a limp mess in the arms of a stranger with my arms around his neck and my face buried under his chin.
A stranger who’d managed to knock the air from my lungs when I’d caught a peek of him where he’d sat in a booth with his friend.
If I was thinking straight at all, I knew he should send fear clapping through my veins.
Because this man was terrifyingly gorgeous.
Strike that.
He was gorgeous and terrifying. An aura of duplicity radiated around him. Wickedness shrouded beneath an easy, affable grin.
“I’m going to make sure she’s fine.” The shallow, dark words rumbled in his chest. “Just be sure these fuckers get gone.”
“Safe to say they won’t be back around,” another voice uttered low.
“Thanks, brother.”
“Yeah.”
A nod and a gesture, and we were moving again. His heavy boots thudded against the hardwood floors. I felt him angle to the side and a door was opened before it clattered shut behind us.
Then I was being lowered onto a worn leather couch in what appeared to be an office.
He stepped back, and I struggled to get my bearings. To stop the rush of dizziness that spun through my head.
I dug around in myself to find the woman that I normally was.
One who most definitely didn’t let random men pick her up and carry her into secluded places.
He took another step back, and I lifted my gaze, my eyes roaming up the hard, intimidating planes of him as I went.
Tracking over motorcycle boots and dark jeans and a fitted button-down that hugged the visible strength packed underneath. The rippling muscles of his arms were covered in ink, the designs extending down onto the backs of his hands, so intricate I didn’t have time to make any of them out.
Not before he was rumbling, “Were you hurt?”
My attention was pulled the rest of the way up to his face .
Striking green eyes speared me to the spot, so intense I was afraid he could peer all the way through me.
His jaw was defined and his brow cut in a harshness that promised there was nothing innocent about him.
His face a carved sculpture of fierce, unnerving beauty.
Maybe that’s why I’d let him touch me. Because everything felt so ugly and bleak right then that I needed something beautiful to marvel at.
A shockwave of energy ruptured from him.
A rage I could see he was trying to keep contained all mixed up with this concern that had my stomach twisting with something I shouldn’t feel.
I swallowed around the force of it.
“No.”
He roughed a tattooed hand through his warm, brown hair, his voice a scrape of coarse gravel. “Saw you hit the ground pretty hard.”
My head barely shook, and my tongue stroked out to wet my dried lips. “My hip might be a little sore tomorrow, but that’s it.”
“You sure? Because you have this going on.”
Shock ripped through me when he reached out and dragged the knuckle of his index finger up the track of a tear that I didn’t know had fallen down my cheek.
Warmth followed in its wake.
A skimming of heat that rushed beneath the surface of my skin.
What the hell was happening to me?
How was I just sitting there?
Chin tipped toward him like I wanted him to do it all over again.
Maybe I really was losing it.
Going off the deep end.
“I…” I stalled.
Was I really going to admit this? Just let it come riding out of my mouth when that territory was always off limits? Apparently, since the words were trembling off my tongue. “I don’t really like being backed into a corner like that. ”
The man’s expression morphed, running through a fresh round of fury.
Most people didn’t like to be touched when they didn’t want to be.
I got that.
But mine went deep.
Honestly, my fear of it used to be debilitating. It was something I’d been working on for years, but I still hadn’t managed to fully bring down the shield.
“Fucker is lucky he’s still standing.” There was no missing the undercurrent of ferocity.
As if he were trying to control it, he swiveled on his heel and strode over to the bar on the far side of the office.
His big body moved across the space.
Fluid and lithe.
Enthralling.
I watched as he grabbed a glass and filled it under the faucet, and he was almost wearing a smile when he turned and headed back for me.
The ground trembled below.
“Here.” He handed me the glass of water.
“Thank you,” I whispered as I brought it to my lips. “Though in a place like this, I’d think you might offer something stronger.”
A low chuckle rolled out of him.
Dark and mesmerizing, and God, I had no idea what it was about him. Why I felt compelled. Held by the energy that emanated from the danger carved on his flesh.
“Think that could be arranged.”
He moved back to the bar, and he glanced at me from over his shoulder. “What were you drinking?”
“Tequila.”
Something I was sure I was going to regret in the morning, but I was already dreading tomorrow with everything that I had, anyway. A hangover couldn’t make it any worse.
And right then, I needed to feel something different. Something different than the grief that had chained me for the last three months. Grief that I was terrified was going to get even more awful come tomorrow.
“Ah, now see, one should never drink tequila alone,” he said in that growly, mesmerizing voice.
“Is that so?” I drew out.
Was I flirting with him?
“Oh yeah,” he returned, just the hint of a cocky smile arching at the edge of his mouth. He picked up a bottle of silver tequila from a shelf that ran the backside of the small bar and filled two tumblers half full.
Then he sauntered back my way, two glittering glasses dangling from either hand.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest.
His striking features slipped between brutal, curious, and sly.
Like he held a million secrets, and he’d be all too willing to steal all of mine.
God, I really must have been drunk because I swore an aura built up around him with every step that he took. A dark light that glowed. An energy that pummeled and bashed and soothed.
I fumbled to set the glass of water onto the side table next to the couch.
“Here you go, beautiful.” He passed me the tumbler in his left hand, and my attention dropped to the tattoo he had stamped on the back of it.
It looked like some kind of symbol.
Two stacked Ss with a dagger running down the middle. An eye sat directly in the middle of it, and at the top of the dagger was a wilting black rose with its petals falling off.
I didn’t know why, but the sight of it impaled me with an arrow of sadness.
With loss.
Like maybe for one second, I could see his pain, too. That his mirrored mine.
He moved to sit in the office chair behind the desk that sat in the middle of the room. Swiveling it toward me, he stretched his long, thick legs out in front of him.
It left about three feet of space between us, but still, I felt him like a landslide. Like a shifting of tectonic plates inside me.
Or maybe my life had gotten so mangled, I couldn’t discern what was already broken and all my shattered pieces were finally falling away.
Whatever it was, it ached, throbbed, as if for one second, he might be able to assuage it.
“What’s your name?” His voice was cut low.
His words shards that coasted through the dense, dense air.
“Emery,” I whispered.
Something flashed through his expression. “Well, Emery, it doesn’t look like we’re celebrating tonight, so here’s to not drinkin’ alone.”
Leather creaked as he sat forward in the chair, and the man stretched out his glass to clink it against mine. The faintest grin danced over his lush, tempting lips.
The man a dose of wicked bliss that would likely be fatal in the end.
I softly tapped my glass to his. “To not drinking alone.”
I tipped the glass to my lips. A fire charged down my throat as I took a sip, but it was different than what I had been drinking.
Smoother.
Almost sweeter.
I let the flavor roll around on my tongue before I mumbled, “Not cheap tequila.”
He canted his head to the side. “Figured after whatever kind of night you’ve had, you deserve the best.”
I wavered before I finally forced my appreciation off my tongue. “That was kind of you. All of it.”
My voice took on a deep sincerity as I glanced at the door.
Electric green eyes sparked beneath the warm light emitted from the fixture hanging above the desk. “Not gonna sit around and watch some asshole try to take something someone doesn’t want to give them. Especially when they’re clearly having a vulnerable moment. ”
“Is that what I look like? Vulnerable?” I didn’t mean for it to come out a challenge. But I couldn’t stop it. That armor I’d worn for years hardening around everything that was vulnerable .
His gaze roamed over me.
Slowly.
Meticulously.
Fire flamed in the middle of it. Tension binding the air as he dragged his attention all the way down then slowly back up to my face. “You look like a whole lot of things.”