8. Emery #2
Because I should have screamed and fought my way out when he reached over to the panel and pressed the button that sent the doors gliding shut behind him, but I was silent.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
He pushed a second button for the top floor.
Severity ricocheted through the cramped space as the elevator began to ascend. A rush of dizziness had me canting to the side, fingers digging into the slick surface of the mirror to keep myself standing.
“What are you doing here?” I finally managed to rasp, the words thin and shaky.
He emitted a sound of disbelief.
Dark and decadent.
As dark and decadent as his voice. “Guess we must be on the same page considering I came here to ask you the exact same thing.”
He took a single step forward. The floor rumbled beneath my feet .
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I defended.
The elevator kept rising, flicking through the lights on the panel. When we were near the top, he reached out and pounded the heel of his fist on the red emergency button.
The elevator skidded to a halt, and an alarm blipped for one second before everything went still and silent.
The only sound was the harsh rake of my breaths and the hemorrhaging of my heart.
It felt as if my lifeblood was pouring out and gushing onto the floor.
The presence of this man a fatal blow.
He turned back to me, his obscenely handsome face warped in a cross of incredulity and sincerity.
“Don’t you?”
Panic surged, and I pushed forward, trying to get around him to get to the dial.
Only he took me by the wrist.
Gently, though it might as well have been a shackle with the way a flashfire of heat whipped up my arm.
Those eyes held me as fiercely as his massive hand.
Eyes so vibrantly green they would spark like the clearest emerald except for the golden flecks that tempered the starkness with texture and depth. The rings that encircled the irises that always seemed to glow.
The same eyes as Maci possessed.
Though his smoldered.
Dangerously.
“Don’t.” It was the softest plea that he issued too close to my mouth.
“Don’t what?” I managed to fire back through gritted teeth, fighting the awareness in my body that didn’t seem to give a damn about the warning bells that were going off in my mind.
“Don’t run from me.” His voice was coarse.
I managed to find a frazzled huff of disbelief as I dug around for the defenses I needed to erect. “Don’t run from you? You’re the one holding me hostage in my hotel elevator. And how did you even know I was staying here? Creeper much?”
He didn’t relent. Didn’t let go. He only leaned in closer.
The scent of cedar and clove invaded my senses.
“You’re the one who showed up at my door this morning then promptly ran once I answered it. You want to tell me why you were there?”
“I got lost.” I tried to spit it, but it came out shaky.
With a tip of his head to the side, he edged forward.
The longer pieces of his warm, brown hair fell forward and brushed over the sharp lines of his forehead.
The vision rushed.
Fingers yanking at his hair, my body afire, a need so distinct coursing through me that I couldn’t see.
His hands on my hips as he spread me.
His head between my thighs as he shot me into an oblivion I hadn’t known existed.
Those eyes as he’d looked up at me.
Ensuring I was with him. That I wanted to be with him. That I felt safe. That for a moment, I was forgetting everything.
I gasped around it, trying to purge the memory from my brain, but he had to go and exhale this seductive sound that made me sure he knew exactly where my thoughts had been.
“You got lost and randomly showed up at my door?” His voice was a rough scrape whispered near my lips. “The man who had you spread out on his desk the night before? You just randomly showed up at his door the next morning?”
My knees knocked, but I managed to force out, “Yes.”
“No need to lie to me, Little Warrior.”
Little Warrior.
Tingles ran through me. Head to toe.
That’s what I had been doing for years.
Fighting.
Fighting the fears.
Fighting the grief .
Fighting the demons so I could find who I was supposed to be.
But right then?
What I was really fighting for was Maci.
“Know you’re in trouble.” He rumbled it like a threat.
Confusion narrowed my eyes, and the question slipped free before I could contemplate what I was opening myself up to. “What do you mean?”
His thumb began to stroke over the sensitive flesh at the inside of my wrist, and it took a second for me to realize what he was touching.
The words that I’d forever marked on my body.
Find me in the darkness, bring me to the light.
Fear. Gratitude. Hope. Grief.
They were all knitted in those ten little words.
“You think I can’t see the ghosts that play in your eyes?” he rumbled.
My chest clutched. God. He shouldn’t see. Shouldn’t know.
“I know you’re afraid of something. That you’re running or hiding. That you’re scared.” His thick throat bobbed as he swallowed, his voice deepening further as he murmured, “I’ll hold it if you’ll let me.”
A gush of air escaped my throat. I’d been afraid for so many years I no longer remembered what it was like not to be. But this fear had nothing to do with whatever he’d sensed in me the same way as I could sense the darkness in him.
This was about what my sister had asked me to do.
“And your little girl…” He trailed off, his tongue stroking his bottom lip in clear agitation.
My little girl.
My eyes went wide. I finally understood what he thought. The assumptions he must have made when he saw her in the car. He thought we were running from someone who was trying to hurt us, when I was pretty sure he was the only one who could hurt us right then.
I let go of a ragged exhale, reservations seeded deep when I finally gave. “We need to talk.”
Surprise seemed to bluster through his face, then he dipped his head, stepped back, and asked, “Where’s your daughter? ”
Not my daughter. Your daughter.
Throat thick, I forced out, “She’s with my mother.”
“Good,” he said, then he shifted around so he could jam at the emergency button again before he pushed the button for the hotel lobby.
The elevator sped toward the bottom floor.
Every bone in my body felt brittle when the door dinged open, and I was barely able to move as he shifted to set his palm on the small of my back and he ushered me out.
A shudder ripped through.
I had to get myself together.
My reaction to him was not okay.
Unacceptable.
A security guard was standing near the elevator, on his phone and obviously calling for help.
Kane lifted a casual hand. “Sorry about that. I accidentally bumped into the emergency button. All is well.”
The lie fell out of him as if it were nothing.
He was clearly a pro.
He didn’t slow as he hurried me through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk in front.
Warm air instantly engulfed me, my skin slicked in sweat, though I doubted it had much to do with the summer heat.
It was the boiling that convulsed from within.
“Where are we going?” I finally managed.
“Someplace private.”
He snatched my hand with his that was tattooed with the Ss, and I nearly toppled at the severity that blistered through my being.
Without speaking, he guided me around the valet parking area and to the side of the hotel where there were a row of parking spots.
He hauled me in the direction of a motorcycle that was every bit as menacing as him. It was in an area that wasn’t really even a spot where white lines cut across the pavement to keep people from parking there.
Obviously, he wasn’t one for rules .
Alarm blared when I realized his intentions, and I dug my heels into the concrete. “Oh, no. That is not going to happen.”
Was he insane?
I didn’t even know him, and he wanted me to get on the back of that death trap?
“Not sure what you’re referring to,” he rumbled.
“I’m not getting on that thing.” I flailed a flustered hand at it.
It was almost completely black, the metal smoked and shadowed. The only parts that had color were the gas tank, which was a muted hue of brown, plus a couple of lines that matched it on the fenders.
It sat low to the ground, the body and tires wide and squatty.
Everything about it was fierce and foreboding.
As foreboding as the man was right then.
All ferocious steps and desperate measures.
He turned around, big body towering over me as he dipped down close to my face.
“If you want to ride me, gorgeous, then you’re also going to have to get used to riding on the back of my bike.”
The words were low.
Wicked, impure temptation.
My jaw had to have dropped to my feet.
Was he serious?
Was he seriously going to talk to me like that?
After…
Except he didn’t know why I was there. No question, those types of insinuations would be extinguished the second he found out who I was.
Who I was related to.
What this meant.
And he needed to know.
He had to know.
I owed it to Emmalee.
So, I sucked the reservations down, swallowing hard as I lifted my chin. “Fine. ”
A smug grin grew on his impetuously handsome face. “That’s what I thought.”
Only he had no idea I wasn’t conceding to his suggestion.
I was conceding to my sister.
He remained facing me, walking backward as he led me the rest of the way to the motorcycle, then he turned and swung his leg over the seat and sank down onto the leather.
Tattooed arms stretched out, those big, big hands wrapping around the handlebars.
Innocently vicious and effortlessly brutal.
I thought I saw it right then.
That he could steal my heart if I let him.
And that was what terrified me most.