1. Max #2
My eyes focused on the weathered wooden slats on the porch ceiling above us. There was a place right above the front door where I’d once considered putting a security camera, but figured I’d never need it.
Next time trust your goddamn gut.
I was pinned. Restrained. I had no leverage, but…
I had teeth.
I bit down on his forearm, sinking my teeth into the top of his wrist, trying to make it hurt as much as humanly possible.
He hissed in a quick breath. It was possible that he had a knife or a gun and that I might be seconds away from dying on my own front porch, but in that moment, the only thing I noticed were the black lines of the rose tattoo on his skin, filled with crimson ink, right below my teeth.
I sank my teeth deeper and finally, for the first time, he spoke.
“Come on. You can bite harder than that.”
His voice was low and deep.
Right fucking next to my ear.
He groaned as I bit him hard again.
“I already called the police,” I spat, blatantly lying. My chin was still up against his arm.
He pulled in a long breath, and I felt his chest rise and fall.
“Relax.”
He sounded amused and barely bothered. Like he knew he was completely in control.
“I don’t know who you are,” I repeated slowly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Lies, lies, lies.
“Want to try?”
I couldn’t hurt him. I certainly couldn’t kill him. I was incapable of it. Mom once told me that I’d probably stop my car for a worm crossing the road. I didn’t even like killing weeds on my lawn. Maybe I would hurt a fly, but I’d definitely feel sad about it.
A slow calm came over my body, like a warm, weighted blanket.
Surrender.
He might kill me, yes. But if there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could force? All I could do was give into the feeling of someone else being in control.
And some sick part of me reared its head, emerging like it had been dormant.
There was a part of me that thought it felt good to surrender.
And for that moment only, my fear melted away, vanishing into the night air. I sank into the feeling, not giving up, but accepting that there was nothing more for me to do.
Well. Maybe there was one more last-ditch effort I could try.
If intimidation isn’t working…
I didn’t have a whole lot going for me, but I knew how to talk to people.
“Just talk to me,” I finally said, trying to sound as stable as I could. “We can just talk .”
“Do your conversations usually begin by threatening someone with a hockey stick? Mine don’t.”
“You were breaking in. If it’s food, or shelter that you need, I can help you.”
“No need for any of that,” he said.
Didn’t fucking seem like it, in your expensive black cowboy hat.
I attempted to even out my breathing. “Whatever it is you want, I can work with you. I can help you. Just talk to me.”
I felt his grip tighten, just slightly, at my neck.
Like he was reminding me who held all the power here.
“Hurting you wasn’t the plan, but now you keep tempting me,” he finally said. “You bit me.”
“Was just trying to get you to let me go?—”
“Normally I only allow people to bite me like that if we’re fucking, Max.”
Something curled tighter in my chest.
How did he know my name?
Was he really an online stalker, who’d already found out where I lived?
I let out a frustrated growl.
Guess being good at talking to people doesn’t matter when you’re dealing with a monster.
I tried to feign relaxation for a moment, loosening my muscles to try to surprise him when I bolted into action. I moved in a flash, attempting to spring up from my locked position.
But he moved quicker than I did.
Again.
“Enough of that,” he said. “I want to look at your face now.”
I cursed under my breath as I felt his arm shift positions against my neck. He moved again, then slid out from under me quickly.
My spine connected with the cool wood below us.
His hands were on my wrists now, nailing them to the porch on either side of me. His ass came down on my hips, locking down my movement.
I was fully pinned.
Checkmate .
As if I wasn’t already in that position since the start.
He loomed above me, my view filled with his silhouette, and I got my first good look at his face.
A dark swoop of thick hair, framed in a halo of moonlight. His cowboy hat must have been what fell to the side of my porch, because it was gone now. Hard contours of muscle came out from the rolled-up sleeves of his black collared shirt.
I registered the details of his body as if I might need them again one day for a police lineup.
He was tall.
Ungodly strong.
Built to fight.
He brought his arm up and I noticed a few long, thin scrapes he’d gotten along his forearm. From my fingernails?
His tongue came out as he licked the area. I could see a flash of metal in the low light, only for a quick moment.
He had a tongue piercing.
Just another thing to memorize for when they lock him up.
After watching me for a moment he moved lower, getting down close to my face.
He stayed there, inches above it, hovering, and I saw the most arresting feature he had: his eyes were emerald green and bright, rimmed with dark around the edges.
“Are you going to calm down now?” he said, his voice more like a command.
My heartbeat thumped beneath his grip on each of my wrists.
He was stunning. In his build and his face. One of those psychotic people who happens to look like a movie star, though he’d made it plain to see how ugly he was inside.
I snapped back to reality, white-hot anger and disgust flaring in me all over again.
“Fuck off,” I growled, the words coming out strange.
I spit right in his face.
He flinched. For the first time, something had caught him by surprise.
His pupils flared. Rage, at first, followed by a half-lidded gaze.
“Didn't expect that out of you,” he said. “I like that.”
Something thrummed inside me.
I’m not fucking backing down.
“Who are you?” I repeated, the fear momentarily gone from my voice, replaced with raw adrenaline and spite.
He dipped lower to one side, his breath on my skin.
My thoughts were drifting again. His fucking breath. Why does it smell so good, and sweet? Tangerine?
“I’m Draven,” he said in a low rumble. “Your sister’s boyfriend. Is this how you welcome houseguests to Tennessee, Max?”
He let go of my wrists a second later, lifting off of me.
The moment I was freed, I bolted into action, putting as much distance between us as possible. I scooted back on my ass on the porch, reaching for my hockey stick and pressing my back up against the wall.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, eyeing the hockey stick.
I jumped a little as I saw a white fluff in quick motion. Misty the cat, finally whizzing past the porch and running behind a bush.
Draven grinned.
My nerves were still shot through with adrenaline. I couldn’t even process it. How could he be smiling, acting so calm and casual?
“What is wrong with you?” I asked the man. Draven.
This is Lily’s fucking boyfriend?
He brushed off his pants as he rose to his feet. “You came at me with a stick.”
“You fucking choked me.”
“Well, that part was just for fun. You have a very chokable neck. And you smelled like good whiskey, which is not easy for me to resist.”
My stomach felt like an anvil. Sadistic fucking bastard. My eyes had fully adjusted now, and I could see that he was wearing a tight white shirt under his black work shirt. He cocked his head to one side, looking me over, like we’d just high-fived instead of ending up on the goddamn ground.
“I thought you were a stalker,” I said.
He furrowed his brow, his expression suddenly serious. “You have people stalking you? Who?”
“People less fucked up than you, apparently.”
His jaw was chiseled. Like he’d just stepped out of a Western movie where he was undoubtedly the one on a Most Wanted poster.
“If a guy like you has a stalker, then I’m the least of your problems,” he said.
“You’re out of your mind,” I told him. I wished the slight waver in my voice wasn’t so obvious. “Could have killed me.”
“No.”
“ Yes .”
“If I wanted to hurt you, you’d be unconscious by now,” he said, his gemstone eyes casting a glance toward me like a threat. “And if I wanted to kill you…”
He didn’t finish that sentence.
“You think knocking me onto my porch isn’t hurting me?”
“There’s not a scratch on you,” he said, idly rubbing his fingers over the spot where I’d bitten him. “Go ahead. Check. I’ll wait.”
He reached down and offered me an outstretched hand. As if the motherfucker wanted to help me now.
I slapped it away.
“Why were you breaking into my barn?”
He reached down onto the ground and grabbed something. Keys jingled in the air, glinting under the moonlight. I instantly recognized them as my mother’s spare set, complete with a little leather rooster on the keychain.
“Lily gave me these,” he said. “It’s not considered breaking in if I have keys. Didn’t know which key it was, so I was trying a few.”
I breathed deep and my heart rate finally started to even out. “You could have just told me that the moment you saw me with the goddamn stick.”
“No fun in that. I liked feeling out how you fight.”
“Why the fuck does it matter how I fight? ”
“I also liked seeing how you looked when I pinned you down,” he continued, looking down at his sleeves and brushing them off. “Spitting in my face was a nice touch.”
“I was desperate.”
He looked up at me. “I know. You were starting to make my cock hard.”
I glared at him. “Bullshit.”
“It was pretty inconvenient in a fight.”
My chest was molten.
It was the first time all night I’d felt like he admitted I had any effect on him at all.
My sister’s fucking boyfriend got hard from my spit on his face?
For Christ’s sake, when was my life going to go back to normal?
“Why would my sister tell you to come into my barn unannounced?” I asked, changing the subject as fast as I reasonably could.