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“It was a tattoo I had removed. In prison, you’re safer if you belong, so—­”
“I understand,” she said, cutting him off. Had she heard the pain in his voice, or did she really understand?
He turned around before she could point out any more scars. “What are you doing?”
She looked him in the eye and touched the side of his neck, where his tattoo began, spreading all the way down past his shoulder and over his chest. “You say you’re damaged. That you’re bad news and won’t ever change.”
“Yeah?”
To his surprise, she dropped her hand to his and brought it up to her collarbone, where his finger felt a rough, puckered line.
“This is a knife wound—­just a scratch, really—­that I got from a man who used to come see me dance at the strip club. He was constantly asking me out, and I always let him down easy. But one night, after I’d had a shitty day, I told him I would never go out with an old, ugly fuck like him. He was waiting by my car when I got off work.”
His rage blazed at this phantom from her past. “What happened?”
“I pulled a move I’d learned from one of the bouncers. Even though he still cut me, I was able to pick up a handful of gravel and throw it in his face. I made it to the front door of the club, and he took off. They arrested him on assault charges, and it turned out he had an outstanding warrant. I never saw him again.”
Caroline pulled him closer, lifting her arm for him to see a jagged scar along her forearm. “This is from a broken beer bottle I got sliced with when a woman came into my bar in San Antonio, looking for her husband. She didn’t take it well when she found out he had a girlfriend on the side, and when I stepped in to stop her from attacking him, she sliced me.”
He couldn’t stop his hand from sliding up over her soft skin until it rested on the back of her neck, his fingers pressing into her flesh until she tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.
“What’s your point with all the show-­and-­tell, Caroline?”
She reached out and smoothed his chest with her hand. “I don’t care how damaged you are, because I am just as broken, maybe more so.”
Her words tore at him, twisting him up inside as his other hand cupped the back of her head. “You don’t want to go here with me, princess. I’m only going to break your heart.”
The laugh that passed those beautiful lips was bitter and sad. “Trust me, my heart was shattered long before I ever met you.”
Gabe wanted her, wanted to believe that he could find comfort in her body without the complications that would inevitably come, but he’d seen her heart firsthand. She had one. It might be wrapped up in a mile-­thick layer of cowhide, but a part of Caroline Willis was still open to new emotions. New love.
And he wasn’t.
But he wanted to kiss her anyway.
He dropped his head until his lips hovered above hers, and he watched as they parted when he came closer. Her hot breath teased his mouth, and he couldn’t stop while she was warm and willing. He might not get another chance to taste her, and while a better man would have walked away, he wasn’t that guy.