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“You are not a monster. I thought we covered this.”
His lips twisted, and something inside her did, too. “You can put your hand on my heart and tell me pretty things, but it doesn’t change the facts. You want tonight to mean something. You want a kiss to be a fairy tale. Well, wake up, Sleeping Beauty. There’s no fairy tale here. There’s no happy ever after. There’s me, solving a problem and then getting the hell out of your sweet, soft civilian life. The end.”
Everly made herself breathe before she keeled over. But she ignored the pounding of her heart, focusing on Blue instead.
“Cinderella. Little girl. Now Sleeping Beauty.” She didn’t realize she was moving again until she’d made it within reach of his hands. And she could feel the danger coming off him in waves. What was the matter with her that it didn’t terrify her? But it didn’t. He didn’t. “What would happen, I wonder, if you let yourself see me as a grown woman for a minute? Not a kid who lived across the street from you a hundred years ago. What then?”
Blue let out a hollow laugh. “Believe me, you don’t want that.”
“I keep trying to tell you that you don’t know what I want.”
“And I keep trying to tell you that you don’t knowwho I am. The fact that I see a pudgy kid in pigtails on a pink bike is the only reason I’m here, Everly. That littlegirl is what’s keeping you safe. Not from them.” He jerked his chin toward the windows, and she knew who he meant. But he didn’t take his eyes off her. And she couldn’t bring herself to look away. “Fromme.”
Everly knew it was stupid, that all of this was stupid and self-defeating at best, but she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. He wanted her to run from him—she just knew it—and she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
Instead, she stepped forward, ignoring that dark glittering thing in his gaze and the way every muscle in his body turned to stone right there in front of her. And she kept going, until she was so close that she had to tip her head back to look up at him, the way she’d done in that lobby earlier.
“Of course I want to be safe from the men who killed Rebecca,” she whispered, trying to make him hear her. See her.Listento her, the way he had on that porch in a brooding blue Alaskan night. “But not from you, Blue. The last thing I want from you is too much safety.”
And it didn’t matter what he said then, because she could see the truth stamped all over him. She could see it in the way he held himself, stiff and hard as if the slightest bend would give him away. She could see the wildness in his eyes, and all over his face, and it was almost as if she could scent it in the air between them.
She knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
She knew.
But she would be damned if she begged him. She would be damned if she put herself out there like that, when he refused to admit what was happening between them. No way.
Not tonight.
She might not recognize what had become of her life. But she still had her pride.
“Well?” she asked, challenging him. Daring him. Lifting up her chin like a prizefighter and wordlessly asking him to take a swing.
And she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t take that dare. When he stepped back, his face shut down into something dark and unreadable.
She wasn’t surprised, no. But she discovered she was disappointed all the same.
“You should eat something,” he gritted out, back to playing the father figure she didn’t want. And certainly didn’t need. “And get some sleep while you’re at it.”
“It’s eight o’clock at night. And news flash, Blue. I’m not a child.”
“So you keep telling me,” Blue retorted, a swift hit she didn’t see coming. It rocked her, though she fought to hide it. “Anytime you want to prove that, go right ahead. You could start by not throwing down challenges left and right.”
“Why? Are you afraid?”
“Careful, Everly.” And for a moment she wasn’t sure she recognized him, so dark and forbidding did he look. “Be really careful. Your mouth is writing checks your body can’t cash.”
She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage at him. Throw herself at him, maybe, because she knew he wouldn’t drop her. Not even tonight, when he looked as if, given the opportunity, he might consider killing her himself. Of course, she knew he wouldn’t.
Everly knew that no matter what she said or did, she was safe with this man.
Whether she wanted that or not.
But he insisted on calling her a child. And she understood on some level that there was a huge part of him that expected her to react that way. To fling herself against the wall he represented, throw a tantrum, have a fit.
Anything to touch him,a knowing voice, deep down inside, whispered.
And nothing Blue had said to her tonight shamed her, but that unpleasant moment of self-awareness did.