Page 44 of Dirty Hearts

She continued to look, but I didn’t need confirmation.

I felt his presence well before I turned around.

Yes, it was indeed Claudius.

In the daylight he did look gorgeous. As gorgeous as he did this morning when I left his bed.

The sun beamed down on him, picking out the lighter shades in his hair.

I returned my gaze to Kelly, who nodded her approval.

I rose on shaky legs, feeling like my knees would buckle but willing them not to.

I walked to him, toward the piercing stare he gave me with his fascinating eyes.

When he put out his hand to me, I took it.

I took it and cursed myself for the way my body reacted to him.

He felt like mine, but I knew he shouldn’t.

* * *

We went back to my place this time.

It felt strange being here. He also drove his car. A black Porsche that added to his suave image but tamped down the bad boy he was.

Last night, he’d put me on the back of his bike. A mean-looking thing that looked like it was pulled from the set ofThe Terminator.

I always knew him to love motorcycles.

Last time he was here, he left me. The time before that was the day when I found out about him and Marisa.

Both were bad times for me.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked once we stepped inside the house. My voice sounded braver than I felt. My body betrayed me, though, because I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.

No not just my hands. The shaking came from deep within my soul.

I hated this flux of nerves that had taken over and invaded my mind. I wasn’t this person. Shaking and trembling. Not damn well knowing how to control myself.

I’d spent years trying to shake off the old me. My old habits, the bad ones.

It was ironically while I was in Europe that I felt like I’d been reborn and gotten some new form of life. Paris in particular was ruthless, and it was evident from the onset that I had to grow a pair of some serious balls of steel to survive.

I’d come back here a new woman, only to get my heart crushed.

Right now the anxiety of what we’d talk about was eating away at my insides.

What would he say to me?

I’d lived in this vague bubble of confusion for so long that it felt weird that something was about to happen to pop it and force me into reality.

Claudius didn’t answer, so I walked on ahead of him. I was aiming for the kitchen, but he caught my arm and pulled me back. His hand dropped to the edge of my waist and lingered there.

It made my nerves scatter as a jolt of electricity coursed through me.

He slipped his hand to the flat of my stomach and closed the gap between us by pulling me flush against him. My back to the hard walls of his chest. He pressed his head to mine, allowing his hair to drift over mine.