He appeared every bit as powerful as Saturday night. Maybe more so. As if second by second, the man continued to gain the upper hand.
For a moment, my eyes got trapped there, on the dark designs etched into his skin, hewn like shadows and mist, as if they might be a hazy screen previewing what was written on the inside of the man.
Scored and scarred and marked.
I had the sudden urge to run my fingers over them, trace the swirls of suggestion standing out in stark contrast to his strait-laced exterior.
Discover what they meant.
The man a riddle.
Then I shook myself out of the stupor.
Come on. This guy had just waltzed in off the street. From out of nowhere. And was sitting in my chair. That had to be wrong on a hundred different levels.
Yet, he didn’t give off the creeper vibe, even though I was sufficiently spun up by his presence.
This was different.
I knew it.
Was pretty sure he knew it, too.
Energy lapped in the space between us.
The same from Saturday night.
Though it was slowed. Weighed down by the questions that were clearly playing out in our minds. His coming to life in the sparks that glowed like a toss of red glitter in his cinnamon-colored eyes, mine in the way my lips parted with the concern that he’d sought me out.
“What are you doing here?” I finally managed, the words trembling even after I told them not to.
Traitor lips.
The man hiked an indifferent shoulder, and one of those hazardous smirks lit his face, the kind of smirk that flamed my insides and fanned the attraction that rippled through the air, so hot and heavy I could feel it crawling across my skin.
What was wrong with me?
But that was the thing about attraction. You couldn’t control who you were attracted to, how sudden and intense it might be. Whether it smoldered and grew or hit you like a ball flying out of left field.
You could only be wise enough not to act on it when you knew it was gonna be bad for you in the end.
I guessed I’d never been so good at heeding that.
“What does it look like I’m doing? Getting a haircut,” he said as if he’d sat in my chair a hundred times before. So damned casual, as if it were just another day. As if he hadn’t stirred something up in me that shouldn’t have been possible two nights ago.
My brow pinched, pulse pounding fast, and I struggled for some kind of self-control. To bring up some walls of security and protection.
No doubt, it was a horrible, horrible time to leave my heart so unprotected. “So, you just happened to stumble into my salon after Saturday night? Seems awful convenient to me.”
“Call it fate.” Another one of those smirks.
“I’d call it stalking.” I didn’t know whether I was flirting, falling into that trap, or if the tumble in my belly was a true-sort of terror.
Intuition.
A warning glowing from deep within that warned me to step away.
He laughed a low sound. As if I were completely ridiculous. The gorgeous stranger set an elbow on the arm of the chair, resting one side of his strong jaw in the crook between his thumb and forefinger, smiling at me through his reflection.
“Do I look like the kind of guy who needs to stalk a woman to get her into his bed?”
Not even close.
Hell, they probably fought to get their chance at claiming that spot.
“No, you don’t. But you don’t really strike me as the type of man who likes being told no, either.”
“I have to admit, I was . . . disappointed,” he seemed to settle on with a twitch of his lips.
“Is that why you’re here? To convince me to fall into your bed?” The question was a tangle I could barely force off my tongue.
“Won’t deny that I wanted you the second I saw you.”
His voice dropped, low enough that no one else in the salon could hear. “Won’t deny that I’m looking at you right now and imagining all the things I want to do to you, and no, I won’t deny that I’m usually a man who gets what he wants. But sadly, that’s not why I’m here.”
God. Even his voice had my insides doing stupid things. His tone both seduction and a threat.
“I told you . . . you don’t know me or what I’m going through. Believe me, it was better we left it as we did.”
Okay, so maybe my mind was still tripped up on exactly what he might be imagining. Insides shaking with what that might be like. Somehow feeling like I needed to throw out a defense considering the man was sitting right there, in my chair.
Looking way too pretty. Far too sexy.
Edible.
But that was the kind of craving I couldn’t give in to.
“Or maybe we should pick up where we left off,” he countered.
He arched a brow, voice so rough and low. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel this. That you don’t want to explore it.”
“Just because I might want something, it doesn’t mean it’s good for me.”
“Oh, I can promise you it will be good.”
Shivers streaked across my skin, and I tried to ignore the way he had me in knots. I huffed out in disbelief, as feigned as it was, trying to steel myself against the all-out assault that was this man.
“So that’s just it? You found me because I turned you down on Saturday night?”
In some kind of discomfort, he fiddled with the expensive watch he wore. Instantly, my eyes went back to the swirls of mystery on his arms. The only thing I could distinctly make out was a demon on the top part of his left forearm.
Screaming.
Screaming as if it were in pain.
“Didn’t I already say that’s not why I came here?” He was doing that arrogant thing. You know, just breathing. As if he held the power to command all the air.
Flustered, I scowled at him, not sure if I wanted to shake him or climb onto his damned lap. He was making me crazy.
“Then you’d better start talking, or you can stand up and walk right out of here because I don’t have the time to play games.”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
He fumbled out a sigh, like actually being truthful might cause him discomfort. “The main reason is I needed to make sure that you were okay. You took off before I could find out if you were really injured or not.”
He lifted his chin in some kind of challenge. One I got the distinct feeling he was directing at himself.
As if he couldn’t actually believe he was admitting it. “I was worried about you, and that’s not okay with me. You didn’t give me the chance to ensure you were safe.”
So, he needed to wipe me off his conscience?
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Men like you don’t deserve that chance.”
He scrubbed his palm on his pants. In all his over-the-top arrogance, he somehow looked nervous. Agitated. All of it was underlined with the type of overbearing confidence that made it come off as if it made him mad. “I deserve that,” he said with a tight nod.
“And . . . what else? You said mostly.”
The man situated himself in the chair so he could pull something out of his front pocket.
My wallet.
My eyes went wide. “Oh, thank goodness, you found my wallet. I went back there yesterday to see if I’d dropped it on the ground. I thought I was going to have to spend my day down at the DMV trying to get things sorted.”
Then he dug a little deeper . . . and . . .
My hands flew to my mouth when I saw what he was holding. “My bracelet. Oh my God, you found my bracelet. I thought . . . I thought I’d lost it forever.”
My favorite bracelet.
By no stretch of the imagination was it valuable, but to me, it was a priceless heirloom.
Three dangling gemstone charms, as fake as could be.
A ruby, a sapphire, a diamond.
My babies I kept so close to me.
“I found them by the curb after you drove away.”
He waved the tiny, slim card-sleeve in the air as if it were the prize. As if it would mean more to me than anything else. Which under normal circumstances, I could totally understand, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The only thing that mattered was that bracelet.
That was when I noticed he had one of the salon’s business cards resting on his knee. I’d stuffed a small stack of them into that sleeve, trying to shove one at Kenneth Millstrom.