Savage Hearts

The experience proved to me that people, on the whole, are stupid, ridiculous, and cruel.

But Danny is none of those things.

Instead of being livid that I abandoned everything we had built without a word, he apologized for that last night in New Zealand. Instead of being too hurt to want anything to do with me, he flew to Costa Rica to punish the men who took our happiness away. After a year with no word, I am still alive in his heart, more alive than I am in my own flesh and blood.

I’ve been cold as stone and just as numb, but maybe, if I were to touch him, to let him in, just a little, I could come back to life.

Back to him…

The phone buzzes next to my elbow and I flinch, so startled my arm jerks forward, spilling my glass of water all over the white tablecloth.

Heart pounding, I right the glass and toss my napkin over the mess, fighting to bring my breath under control as I rescue the phone from the path of destruction.

“You okay?” Danny asks, brow furrowing with concern.

“I’m fine,” I say, teeth digging into my bottom lip as I glance down at the latest message from my drug and arms dealer. “Just thinking too hard.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Nothing, stupid things.” I turn off the phone and slide it into the front pocket of my backpack. “We’re going to meet at four thirty tomorrow afternoon. Same place.”

“If you don’t want to do it, I could go in your place,” Danny says. “I’d rather if you’ll let me. I saw that guy. I don’t like the thought of you being alone with him again.”

“I’ll be fine. If he was going to hurt me, he would have tried the first time,” I say, picking pieces of ice from the tablecloth and plunking them back into my glass. “I think he’ll want to keep me around, just to see how much more money he can get from me if nothing else. And worst case scenario, I’ve been training for months. I know how to defend myself.”

“I can tell,” he says, his gaze drifting down to my shoulders and bare arms. “I wouldn’t want to mess with you.”

His words say one thing, but his eyes and the husky tone of his voice say another. They say he still wants me as much as he ever did. That he’d like to know what it feels like to have my stronger, more powerful legs wrapped around him and my muscled body pressed against his, skin to skin.

I should warn him to cut it out and honor our deal to keep the personal stuff out of this.

But instead I find myself leaning closer and saying—

“No, you wouldn’t. Because I would kick your ass.”

His eyes flash. “Oh yeah? You think you could take me, Collins?”

“I know I could,” I say. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

His tongue slips out, curling over his bottom lip and drawing it back between his teeth. It’s his fighting-not-to-kiss me face, the one made familiar from hundreds of car rides back from the beach when we were kids, when we were sprawled in the back seat and my dad was sneaking peeks at us in the rearview mirror, making sure no teenagers were making out on his watch.

The heat in Danny’s eyes makes me think about warm lips, eager tongues, and the taste of him sweet in my mouth, and for the first time in so long, I want to touch someone.

To touch him.

I can already imagine how perfect it would feel to have his arms around me, pulling me into his lap, kissing me senseless in front of the people bustling by on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and going about their lives as if there is nothing in the world to be afraid of. Not on a day like today, with the sun shining and a faint ocean breeze blowing in from the sea miles away and the music of street musicians filling the air with a light and happy beat.

But there are so many things to be afraid of, and if I let my shields slip, I will start to remember them all, and not the way I do now, faintly from beneath my calluses. I will be raw and vulnerable again and I can’t go there. Not now. Maybe never, and Danny doesn’t deserve to have hope dangled in front of him and then wrenched away.

For now, I have to stay free of any promises but the ones I’ve made to the men I will destroy.

So I push my chair back, moving away from Danny, no matter how much a part of me wants to do the opposite. “I’ll call you tomorrow for directions to the cabin and see you after the deal is done.”