No White Knight

Even if he walks out that door in the morning, I don’t think I’ll ever forget Holt Silverton.

“And if we do it again?” I ask tentatively.

Uh-oh. This cocky bastard grins.

Dark, wicked, a slow smile that tells me exactly what’s on his mind.

“If we do it again, I’ll show you what dirty really means,” he rumbles.

Everything inside me quivers. “Like what you did to me already wasn’t filthy.”

“Honey,” he says, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.” He leans in close, and I think he’s about to kiss me, but instead he brings that dark, dirty voice right up against my ear, making me shiver. “If you’ll let me, I can…”

What he says next makes heat, then chills, then fire blast rip through me so roughly my whole body snaps tight. With a gasp, I shove at his chest, my face on goddamn fire.

“Holt Silverton!”

He lets himself be pushed back, smirking wickedly. “There’s the small-town girl. What happened to the tiger who clawed my back up?”

I freeze. “Oh—oh, crap. I didn’t even realize—are you bleeding?”

The smirk on his face and the light in his eyes makes me want to crawl under the bed from sheer mortification.

I can’t believe I lost myself so much that I left marks on his back.

Now he’s never gonna stop being smug about being that good.

And he sure as hell sounds smug now as he purrs, “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Nope.

I’m checking out of here before his head gets too big for the room.

I should put something on his back, anyway, since human nails are dirtier than any animal claws.

I gather the sheet up as a makeshift robe and sit up, starting to swing my legs over the side of the bed. “Let me—”

“Libby.” He stops me with a hand curled around my wrist, that smug look softening into a warm smile, a lingering gaze. “It’s fine. Stay here with me. Talk.”

I’m tempted to yank loose and run.

I could. He’s not holding me too hard.

That touch isn’t a demand. It’s a question. A request.

But I think that’s why I stay.

Because it’s like he knows me that well already.

Try to pin me down, try to push me, and I’ll just kick back, shake him off, and fly away.

Ask me, though, give me a choice…

I’ll choose to stay.

And I stay now, even if it’s giving me the shakes, settling back against the pillows and letting go of my death grip on the sheet.

“O-okay.” I don’t think I’ve ever sounded so nervous in my life. “About what?”

“You. Me. Us,” he says, still looking at me like he can’t see anything else. “And if you want this to mean anything.”

I kind of hate him right now.

Just because it was a hell of a lot easier to hate him when he was smarmy in that stupid suit, smirking at me and saying dirty things that curled my toes.

When he’s like this, it’s not so easy.

His eyes reach down inside me so deep, reminding me how he can make me feel with a single kiss.

I look away, folding my arms over my chest and curling up against the pillows.

“Do you want it to?” I ask.

“Nice deflection.” He makes an amused sound. “What if I do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what that means.”

“Well, for starters…”

I hear his body moving against the sheets, his skin hissing against fabric, like its roughness is a whisper reminding me how it felt against my flesh.

His warmth presses against my side. One hot, heavy arm drapes around my shoulders.

“For starters, you can try not shutting down and hiding from me,” he finishes in a low rumble.

Some stubborn part of me wants to resist. To pull away.

I’m a little tired of being stubborn, though.

Uncurling myself, I tuck in against him, burying my face against his chest so I can be close to him without having to meet his eyes.

“There,” he growls, both arms around me now. “You feel damn good, Libby.”

“Um, okay,” I mutter, but then after a moment, my face burning, I add, “so do you.”

He chuckles. “Don’t know about you, but I think we got a chance at something real here. I don’t know what else to call it…if you want to give it a shot, I’m game.”

“I…yeah. I think I could.”

It’s hard to say, hard to admit, but I’m so tired of fighting everything.

I feel like the whole world’s against me, trying to take everything I love.

Right now, Holt’s the only one trying to give anything back.

Trying to be here for me.

Trying to cherish me.

“Honestly, it scares me to trust you,” I whisper. “It feels like all the people I’ve ever trusted turned out to be awful.”

“Not true,” he soothes, stroking his hand down my arm. “Your father wasn’t awful. We’ll get that cleared up. I bet your mom wasn’t awful, either. Sierra, well, she’s a mess, but she’s got her own pain to deal with. The problem is, she’s making it your problem, too.”