Suddenly, I’m repeating his own words in my mind. Some things are better left alone.
There are so many meanings I could assign to that statement right here and now if I let my mind go wild, and it’s good at doing that. I make a living letting my mind go wild to uncover harsh facts.
Time ticks by, too much time, and my heart begins to thunder in my chest. What if a surprise awaited him inside? What if Adrian’s in trouble? What if he needs my help? I unzip my purse and remove my weapon. Adrian appears in the elevator doors and glances at the gun, a pulse of that dark energy in the air, as his brown eyes meet mine. “What’s that for?”
“I thought you might need to be saved.”
His eyes narrow and there’s a tick of something more in the air now. “And you were going to save me?”
“Yes,” I say simply, returning the Glock to my purse and zipping it up. “Thankfully, I didn’t need to shoot someone else in the foot.”
I expect him to laugh or smile, but he doesn’t. He just looks at me, studies me a beat and then a beat longer, his expression unreadable, but somehow punched with an eruption of emotion. “Come inside. I’ll pour us some whiskey. We both need a drink right about now.”
He backs away, disappears, an invitation in that action.
I don’t immediately move.
Instead, Adrian’s own words are back in my head: You have changed me in ways you will never understand. Somehow, I know that once I enter his apartment, I will not leave the same person.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PRI
The truth is that I was a changed person the moment I met Adrian.
I was a blank canvas that had been colored in the grays and blacks of betrayal and distrust. He’d splashed that canvas with colors, the sunshine to the stormy nights that had become my days, even if I had not seen that reality.
And as my father said to me when I was first learning to practice law: You can’t look back. You can’t turn back. Go forward and use what you’ve learned, even the mistakes. I don’t know where Adrian and I are going, but I’m not looking back.
Therefore, with nerves in my belly, I enter his world. I step off the elevator and into his apartment, a dark stained concrete floor beneath my feet. Adrian is immediately behind me, reaching for the oversized jacket I’m wearing and easing it down my shoulders. I steel myself for the touch of his skin to mine, but disappointedly, it doesn’t follow.
“I turned on the fireplace remotely before we got here,” he says, and I believe he’s hanging the jacket on a coat rack. “The apartment should be warm.”
I don’t rotate to face him. Instead, I hug myself, a protective gesture born of the vulnerability I’ve felt with Adrian since our incident on the plane. I don’t know who or what we are anymore, and I could tell myself to live in the moment, but it’s not that simple. Not for me and Adrian.
His hand settles on my hip, hand flattening on my back, a hot possessiveness in the unexpected touch that should perhaps not be unexpected at all. I’m in his apartment. One might say that he’s touched me over and over these past few hours, but this touch is different: it commands, it demands, it assumes ownership. No. No, that’s not right. Logan’s touch assumed ownership, and I hated it. Adrian’s touch is a possession created by us, not him, a product of our intense connection. And we do have an intense connection, of this, I do not question.
He shifts and stands in front of me, studies me, and I can almost taste the words on his lips, and the hesitation that flavors them. “I’ll get that whiskey.”
I decide whiskey is just fine by me. I need to relax. I need to come down from whatever this emotional ride I’m taking with this man is. I nod my approval and then his hand is gone, leaving behind a hot burn and my puckered nipples. Lord help me, I’m so damn out of my head and inside my body right now, which isn’t a safe place to be. Not when our lives are on the line and big decisions have to be made and made with urgency.
I watch him cross the room, long, confident strides, a lethal glide to his steps. Only then do I take in the room, notice the masculine space of dark colors accented by a stained concrete floor of browns and tans. The living room is before me, brown couches framing floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the water, while two winding staircases sit left and right in the rear of the space. To my right is the kitchen with a dark, round wooden island covered in stone.