Say It's Forever (Redemption Hills #2)(8)

There was a part of him that was definitely toying with me.

“Besides, you’re still dripping all over my ridiculous floors,” he grumbled with that rough, low voice.

On a gasp, I jerked back to see the wad of clothes I clutched were indeed dripping onto his floor, and a small puddle had gathered at my toes.

“Shit.”

The asshole laughed and stepped forward. “Give me your clothes.”

I held them closer like he was a common thief. A plunderer of sound judgement.

Obsidian eyes glinted and danced, and his laughter floated out of his mouth and surrounded me like a dream. The man leaned forward to whisper in my ear, the words coming from his mouth temptation and a tease. “You’re lucky I’m not asking you for the ones you’re wearing. Stand there a minute longer, and I just might.”

My eyes narrowed as I angled back. “I’ll stab you.”

That time, his laughter boomed. Like I was the ridiculous one.

Reaching out, he snatched the dripping wet ball from my hands. He held it to his chest, and the man waltzed away like doing it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Come on, Wildcat, laundry room is this way.”

Um…what?

“Excuse me?” I scrambled along behind him.

He just chuckled as he moved through the kitchen to a door on the left of it. He opened it and stepped into a laundry room that was as big as the kitchen back at our house.

I froze at the doorway because there was no chance in hell I was getting that close, and he was grinning as he tossed my clothes into the dryer and punched some buttons.

It beeped and spun to life.

“See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

That mischief played, the man eyeing me up and down as he edged me out of the laundry room.

Huffing, I crossed my arms tight over my chest.

“What is it, darlin’?”

His voice had gone soft. Like he didn’t have the first clue he had me spun up.

“You don’t think this is a little bit weird?” I waved an erratic hand over my head.

He grinned. “I like weird, if I’m being honest.”

He reached out and gently brushed his fingertips over the scar on my jaw.

It happened so fast that I didn’t realize what he was doing before his hand was already there. As if it were second nature. As if he did it all the time. As if he had the right.

Fire streaked my flesh.

Horror and fear and the fight.

Worse was the flash of comfort that came along with it.

Aghast, I ripped myself back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I wheezed, the words haggard and pained. Panic raced my veins and nearly sent me screaming out the door.

Screw the rain and the storm.

But I forced myself to remain standing.

I wasn’t weak.

I wasn’t weak.

I lifted my chin defiantly like I was daring him to do it again because if he did it this time, I was going to teach him a lesson.

He actually had the nerve to look apologetic, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his low-slung jeans that showed off an expanse of chiseled abs, his hip bones peeking out over the top. The packed, rippled flesh was covered in those designs there, too. Ones that I refused to study even though I was itching to reach out and touch them the same way as he had done to my scar.

Like it was natural.

Right.

God, I kind of hated this man. Hated that he stirred something in me that I couldn’t afford to feel.

“Sorry. That was rude.” It sounded like he meant it.

“I don’t even know you.”

He dragged a hand from his pocket and uneasily roughed it through the longer pieces of his hair. “Know it.”

He hesitated, then added, “But there’s something about you, isn’t there, Salem?” That gaze narrowed and his head pitched to the side, the man studying me as if I were a riddle he was trying to decipher.

Energy shivered and flashed. A blanket of lightning flickered at the windows. A current of it ran the dense air.

The way his eyes caressed my face, it might as well have been his hands. “Is it wrong if I want to get to know you?”

Attraction billowed and boiled. Held in the bare space that seethed between us. A snare to hold me back.

Gravity.

I scrambled around in my brain for the last vestiges of my common sense.

“I have no interest in that.” The words were bitchy and a straight-up lie. “I just want to go home.”

The blunt of the rejection struck across his face before he dropped his gaze to look at the floor.

“Right, okay,” he mumbled, his head bouncing in affront as he stared at his bare feet with his teeth gritting.

Thunder cracked.

With it, the rain intensified to become a violent pounding at the roof.

He looked up at me, and every angle of his face hardened with the promise. “Told you my purpose tonight was gettin’ you to safety.”

I was pretty sure it was here that wasn’t safe. Not with the way my pulse battered and my stomach coiled and this needy interest was taking me over. I swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”

“Means you’re stuck with me tonight. I’ll get you home first thing in the morning.”

“You expect me to stay here? With you?” It was a shriek of disbelief.