Brutally Beautiful(80)



The way he looked at me made me forget the things I was upset over. Whatever they were that I was just thinking about.

The sight of him was gloriously perfect, how…how to describe what this man looked like? The muscles of his entire torso were clearly defined and they rippled as he moved towards me. His shoulders, thick and solid, his arms tight and sinewy, he was the perfect specimen of a male and I simply couldn’t take my eyes from him.

“It was my turn to use Google,” he whispered hoarsely, his wet hands reached my chin, lifting it to him.

“Did you know that there’s a missing person’s report on two women from New York City? One’s name is Jennifer Coswell, and the other is Samantha Matthews. Jennifer is a nurse at New York-Presbyterian University Hospital and Samantha, well Samantha Matthews is the f*cking head trauma surgeon there,” his nostrils flared. “And they’re both wanted for questioning in some sort of suspicious circumstances.”

I tried to pull away, but he savagely grabbed the back of my neck and held me there; his cold grey eyes frozen, waiting for answers. I couldn’t find the right ones. I couldn’t find the words that would tell him…anything. I just wanted to run, run so he wouldn’t know me, the real me. “Well, I hope those two woman are okay. Because, sometimes I hear stories like that and wonder, maybe, if certain women are better off missing than being found. But I wouldn’t know anything about them, because I’m Lainey Nevaeh, and I’ve never been anything but a waitress.”

“If you keep piling more bullshit on your story, you’re going to get buried in it. You have some sort of dark f*cking secret that you think you can’t tell me, and I want to know. I want to know you.” Leaning in, his rough, unshaven chin scraped harshly against mine, “I want to know you.” Wet lips slid over mine, and the hands that held me down tangled themselves tightly through the wet strands of my hair, tugging my face closer to his.

My eyes fluttered closed with the pull, and there was nothing in the room, nothing in the world, but his mouth on mine, and the sounds of the lapping water against the porcelain tub. Pressing the warm tip of his tongue across my lips, he parted them, dipping in, persuading me to give in, to lay me bare, know my secrets. “Let me in, Lainey.”

Wet fingers slid down my neck as I leaned back to look at him. “Something dark haunts us all. What darkness haunts you at night, Kade? What do you squeeze your eyes closed to when the darkness bites against your back when you’re alone at night? Because I was married to mine. I was daughter to mine, and I refused to look into the mirror and see it make me as dark as them, so I walked away from it all.”

Reaching my hands up, I pulled a white towel that hung from a small brushed-nickel hook on the wall. As Kade thudded his head back against the corner of the tub, his eyes fluttered closed and I stood, wrapping the towel tightly around me.

“Please don’t push me away. Let me know you,” he whispered when I reached the door.

“How very f*cking hypocritical of you, Kade. Weren’t you just the one in your truck screaming for me to get out when I tried to get you to talk to me? Why did you push me away? Why do you push everyone away? Maybe you have things you don’t know how to talk about, maybe you’ve seen things that you don’t want to see again, maybe you can’t even get the words to fumble out of your mouth. Whatever reason it is, Kade, you should understand that it’s probably the same reason as mine.”

“I can’t trust anyone,” he whispered, clipped.

“Me neither,” I replied.

“I’m not comfortable around people,” he snapped.

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