Ride Hard (Raven Riders #1)(11)
Well, hell. Dare couldn’t leave her out there in this.
He leaned over the chair, using a hand on her shoulder to shake her. “Hey, Haven.”
Thunder boomed so loud it shook the porch floor under Dare’s boots.
Haven’s eyelids flew open and her eyes went wide with terror. She screamed and scrabbled backward, but the reclined back of the chaise lounge kept her from getting very far away from him. “No, no, no!” she yelled, her arms and legs striking out.
“Shit. Whoa, Haven. It’s okay,” he said, reeling back. “It’s just me. Dare. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her breathing was nearly hoarse it was so labored. Her gaze darted around. “Dare,” she finally managed, looking up at him.
“Yeah,” he said, gesturing to the rain. “Just thought we should get you inside.”
Thunder crashed and lightning lanced the sky.
Haven flinched, her hands white-knuckling it around the arms of the chair. “Yeah,” she said with a quick, jerky nod. “I’m sorry.”
Her propensity to apologize for things that either weren’t her fault or didn’t require apologies made him feel protec tive of her—even more protective than he normally felt of the women who sought the Ravens’ help. Dare knew from the firsthand experience of having a controlling dickhead of a father that someone had ingrained that knee-jerk reaction into her. “Don’t worry about it.”
The downpour became torrential and the wind whipped water under the cover of the porch roof. Long tendrils of hair blew around her head, and Haven gathered them in her fist as she rose.
She seemed shaky on her feet, and Dare leaned down and put his mouth near her ear so she could hear him over the deluge. “Are you okay?”
A quick nod. “Yes,” she said, though he just barely heard her. A fantastic explosion of thunder kept him from hearing her next words at all. She shrieked in fright and buried her face against his chest.
The contact shocked him, and it wasn’t often that that happened. She’d given some pretty good cues earlier that she didn’t want to be touched, and Dare had been around enough people with bad histories to know to respect their boundaries. Yet Haven touched him, taking shelter against his body.
Another clap of thunder had her pressing harder against him. One hand clutched at the edge of his cut.
Probably made him an *, but something about the way her hand fisted around the denim shot heat through him. Not that she’d meant to do it, of course. Not that she was probably even aware.
Shaking away the whole train of thought, Dare debated and then finally put an arm around her shoulders. When she showed no signs of minding the contact, he hugged her in tighter. God, she was a slender little thing in his arms. “Come on,” he said, his lips against her ear. Keeping his arm around her, he guided her into the kitchen.
Inside, he secured the door and hit the kitchen lights.
Her shoulders sagged like she’d just been freed of a great weight. “Thanks,” she said, hugging herself. “It’s stupid, but I’m afraid of thunderstorms.”
Dare looked at her, at the way her eyes skated away on the admission. Another story right there, no doubt. “We’re all scared of something, Haven.”
“Even you?” she asked, that electric-blue gaze filled with what looked like hope.
He gave a tight nod. “Even me.”
HAVEN WAS COLD, wet, and embarrassed for freaking out in front of Dare. Again. Waking to a dark figure looming over her, she’d been sure her father had found her, would drag her back to a life she’d hated, would never let her go.
But her fear had given way to curiosity—about what a man like Dare could possibly fear. She was dying to know . . . but she chickened out of asking, and then he was heading toward the mess hall door.
“You heading up?” he asked, turning to peer at her over his shoulder.
The way he paused there perfectly highlighted the square edge of his jaw and had Haven thinking back to Cora’s assessment earlier in the evening. Dare was hot. And his kindness made him even hotter, though he still intimidated the heck out of her. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “In a minute. I need to get something to drink first.”
With a nod, he disappeared through the door. Haven released a long breath and sagged into one of the chairs at the table. Something occurred to her in the quiet stillness. She’d burrowed against Dare’s chest. She could still smell his scent, all leather and warm skin. And he hadn’t flipped out on her. Or taken advantage of her vulnerability.
How sad was she that his decency made him noteworthy?
From there, her thoughts quickly spiraled. How long would she and Cora be welcome there? How would they get the resources they needed to start a new life, one where her father couldn’t find her? What would that new life even look like? God, she was almost twenty-three years old with no skills, no money, and not even a high school diploma, since her father hadn’t thought it important to officially withdraw her from public school or do anything to create an actual home school experience for her.
Between the storm and her troubling thoughts, Haven knew she had absolutely no chance of falling back to sleep. Her brain was wide awake and going a mile a minute. And there was only one thing that helped when middle-of-the-night anxiety settled in. Baking.
She loved cooking and was good at it, but baking was the thing that made her feel the best. That calmed her. That took her away from all the crap. Growing up without a mother, Haven had become responsible for cooking as soon as she’d been old enough to do it. In her father’s quest to look respectable, they had a big, beautiful kitchen in their big, beautiful house, which he’d stuffed it full of his collections—of guns and knives, of World War II collectibles, of Atlanta Falcons memorabilia, of rare books he never read. She thought of him that way—as a collector. And she was just one more thing he owned. For her, the new plantation-style house, complete with pretentious white columns along the front, had been nothing more than a gilded cage.