Page 632 of Flirting with Darkness

Why the hell won’t he even answer me…?

Something further in me snaps. I march toward him and wrap all of my fingers in the lapels of his jacket, the leather supple and gritty with dust under my fingers. His face is inches from mine, but his expression doesn’t change. Neutral, bordering on amused. Why does he think this is funny? What even does he think is funny? The front of our family bar got blown up, we got shot at by three thugs, and my sister is still with them, and this jackass—

“Are you laughing?” I demand.

“Do I sound like I am?” His tone is amused, we’re nearly nose to nose, and there’s no disguising the twinkle in his eyes. I let out a noise of disgust and shove him away from me, taking a few steps back.

“Fine. Fuck you.” I stomp past his bike, toward the road, kicking gravel as I go. Puffs of dust herald my arrival as I walk to the edge of the service station, and look down the long road back to the city, and back to my sister.

My throat tightens up. Fear is clawing at my heart, the sound of her screams worrying in my mind over and over. It’s on a fast rewind, the whites of her eyes shining bright, her mouth open wide. I’ve got to help her, to save her. Whoever those guys were, they’d violently attacked our bar. The thought of what they could be doing to her right now makes a slow shiver crawl up my back, settling in every single one of my ribs.

“That’ll take you hours, y’know,” he calls out, lazily. “They’ll be long gone by the time you get there.”

“It is what it is,” I snap at him over my shoulder. He’s leaning back, hands loose on by his sides, his feet solid on the ground. Watching me. And his eyes — I can see them from here. I tell myself it must be the sun, but his eyes still glint gold, like sand or dust on the horizon, even from ten feet away. “And anyway, you were such a big hero, rescuing me, saving my life, et cetera, so why don’t you be a gent and give me a lift back?” I try not to let the fear I feel creep into my voice, but it’s there. The worry. The uncertainty. The desperation.

“That’d be signing your death warrant,” he says calmly, his expression relaxed and neutral. “So, no. I don’t think I will.”

My chest goes stiff and tight, and I stare at him.

“Those men were chasing you,” I say, matter-of-fact, “they shot at you.” These are truths that I know, deep in my soul. He showed up, then They showed up. The math was simple, the logic was unflawed. He and They had to be connected. They had to be.

He arches one dark eyebrow and then glances away from me, toward the service station. The windows were long ago blown out, the doorway blocked by a sheet of plywood, but I can see the outline of the desert through the half-broken walls. What he’s looking at, I have no idea.

“That’s what you wanna think, what you gotta think, then okay. But if you go back, they’ll come for you. They’re looking for you. I was looking for you, too. You’re just lucky I’m the one who found you first.” He hits the kick stand with his foot and dismounts, for the first time since getting on it. Way, way back in our cursed meeting.

I tense and back up quickly toward the road.

“Stay away!” I say, panic gripping me like a fist, squeezing my throat until the words barely squeak out. “What do you want?”

His gaze is steady, locked on me as he walks toward me. My eyes search his person, trying to locate anywhere he could be concealing a gun. Because by now I’m pretty convinced… he’s going to kill me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did. I don’t even drive, so it’s not like I could have cut him off in traffic and he hunted me down at my dad’s bar and—

He’s ten feet away. Then five. I stumble back, my foot hitting a broken piece of cement curb, and I topple with a grunt.

He blurs in front of me, his arms wrapping around me, cradling one hand in the crook of my neck, the other in the small of my back, and he catches me, inches from the ground. His hands are so hot through the fabric of my shirt, and against my bare skin.

“Easy,” he says, and he eases me down until I’m sitting. He crouches in front of me. His presence is no less threatening, even with each time those strong, warm hands pull me out of harm’s way. “Why do they call you Katydid?”

“It’s Katy—“ I reply automatically, because only close family and friends get to call me Katydid. Wait… “How do you know my name?” I ask, my eyes lifting to his with urgency and confusion. He’s not looking at me directly, instead eyeing up my body. He lifts one of my hands, inspecting my arm for something. Damage, maybe, or jewelry, that he can steal. Joke’s on him, the only thing of value I’m wearing is my necklace, but it’s so old and tarnished it doesn’t look like much.

“I heard your sister yelling at you out back a few days ago,” he says. My eyes narrow, and he finally meets my gaze. A rueful smile tugs at his mouth. “I’d lie and say I was in the neighborhood, but I was doing recon.”

“Comforting,” I snipe, as he lifts up my other arm, turning my hand over to the sunlight so he can glance at it. “What?” I demand, prickly feeling coming over the back of my neck. I should pull away but his touch is… nice. Non-offensive, almost clinical, even caring. Like he’s checking me for cracks or breaks, so he can put me back together.

“Just making sure you’re not marked,” he says calmly, as if that makes any sort of sense, and there’s that stupid even tone of his again like he knows how in control of this situation is, and that I couldn’t fight him off if I wanted to.

Which… even after the last forty-five minutes of my life, I’m not sure I want to. My stomach is clenched, and I’m scared of what I left behind, and he seems to have answers, that I’m hoping he’ll share with me.

“Marked?” I ask, detesting how much my voice wobbles. I should just hit the road, start walking, get the hell back to my sister and make sure she’s okay. He keeps looking over me, not answering my question (which is becoming an annoying habit of his), and there’s a weird sort of heat rising to my skin as he examines me closely.

Those liquid gold eyes of his shift from my body up to my face, and I’m caught in them. The air goes still around us, and icy heat floods my face. My heart’s thudding its way up into my throat, wedging itself in there like it has something to say, and I swallow. Firmly.

“Don’t you want to be more than you are?” he asks, his voice a weighty thrum in my ears — not unlike our bar’s jukebox purring out a low smoky ballad, late at night after everything’s closed down and shut off for the day. “Can’t you see… how much more you are?”

There’s a gaping, aching honesty in his words, a rawness that leave me breathless and restless and disoriented. Emotionally, it almost feels like he’s lifting me up, but… to where? For what purpose?

“I—”

He slowly stands, his tall height towering, and stretches a hand down to me.

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