Page 5 of At the Edge of Surrender

Arms strong and sure where he had them under my legs and back.

Maybe I’d had too much to drink. Or maybe it was that my emotions were so frayed and raw that it’d left me numb in some hypersensitive way.

It was like I could feel too much and too little, both empty and like I was going to burst apart from the pressure, and I was desperate for anything to fill the void.

Well, anything except for that disgusting creep who’d come sauntering up to me like I’d actually play into his stupid pickup line. Slurring his words as he tried to get into my line of sight.

Panic had lit the second he got into my vicinity.

That instinct kicking in.

Fight.

Except I had so little fight left in me. So little fight after everything I’d been living for had been stolen away. The hole gaping and throbbing. And now, the last tattered piece was getting ready to be ripped away.

So, there I was, in this crappy dive bar where I thought I’d beisolated enough to drown in my sorrows, only instead, I had wound up a limp mess in the arms of a stranger with my arms around his neck and my face buried under his chin.

A stranger who’d managed to knock the air from my lungs when I’d caught a peek of him where he’d sat in a booth with his friend.

If I was thinking straight at all, I knew he should send fear clapping through my veins.

Because this man was terrifyingly gorgeous.

Strike that.

He was gorgeousandterrifying. An aura of duplicity radiated around him. Wickedness shrouded beneath an easy, affable grin.

“I’m going to make sure she’s fine.” The shallow, dark words rumbled in his chest. “Just be sure these fuckers get gone.”

“Safe to say they won’t be back around,” another voice uttered low.

“Thanks, brother.”

“Yeah.”

A nod and a gesture, and we were moving again. His heavy boots thudded against the hardwood floors. I felt him angle to the side and a door was opened before it clattered shut behind us.

Then I was being lowered onto a worn leather couch in what appeared to be an office.

He stepped back, and I struggled to get my bearings. To stop the rush of dizziness that spun through my head.

I dug around in myself to find the woman that I normally was.

One who most definitely didn’t let random men pick her up and carry her into secluded places.

He took another step back, and I lifted my gaze, my eyes roaming up the hard, intimidating planes of him as I went.

Tracking over motorcycle boots and dark jeans and a fitted button-down that hugged the visible strength packed underneath. The rippling muscles of his arms were covered in ink, the designs extending down onto the backs of his hands, so intricate I didn’t have time to make any of them out.

Not before he was rumbling, “Were you hurt?”

My attention was pulled the rest of the way up to his face.

Striking green eyes speared me to the spot, so intense I was afraid he could peer all the way through me.

His jaw was defined and his brow cut in a harshness that promised there was nothing innocent about him.

His face a carved sculpture of fierce, unnerving beauty.

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