Page 87 of At the Edge of Surrender

“Guess it’s a goodfingI got here.”

“Yeah, Maci, I think it’s a really good thing you got here.”

I pressed my hand over my mouth to stop the cry that threatened to rip out, to force the chaos down into the pit where I needed to keep it. To calm the storm that raged inside.

To just beokay.

But I didn’t know how to make it okay when all of this just seemed…wrong. Questions constantly spun through me. The millionwhysI would never be able to ask my sister.

Inhaling a breath, I shuffled over to the picture window and stared out at the scenery.

Trying to draw in its peace.

I doubted I was going to find any of that here since another shiver rolled when I felt his presence emerge from behind again.

A swell of intensity that blistered across the room.

I didn’t want to look, but there was nothing I could do.

The man a snare.

Apparently, I had trouble looking away from beautiful things.

Beautiful, vicious, dangerous things.

The ground trembled as he took two steps forward, a clash of chills and fire igniting on my flesh as he leaned in close to my ear.

Ridiculously full lips right there, his aura all around.

Cedar and clove and temptation.

“Want you to consider this your home, Emery, for as long as you’re here. Whatever you need, just say it, and I’ll give it to you.”

Suggestion spilled out with his gruff words, and my belly tightened in want while my spirit screamed in rejection. I glared up at his stupidly handsome face.

Did he think I’d forgotten the threat he’d made to take me to court?

“Yet the one thing I asked of you, you refused to give me.”

Fingertips were suddenly trailing my jaw—my jaw that dropped open at his flagrant touch. Without permission, my head tipped back, my breaths ragged as he leaned in so close his mouth was only an inch away.

Those green eyes sparked, and the edges creased in harsh severity. Almost as severe as the cut of his voice.

“There’s something you’re going to learn about me, Emery. I fight for my family. Whatever the cost. Whatever the price. There might be very few people I trust in this world, my circle small because I rarely let anyone in…”

He dipped in closer.

“But when I love? I love with everything I’ve got. And that little girl? She’s going to get all of that.”

TWENTY-TWO

KANE

“How many roomsdo you even got in here?”

Maci’s little voice coming at us from behind had me stumbling back, ripping myself from the magnet of this woman that threatened to do me in.

Had never once in my life had someone affect me the way she did. Way I wanted to crawl right inside her. Get lost in those warm toffee eyes. Sink into the sanctuary of that body. Understand the fear and reservations she so clearly carried.

---