Page 9 of At the Edge of Surrender

My throat thickened. “It’s just been a really rough couple of months.”

I almost laughed at myself. It’d been more than rough. I’d lost the person closest to me. But I couldn’t bring her up. Not right then.

Sympathy flickered through his eyes, like whatever emotion he’d just experienced was a match to my own.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Somehow, I knew he meant it. It wasn’t some platitude.

He angled back, letting his hand drop to the arm of the chair, though he remained right there.

His presence hovering around me.

I blinked, trying to process through what this man made me feel. Why I felt like I knew him. “Why do I get the sense you’ve had a couple of those bad months yourself?”

I guessed I was pushing. More comfortable with this man than I should be. But he made me feel…different.

A grin hooked at the edge of his mouth that I was having a hard time not staring at, though there was a distinct grief woven in it. “We all have, haven’t we?”

“But do we really notice it?”

We all knew pain, and we were all likely grieving in some way, yet we moved through our days without really noticing or acknowledging it.

But I couldfeelhis.

His hand came back to my face, and this time, he rested his entire palm on my cheek. His face dipped in so close I was breathing in his aura.

“Like the way I see yours?”

My nod was shaky. “I think I feel yours, too.”

“And why do you think that is?” His voice dragged lower, sending a rash of tingles lifting across my flesh.

“I…I don’t know. I don’t know why you feel different. Familiar, maybe. Safe.” It all rushed out of me without permission.

But it was true.

I felt safe.

Truly safe for the first time since I was seventeen.

So, when he went to draw his hand away, I hurried to grab it andpressed his heated palm back to my cheek. Desperate to feel something other than the torment that slayed and ruined.

Desperate to fill the cavern that throbbed inside me, even if it was only for one minute. The piece that had been cleaved away without the chance of it ever being restored.

This man who for the first time in years didn’t make me want to run.

I knew this had to be a grief reaction. A survival instinct. Because it shouldn’t be possible, and certainly not with a man who looked like him.

What I really needed to do was drag myself back to the hotel and curl up in bed next toherand wait for the morning to come. But it was morning that I dreaded. Morning that was likely going to rip out the last piece of me that I was clinging to.

And for a little bit, I wanted to feelthis. The sear of his palm as it rested on my cheek. The heat of his eyes that flamed as he stared across at me. The pound of my heart and the greed that blistered through his body.

“What are you doing?” His voice had gone gruff.

“I just want to feel.”

His thumb stroked the curve of my cheek, and his breath curled over me as he leaned in even closer.

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