Page 31 of Cast Stones
I open the restroom door, determined to give what’s-his-name at the table-for-two in the window a fair shot. I’m even considering—
Out of nowhere, a hand clamps around my mouth, pulling me back against a hard chest. There’s no time to scream. No time to react. Before I can form a coherent thought, another hand is wrapping around my waist and dragging me into a darkened alcove away from the chatter of the main part of the restaurant.
Life is the great leveler, I think wildly, as his familiar scent hits my senses.
Rich and earthy, like the ground we used to lay on together, swapping our prison bars for counting stars—all the while feeling something growing between our souls that reached far beyond the galaxies above us.
Some say it’s a rollercoaster… One minute you’re flying high, and the next you’re nosediving straight to the bottom. Broken and bleeding, you think the ride is over. But that’s the thrill. The goddamn paradox. Just when you least expect it, another twist takes you right back up to the top.
And here I am, facing another ninety-degree drop, staring right into a pair of devil-black eyes I assumed were gone forever.
“Luca,” I gasp out.
“What the fuck are you doing with that man?”
I wrestle out of his hold, which is a joke. He’s six foot four inches of solid muscle. Without his prison chains on, he could pin me against the wall, and I’d be a rag doll in his hands.
I grit my teeth as explosive memories threaten to overpower me. Spinning around, I shove my palm against his chest and stumble backward on my heels. “We’re toxic, Luca. We’re every torn-out page of wrong.” Hot tears blind my vision. “As far as I’m concerned, you died ten years ago. You need to leave right now or—”
“Or what,cara mia?” he murmurs.
“I’ll be making a call to Detective Hunter to let her know you’re back in town.”
I hope the words sound as bitter as they taste. I hope that hearing them cuts him with the same jagged knife that’s lodged in my chest just from looking at him.
He shakes his head slowly at my outburst. “I’m not going anywhere, Madi. You’ve been a bad girl, and I’m done waiting for you to remember all the reasons why.”
Another step back and my shoulders slam into the wall. “I’m not a bad girl anymore, Luca, I’m a free girl,” I counter weakly. “And trust me, I remember plenty.”
“Not everything. Not yet.” Luca wastes no time closing the distance between us, capturing my chin between his fingers, his forearm pressed hard between my breasts. “You’re not free, Madi. You’re so numb on prescription meds these days, it’s a wonder you can still feel anything at all.”
“I don’t want to feel.”
“That’s not freedom. Not even close. You throw that word around like it’s a right instead of a gift.” I try to pull away from him, but he tightens his hold, brushing his lips against my ear. “What did I always tell you?”
I want to fight him, but my limbs are numb. Having him this close forces me back to that cabin in the woods again. To a time that was just us—spinning the bad into hope, and our desperation into survival. “That you’d never lie to me,” I whisper, the words sounding as obscene to me as their truth.
His thumb strokes my lips, setting my whole body aflame.He’s wrong. I can still feel something.“What else?”
“But you’d hurt me if you had to.” I swallow hard, my confirmation causing his breathing to become hard and heavy against my cheek.
He brushes his fingers along my neck before closing them around my throat.
He’s not hurting me.
Yet.
And thatyetis what I hate. Because it’s the thrill that lurks in the darkness.
I feel his lips curve into a smile against my ear. “You look sick, Madi. You should excuse yourself and get into a cab before you cause someone to catch their death.”
“You don’t intimidate me. Not then. Not now.”
“I’m not trying to,” he says, still sounding on the verge of laughter. “But I can.”
“I hate you.” At least those words held a dirty conviction.
His lips twitch from suppressing a smirk. “No, you don’t. You hate yourself because you want to hate me. That part of you that’s still good is screaming at you to knee me in the balls right now, but you won’t. Because there’s another part of you that belongs to me, a part I darkened with a taste of vengeance so sweet ten years ago that it hungered for more.”
