Page 2 of After Dark
He had been her everything and she had been his and walking away from that had consequences, just like coming back did. Serious consequences.
Maybe she wasn’t as prepared to handle those consequences as she’d thought she was.
But she was outside again now and Brooklyn Basin was coming alive in the embrace of a deep red sunset. The dark was coming in fast. There was music in the distance and the usual crush of people wandering in the temperate dusk before the dark brought out the far scarier things who lurked in the shadows here. She wouldn’t stay much past nightfall. She would try again tomorrow.
Still, for a moment, she stood in the shadows and wished she could take it all back for approximately the seven millionth time.
And then, as if she’d conjured him up from the red and pink streaks to the west, there was suddenly a very hard, very familiar grip on her arm.
Then he was there.
She didn’t have to look up to identify him—she caught his scent, like cedar and salt, and she knew his touch better than she knew herself—but she did it anyway, because she’d always been a fool where this man was concerned. It was a fault that ran inside her, tectonic and disastrous, and there was no getting away from it no matter how far she ran.
Lord knew she’d tried.
Looking at him after all this time felt inevitable, like doom mixed with that wild rush of heat she remembered all too well.
There’d been a time she’d called it joy.
And Arlo Finn stood before her, somehow even more terrifyingly perfect than she remembered, and she remembered every part of this man. She had memorized him immediately and completely. He was imprinted on her, inside and out.
They had clapped eyes on each other and that had been that.
It felt the same way now.
But tonight the wild red sky seemed to make him new, or maybe that was her trepidation and deep longing talking.
For a breath, they studied each other.
He was a very large man who looked like exactly what he was: a very dangerous weapon that it would be foolish to underestimate. These days he ran private security but he’d started in the Army, then had some years he didn’t like to talk about. Josette had traced all the scars on his hard, tough body and could map them with her eyes closed. She’d kissed his broken nose and the space between those dark gray eyes of his that sometimes reminded her of rain, but tonight were more like steel. The kind people made into the bars of prison cells.
Arlo wasn’t anything close to beautiful. He was too rough, too real. He was made out of fists and ferocity, hammered over time, until nothing remained but a honed and deadly armory in the shape of a powerful, intimidating man.
Nothing had ever made her feel more safe, or more scared, than being with him. That was her curse.
Josette couldn’t speak. Her heart clawed at her chest. Her body reacted the way it always did—she melted. Her pussy was wet and greedy in an instant. Her skin burned where he touched her, a burn that spread to every last inch of her. Her breasts swelled against the shirt she wore, painfully. She was pretty sure she was sweating.
“Arlo…” she tried to say, but the ferociously grim expression on his face made her think better of it.
She was dimly aware that her head spun, like she was drunk, and that only made sense when her back hit a wall. Then he was a harder wall in front of her with his wickedly large, fiendishly clever, and extremely hard hands on either side of her head as he leaned in.
Josette thought he would say something—probably something she deserved to hear, not something shewantedto hear, but instead, he simplylookedat her.
Like he was looking into her. Through her.
He’d pulled her out of the flow of the neighborhood, into some kind of alcove tucked into the shadows. Maybe it was an alley. She couldn’t bear to look away from him long enough to tell.
Arlo studied her face as if he’d been waiting for this moment—this exact moment, like it was preordained, like he’d known exactly when and how it would happen—and was not exactly thrilled that she’d turned up on cue.
This was not a new feeling when she was around him.
Their issues were simple, really. He’d expected perfection and had delivered it on his end. She hadn’t been able to live up to his demands. Rather than discuss that yet again only to end up in the same stalemate, she’d bailed.
He didn’t have to lay that out for her. She knew. He knew. They had both been there that last night when she’d been unable to do what he’d asked and he’d lifted up her chin with one finger and had asked—eyes intense and direct—what now?
She’d been gone before dawn.
That sat between them too, uglier now that she was looking at him.
