Page 70 of Sinners & Saints (Sinners & Saints)

Daze releases a small, sharp breath.

My eyes flutter open, and when I look at him, he’s lying on his side. His gaze is piercing, fixated on me, and it’s evident that he doesn’t intend to sleep just yet.

He slowly lifts his hand and caresses my face with the back of his fingers. A chill sweeps through me, and I’m drawn to him like a magnet. I involuntarily inch closer until our shoulders are touching, and his jaw clenches tight.

The waning daylight filters through the window, illuminating his beautifully sculptured body covered in scars and ink. Andthose striking, gray eyes.

The way they look at me will be my downfall.

Yet, I find myself shifting closer. Closer. Even closer until his bare chest is flush with mine, but it’s not enough. Before I can even make sense of it, I’m touching his face, brushing the loose strands of hair away from his eyes, giving me a better view.

“Good night,” he says playfully, but I know he senses the same inexplicable emotion I do.

This moment feels different. Intimate.

Something I’m not quite used to.

He isn’t either.

“I’m not used to being told to go to Hell and then chased after in one day,” he says as his hand travels up my spine. He firmly grasps the back of my neck, and a soft breath escapes me.

“I’m not used to this,” I say, using that word as a stand-in for many different things. I’m not used to intimacy. To violence. To the brutal clarity only he can give.

I should run from it. But I’m not.

“I owe you,” he says as if I never spoke. “I don’t like owing a debt, so I’ll make you an offer. For you only—take what you want from me. Anything you want, it’s yours…”

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter if he is. For this moment, I have him, and it’s strangelyenough.To the point that I feel tempted to commit yet another sin where he is concerned.

I want to be greedy.

“Tell me about how you ‘almost’ went to prison. Why did you say my father had something to do with it?”

He sighs. “You remember how I said Hale asked me to do something for him?”

I nod, feeling my stomach tighten. “What?”

“He wanted me to look into your church. Salvation or whatever—”

“Salvation is the outreach program,” I say absently. “Covenant is our church. It’s my father’s take on the Protestant faith and its core tenants, but with an emphasis on charity and virtue.”

My throat dries as I realize how little of those ideals I’ve lived up to lately.

“Salvation is my father’s pet project. He’s helped many people through it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he has,” Daze says. “Hale thought it was a front for something. I’m not sure what. When I started digging, let’s just say someone turned up dead, and I got thrown in lockup and threatened with a murder charge.”

I just stare at him. He sounds different when he’s being truthful. Less playful and more… Cold. He doesn’t have the energy left to put up a front anymore.

When he doesn’t elaborate, all I can ask is, “Did you do it?”

He meets my gaze and holds it. “No. And the cops had nothing on me, either. That’s the strange part. The law is that after forty-eight hours they have to let you go. Somehow, due to a ‘paperwork’ mix-up, I was in there for three months. By the time I got out, Hale was dead, and the truth is, I don’t know exactly why.”

“But you think my father has something to do with it?”

He flicks his gaze up to the ceiling. “Let’s just say I had a hunch. The same hunch I had to keep an eye on you with your brother gone. That intuition hasn’t failed me yet.”

I swallow hard, overwhelmed by the genuine concern I hear in his voice. “You really care that much? About someone you didn’t even know?”

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