Page 79 of Deal with the Devil

Deals with devils in the dark

A kiss to seal

This unwritten deal

A promise to bind your heart to mine

I won’t let you go

Never letting you go

You go, you go, you go

Never

Let you go

“That’s—a song.” Wrenlee breathes, I can hear the emotion in her voice. Misting it. But I can’t take my eyes from the stage to look at her.

Kane didn’t sing the whole song, but he sang enough for everyone to know who wrote the song. He sang enough for me to know who it was for. Infused the melody with words meant just for me.

“I—I thought Cash did the writing.”

My words are hardly loud enough for me to hear, an absent muttering I don’t expect an answer to, but Candace answers anyway, “They all write, but Cash does most of it.”

Wrenlee finally turns to me. “That man loves you. All the way kind of loves you.”

I can’t take my eyes off the man as he strums his guitar with fingers that move like they were made to explore music—music and me.

Wrenlee scoots to the edge of the booth. “I need to pee.”

“Me too,” Candace points to me. “You coming or can you watch the stuff?”

“I’ll stay.”

They scoot from the booth and disappear into the crowd as I suck on my straw and watch Kane in his element. It was only last night that he had me so thoroughly, I’d passed out in the bathtub against his chest. Now, though, I feel that familiar want for him building deep in my core. That need I sense only he can sate beginning to burn in my blood.

A body slides into the booth close to mine, a big hand covered in ink sliding a fresh margarita in front of me. I blink, caught entirely off guard by the stranger’s bold intrusion.

But before I even have time to utter a single syllable, the man is speaking, “If I didn’t already know it, that song would have told me everything.”

I blink at the man. He’s—impossibly attractive. He’s the kind of attractive that is so attractive women everywhere stand and stare—or more accurately, gawk. He’s the kind of attractive that intimidates. That shuts things down before they even begin, because with one slash of those bright blue eyes ringed in a burst of ominous black, I get the sense that I’m a very small, very appealing prey between the paws of a very dangerous, very lethal top predator.

My head cocks to the side stiltedly, because he’s alsofamiliar.

My heart begins to drum in my chest.

“What do you already know?” The words are out before I can do the sensible thing and swallow them down.

Those cutting black-ringed blue eyes take me in. All of me.

I want to shrink, or better yet, flee. But that’s the thing about predator and prey. If the latter runs, the former chases. Catches. Devours.

I shiver.

His fingers slide over the glass of uncut vodka he has yet to take a sip from. Most would think the movement is absent, thoughtless. But I know better. Without knowing who this man is, I know there’s not a thing he does absently. Everything is done with thought, with intent. There’s nothing lazy about the way those capable fingers move slowly over the glass—not with the way the rest of his body sits unnaturally still. It almost feels as though he’s crafting the human act—for me—because he knows if he doesn’t, the little ease I feel will vanish completely.

Does he want me at ease?

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