Page 23 of Sniper's Pride

She would have believed him without question if he’d said that a few hours ago. If he’d sat at that table in the café, stared her down, and laid it out that way. She would have been deeply embarrassed that she’d made it personal when he was only trying to do his job.

But it was dark inside this dive-bar-to-end-all-dive-bars. There was country music wailing on the jukebox, and Mariah was at least four shots in to a blurry, giddy night. And that gave her insight she wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Griffin didn’t look at her like she was a client. Therewas a difference in the way his trained gaze tracked the noise and chaos around them. The way he seemed to keep tabs on everything that was happening, from the pool tables to the bartender to whatever tense, whispered conversation Caradine and Isaac were having a few feet away.

The way he looked at all of those things was more clinical. More distant.

But when he looked back at her, every time he looked at her, something in him burned.

She didn’t ask herself how she knew this. She just accepted it.

And her fingers were pressed into that mouthwatering hollow between his pectoral muscles, so she went with it. She spread out her hand, touching as much of his chest as she could.

It still wasn’t enough.

She wasn’t all that shocked when he snatched her hand and held it in the space between them.

“You’re drunk,” he told her. Flatly.

In the exact same tone she remembered wielding on any number of her own relatives in the past when they’d taken their own McKenna cures.

She couldn’t help but grin. “Am I? Already? I thought for sure that came with crying in the corner. Trying to curl up and take a nap under a bar stool. Or dancing on the pool tables in some or other state of undress.”

“That’s wasted. That comes after drunk.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said airily. “I’ve never been drunk in my life.”

“But you figured you’d start tonight. In a bar where you don’t know a soul. Anyone in here could do you harm, for all you know. You might as well paint a target on your back.”

“I’ve drunk some wine here and there, but it was always controlled. Never more than two glasses, under pain of death. David got to get drunk if he wanted, of course. But drunk on a woman is no good, don’t you know? It’s sloppy. Trashy. And we can’t have that.”

His lips moved like he was biting back his words.

But all he said was, “I’m taking you back to your room.”

She laughed at that, too. But she didn’t protest. He kept that hard hand of his wrapped tight around her upper arm as he steered her away from the long, scarred wooden bar. Mariah waved to Caradine, who didn’t wave back. She dutifully accepted the bundle of fabric that Griffin handed her, but it took her a few confused moments to realize that it was her own fleece and vest.

“This is all much more forward than I’m used to,” she told him as he swung open the door and propelled her outside into the shock of the cold night air. “I don’t go to bars. Much less leave them with strange men.”

“It’s cold,” Griffin said shortly. “You should dress yourself appropriately before you freeze.”

“I like it,” Mariah assured him.

She could feel the cold, of course. It was like a sharp, gleaming scythe, cutting straight into her and cleaving her in two, but it was exhilarating all the same.

She tipped her head back, letting herself topple off into the real Milky Way spread out above her. She had never seen so many stars in her life. Not even when she’d been a child, lying in the back of a pickup truck on those long summer nights out in the country.

And it wasn’t until she felt his hand tighten around her arm that she realized Griffin was the only reason shewasn’t spinning off into the ether. Or tumbling to the uneven ground.

She smiled at him when she found him there, scowling beneath the surly neon sign from the bar that cast him in a kind of pink shadow. But it did nothing to take away from his breathtaking beauty, which caught at her with the same sharpness as the temperature.

“You’re beautiful,” she told him.

His scowl deepened. He let go of her, but only so he could take her fleece from her hand and put it over her head like she was a child. She stood there, bemused, as he fed one arm through one sleeve, then the other. He tugged the fleece into place, zipped up the neck, and even tugged her hair free. Not done, he wrapped her down vest over her shoulders, made sure her arms were in the proper armholes, and zipped that up, too.

“Replace this vest,” he muttered at her as he did it. “Down gets wet and soggy. You’ll freeze in the first rain.”

A new sensation swelled in her then. Raw. Fragile. And far more dangerous than too much tequila or that fire in his dark gold eyes. All that sunshine had shifted into something sacred, and it didn’t matter that he was scowling at her.

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