Page 3 of When He Fights
“You don’t want this.”
Oh, her arching hips said she did.“I want you.”Just so they were clear.
“It’s fucking displacement.Gray warned me this shit would happen.”A hard exhale.“You don’t want me.You want the safety that I offer.”
Um, she wasn’t turned on right then because ofsafety.“I know what I want.”
“Ana…”
Longing poured through her.“I think I’m falling in love with you, Kane.”A stark admission made as she continued to have her legs wrapped around his waist.
At her words, his eyes blazed and he…
“No.”Very firm.Kane pulled away.Lowered her at the same moment.
Her sneaker-clad feet hit the floor.
“You don’t love me,” Kane denied.Definite.
Her heart kept racing, but a chill skated over her skin.“You tell me what I want.What I don’t want.You tell me when and who I don’t love.”Her arms curled around her stomach.“I think I’m the expert when it comes to knowing how I feel.”
“Ana.” He reached out for her but…stopped himself.Instead of touching her, his hands flattened on the wall behind her.“You have been living on fear and adrenaline.Your emotions are all over the place.I’m a safe fucking harbor for you.But what youthinkyou feel for me?It’s temporary.When the danger has passed, when you have your new life and this is all just a bad dream, you will regret me.”
She could never regret him.“I want you.I’m falling for you.”
His eyes glinted.“You don’t know me.”
“I—”
“You know what I’ve told you about myself.Bits and pieces of my life.YouthinkI’m safety, but I’m not.I’m as fucking dangerous as your ex, and the last thing you need is to get involved with someone like me.Because you’re wrong.I’m not a safe harbor.I’m a nightmare.One that you won’t be able to escape, not if you give yourself to me.Not if we cross this line.”His head came in closer to hers.
She could not look away from his eyes.
“I fuck you?If I do that, I won’t let go.When the time comes for me to give you up, for you to go on to that new life,I won’t let go.”
Why was that such a bad thing?“Maybe we could have a life together.”
“Because you like to fuck monsters?”
His wordshurt.She flinched, unable to help herself.
“Dammit!Ana, I’m—” He shoved away from the wall.From her.Took two steps back.No, three.Four.Stood there with his hands fisted at his sides.Kane pulled in a deep breath.Then another.“You don’t know what I want to do to you.”
She’d thought he wanted to fuck her.Instead, he seemed to be putting up new walls between them.
“There are rules,” Kane stated as he rolled back those broad shoulders of his.“Rule one is that I don’t fuck the witness.I protect her.”
Right.Witness.That was her.
“I don’t keep the witness.There is no place for her in my life.”
Brutal.She blinked quickly because a watery film had just obscured her vision.
“There is no place for me in hers,” he continued flatly.
Because he didn’t want a place.She would have gladly made a place for Kane in her life.
His gaze never wavered from hers.“Fucking would change everything.”
