Page 70 of When He Fights
Definitely interesting.
He closed in on her.“There tends to be a lot of blood when someone is shot five times.”He’d counted each entry wound.“At close range.”Gray stopped right in front of her.“Can’t handle the blood, can you?”
She hissed out a breath.“I can handle it just fine.”
Nope, she could not, in fact, handle it.“That why you’re swaying on your feet?Because you handle things just fine?”
She sent him an icy smile.Her body also swayed again.
He caught her elbow.To help steady the sway and to guide her away from his crime scene.“If you can’t handle blood and gore,” he said, keeping his voice low and ignoring the incredible softness of her skin beneath his touch, “then why in the hell are you playing around with maniacs like Logan Catalano?”
“Maniac?”she repeated.“That a clinical term?”
“He just shot a man five times.You want me to call him an upstanding member of society?Because I don’t think that description fits the situation.”
“We don’t know that Logan fired those shots.”
He rolled his eyes.“I am too tired to deal with your delusions.”He deliberately stepped to the side.“You’ve been interviewing the killer for months.Maybe you had fun playing games with him, but this is reality.And, in reality, Logan Catalano is a twisted freak of a killer.He came after me.He came after my friends.He also just left a dead body for us to find, so, yes, there’s that.”He moved closer to her.When he’d been peering into the truck’s interior, the scent of blood, death, and excrement had flooded his nostrils because when the poor bastard driving had died, his bowels had emptied.
Death wasn’t pretty.Death wasn’t kind.It was brutal and sick, and twisted pricks out there like Logan Catalano were maniacs.They were brutal beasts.He wasn’t going to sugar coat for the pretty psychiatrist.
But as he stepped closer to her, Emerson’s scent washed away all others.A sweet scent.Light.Fresh.Innocent.That stupid thought again.What.The.Fuck?
“I don’t have delusions,” she told him.
He thought he’d heard a hitch in her voice.
Now his attention was utterly fixated on her.“Logan Catalano was a mob enforcer.A hitman.The real fucking deal.”He shook his head.“You had to see photos of the crimes linked to him.What is this, your first time to see a kill up close and personally?”
“Yes.”She swallowed hard.“It is my first time.To be, uh, up close and personal.”Then her hand flew over her mouth.“And if you will excuse me…” Words muffled by her fingers even as her horrified gaze held his.“I’m about to be very, very sick.”
And, dammit, she was.Emerson went careening away from the truck.He knew she was going to vomit.
Hell.
He rushed after her, and as she doubled over, he swept back her hair just in time.
Then she vomited right near his shoes.
Dammit.Onhis shoes.
Hehatedworking with partners.
ChapterFifteen
No,no, fucking,no.
Kane jerked away from Ana.He stumbled back.Got the hell away from the bed because he was not going to push her.He was not going to take her.He was not doing thisnow.
Ana’s eyes opened.Her cheeks were flushed.Her lips swollen from his kiss.All he wanted in the entire world was to go back to her.To pull her against him.To kiss her again.To take her until they both drove into the hardest orgasms of their lives.
But she was wrong about him.
“I am a killer.”A low growl.Ana needed to ditch the rose-colored glasses where he was concerned.If she wouldn’t ditch them, then he would have to smash them for her.“It’s what I’m good at.Baby…” He looked at his hands.The hands that had touched her.The hands that he always tried so hard to be careful with—especially when he was around Ana.
His hands had killed.
“You can pretend I’m something else.”Everything seemed pretend these days.Maybe because Gray was always tossing out cover stories left and right.When you played enough roles, sometimes, it got hard to remember who you really were.Whatyou really were.“But when you strip everything else away, I’m the man who was trained to kill.I’m the man who has eliminated threats that should not be walking this earth.”An exhale.“I have killed people, Ana.”No sugar-coating.Just a blunt and brutal truth.“I went on missions.I did the jobs.I knew the risks.Once, I…I was in a place that was as close to hell as you could get.The world was on fire around me.It was kill or be killed, and I beat a man with my hands until he stopped fighting back.”
