Page 30 of Hart of Darkness
Maggie
Ididn’t move from my spot at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t even open my mouth to speak, which was so unlike me. But Dillon’s statement that Maxwell and I had slept together rendered me speechless. The tone in his voice screamed of jealousy, and that gave me mixed emotions. In one breath, I was all toasty inside, knowing that Dillon would fight for me. In another, his jealousy gave me reason to pause. Sometimes when men were fighting over a woman, that meant feelings were involved. Dillon couldn’t possibly have feelings for me. After all, we didn’t know each other well enough to develop any sort of feelings except for lust. Maybe I was reading too much into the situation.
The silence between us grew as I fiddled with my scarf. I wanted to speak, to say anything to break the tension, but I had no words. Not to mention, Dillon was shirtless. Tattoos not only decorated both arms, but his chest had the Latin phrasealis grave nilinscribed across a red bird wing. Latin had kicked my butt in college. I’d only taken the course because I thought it would be cool to learn a language from ancient times. The only word that had made sense to me was grave, which meant serious in both Latin and English.
Dillon dragged his gaze from my head down to my toes, which curled when he settled his eyes on my face. His hooded golden-brown eyes made me hold my breath as though we were standing toe to toe and his lips were a hair from mine.
I got the feeling he wanted to throw me on the mat and devour me. Yet my intuition was telling me he was trying to understand my relationship with Kelton.
“Kelton and I danced and drank, nothing more,” I said, feeling compelled to give an explanation. I didn’t have any lingering attraction to the Maxwell either. Sure, he was handsome, but not like the man in front of me.
Dillon gave me a cheeky grin. “I heard your voice message.”
The topic of Kelton became a faded memory as my cheeks turned tomato red upon realizing Dillon had heard my admission about his sexy voice.
“Th-that.” My knees finally unlocked at the mere thought that I’d just stuttered. I never stuttered. I dropped down on the bottom step. “Busted.”
He finally chuckled and stood up. His jeans rode low, showing that thin line of hair, or what I liked to call the happy trail. “Nadine is gone.”
And just like that, any tension, sexual or otherwise, was history. “Wait. So the cops didn’t find her here?”
He tilted his head, and his hair flopped to one side. “Why would they find her here? Did you say something to your cop friend?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I promised her I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. Anyway, I was talking to Ted when he got the call that they’d found the redhead. Honestly, I thought you might have called them or that someone in the shelter did.” I might as well lay my cards on the table too. After all, we both assumed the other had blabbed on Nadine.
He puffed out his cheeks. “No one here alerted the police. She took off early this morning. Nadine told one of my guests that she wasn’t safe here and that she didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”
I gulped down a ball of fear as I clutched my stomach.
A muscle ticked in Dillon’s jaw. “Is she alive?”
I squeezed my eyes closed for a second. God, I prayed she was. “When Ted got the call, he took off so fast, I didn’t get a chance to ask him anything.” It hadn’t helped that my tongue wouldn’t work.
Dillon brought his rough hands up to his mouth in prayer formation then began wearing a hole in the cement floor in a narrow spot off the matted area near me. “I shouldn’t have left the shelter early this morning.”
I pushed to my feet and grabbed his arm. “Stop. You’re making me dizzy, and you can’t blame yourself.” I should’ve stayed at the shelter last night and kept Nadine company. She’d been alone and scared.
He looked at my hand then met my eyes. All thoughts of Nadine were slowly dissipating as my heart fluttered. Then Dillon’s large palm was on my face.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patterwent my heart.
I swore if his hungry gaze weren’t preoccupied with my lips, he probably would have seen my heart pumping out of my chest.
I dragged a hand up the arm that had Grace inked on it.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he traced my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. I’d never had anyone treat me so tenderly, as if I were a rare gem. The heat in the room rose and continued to rise the more his whiskey gaze roamed over my face, wild and free.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to run through fields of daisies with Dillon chasing me. Not to have a care in the world. Not to have revenge simmering in my blood. And not to have any memories of my childhood. I could stop my crusade to put Cory away. I could lose my memories by thinking of the future. But I had one problem.
I slid my hand under my scarf and fingered my scar. I would always have the memory of what Cory had done to me.
I choked back tears, when I wanted nothing more at that moment than for Dillon to kiss me and take away the memory of what I’d been through.
Touch me. Tempt me. Kiss me. Feel me.Those statements played like soft lyrics in my head.
Dillon lowered his hand until he was untying my scarf. “Maggie.” My name on his lips was like discovering chocolate for the first time—sweet and addicting. He had rendered me powerless to do anything but bat my eyelashes.
His pinky finger danced over the sliver of scar that was poking out from the collar of the dirty shirt I’d pulled out of the laundry that day. Luckily, the shirt had only been worn once.
