The Problem with Peace: Greenstone Security #3

by Malcom, Anne

  But he moved.

  Our mouths crashed down on each other in the next moment.

  A man like him, I expected him to take the reins as soon as my mouth opened to him and his tongue slipped into my mouth. I may not have personal experience with the alpha type men, but I knew the drill. I’d seen the Sons of Templar men.

  But Heath wasn’t going to be put in one particular box.

  He kissed me back. Heck, did he kiss me back. But he let me control the pace, the fire, everything.

  My hand was tight on his neck, commanding our bodies together, pressing as much of his muscled form to my small one as I possibly could.

  I wanted to be closer. I wanted to unzip him and crawl inside his skin.

  His hand was tight at my hip and was yanking me to him with that same kind of desperation. His entire body was tight. Wired.

  His eyes were dark and dangerous when I pulled back.

  I stepped away from him and grabbed my beer, if only for something tangible to hold onto so I didn’t float off the face of the earth.

  He watched me, grasping his own beer. Silently.

  I waited for him to speak, not nervous. I should’ve been, such an extended amount of silence after a kiss between strangers was not the norm. It was usually a sign of something bad. But I knew it wasn’t bad. There was a certainty between us that shouldn’t have been there after such a short amount of time. It shouldn’t have been there, but it was.

  He took a long pull of his beer, never taking his gaze from me.

  “What was that for?” he asked after swallowing.

  “I just felt like I needed to see what it was like to kiss you,” I replied, my voice soft.

  Something flared in his eyes. “That was a bad decision, Sunshine.”

  My blood ran cold with the words chilling it in a way only rejection could.

  But this isn’t rejection, I told myself. The way he’d kissed me back, the way he was looking at me, devouring me with his gaze, no way in hell was that rejection.

  It was something else entirely.

  “Why was it a bad decision?” I asked on little more than a whisper.

  “Because now I’m never gonna wanna know what it feels like to stop kissin’ you,” he growled.

  My stomach dropped.

  My panties dampened.

  He continued to stare.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  His attention didn’t urge me to find the words. No, it seemed to radiate contentment, like he was perfectly happy to watch me struggling to breathe, to control my hormones and figure out how the hell to handle myself in a situation like this.

  “You’re not holding much back,” I said on a whisper. “You’re showing your cards pretty early in the piece. Aren’t you meant to pretend you don’t care about me or something?”

  He moved as soon as I spoke, so his body was right up in my space and his hand on my neck.

  “I don’t pretend under regular circumstances,” he said. “And these circumstances are far from regular.”

  His eyes went down my body and then back up, every spot under his gaze sizzling from the power of it.

  “You are far from regular,” he murmured. “But I’m also not gonna sugar coat shit here. I’m not in it for a long haul, and that’s not a choice, that’s my life. Path I’ve chosen means the only choices I can make is to kill someone else to save a buddy, or to save myself.”

  His thumb began to stroke the side of my neck and he held me hostage with his gaze. “I don’t get to choose to see the beautifully irregular girl again after this weekend,” he continued. “I’m showin’ my cards now, they aren’t pretty, or even the hand I wanna play, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Now you’ve gotta make your decision about whether we’re gonna play this out or if I’m gonna put you in a cab, have the memory of your lips and your smile.” He moved his hand to brush my bottom lip with his thumb.

  “And trust me, places I’m gonna be, that’s gonna be enough to get me through. But if you’re willin’ to give me more, knowing what you know about what this is, more importantly, about what this isn’t, make no mistake, I’m fucking taking it.”

  His words were spoken roughly, because his edges were rough, no matter how neatly his shirt was ironed, or how close cut his hair was. Whatever he’d been through chiseled and sanded down the parts you couldn’t iron, wash or shave. It made sense that his voice matched that.

  But there was something beyond that. Something soft. Something I knew was for me. Something I wanted to be mine, I wanted to rouse the last soft and tender part out from this rough man, despite the fact it had a time limit.

  Despite the fact that my beating heart would be a countdown to when it’d never be whole again.

  Because I was falling for him.

  People knew I believed in love at first sight, considering I proclaimed it every week. But that was with boys who spoke pretty words and had pretty, unblemished souls.

  This man was not giving me pretty words and I could see his soul was plenty blemished from death and pain he’d both seen and administered.

  This was not the kind of love at first sight I imagined. Or that I wanted.

  But it was here.

  “Everyone around me has always wanted to protect me from the world,” I whispered. “They don’t think I can handle it. The real one. Not the one they think I live in.”

  His hand tightened on my neck. “I’m not here to protect you from the world. I want to give it to you. Because I know you’re strong enough to handle it.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, his lips inches away from mine. “You’ve only known me for a few hours.”

  He grinned against my lips and the expression hit me in the stomach. Well, a lot lower than my stomach. “I’ve known you much longer than that, Little Girl. And I’ll know you much better in a few hours.”

  And then he kissed me.

  Kissed me.

  I’d been kissed before. I wasn’t inexperienced in kissing. Or other things. My virginity was technical. I’d guarded it fiercely, but I’d been a lot freer with other things. So boys had kissed me. Some good. Some okay. Some not good at all.

  But this was nothing like that.

  This was not a boy.

  This was a man.

  Before he’d kissed me, like really kissed me, showed me the amount of experience and talent he had in that area—and presumably other areas too—but I was the one who was in charge of that. That was my kiss. I had the control, of when to start and stop. He hadn’t taken that from me, despite the way he held his body that told me he was fighting for control. Like absolutely freaking battling for control.

  This time he wasn’t fighting.

  Or battling.

  I didn’t have the control.

  He didn’t take it from me.

  He kissed me in a way that told me I’d never had the control in the first place.

  And he didn’t kiss me hesitatingly, as if he were asking permission. He took it. He demanded surrender, and also encouraged me to match him, to fight him.

  And I did. Something inside me I didn’t even know existed awakened and I hooked my hands into his belt loops, yanking him closer to me, needing him to be pressed into every inch of me. I kissed with everything I had and everything I didn’t know I had.

  My breath came in a harsh inhale when he released me, his face inches from mine, expression hard and wild.

  “Fuck,” he ground out.

  I blinked at him. “What?” I breathed, my voice husky and raw.

  “You’re gonna be trouble,” he murmured.

  “The good kind?”

  His eyes darkened. “No, Little Girl. The worst kind.”

  And then before I could even try and respond to that, he kissed me again.

  It wasn’t until much after that I realized that he hadn’t even waited for permission to break my heart. He’d told me it was going to happen, given me the opportunity to walk away, but he’d been holding onto me with an iro
n grip as he did so.

  But I could’ve had wings and I wouldn’t have moved from the sticky floor or the shitty bar.

  From his arms.

  Chapter Two

  “Gotta ask you something,” he said an inordinate amount of time later.

  Minutes could have passed. Hours. Lightyears.

  Heck, the world could’ve ended outside, and I wouldn’t have known. Or cared. And I was a person kind of concerned with the end of the world, about recycling, about climate change, about the destruction of rainforests and the consumption of fossil fuels. I was passionate about it. Lucy called it “more annoying than slow walkers in airports.”

  But I hadn’t known passion until him.

  I hadn’t known life until him.

  Of course that was a ridiculous thing to think about a man who I’d met in a bar and who I’d been making out with against a slightly sticky wall for however long. But that was me. I embraced feelings that other people might call ridiculous, or try to taint with logic.

  “Anything,” I whispered.

  His eyes flared. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” I said immediately, wishing it wasn’t the truth, wishing I was older and more worldly.

  “Fuck,” he murmured, hands tightening around me. “You’re too young.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “A good man would stop this right here,” he continued, moving his hand so he could tug lightly on my hair.

  My stomach continued to drop.

  He moved his gaze up and down my body with deliberate slowness. “I’m takin’ you home.”

  I gaped at him and tried not to show my disappointment. “Home?” I asked, my voice small.

  I’d thought this had been good for him too, despite the reaction to my age. I was legal, after all. The hardness against my stomach was evidence that he wasn’t turned off by me. The darkness on his face sure made it seem that it was something more than him being turned on. That this was more than physical. But maybe I was misreading. Maybe I was seeing things I wanted to see. It wouldn’t be the first time. Everyone in my life knew I had the tendency to block out the darker and harder aspects of life, pretend they weren’t there so I could have my sunshine.

  But this wasn’t sunshine.

  Not with him.

  It was dark, unyielding and unpredictable.

  But maybe I was imagining it. Or pretending that he was having this same visceral reaction. Maybe he kissed like a man so he could totally see that I kissed like a girl.

  “Yeah,” he rasped, his thumb brushing my swollen bottom lip.

  I sucked in a ragged breath at the gesture.

  I did not know people did that in real life.

  But they did.

  And it was awesome.

  “I can, you don’t have to—I can find my own way home,” I whispered.

  I was originally trying to make it sound like I wasn’t a heartbroken little girl that her passionate liaison was ending without even...ending. I was trying to sound like a strong independent woman who didn’t need the man who kissed the heck of out her to drop her off at home.

  His body hardened. “Oh, you’re not findin’ your way anywhere, Little Girl,” he growled.

  He stepped back, taking me with him, his hand grasping mine in a grip that was just a little too tight—in other words, perfect.

  “I’m plannin’ on getting lost tonight. In you. And you’re getting lost too.”

  And then he started walking. I went with him mostly as a result of his powerful stride and his firm hold on me. But once the words penetrated, I all but skipped behind him. The bar was loud and crowded, a mess of writhing bodies that it hadn’t been before.

  I didn’t see how he was going to navigate through the number of drunken bodies clogging up the path to the exit. But I needn’t have worried. The crowd seemed to fricking melt for him. We were outside before I knew what had happened. The air was shockingly fresh and jolting, goose bumps immediately rose on my arms.

  Heath was yanking his leather jacket off and it was situated on my shoulders in a moment.

  “Now you’re going to be cold,” I murmured, inhaling his purely male scent, hoping it imprinted onto my skin. That it would somehow sink into my bones.

  “But you’ll be warm,” he said, his lips coming down on mine for a quick and brutal kiss.

  And then he was walking us along the sidewalk.

  To get lost.

  And I found myself hoping I’d never be found again.

  * * *

  I was nervous.

  I hadn’t given myself time to properly and truly get nervous. To think about what I was doing. Mostly because Heath demanded every ounce of my attention, there was no room for nerves when he was kissing me, when his hands were on me. There was only enough room to remember to breathe.

  But now I was nervous.

  Because it was real.

  I was going to give him my virginity.

  There was no hesitation in that. I knew instinctively that he was the perfect person for me to give it to. He was the person I didn’t know I was waiting for.

  I went on intuition.

  I might’ve still been a girl, but he awakened the woman in me, including my woman’s intuition.

  I knew he’d take care of me. That he wanted to. It was evident in everything he did. From putting his jacket on me to opening my car door, to not moving the car until my seatbelt was buckled, to his hand settling on my thigh the entire ride.

  And then to him directing me to the bedroom and then leaving to get me a glass of freakin’ water.

  Because that was the kind of guy he was.

  “You hungry?” he called from the kitchen.

  Not that he even really needed to raise his voice since the kitchen was approximately two doors away from the bedroom.

  “No thanks,” I called back.

  My stomach was far too unstable for such things like food.

  I was sitting awkwardly on the end of the bed, not quite sure if I should undress, lay seductively splayed across the dark gray comforter, or get right under the covers.

  All of these options seemed awkward, not that sitting ramrod straight at the end of the bed was exactly any better.

  To distract myself, I looked around. Not that there was much to look at. He’d told me that this was his ‘crash pad’ in L.A.

  And considering he was away for years at a time, it was a surprise he even had a pad, crash or otherwise.

  I’d asked him about this on the drive.

  “Why don’t you just get a hotel when you come back?”

  He glanced at me across the cab. “’Cause after a year livin’ hard and rough and not knowin’ if I’d be alive to have a shitty sleep in a shitty cot, I like knowin’ that I’ll be coming back to a bed that’s mine, even if it’s in a crappy apartment. It’s somethin’.”

  All of this was spoken with a harsh nonchalance that I was getting to understand was Heath’s default when talking about things that were heavy or emotional.

  It got to me.

  A lot.

  He didn’t have a home.

  I was a huge believer in a home being people more than a place. A family, adopted or otherwise—I was lucky to have both, plus a physical home of my own with memories that sank into the very foundation—to be a constant, people you could always go to, always count on.

  And Heath hadn’t mentioned family. Friends.

  Granted we barely knew each other, but he already knew I had two sisters, one adopted, one blood related, a mother that texted me to make sure I was still in the country—and being serious—a father that brewed his own beer, and that my friend Allie wanted to star in her own movie but instead was playing a serial killer’s latest victim on some crime show.

  He’d listened. Asked questions. Seemed utterly engaged in my long-winded, enthusiastic and totally crazy stories that should’ve made a guy I met at a bar run a mile.

  He didn’t run a mile.

  He kissed me un
til I was crazy and then took me home.

  To his ‘crash pad’ that served as the one constant he could come back to after months, years of war.

  It wasn’t in a terrible area of L.A., not that I was one to care about ‘areas.’ But the cars parked on the street were nice, the apartment buildings all well-kept, and the streets were well lit.

  He lived in one of the highest buildings on the block, top floor but where that didn’t mean a penthouse, it just meant the exact same, shoebox apartment without hearing the neighbors practicing tap dancing on the floor above.

  You walked in with a small and modern kitchen on the left, an equally small and sparsely furnished living room directly ahead, with doors opening off to a small balcony.

  His hall consisted of one door to the bathroom, one to his bedroom.

  From what I saw of the place, it was lacking any kind of personality but was meticulously clean.

  The bed I was sitting on had army corners and everything. I had yanked at the comforter just to create some disorder because the pure crispness of it all made me uncomfortable.

  The room had a large dresser, not a single thing sitting on top of it. Not a photo, not a jumbled array of aftershave and deodorant.

  Not one thing.

  Ditto with his bedside tables.

  There was a lamp on either side and a digital alarm clock.

  He said he didn’t want a hotel room because he wanted a home. Hotel rooms had more personality than this.

  My heart burned with the knowledge that this was his version of a home.

  It was only as I was blinking away tears at that thought did I realize that the man I’d been crying for was standing in the door, with one glass of water in his hand and his eyes on me.

  I wondered how long he’d been there, staring at me while I had grieved over his version of a home. Or lack thereof.

  “Your bed is far too neat,” I said.

  He blinked.

  “Like, I know it’s good to make beds when we’re not sleeping in them,” I continued. “Believe me, I know, since my entire family are bed makers.”

  Heath’s jaw ticked. “You say that like they’re serial killers.”

  “They might be,” I deadpanned. “Serial killers like order after all.” I paused. “Now would be a terrible time to find out you’re a serial killer. Now I’m alone and at your mercy.”