He considered me for several seconds, his head cocked, his eyes narrowed. The heat pulsing off of him was even hotter when he faced me straight on like this, his stare searing through me. And just like sitting in front of a blazing fire, it was pleasant yet intense. Too intense.
Still, I didn’t leave.
“Should I tell you what I think, Emily?”
Walk away. “Actually, I don’t really give a fuck.” I tried to pretend I wasn’t completely hypnotized, but even I could hear the failed pretense in my tone.
“See, but I think you do. You came looking for me first, remember?”
“Then you told me to go. And I did. Now who’s doing the looking?”
Reeve reached his hand out and toyed with a loose tendril of my hair. “I’m going to tell you what I think, Emily.” His fingers kept me mesmerized as he rolled the strand between them, his pull gentle, so gentle. “I think you liked it. I think you liked being scared.”
Each word was like the tickle of a feather against sensitive skin, making me itch and squirm under the graze of their truth. I wanted to pull away. Yet I also yearned for an increase in pressure, ached for his fingers to tug, hungered for his words to turn hard or for his mouth to stop talking all together and crash against mine instead.
“I think it turned you on.”
My gaze flew up to meet his. “You mean like it turned you on to threaten me?”
He dropped his hand. Darkness crossed his eyes, and I suspected he was angry that I dared to challenge him. Or angry that I knew something so personal about him. Or maybe angry because it was honest, and maybe that pissed him off as much as his truth afflicted me.
Or maybe it wasn’t anger at all but something else, something more primal and raw and base. Slowly, he smiled. “I can’t deny that it turned me on.”
The tension between us stretched taut. We shared that. However not-very-nice his demonstration, however sick and twisted it had been – we’d both been aroused. And now that we’d both acknowledged it, the dynamic between us changed. Now the door was open. Now one of us just had to walk through it.
Reeve was the one to cross the threshold. He reached out and took my hand in his and caressed his thumb across my knuckles. Goose bumps took perch along my skin as his touch sent electricity shooting up my arm and down to my core.
“Look” – he fixated on our hands – “I’m not going to tell you that I would never hurt you.”
Alarm skidded through my nerves with a delicious thrill, rousing my want, heightening my desire.
“Besides, I don’t think that’s something you’d want to hear from your lover.”
“Lover?” The term caught me off guard. It also brought me to my senses. What the fuck was I doing? I pulled my hand from his and took a step back.
Reeve’s expression gave nothing away. “What exactly did you think we were talking about?”
I hadn’t been thinking at all. That was the problem. There was a pull between us – that much was obvious. I’d meant to take advantage of that when I was using him to find Amber. If I had a reason to still believe he was involved in her disappearance, this would be a victory. But now there was no reason to pursue him. There was no reason to involve myself with a man who was at the very least dangerous if not also a killer.
Yet I still wanted him. “I don’t know, Reeve. Because you do a lot of talking, and all I hear are mixed messages.”
“I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
And what exactly was it he was saying? That he wanted to take me into his bed? That he wanted to scare me and possibly hurt me and I was supposed to be okay with that?
The horrible part was that I was okay with it. But to what end? It had been men like him that I’d run away from all those years ago. Because, even though I desired them, I knew they weren’t good for me. I knew that I didn’t have the capability of determining how much pain, how much fear was too much.
What was it that Reeve had said to me at his spa? “The problem with men who are actually a threat is that you don’t ever find out how unsafe they are until it’s too late.”
It was a wise warning.
He was waiting for me to respond, his eyes questioning.
“I hear you,” I said. Then with effort, I shook my head. “Your last message was louder.”
It was satisfying to be the one to turn away this time. The one with the last word. It didn’t make it any easier.
Just as I was about to step into the Expo, though, Reeve was at my side. He stretched his arm in front of me like a barricade, bracing his hand on the doorframe. He didn’t touch me, but he stood close enough that I could feel his exhale skate across my skin, the rhythm of his breathing a song that brought another layer of goose bumps to the surface.
“I don’t know what it is about you.” His voice was strained, the only sign that he wasn’t completely in control. “But I can’t get you out of my mind. You contaminate my thoughts. I keep remembering your body under my hands as I touched you. The parts of you I didn’t touch. The sounds you made. The look in your eyes. You haunt me, Emily.”
My knees were jelly, my insides a puddle of want and need and trepidation. But warning bells underscored Reeve’s words. “You haunt me,” he’d said. “Contaminate my thoughts.” I recognized the sentiments. I’d been there. I was there – with him, yes. With Amber.
She was the reminder I needed.
I swallowed, and without looking him in the eye said, “Now you know how I felt.”