Rhyannon Byrd - Edge of Hunger

“To see that I’m okay?” he growled, lashes so long and thick they cast shadows against his skin. “Christ, woman. I’m not the one who almost had their fucking throat ripped out.”

A police car came roaring around the corner in the next instant, siren blaring as it sped past the weathered apartment building and into the night. They both jumped, flinching from the jarring screech of the siren’s wail.

Pulling away from her, Ian pushed one rugged hand back through his damp hair, the muscles in his arm and chest coiling and flexing with the action, drawing her eye. “I need a cigarette,” he muttered, turning and disappearing into the darkness behind him. He didn’t slam the door in her face, so Molly assumed she wasn’t being told to leave. He moved deeper into the shadows of the apartment and she followed, pulling the door shut behind her.

Without the light from the street, darkness blanketed the room. The loss of sight made her other senses sharper, the panting sound of her breath filling her ears, the surface of her body so sensitive, it was as if she could feel the shadows against her skin. They slipped over her flesh like tiny, featherlight touches of a fingertip, stroking her cheekbones, her chin, the line of her throat.

Just stay calm. Don’t freak. And for God’s sake, don’t start crying again. He’ll think you’re out of your mind. Not that he doesn’t think that already .

Taking a deep, trembling breath, Molly squinted against the darkness, unsure of where to walk, until a low glow of light spilled into the murky gloom from a doorway on the far side of the room. Following the light, she found him facing her, one powerful shoulder braced against the far wall beside a window in the small kitchen, head lowered as he lifted his arms to light the cigarette perched between his lips. He’d switched on a small light that shone over the sink, the muted glow too weak to reach the shadowed corners, casting him in a hazy glow of gold.

Slanting a curious look in her direction, he spoke in a graveled, hesitant rumble. “Why did you scream my name at the end? Did I hurt you?”

She moved cautiously into the kitchen and collapsed into one of the pine chairs beside a small table, wishing she’d pulled on something heavier. The chill of the air conditioner seeped through her thin shirt, freezing her to the bone, while Ian stood there half-dressed, his body vital and big, covered with a light sheen of sweat, as if impervious to the cold. “No.”

“Then why the scream?” he demanded, taking a long draw off the gleaming cigarette, the details of the room lost beneath the force of his presence. She had the feeling she could have been surrounded by ravenous predators and still have remained oblivious to the danger, her entire focus centered on the hard, beautiful bulk of Ian Buchanan.

“Answer me.” The harshness of his gritty tone made her flinch. The soft glow of light glinted off the broad width of his shoulders, his skin gleaming like bunched satin, and yet, he was completely untouchable. Like a wild, caged animal. Beautiful, but deadly.

Molly looked away and drew an unsteady breath. “I didn’t want…”

“What?” he snapped, the word lashing with whipcord strength.

A self-conscious shrug rolled across her shoulders, her eyes still focused on a distant patch of his kitchen floor. “I didn’t want you to…leave me there alone.” The confession slipped from her lips without any direction from her brain, startling and unintended. She wanted to snatch back the telling, vulnerable words, but it was too late. He was already absorbing them, working them over in his mind, that dark blue gaze zeroed in on her with ruthless, uncompromising intensity when she sneaked a quick peek at him from beneath her lashes.

“Tell me what you remember.”

She flushed, keenly aware of the heat suddenly rising up beneath her skin, burning in her cheeks. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, every part of her oversensitized, as if she were experiencing everything too keenly. The coolness of the air. The stuttering speed of her pulse. The press of that beautiful blue gaze, the mesmerizing color probably the envy of every woman he’d ever known.

“Molly!” he snapped again.

The words jerked from her lips in rapid succession, beyond her control. “We were in a forest. It was night. You were…different.”

A rough, humorless laugh rumbled up from his throat, and he took another deep pull on the cigarette, his silence making her ramble with the need to fill the uncomfortable space. “We had sex, but you…you didn’t…”

Her voice faltered, and in a graveled tone, he said, “Come?”

“Yes.” She shivered, her body clenching with remembered sensation. It had been unlike anything she’d ever known, being under him, consumed by him.

“Believe me,” he grimaced, the barest hint of a wry edge to his words, “I know.”

Her gaze flickered briefly to the immodest bulge in his jeans, and she wanted to ask why—why he hadn’t allowed himself release when inside of her—but couldn’t, suddenly afraid of what he might say. He’d seemed to enjoy what had happened between them, but she knew men were fickle creatures, not to be trusted with emotional issues. His words, if delivered cruelly, could cut her to the quick, and she was already feeling too raw, the defenses she’d spent so many years building suddenly seeming frail and unstable. She didn’t know him well enough to trust him. Hell, she didn’t know him at all.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, she felt perfectly safe, alone there with him in the middle of the night, with nothing but the quiet stillness for company. Those storm-dark eyes moved over her face, lingering over her individual features. Then he lowered his head, reaching out toward the ashtray perched on the edge of the kitchen counter. She knew if she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she would have missed it, that bleak shadow of fear that crept over the rugged angles of his profile. He slanted a sharp look in her direction when her breath sucked in on a gasp, and for a single instant, she could have sworn she heard his raspy voice in her head. Heard the unspoken question he was too afraid to ask.

“No,” she whispered, her body trembling with a low vibration.

He ground out the cigarette in the stainless steel ashtray and turned toward her, feet braced apart in an aggressive stance, powerful arms crossed over his broad chest. “No what?”

She rolled her lips together. “You’re not evil.”

He grunted in response, distracted, and began pacing the width of the room. She watched his bare feet against the faded linoleum, long and dark, but as perfectly proportioned as the rest of him. Her gaze traveled up the length of his body, over the hardness of his thighs, the corrugated stretch of his abdomen, and he raised his arms, shoving his fingers back through the rumpled mass of his hair. She could do nothing but stare at the bulging power of his biceps with wide-eyed fascination. He was so perfectly sculpted, it was as if a master artisan had cut him from marble like David , and the gods had breathed life into him.

But he was no angel.

And yet…he wasn’t a devil, either.

“I mean it, Ian. You’re not evil, no matter how… physical your dreams might be.”

“Yeah, and how can you be so sure? You don’t know me. Don’t know what I’m capable of. Don’t know what I dream about doing to the women in my bed.” He stopped pacing, turning his head to look at her, eyes sharp and dark, so blue they looked black. “Or maybe you do.”