RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,43
a strange look in his eyes. The brief moment of eye contact we share makes me want to hide behind the fucking bookcase. Turning away, he strikes a long match and holds the flickering flame against the paper until each one of the scrunched-up balls is alight. “Your father taught you Morse code, too, right?”
“Yes.” I don’t want to relinquish this or any other piece of information about myself, but it’s a simple enough question. I have no reason to withhold the truth.
“It wasn’t a game for him, was it? It was a punishment.”
A shockwave of panic detonates in my chest. It ripples out, sending adrenalin chasing through my veins, spreading through me like that lightning that fired across the sky before. He can’t know anything about my father. He can’t know shit about my past, or about me. Anything he thinks he knows is wrong, so why do I feel like he’s just cracked me open and rifled through all of my ugly secrets? It makes me feel suddenly dirty. “My father’s irrelevant,” I say tightly.
“Our fathers shape us,” Wren says, standing up to his full height. Behind him, the fire he built roars to life, like the infernos of hell just leapt at his command and obeyed his summons. “I’ve read a lot about your old man. What else did he teach you? Muay Thai?”
“No.”
“Oh right. Israel. He probably taught you Krav Maga.”
I do not like that he’s able to deduce so much about me. It’s unfair that he’s armed with information that I don’t know about him in kind. There are things…things that he can’t know. Things that have been buried so well and so deep that even he couldn’t have dug them up. “I don’t see how any of this is important,” I say.
He pouts. “Do you still practice? I know a little Krav Maga myself. We could spar.”
“No.”
“No, you don’t practice anymore, or no, you don’t want to spar with me?”
“No, I don’t practice here. Why would I when I don’t have to? And can we stop talking about my father, please? That stuff’s private.”
Wren shrugs off my cold tone. “Your wish is my command.”
Quiet and as leonine as a panther, he crosses the small room, coming to a stop in front of me. Flicks of his hair hang down into his face, creating a dripping curtain that shields his eyes. I still feel the intensity of them, though, burning into my skin. He licks his lips, his hand reaching up, making me flinch.
He pauses, an inch away from my face. He has pianist’s hands, with long, dexterous fingers. I’m riveted by the sight of them. By the thought of what he might do with them if left unchecked. His nails are still covered in that same chipped black nail polish I noticed on my first night at Wolf Hall. “You’re a flighty little thing,” he rumbles. I resent the way his voice makes my skin break out in goosebumps.
“Forgive me for being cautious, but I don’t know anything about you. We’re not friends,” I volley back at him. “I’m not accustomed to people thinking they can touch me uninvited.”
He drops his hand back to his side, a slow smile spreading across his damnable face. “I’ll be sure to wait until I’m invited, then. You have a rose petal in your hair. I was just gonna get it out for you.”
I automatically check my hair, finding the petal and disentangling it. Wren sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, his eyes full of an emotion I can’t rightly decipher. It’s a dangerous look. Sharp. The type of look that could cut if administered correctly. Retreating a couple of steps, he shrugs, grabbing hold of the hem of his black long-sleeved shirt.
“If you want to stand there in your soaking wet clothes, that’s your call, Stillwater. I’m not one to suffer discomfort willingly, though.”
Before I know what he’s doing, he’s pulled the sodden material of his shirt over his head and turned around, walking back to the fire, where he hangs the item of clothing from the rough-cut mantlepiece for it to dry. I’m left staring at his back—a naked expanse of muscle and flawless, tanned skin that makes my throat pulse and throb. That shirt, the same shirt he’s been wearing day in and day out since that very first night when I met him outside Wolf Hall, has been hiding a multitude of sins: strong arms, a broad, strong back, and a chest that