Up in Smoke - Tessa Bailey Page 0,42
and pull her back against him. Something hideous took up residence in his stomach at what she’d just revealed. He’d seen it coming and still hadn’t been prepared for the image. “I let him think he was going to take me home so I could get the information we needed, then I crawled out the bathroom window.”
His hands started to shake. It wasn’t only the flirting that maddened him. He loathed knowing she’d smiled at some fucker, teased the guy with the same body she teased him with. But it was so much more. He knew what men were capable of. Some men, especially men who’d had a few whiskeys, weren’t always satisfied with flirtation. It gave them the false assumption they were owed something. Which could lead to them trying to take it. That line of thinking might be extreme, but when he’d lived his life, seen women around him get taken advantage of or mistreated, the possibilities crashing through his brain weren’t out of the question. Not by any stretch.
He massaged his forehead for long moments, trying to bring his boiling temper back down to a simmer, but it didn’t work. It needed to be released or it would remain and fester. Without thinking, he hauled back with his fist and slammed it into the SUV’s rear window. It cracked, glass crunching into a curved impression of his closed hand. Goddammit. This part of himself was disgusting. This trait he’d inherited. The need to be destructive when everything built up and required a place to go. “You don’t know what it does to me, Erin.” He pushed the words out between clenched teeth. “Knowing you were all alone in a bar full of men. You don’t know.”
Based on the stunned look on her face, she now had an inkling. “You do know that they can’t touch me. I wouldn’t let them. If I can’t even have your hands on me, you think I could stand theirs?”
“Theirs. That’s my point. How many of them, sweetheart? And only one of you.” He bunched his fist, pondering full-on demolishment of the window. Needing to see it break. Dying to hear the crunch and feel his knuckles being abraded. “What if they didn’t give you a choice? Any of them could have followed you to the bathroom or out of the bar—”
There went the window. Aware that his show of anger had to be alarming her, he inhaled through his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, she was standing in front of him, not a hint of fear on her face. Only concern for him. He mentally sagged under the weight of her confidence in him, her obvious faith that although his fist broke windows, it would never come near her. Jesus, he’d rather die.
Connor held his breath as Erin locked her wrists behind his neck, rubbing her cheek against the center of his chest, his hammering heart. She started to sway side to side, like a lapping ocean, and he was powerless to do anything but move with her, getting lost in the unhurried rhythm. Inside him, the chaos turned from a bright, blazing red to a tranquil blue. It happened so fast, it dizzied him. All it took was her touch, her being there. “You’re back now. You’re back,” she murmured, her voice almost carried away by the stiff breeze. “Anyway, that window had it coming.”
It all came pouring out, his words tumbling over themselves in an effort to reach her and be accepted. “It felt good sometimes. Maybe all the time.”
“What felt good?”
“Beating on scumbags back in Brooklyn. Sometimes I…wanted to do it.” He swallowed the knot in his throat. “I started to like it too much. It was like a reprieve from thinking.”
“Like my fire.” She nodded against him. “I understand.”
“Tell me you know I’d never hurt you,” he begged her quietly. “Especially out of anger. Tell me.”
“I know that,” she whispered.
The frustration in his chest had eased, but as he leaned back and looked her over from head to toe, it took a different shape. A possessive one that, unlike the anger she’d soothed away, wouldn’t allow a similar fate. He let his gaze wander down her exposed stomach to end between her thighs. “Tempt a room full of men with what’s mine? You show me what you were tempting him with. I need to be the only one who sees.”
Adrenaline sparkled, adding to Erin’s arousal. “Here? Outside?”
“No.” Connor closed his eyes