Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,36

“The emptiness of it. Devoid of expectation. Everyone is meant to be asleep at night. Everyone is meant to be dreaming or having nightmares, whatever. So, I like to be awake in that time. It feels forbidden, don’t you think? Somehow wrong? Even as an adult, when we don’t have curfews, bedtimes, three in the morning feels wrong, doesn’t it?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I didn’t even let the pure shock sink in to the fact that I was sharing so much with a stranger.

“I like that. I don’t use it to write or anything horribly cliché like that. Why would I use this time, this freedom, for anything like that? I like to do nothing. Stare at the night. Wander around in the dark. All my demons keep me company, there’s not enough room for others. Not until the sun shines. So that’s why I’m awake at three in the morning right now. Because I always am.”

He didn’t soften with my words, with my exposure to him. In more ways than just my skin. I knew he could tell this was out of character for me because he calculated character. He measured people up, down to the millimeter, so he knew how to tear them apart.

Don’t ask me how I knew that.

Maybe I didn’t know that; maybe that’s what I was creating about him, for my story. I did that sometimes. Only knew people for as long as it took me to get a skeleton, then Frankenstein bits of flesh together to make them into a character that suited me. Suited my stories. Was I making him up, or was he already a Frankenstein?

Saint didn’t speak.

Neither did I.

No wolves howled at the moon. All other predators were silent.

An icy breeze swept through us, and pushed my cardigan to the side, so the edge of my nipple teased at his vision. I didn’t make a move to cover it. Why should I? He was in my space.

Plus, a modicum of hunger teased itself from my pure silk underwear. A need that was so animalistic in nature, it surprised me. I was not a sexual person. No matter what I wrote in my books, what I wore, what I said in interviews. There was no feral hunger in me to be thrown around like some kind of prop.

Even…before.

But yes, I was feeling it now.

Surely something to do with hypothermia I was meant to be recovering from instead of catching all over again.

Saint’s almost lazy gaze sharpened from my chest area and darted toward the wood pile that was now long forgotten, hypothermia or not.

In one blink, he was bent down, scooping up the wood with ease.

I waited for it.

The gruff order to get back in the house, get off my feet while he tended to my warmth and well-being. He certainly had the air of a man who liked to order a woman around.

But nothing came.

He straightened, walked straight past me and into the house.

No offer of his jacket, no ask if I needed help getting inside, or dealing with the pesky bout of arousal somehow intensifying with his detached demeanor.

I didn’t like the idea of him being in my space again. With my rumpled, damp sheets, the scent of my sweat still hanging in the air. The empty wine bottle. Empty whisky bottle. Empty fucking heart.

But here I was. And if it were a choice between dying from exposure five feet from my home or going in to brace an awkward situation with a man I found attractive, it was going to be the latter.

I’d given up once.

Once.

Which was pretty darn impressive if you asked me, considering my history.

But once was it. All I was allotted.

So, I hobbled into the house.

He hadn’t turned on more lights, like most normal people might do. People felt comfortable lighting up their houses like beacons when it was dark, so everything was visible, nothing hiding amongst the shadows. As had previously been established, I relished the things that hid in the shadows.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise Saint did too.

The man was a shadow.

I had expected the fire to be roaring by the time I made it in. He was a man, he make fire, impress helpless woman.

But no.

The firewood was piled neatly in the chic basket allotted to it. The fireplace itself, dead and dark.

“You know how to make a fire?” he asked. His voice was colder than the night air, bursting in from the door I hadn’t bothered