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anyone?”
    I crossed my arms across my chest. Shielding myself from him had already proven impossible, but I was stubborn. “Yes.”
    â€œBullshit. When did you start lying to yourself?”
    For survival,
I wanted to shout
. Because I wasbusy mourning you, when I couldn’t finally do with you what I’d never done with anyone else.
    So I didn’t answer him. He got up in one swift movement, and I backed away a step or two, but no, he wasn’t letting that happen. Mr. Tall, Dark and Commanding closed that space rapidly, leaving just enough room for me to not be completely threatened.
    â€œKiss me.”
    â€œYou can’t order someone to kiss you.”
    â€œI’m not ordering
someone
. I’m telling
you
to kiss
me
.”
    My tongue darted out to lick the corner of my lip as I considered this. Very dangerous—or it could possibly prove that this pretense of attraction was just that. “Okay, fine.”
    He raised his brows in that “I’m waiting” way.
    I put my mouth on him and was rewarded with a bruising, brutal kiss that devastated my nervous system. Hands down destroyed it as he’d proved I’d been lying to myself.
    â€œDamn you,” I murmured against his mouth, and then I stopped thinking. His arms came around me, steel bands, but warm. His whole body was so damned warm.
    He murmured against my cheek, “Every second I was on that goddamned concrete floor, bleeding and waiting for help, I thought aboutyou. Every single day I was in that hospital, I thought about you.”
    â€œYou hung up.”
    â€œI had to concentrate on not dying, Calla,” he said fiercely, then softened. “I want you to realize that I’m not going anywhere. Correction—I’m not going anywhere without you.”
    I thought about him lying on the concrete floor, then in a hospital bed, clinging to life. Thinking about me. Heady stuff, and I couldn’t deny that it made me feel better about the uncertainty I’d faced so far. “You expect women to fall at your feet. I’m sure they do. It’s not happening this time.”
    He leaned into me again, the scruff of his cheek brushing my ear. “It’s already happened, Calla. So fucking deal with it.”
    Was it time to surrender to the inevitable? What could it hurt?
    It could break your heart, baby girl.
    My mother’s voice. Grams’s too. Both strong women almost done in by equally strong and dangerous men.
    Although no, that wasn’t right—those men were dangerous, but not strong. Because they’d never come back to do what was right. Cage was here, despite everything, despite the threats to his own life. According to Tenn, Cage had riskedit again to come make sure I was all right. How could I walk away from that?
    God, I was in so much trouble. I should run, out the door, down the street, beg the nearest police officer to get me home . . .
    Home.
    Where’s that again, Calla?
    But no, I wouldn’t do that, because I had nowhere else to go. I’d never let myself be defeated, and I wouldn’t start now.
    I’d had dark, dangerous men circle me before. I seemed to be a magnet for them. I was independent and they took that as a personal affront or challenge. But that’s not why I did it. Not at all.
    I saw what dangerous men did to the women in my family, how it left them with nothing, beat up and destroyed. It started with Grams, continued with Mom, who loved a bad man while never giving Jameson Bradley a second chance. And it continued with me trusting the wrong boy.
    I’d watched love ravage those women until they’d become nearly unrecognizable. Loving the wrong man wasn’t a crime, but I began to believe that it should’ve been. Because it rendered both my mom and Grams incapable of loving any other man—any good man—and there were several in each of their lives that came calling.
    I never went as far as