for a boarder. You didn’t know?” he asked. His voice was even more intimate than the flash of skin at his collar. They might have been talking about something as mundane as renting rooms, but the deep timbre of his tone said that that wasn’t what they were talking about at all.
“No. They never mentioned you,” Trinity said. They might have tried. She’d never given them the chance. Her calls were always brief. The better to forget that she dreaded coming home even as she planned and prepared for it day by day by day.
“And no visits,” Creed pointed out.
Trinity nodded. She also closed her eyes. It was weak, but inevitable, akin to catching herself before she could fall.
“When I first moved in, I thought that you would be back on occasion. I imagined sleeping under the same roof and then I was glad you didn’t come home,” he said.
Her eyes opened in spite of her best intentions. His handsome face was tilted down toward her and its angular lines were shadowed even in the morning light.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Creed said.
“Neither should you,” Trinity replied. She leaned back against the desk to put some distance between them. Six inches was hardly a reprieve.
The whole town had thought him most likely to crash and burn like some rebel teen, not become an historian with his books and memorabilia, and certainly not an author, although his fascination with the occult appeared obvious enough to make her quiver.
“No. You’re right. I shouldn’t be here at all,” Creed agreed. His face tightened. Her attention was drawn by the tension in his jaw. The width of his shoulders. The way his hair brushed his cheeks. Anything and anywhere but his deep, dark eyes.
“Do you remember that day by the lake?” he asked.
And suddenly her gaze went back to his. His eyes were brown. If she looked long enough, if she allowed herself to look long enough…you could see the streaks of dark chocolate in the double shot of near black espresso.
Yes. She could.
And when she did, she realized how much heat it took to melt and blend all those rich colors to create his midnight gleam.
“I remember,” Trinity said.
Her focus dropped to his lips. They had been cold and blue against hers that day, but they had heated, hadn’t they? Once he’d coughed and gasped and came back to life, they had been as warm and wicked and alive as any girl could ask for in her first kiss.
But then she’d spent the next four years of high school and three years in Boston avoiding him and his watchful eyes.
“You tasted like hot chocolate and mint,” Creed said.
He had reached for the end of her shiny scarf and he toyed with it. For some reason, the casual gesture caused heat to rise beneath her skin. Or maybe it was his talk about her taste.
“I saved you,” Trinity said. It hadn’t been about flavorful kisses. It had been about life and death.
“Did you?” Creed asked.
He tugged on the edge of her scarf, firmly but gently. It slid against her skin until the knot caught and then the fabric grew taut against her neck. And still he tugged. Not hard, but insistent. Inexorably. She could resist. She could pull back and away.
She didn’t.
Instead, she let him pull her forward using the gentle tug on her soft scarf as leverage.
He began to wind its length around his fingers—once, twice, again. That was all it took to bring her body flush to his.
He was tall and muscular like a wall ofsolid masculine flesh. His pull had brought her much softer, but much tenser form against his. She was braving the fall by looking into his eyes again and he quirked onebrow and paused, waiting—for what she couldn’t be sure.
Did he expect her to run away?
This close, she could see the damp under layers of his hair and she could detect the scent of soap on his skin. He’d taken a morning shower while she disposed of matches and snooped in his rooms. She could also breathe in the faint mellow bite of the whiskey he’d had before breakfast.
“I shouldn’t be here, but I am. You brought me back from a cold consuming darkness I’d never even known existed. There’s damnation and decadence in that, Trinity, in case you didn’t know,” Creed said. She thought she knew. Somehow. All about darkness and damnation, but not decadence….
Crystalline seconds froze the world around them in that iced November memory, but they weren’t cold now. Not at all.
He dropped his lips to hers in a predatory swoop that had been in the making for seven long years, but he didn’t need the hold he had on her scarf. She held herself still for his descending mouth. She tilted her chin to meet it.
It was a mistake. She accepted the inevitable kiss with the courage she should save to face other things.
His lips were soft, but firm. His tongue, with a hungry flick, brought a hint of expensive Scotch and heat as far removed from November chill as could be. She reached for him, her arms around his neck and one hand burrowed into his hair, but he continued to hold only her scarf as if it was a lifeline.
To save him from what, she couldn’t be sure.
Not Scarlet Falls. He chose to be here. He chose to dive deep into the history of the town.
She was the one who was falling. She could feel the dark hungry maw at her feet. But holding onto Creed only made the fall more imminent.
When she moved her hands to wrap them around the knot he’d made of her scarf, he pulled his lips from hers. Their mouths clung as if in protest for several seconds, but he gave them no mercy. He tilted his chin up to break the contact, but he didn’t let her go. Maybe because her hands were twined around his fist in her scarf and he didn’t want to jar her bandage. Or maybe because he was too busy looking into her eyes.
Trinity shuttered them as fast as she could. She thought of puppy dogs and taxes and how far she would be behind when or if she was ever able to return to school. But somewhere in that mix, erotic thoughts mingled. Like how intoxicating the taste of Scotch was on his tongue even at 9:00 a.m. and how well its rich flavor fit with the shadows in his eyes. And more desperate and wickedthoughts, too. Like maybe, just maybe if she had to face constant threats, she would like to do it with the afterglow of his lovemaking on her lips and on her skin.
“I can’t leave Hillhaven. I have to be here for my work. This is the oldest structure in town. Did you know that?” Creed asked.
He still held her scarf and his eyes still burned. His lips were masculine and firm and also swollen from their kiss. They were only separated from hers by inches. She wanted to narrow that margin, but she held herself very, very still instead.
“The lake is older,” Trinity reminded him, her heartbeat pulsing in her ears.
“I know,” Creed said and she thought she saw the memory of breathing those bleak waters in his face.
His fist loosened
