Page 41 of Steel's Secret
“A black SUV has been sitting outside my office. A car slowing behind me. Calls that disconnect.” My voice cracks. “Isaiah, someone is watching me.”
Anger flashes in his eyes, swift and violent. Not at me, at the world.
“Let me handle it,” he growls.
I shake my head hard. “No. Talk to me. Tell me who’s behind this.” He looks away. That single motion guts me. “This isn’t random,” I push. “You know something.”
His jaw ticks. “I know enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Something inside me snaps. Fear, fury. I’m not sure which. “Stop treating me like something you can fix with silence!”
His stormy grey eyes whip back to mine. Danger in the dark depths.
“You want the truth?” he bites out. “The law won’t save you, Aria. You know that better than anyone.”
The words slice like glass.
I shove him hard. “So you get to decide for me?”
“Yes.” His voice is low, lethal. “Because whoever’s out there isn’t after you. They’re after me. And using you to get there.”
My breath catches. “Tell me who.”
He hesitates. His fear speaks before he does. “There are old names tied to my father,” he says finally. “Old enemies, someone the Saints thought they buried. Old debts. Someone wants to drag me back into that war.”
That’s not all of it. But it’s all he’ll give me.
“You can’t keep this from me,” I whisper.
“I have to.”
“You don’t trust me.”
His breath stutters. “It’s because I trust you that I can’t.” The room goes still. Cold. Sharp around the edges.
“This isn’t love,” I say, voice trembling. “It’s survival.”
He steps closer. His eyes burn with intensity, and they’re locked right on me. “Same thing around here.”
And suddenly the argument is heat. Too close, too raw, too much.
His hands are on my hips. Mine fisted in his shirt. Anger blurring into desperation. Fear melting into hunger.
I shouldn’t kiss him. He shouldn’t touch me. But we collide anyway. Mouths crushing together with the same reckless certainty that has wrecked us from the beginning.
He lifts me onto the workbench, lips bruising mine, hands gripping my waist like he’s trying to hold back an entire war.
I tear at his shirt. He growls into my mouth. Metal bites my thighs as he pushes between them, heat radiating through denim and leather.
My breath fractures. His name breaks in my throat. “Isaiah…”
“Don’t run,” he whispers against my skin. “Not again. Not from this.”
“This is wrong.”
