Page 36 of Twisted Road

He caught her waist and anchored her on him. “Stop being such a scared little rabbit. I laid it out to you in that cave. I was very to the point, and there couldn’t have been any mistakes about my meaning.”

Lyric shook her head. “One of my very bad traits when I say I’m not normal is sometimes I hear things but don’t always comprehend them.”

“You didn’t want to comprehend because you don’t like change. This is a huge change for both of us, but it’s happening.”

“No, it’s not. You don’t get to decide that.”

He ran the pads of his fingers down her face, tracing her cheekbone and then her lips. That barely there smile curved his mouth. “You forget that you’re with a biker, Lyric. This is my world and my rules. You came here of your own free will.”

“I did not. I was unconscious.” She wanted that on record because evidently, she would need it.

“You promised me you’d come home with me.”

That was true. “I was under duress.” Because she’d wanted him happy. That had been the worst of the duress. She’d wanted him happy, so she’d agreed to something she knew wasn’t going to end well.

“It doesn’t matter how you got here, Wildfire, you’re here, and you’re not going to leave.”

“Whatever happened to your motto? Live free or something like that.”

“I do live free, but you don’t. You have a lot of choices, babe, but leaving me isn’t ever going to be one of them. If you didn’t feel about me the way you do, this would be a very different conversation, but you do. I know you don’t want to, and you’re doing everything in your power to shut it down, but since you have to stay, you may as well learn to live with it and enjoy every fuckin’ minute we have together.”

She knew she was frowning. He wasn’t making any sense. She’d had the brain injury, and she knew she had lost a little time here and there, but that didn’t mean the things she knew about Keys weren’t true.

“Honey,” she said, rubbing her finger along his jaw. “You were hit over the head with a baseball bat. You haven’t told me how bad that injury was.”

That smile of his lit his eyes briefly. “You think I’m talking to you like this because I have a brain injury? I’ve always talked to you like this. You just couldn’t hear me.”

“I can assure you, Keys, had you talked to me like this, I would have run for the hills. I know you. You’re not a one-woman man. I’m not made for one-night stands.”

“And I told you, I don’t need hundreds of women to satisfy me. I didn’t want a relationship or to claim a woman of my own until I met you. I made up my mind, and you came home with me, so now you’re here, and you’re going to stay. Having said that I don’t need hundreds of women when one will do, I like sex. I like it my way. You’re going to learn to give it to me the way I want it.”

“Selfish much?”

He burst out laughing. “You won’t think that when you’re begging me for more. If there’s one thing I won’t fuck up with you, it’s sex. Everywhere else, you’re going to have to have patience with me. If you’re not happy, you lay it out for me. We’ll fix it. I’ll do the same.”

Her insides began to quiver. Roll. This was Keys being 100 percent serious.

“You’re shaking your head.”

“It won’t work. You know it won’t. You’ll move on the way you do, Keys, but I won’t recover. It’s just a bad idea.” She didn’t want to hurt him. She just needed him to understand. Her fingers stroked a soothing caress along his jaw. “You have to listen to me when I tell you I’m not like other people. I am very good at blending in. Fitting in. That’s what I do, and I hardly ever make mistakes. But what people see isn’t real.”

“I’m aware, Lyric,” he said softly.

“I feel too much. I pretend I don’t, but I feel too much. It’s part of my…condition. You don’t. That’s not a dig at you, it’s just how you’re wired. There are so many reasons why we’re not compatible…”

“Yeah, I heard every one of them. I’m not being dismissive of your fears, Wildfire. I can see they’re very real. But we have a bottom line here, and we may as well skip all the bullshit in between to get to that. You get me?”

She was really shaking, not just inside. Keys had no idea how bad his idea was. He just couldn’t understand. “No.”

She held up her hand to stop him. Her fingers ended up too close to his face. He leaned forward and sucked her fingers into the hot cavern of his mouth. Her world stopped. Exploded. Sparks rained down. A thousand little stars burst around her head. In her head.

It was ridiculous how badly she reacted. Every nerve ending came alive and was wholly aware of Keys. Centered on him. Her lungs burned for air. She didn’t understand why, but her reaction terrified her. Along with everything else she was feeling for him, she didn’t want to be physically attracted. That was the surest way to the end of their friendship. She would have nothing. No one.

His eyes burned over her. That amber that glittered like gold. There was something she couldn’t read there, but it both terrified her and sent waves of heat crashing through her veins. In her life, she’d never felt the intense pull of sexual hunger. She had always thought she wasn’t in the least sexual, but at that moment, her world tilted, turned, and she was burning hot.

“I—I need to think, Keys,” she actually stuttered, one hand going to his chest as if that could stop the coming storm.

Around her, the edges of the room were darkening. She felt the rolling thunder in her chest, her heart pounding. She tasted him in her mouth as if the essence of him was already leaking into her body through her pores.