Captured at Nightfall (Capture My Heart Love Story) (8 page)

He nodded, lips twitching. “Good girl.”

This felt so . . . weird, sitting here with
him
. Allie was tongue-tied and flustered, not really sure where to steer the conversation. With Matthew, she felt like she needed a bullet list of points to talk about. He wasn’t one to fall into easy or light chatter. She sighed. “Sorry I bothered you at work.”

His mouth quirked.
“Are you really?”

Her cheeks flooded with heat. “Okay, not really.
But I did kind of force you here.”

He chuckled then and
Allie fought to keep her jaw from falling into her lap.
Laughter!
“Is that what you think?” He shook his head, eyes lighting with humor. “Trust me, baby. If I didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t have.”

“Then why the fight?”

His mouth compressed and he drew in a deep breath. “Who’s to say I was fighting
you
? Maybe I’ve been fighting
myself
for the last few weeks?”

What?

She blinked back, all wide-eyed, like a deer caught in the headlights moments before a tragic death-by-semi. “But, I thought you were mad at me for stalking you? I’ve been online all week trying to get your information so I could see you, but you’re like some kind of ghost. I had to drive back down to the UMMA and bribe some guy to give me the only address he had on you; which turned out to be for PPMS.”

His face darkened and his words dripped with ice, “You shouldn’t be in that part of town.
Ever
. You have no idea what kind of shit goes on there.” His fingers found hers across the table and squeezed gently. “Promise me you won’t go back.” Deep green eyes glared at her beneath a tight brow.

“I
. . . promise,” she stammered.

His eyes narrowed
while he looked for a lie in her face. Finally, he sat back and his fingers slid free from hers, only to dive into his mess of bronze hair.

She swallowed, trying desperately to dislodge her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
Her fingers still stung with the electricity of his touch. “So . . . about the stalking. I’m not like this normally.”

His lips curled up, showing a glimpse of perfect white teeth and a shudder shot down
her, an image of what he’d done with them not long ago flashing through her mind.

“You think
you’re
the stalker?” His voice had dropped into that caramel choco fudgin’ goodness again.

“Yes,” she breathed
and her stomach twisted into a tight knot.

The waitress took that
moment to bring their meals.

While
the food’s aroma swept across her she looked into his gorgeous face and her tongue darted out to wet her lips. When his eyes fell to her mouth her breath hitched inside her lungs. What was she going to do with this man? One moment he scared the ever-loving shit out of her, and then the next melted her insides to butter.

His mouth tightened, but his shoulders relaxed. “
I’ve been looking into you, too, Allison. After everything that happened, I wanted to make sure you were safe. I drove by your house a few nights . . . you know, to make sure you were still okay.”

Holy
turtle shit.

He’d been so close all
this time and she’d had no idea. Allie didn’t know if she should run, screaming for the hills or be relieved that she’d obviously had some effect on him, too.

Matthew
took a drag on his dark, frothy beer before continuing, “So, we’re both stalkers.”

Oh
. . . “Okay, then,” she breathed. Inside she was squealing like a sissy, clapping her hands, and dancing around in circles.

“Okay?” His eyes widened.

Allie shrugged and pulled her plate back toward her, shook out her napkin, and placed it in her lap. “We’re both stalkers.” She prodded one of the long noodles with her fork.

Matthew
’s head tipped to the side and his mouth twitched with a smile. “And I was afraid this would be awkward.” He sipped some more beer and popped a piece of fish into his mouth.

Following suit,
Allie cut into her meal and bit into a scoop of sauce and pine nuts. The woodsy, rich texture of the mushroom ragout was delicious. She put her fork down on the side of her plate and leveled her gaze across the table at him. “Why didn’t you want to come then, if you’ve been watching after me?”

The pupils of his eyes dilated and his voice dropped to a low growl. “I told you. I’m not good for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” Eyebrows raised.

“Innocent.
Naïve. Still yet to discover the ugliness that plagues this world.”

Bitter laughter escaped her lips. “
I’m not totally unfamiliar to hardship.”

He shook his head. “
Life’s hard, there’s no diminishing that fact; but what I’m talking about is the presence of real, undiluted evil.”

“And you know about evil?”

He shook his head. “Baby, you don’t know the half of it.” He took another pull on his beer.

Uncomfortable with
the way their conversation had plunged into the macabre, Allie decided to move on to another subject. “So, the bodyguard company; is it yours?”

“Now it is.” His mouth carved downward. “I had a partner
. He’s . . . gone now.”

Allie
patted the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “How’d you get into the bodyguard stuff?” As she said it, she couldn’t help hearing Whitney Houston singing about always loving you. She coughed around a giggle and asked, “Was it from the Navy?”

Using knife and fork,
Matthew sliced off a piece of fish and layered a small chunk of vegetable beneath it. He was so self-contained, so meticulous and deliberate with his movements. It had Allie sitting up straighter just watching him eat. The bite slid between his lips and he chewed before taking another sip of beer. “Not exactly,” he replied. “We don’t make a lot, and I was between tours for a few months at a time. Started taking the random security job to earn extra cash. Made a business out of it and after a few years, it all just blew up into what it is now.”

“You seem to have done well,” she agreed, mouth tipping to the side.
“How old are you?”

That deep, rumbly chuckle again. “
Thirty-three”—
Crap! Nearly ten years her senior?
She tried not to gape.
What the hell was she doing?
—“Who would have guessed I’d succeed at business. I was a total screw up in school. And my half-semester attempt at college was a joke.” His eyes danced with whatever memory floated through his head.

Feeling
more brazen by the minute, she asked, “How come, if you’re some big, bad SEAL, you’re not all ripped like your goon squad?”

His lips trembled with a smile.
“Goon squad, huh? Most of the guys that work at PPMS are there for appearance only. Truth is; the real warriors come in all shapes and sizes, none of them muscle-bound meat heads. To do what we do, we have to be strong, but also retain maximum flexibility. It’s more about mental strength, really. Being willing to do whatever it takes. Refusing to give up. That’s a mantra in the teams.

“
There’s a reason we have such a hefty dropout rate.”

Allie
paused to take another bite of linguini. He was open to her—maybe because of the beer—but whatever the reason, he was answering questions. She had the feeling it wasn’t something that happened often and she wanted to milk the opportunity for what it was worth, while it lasted.

“Sounds romantic to me,” she mused. “So much self-sacrifice and talk about duty to country. You’re like some kind of modern-day knight of the round table.”

His knife and fork came down hard on the side of his plate. “We need to get something straight. Romance don’t have a damned thing to do with it.” His voice was soft, but the tension that radiated from it suffocated. “I get the knights of the round table bullshit a lot. Knights were trained killers, no matter how you spin it. At the end of the day, they came home bloody and beat. Nothin’ dreamy about that. War is ugly. America—” he jabbed a finger toward her chest “—is a pinnacle of light to a lot of the world, but like anything else, so much light casts an even blacker shadow.” He took another sip of beer. “People like me exist to keep the darkness from getting too close. And it takes some darkness to fight darkness; otherwise you can’t know how to exterminate it. Warriors live in twilight; we hold the line so the rest can enjoy the sun.” He leveled a stare at her. “I’ve killed, Allison. Difference was; every life I took saved countless others.”

His gaze held hers captive, challenging her
while the seconds ticked slowly by. For some reason, the confession brought a lump of emotion to Allie’s throat and her eyes burned with the urge to cry. He’d no doubt seen his share of evil.

“Sounds lonely,” she rasped.

“Has to be.” He finished off the last of his food and pushed his plate to the side. “Are you done?”

Allie
looked down at her half-eaten plate. Her appetite had evaporated a while ago. “Yes.”

He
peeled an obscenely large amount of cash from the top of his money clip and placed it in the middle of the table, leaving Allie to stutter incoherently about her treating
him
to dinner, and how they should at least go Dutch.

He
just ignored her and slid out of the table before offering her his arm. Allie took it, enjoying the warmth and hard muscle beneath her fingertips even though he’d just unloaded on her.

This was one of the most bizarre
dates she’d ever had. She’d never felt more conflicted in her life.

They walked out the front of
the restaurant in silence. Allie was all-too happy to remain that way. She looked down at Matthew’s scarred hands again and swallowed as a jolt of fear splintered through her. Those hands had killed. The idea was terrifying.

Driving back
to the PPMS building, Allie used the opportunity to take in Matthew’s profile from under her lashes. Tinted windows seemed to put everything in a strange, dark bubble. The outside lights of the evening traffic reflected golden beams off Matthew’s bronze hair and traced white lines down the edge of his smooth nose, lips, and chin.

What did she want with this man?
She’d been asking herself that same question all afternoon. From all accounts, she’d be better off to tell him goodnight and be grateful when they went their own ways. She had a feeling he was trying to scare her into doing just that. But . . . now she’d come this far she wanted to know more. Matthew was all dark carnality and mystery, a real life Rambo, rubbing over her senses like velvet, seducing her at every turn. She wanted to delve head first into whatever darkness she sensed he’d been warning her about tonight. She didn’t care what consequences could result, as long as it meant she’d be spending more time with him.

The SUV rumbled to a stop behind
Allie’s car—of course Matthew knew which one was hers, it was the only 2000 model in the lot—and he shut off the engine.

They turned to each other at the
same time, which would have been funny, had it not filled the atmosphere with instant crackles of electricity. Allie cleared her throat, lost in Matthew’s green eyes, unnervingly close to her in the dark. That damned magnetism was in full force, tugging her eyelids closed and shooting her heart rate on a sprint through her veins.

She swallowed. “
Matthew, look. . .”

He seemed to snap out of their weird connection and quickly opened his door. “Wait,” he commanded before walking to the other side and opening the Escalade’s passenger-side door for her. His fingers wrapped around hers, a cool anchor as he helped her out, sending shocks and tingles coursing up her arm and bringing her blood to a full rolling boil. He must have felt it, too, because as soon as he released her hand, his fingers flexed at his thigh.

His head cocked to the side as he regarded her, his face shut down so Allie had no idea what was going through his mind. No doubt about it, standing face-to-face with this Grecian god had the heat of Allie’s rising lust stoking by the second. Her tongue ran nervously over her upper lip, drawing that deep green gaze back to her mouth again.

A growl rumbled deep in his
throat. “Screw it,” his voice a harsh rasp.

Allie
’s back landed against the side of her car door as Matthew covered her with his body. He was a wall of hard muscle, every inch of him pressing against every inch of her, lighting up her nerve endings like a pinball machine. His thigh pushed between her legs and that delicious part of him shifted to that part of her that was currently on the verge of short-circuiting.

Holy, sweet mother of
mercy
, she thought with a gasp. She’d never felt anything like this before. It was too much; she was going to combust.

Her ragged breathing was cut off when his lips slanted over hers. Astonishingly soft and gentle, his mouth
asked without words for her submission. Her answering sigh gave him the opening he needed and his tongue was suddenly filling her mouth, stroking and entwining; hot, and wet, and tasting like heaven. His hands laced through her hair at the back of her head until his fingertips grazed the base of her skull. She shivered and heat blossomed inside her belly like a golden flower. His fingers constricted around her hair, gently twisting her head to the side, giving him access to her throat. His breath was a cool draft against her skin. Pebbling goose bumps rose up to meet his lips while his teeth grazed and nipped against her skin, his mouth a soft, velvet brush following in their wake.