Read Heart of Danger for Free Online

liked him. They’d had a great meal. Back in his car, she’d decided to let him kiss her and that she’d accept another dinner invitation. And maybe on the weekend she’d invite him over for lunch.
    Nice and slow. The way she liked it.
    And he’d leaned over, fisted his hand in her hair and kissed her hard, aggressively, opening her jaw with his other hand and thrusting with his tongue. He took her completely by surprise and she resisted.
    He liked that. Oh yeah he liked that. A lot.
    And what he was inside, under that nice, bland exterior, rushed like ice over her skin. Swirls of violence filled her head, red-tinted and hot. Sickness pulsed through her in nauseating waves, nearly overwhelming her. It had been there all along, and she hadn’t seen it because she hadn’t touched him. She recognized at his kiss that violence filled him, as if his skin was a sack full to the brim with it. All it took was the slightest abrasion and the skin broke and aggression and violence came geysering out.
    She’d pushed at him and run to her small house, slamming the door behind her, panting. Listening until, finally, she heard his car tires squeal as he took off fast.
    That night had been like a watershed, the lowest point of her life. After slamming the door shut, she’d slid down the wall, huddling in on herself and trembling for hours.
    It had occurred to her for the first time that maybe this was it. It was never going to get better, ever. She’d misjudged the man because she kept herself so isolated. And she kept herself isolated because her gift poisoned the well whenever she wanted to get close to someone.
    The episode scared her so much she hadn’t touched a man since, for fear she’d chance upon someone else just brimming with violence.
    That wasn’t the impression she was getting here, though granted, she wasn’t touching him. What she got was impenetrable granite. Massive self-control. What was under it was invisible to her. It might be violence, it might not, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to come geysering out. It wasn’t going to come out at all.
    She met his eyes. Women tended to look people in the eye, but some men interpreted that as aggression, as lack of respect, and responded accordingly. She didn’t get the sense in any way that this man was out of control. On the contrary. Every single line of his big body remained still, clearly leashed to his will.
    Even though he was armed to the teeth.
    There was a big black gun strapped to his right thigh and a big black knife in a sheath on his other thigh. He didn’t need them. His entire body was a weapon. There was power in every long line of him. Leashed, potent, unmistakable.
    His winter wear was some kind of high-tech stuff—thin black non-reflective material—and it showcased his body, one of the strongest bodies she’d ever seen. Extra wide shoulders tapering down to a lean waist, long, powerful thighs, long arms and massive hands at the ends of them.
    This was truly a formidable man and he’d glowered at her during the entire interrogation. Fierce, dark eyes fixed on hers, as if waiting to catch her out in a lie. Well, she was too steeped in neurolinguistics to make any mistakes in eye displacement even if she were lying. She knew precisely the body language necessary to convey truthfulness. If she wanted to lie, only an fMRI would show it because she couldn’t force her brain to light up specific areas.
    She wasn’t lying so it wasn’t an issue, but the quality of the man’s attention was such that she was certain he’d unmask untruths coming from anyone he cared to unmask.
    His entire body language was still but wary. He didn’t trust her, not an inch. Had she made any kind of aggressive or even evasive move, there was no doubt he’d have snake-fast reflexes. So she stayed still, too.
    But now she’d fulfilled the mission a sick man had sent her on, one she’d been helpless to refuse. It was done, for better or worse. The tension