“Is it true?” I stalked up to him.

He dragged his eyes from my face to my feet and back again. “Is what true?”

“You want to send me home,” I snapped. “You emailed Tabitha. Don’t be dense.”

He hissed and his eyes flashed in warning. He circled me, and I turned with him. “Evan?” he asked.

“It wasn’t Evan.” Shit, I didn’t want Tabitha getting in trouble either. “I overheard you.”

“No, you didn’t.” He stepped toward me, and I retreated to the darkness of the wall next to the couch. There was no way I would sit down and share a nice congenial moment with him. I needed to clear the air, and then I was getting out of here. There was a danger to this man tonight. Who was I kidding? There was a danger to him every night.

Why did everyone else see a kind, handsome, and broken pussycat?

All I saw was a lethal predator who I felt sure had the means to snatch my heart from my chest with a single swipe.

He loomed.

“What are you doing?” I gasped as my back hit the wall and he kept coming. “Y-you’re scaring me.”

“Good.” His palm smacked the wall by my head, and the smell of stale, smoky and alcohol fueled club air sifted slowly into linen and rough pine wood. “Because you scare the shit out of me,” he said. “Tu me détruis.”

I swallowed but my throat was stuck. “Wh-what does that mean?”

He leaned in, nose skimming up my cheek, inhaling me. We’d never been this close. My body lit up like a glowing tinder.

My breathing grew shallow.

Fingers lightly pressed into the hollow of my throat, resting. His skin to mine. “You don’t seem like a girl who scares easily.” The words, delivered so softly right into my ear, made every molecule of my skin vibrate.

“I’m not,” I managed, though I knew that wasn’t what he’d said in French. My hands, pressed to the wall on either side of my hips, dropped and I fisted them to keep from reaching for his waist. To stop my fingers curling into the belt loops of his jeans and tugging him closer. I was enclosed in the energy of his body, aching. But resisting. This was my boss. And he’d taken leave of his senses. One of us had to keep our head.

“What about me scares you?” he asked.

I squeezed my eyes closed, like I could gather my courage. I dragged in air laden with his woody scent. The same air that was weighed down with the heady and heavy atmosphere of the club. We were suspended in time. His face hovered next to mine, his mouth by my ear. My nerve endings screamed for contact as his every exhale stirred across my skin.