“Why should I be afraid of you, Brick?” she scoffed. Sure, her knees were literally shaking. But it wasn’t from fear. It was so much worse.

“Because…” he said, leaning in closer and closer in slow motion.

She stopped breathing and realized she’d flattened herself against the kitchen wall like a cartoon character pancaked by an anvil. He was so damn tall. She had to tilt her head way back to look up at him. And what she saw in his eyes made her wish she would have looked south rather than north.

He stopped an inch from her. So close that she could feel the hum of awareness firing between their bodies. So close that if she took a deep enough breath her breasts would brush against his chest and her nipples would celebrate.

“Take a breath before you pass out, Remington.”

She took one. A ragged, wheezy one. “Why should I be afraid of you?” she repeated.

He held up a hand like he was going to caress her cheek, but his palm stopped just short of touching her, and he withdrew it. It was his turn to take a jagged breath. “Because if you knew all the things I wanted to do to you, you’d leave town tonight and never look back.”

All the things he wanted to do to her? Like tie her up, throw her in a trunk, and murder her in the woods things?

His lips quirked. It wasn’t a smile per-say. But it was a sign of amusement. “Sometimes I can hear you clear as day in my own head. Sometimes—like when you’re calling from the ice bridge because you’re bloody and stranded—I’m thinking about murder. But most of the time…” His hand was back. And this time, he trailed his index finger down the side of her neck, over her clavicle, and under the neckline of her sweater.

She was on fire. He was touching her. On purpose. The trail his finger left behind was fire, lava, lightning.

“Most of the time?” she repeated.

“I showed up for the same reason I do everything.”

“What’s that?” she pressed. She was getting lightheaded and hoped she wouldn’t do something undignified like pass out at his feet.

“For you, Remi.”

Maybe she wasn’t having a heart attack. Maybe it was one of those strokes that garbled language processing. Maybe he was looming over her, telling her he did what he did because the baby hippopotamus at the Cincinnati Zoo told him to.

She opened her mouth, and nothing came out. No sound. No air. Nothing.

Brick Callan had just pulled the rug out from under her.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” she asked.

Those lips quirked again and she thought for half a second he was going to close the distance, cross that last inch that separated them and kiss the ever-loving hell out of her. She’d probably die from it, but she was okay with that.

But then his eyes were shuttering. The heat between them sputtered out.