Stifling a shudder, she turned and watched Gideon take a swig from his bottle. Growing up, she usually closeted herself in her room when her father sat drinking in front of the television. A safe place to avoid the path of his red-eyed gaze. Of course sometimes not even the barrier of her door could protect her.

“I hate beer,” she muttered, her father’s slurred insults echoing in her mind. Her nose twitched, almost smelling his foul beer breath hissing in her face.

“And why’s that?”

She shrugged. “When my father wasn’t working on a job, he was home. Drinking.” She nodded. “And that was pretty much it.” She snorted, a pained smile curving her lips. “God, we couldn’t wait for him to leave.”

Silence fell between them, filled by the din of the bar. She wondered what had inspired her to bring up her father. She never talked about him. Not with anyone. Not even with her mother.

“Was he a mean drunk?” The question fell hard from his mouth, almost startling her.

“Mean better describes him sober. Drunk, he’s something else.” Something worse. “I learned to stay out of his way.” She crossed her arms, rubbing flesh that suddenly felt chilled as she remembered the times she had not escaped his notice. “For the most part.”

He stared out into the bar, the rigid line of his profile resembling carved stone. Suddenly, he said, “The timid little mouse suddenly makes such sense.”

Heat crawled over her cheeks. Their conversation at dinner flooded back over her. “I’m not passive, remember,” she snapped. “Not a mouse.”

He turned his gaze on her, eyes a cool and steady green.

Dropping her arms, she met his stare directly, challenging.

“If you are—were,” he amended, gaze flicking over her, taking in her shiny halter top, slowly roaming over the swells of her breasts, “it sounds as though you had good reason.”

“To be weak?” she growled. Vulnerable? Submissive? Her mother? She shook her head fiercely.

“No,” he countered, eyes burning as they drifted back to her face, drilling into hers. “To be human.”

Human. Something she could no longer lay claim to either. At that moment, he must have realized the same thing, too.

His eyes changed, the green deepening, assessing her with a burning intensity. The air between them altered, grew charged. Hunger pumped through her veins and her nipples hardened against the thin, satiny fabric of her top. The muscles along his square-cut jaw knotted and she scented his reaction to her—visceral and immediate, earthy, a spicy musk on the air.

He tore his gaze from her and looked out at the bar again, severing the moment.