I hate to think of you getting yourself into trouble, her mother had said more than once, and all because your head is always in the clouds.
And her father had frowned at her, the day he had dropped her off at the airport. Looking far more serious than he usually did. The world isn’t a magical place just because you want it to be, honey. Be smart out there.
Indy had not been smart. She had been the opposite of smart, in fact, and had reveled in how little care she’d taken because it made for a better experience and then a better story to tell. And she had known, then, that she was going to pay for that in some out-of-the-way alley where no one would ever find her if they left her for dead.
Assuming they left her.
But that wasn’t what happened.
She shuddered now, her hands cupped around her coffee. Far away from Budapest in a crowded café in lovely, fairytale Prague, two years later.
Still, Indy shuddered, because she could remember too well her first sight of him. That face of his, so beautiful it was cruel as he’d stared down at her in disbelief. She’d noticed that face, like the blade of a hatchet, piercing and inevitable. She’d had the impression of a tall, well-built, dark-haired man, but he’d had the eyes of a poet, intense and yet almost dreamy as he’d gazed at her there on her knees.
Their eyes had met down the length of the gun he’d held, pointed directly at her forehead.
And she’d had no doubt whatsoever that he knew how to use it.
He asked her something in a language she didn’t understand. Hungarian, she’d thought, which would make sense as she had been in Hungary. Indy had shaken her head, almost smiling in an out-of-body sort of way, because at least if she was going to meet a brutal end it would be at the hands of a man who looked like an angel.
A fallen one. And fallen hard.
That he was dangerous, brutal and powerful at once, would have been obvious even if he wasn’t holding a gun. Right in her face.
Even with those too-blue eyes.
What are you doing here? he had asked her in English, after trying a couple of other languages and getting nothing. His accent had made the words seem like liquid, swirling around her and washing through her. A new, potent heat.
I have no idea, she had replied, honestly.
And for a long moment, possibly a lifetime, she had been aware only of him. That look on his overwhelming face. That gaze of his that made her want to cry. The electric something that arced between them, even with concrete digging into her bare knees and her hands in the air.
For that little while, nothing else existed.
Nothing.
He had muttered something she’d understood was profane, even if she hadn’t understood it.
And then everything got fast.
Indy remembered it like a blur, though she knew that each action had been precise. Surgical.
He had looked at her. She’d seen something in his gaze, something that had made her breath catch.
Something that had gone through her like an earthquake.
Then he had turned and taken down the other three men standing there with him. She had hardly had time to gasp, to shake, to react. She’d thought of poetry again, all of it lethal, as he’d spun around with blistering speed and laid all three men out flat.
Two kicks, one punch.
Like he was an action star.
Come, he’d said to her when they were all slumped on the ground. You cannot be here.
He’d reached down to pull her up to her feet with a possessive grip on her arm.
And Indy had gone willingly.
More than willingly. Because he’d saved her, that she’d had no doubt—even though it hadn’t been clear if he was one of the things he’d saved her from.
But there was something about his grip on her arm. The way he’d moved them both out of that alley. Quickly, but with that same liquid grace she’d already seen used with lethal intent on his friends.
It had occurred to her then that she ought to have been more scared than she was. As scared as she’d been when she’d first understood what was happening to her. As scared as she’d been before she’d actually caught his gaze and everything had...shifted.
If you’re just going to kill me in a different location, she’d said as he led her away from the alley, I have to tell you that it will be very disappointing.
They’d made it out into the street by then. She could hear the pumping sound of the club she’d so foolishly wandered away from, though she couldn’t see it. Had she wandered into the alley from the other side? And yet Indy hadn’t really cared, because there had been a streetlight and she could really see him then.
He was built like a weapon far deadlier than any old hatchet. His beautiful eyes were breathtakingly blue, and he had a set of lips that should have made him a courtesan—and might have made him pretty if his face wasn’t drawn in such harsh, male lines. She’d thought she would happily pay the whole of her life savings, and then some, to have that mouth between her legs.
But those were the only two soft things on his body.
Everything else was muscle. Thick and honed at once, so that he fairly hummed with power. With threat.
She remembered thinking how odd it was that she had been with so many men and had always happily explored all the various ways they used their power. Physical and intellectual alike, but nothing like this. Like him.
This man was darkness personified and his body showed it.
Indy had noticed a tattoo rising from the neck of his T-shirt, the same T-shirt that strained to contain his biceps. The same T-shirt that seemed unequal to the task of his hard, ridged abdomen. He wore dark jeans and the kind of dress shoes men wore
