Page 50 of Ruthless Enforcer

"How do you want me?"

I gesture toward his current position as I pull the stool over. "This is good. I just need your hands."

He extends his right hand, palm up, and the simple gesture feels like a concession—like he's offering me something he doesn't give freely.

Sitting down on the stool in front of him, I pull a sketchbook from the table and flip to a blank page, then grab a piece of vine charcoal. "Relax."

"I am relaxed."

I roll my eyes. "You're coiled like a spring."

"Occupational hazard."

I'm close enough now that I can see the faint scar along his wrist and the way his pulse beats steady and slow beneath his skin. Close enough that his scent—cedar and gun oil and clean, dark heat—fills my lungs with every breath. "Give me your hand."

He hesitates for half a second, and then he extends his right hand fully.

I take it. His skin is warm. Rough in places, smooth in others. The knuckles are scarred, the nails short and clean, the tendons visible beneath the surface when he flexes his fingers. I trace the line of his palm with my thumb, mapping the architecture of bone and muscle and memory, and feel his entire body go taut.

"What are you doing?" he asks quietly.

"Looking."

"At what?"

"Everything." I turn his hand over, studying the way the light catches the ridge of his knuckles, the shadow pooling in the hollow of his wrist, the faint blue of the veins beneath his skin.

This is the hand that saved my life.

This is the hand that slid a ring onto my finger and made me his wife.

This is the hand I fantasize touching me, of trailing up my thigh and slipping between my legs.

Taking a shaky breath, I pick up the charcoal and start sketching.

The first marks are quick and loose—gesture lines to capture the shape, the weight, the way his hand rests against the arm of the chair. Then I slow down, refining the details, darkening the shadows, pulling the form out of the white page.

Gabriel doesn't move—he doesn't speak. He just watches me with those blue eyes, and I can feel the tension radiating off him like heat.

"You hate this," I murmur.

"Yes."

Still sketching, I glance up at him. "Why?"

"Because you're looking at me like you intend to keep me."

The honesty of it stops my hand mid-stroke.

He’s staring at me with an expression I can't quite name—something raw and possessive and frustrated all at once.

"Maybe I do." I try to say it lightly, flirtatiously, but it comes out sounding like it’s straight from my heart—probably because it is.

"You shouldn't." His fingers tighten on mine. "I'm dangerous, Clara. I'm entangled in violence and obligations you didn't sign up for. You should want a man who can give you a normal life, not this."

"I don't want normal." I don’t even know what that is.

"You should."