The Dare Collection 2018. Taryn Leigh Taylor

      MAYA CHANGED OUT of her slinky dress, throwing it across her bedroom as if that could spare her another dousing rush of the embarrassment that had chased her all the way from the piazza. Her heels followed, one after the next, clattering against the floor as she tossed them aside. With force. She stripped down completely, as if the outfit was to blame for what had happened in that bar. And all her choices leading up to it.

      When she dressed again, it was in soft, flowy, comfortable clothing that was as close to a hug as she was likely to get tonight.

      Or ever again, a dour little voice inside her pronounced.

      She told it to shut the hell up.

      That was when she heard a faint noise from the other room. She stormed out of the unlit bedroom, her bare feet slapping against the floor.

      And maybe she had been expecting him. Because when she looked at Charlie standing there on the inside of her door, his blue eyes brilliant and the hint of exertion making his cheeks ruddy, she felt a whole mess of things.

      But none of them was surprised.

      “Now you’re just letting yourself into hotel rooms?”

      “It’s my hotel, Maya. I have the key. I have all the keys.”

      He sounded even more dangerous than usual. It made something in her tip over, then hum.

      But she thought she’d rather die than let him see that. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that the owner of a St. George hotel should not be breaking into a guest’s room. That’s not the sort of thing you’re going to want to put in your brochures.”

      “What is it you think I’m keeping from you?” He threw it at her, and he sounded different than he had down in the village. More dangerous, yes. But also more raw, if that was possible. “This whole song and dance about how I’m lying to you is bullshit.”

      “I’m somehow unsurprised that’s your take.”

      “You’re always running from something, Maya. That’s how you got here, isn’t it? Well, now it must be time to run from me. But I’m not that douchebag who left you at the altar. I didn’t do anything to you except make you come.”

      Maya sighed. “I keep forgetting how blameless you are in all of this. Everything is happening around you, but it’s never about you. My bad. You’re like the eye of the storm.”

      She did something theatrical with her hands that made his entire rangy body go stiff. As alarms went, that one was loud and clear—but she didn’t back down.

      “Are you standing in front of my face telling me I don’t know how to take responsibility for myself?”

      The way he asked that question suggested that she had better not be telling him anything of the kind. A smart woman would have backed down, happily and quickly.

      Maya chose to tilt her head to one side like he was some kind of specimen in a zoo. “Why? Is that a trigger for you? I wouldn’t know, would I, because I don’t know anything about you.”

      “I don’t know what you think this is, but where I come from you don’t spill your guts for a fling,” Charlie growled out at her. “No matter how hot she is in bed.”

      Maya was shaking, but she couldn’t tell if it was happening inside her—or everywhere. And oddly enough, she didn’t have it in her to care any longer if he saw it. If he saw everything.

      “Fine,” she said, her voice even but not remotely mild. “Then why are you here, Charlie? Why did you chase me all the way back from that bar and let yourself into my room? If this is a fling that’s gotten out of hand, why come back for more?”

      He moved as if he was going to put his hands on her—and God help her, she wanted that. She thought she would commit crimes to feel those battered, tough hands on her skin again.

      But he raked them through his hair instead.

      And his voice was as grave as that expression on his beautiful face when he spoke again. “You want things from me that I don’t have to give.”

      That should have wrecked her. Instead, she rolled her eyes.

      And for a moment, she didn’t know which one of them was more shocked.

      She compounded it with another sigh, this one bordering on irritated. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I don’t think you’ve ever been intimate with another person in your entire life. I don’t think you have the slightest idea what you have to give.”

      He stared back at her, looking astonished. And darkly furious, all at once.

      “Terrific. I guess this is the night for inspirational speeches. I’m a changed fucking man.”

      Maya shook her head at him, while inside there was something like grief mixed in with the sadness that she knew had everything to do with this man. Charlie, particularly. Not anyone she had left behind.

      “Tell me one true thing,” she challenged him. “Just one, Charlie.”

      He looked at her as if she had hit him. As if she’d hauled off and landed one on his face. She imagined he would prefer that.

      “You have no idea how I was raised. The kind of man who raised me. What I had to do to earn his approval. And worse, what it was like when I figured out I was good at it.”

      “One true thing,” she said quietly. “Everything you just said is a story.”

      “You said you were a lawyer, Maya. I don’t think you want to know what it was like to be raised by a lot of outlaw bikers. Almost one of them, but not quite. And not because I didn’t want to be, because I did. Believe me, I did. But I look the way I do. Clean me up and put a smile on my face and I can convince anyone of anything—and that made me useful. A kind of useful that wearing biker shit and getting myself arrested would ruin.” His hard mouth tightened. “My stepfather raised me up right. I ran cons.”

      “One. True—”

      “It wasn’t just my stepfather who thought being kind meant an ass kicking that didn’t take out an eye or a tooth. It was that whole dusty, dirty world. The club. My stepdad and his dirtbag friends, who I considered family. My mother, who’s never been anything but a pain in the ass. Some kids play cops and robbers, but they grow out of it. Not the people who raised me. Not me.”

      He took a step toward her. Maya held his gaze, though he looked as close to tortured as she’d ever seen him. His blue eyes were blazing. Wild, even, with so much emotion and fury she almost couldn’t bear to look at him. Almost.

      Charlie stopped before he reached her. Jerkily, as if he didn’t know what his own body was doing. And Maya had to lecture herself, harshly, not to reach out and touch him herself.

      “My stepdad was killed in a bar fight a few years ago by some real nice individuals he met in prison and tried to cross,” Charlie told her in that same voice, dark and low. “And then I was really in trouble. Don’t get me wrong. Carl wasn’t a nice man. There wasn’t one shred of decency in him, he was proud of it, and no one missed him when he was gone. But he protected me in his own way. With him gone, I had to figure out how to live in that world on my own.” His blue eyes flashed, like his own kind of lightning. “It was brutal, but fine. I survived.”

      “You survived, sure. But are you really fine?”

      “This is what I’m trying to tell you, Maya. There’s no part of me that’s fine.” And the laugh he let out then was dark. Barbed. “And you wouldn’t care either way if you didn’t like how I look. How I fuck. You think you want this?” He took one hand and slammed it against his own chest, hard enough that the noise made her flinch. “You can’t handle what I carry around in here.”

      She took a moment. She looked at the fury blazing from him, bright blue and powerful. At that set to his jaw. The way he held himself, as if he was seconds away from throwing himself