Shit.

Shit, shit, f**king shit!

He was huge. Huge. I’d never seen a man that big. He had to be six foot five, six foot six, maybe even taller.

His shoulders were immensely broad, the wall of his chest was just that. A wall. His h*ps were narrow, his thighs enormous. He was muscle from neck down, pure, firm, defined muscle. I saw it through his skintight black t-shirt, his tattooed arms, his jeans that tightened on his thighs as he moved.

His hair was black and clipped short on his head, another tat drifted up his neck.

His jaw was square and strong. No stubble. Clean-shaven. His brow was heavy, his eyebrows black, arched and thick but the left one had a line through it, a scar that matched the smaller one under the eye.

But this scar did nothing, not one thing, to mar his utterly perfect features. Strong, straight nose. High, cut cheekbones. Full lips. His eyes were shaped like almonds, turned slightly down at the sides and ringed, even when he was the width of my car away, I could still see, by thick, curling black lashes.

That said, his face, though sheer male beauty, was blank. Scary blank. Expressionless. Completely. His eyes were on me standing in my opened door watching him round the hood and turning with his movements. But there was nothing in those eyes. Nothing. Void.

It was terrifying.

Ronnie and Shift didn’t hang out with good people. There were the dregs of society but even dregs had dregs and the dregs of the dregs were who Ronnie and Shift hung out with. Again, it didn’t happen often but it wasn’t like I hadn’t come into contact with some of these people. And I didn’t like being around them but I learned a long time ago to hide that.

But this man, Ty Walker, was something else.

I did not think he was the dregs of the dregs. Or even the dregs.

I just had no idea what he was except downright terrifying.

I made an almost full circle as he cleared my door and walked a half a step in, pinning me between him and the car and I had to tilt my head way, way, way back to look up at him.

It was not an optical illusion, a trick of the heat waves. He was tall and he was huge.

And also, his eyelashes were long and curly.

Extraordinary.

I’d never seen eyes that shape, lashes that thick and curly. I’d never seen any single feature on any living thing as beautiful as his eyes.

He stared down at me with his beautiful but blank eyes and my only thought was that he surely could lift one of his big fists and pound me straight through the asphalt with one blow to the top of my head.

“Uh… hey,” I pushed out between my lips, “I’m Lexie.”

He stared down at me and said not a word.

I swallowed.

Then I said, “Shift wants a call the minute you’re out. I, uh…”

I stopped speaking because he leaned into me with an arm out and I couldn’t stop myself from pressing my back into the car. But he just pulled my cell from my hand, straightened as he flipped it open, his gorgeous eyes staring at it as his thumb moved on the keypad. Then he put it to his ear.

Two seconds later, he said in a deep voice that I felt reverberating in my chest even though he was three feet away, “I’m out.”

Then he flipped the phone closed and tossed it to me.

Automatically, my hands came up and I bobbled it but luckily caught it before it fell to the asphalt at our feet.

“Keys,” he rumbled and I blinked.

“What?”

His big hand came up between us, palm to the sky and I looked down at it to see his black tats and the veins sticking out on his superhumanly muscled forearm.

“Keys,” he repeated.

My eyes went back to his beautiful ones.

“But… it’s my car.”

“Keys,” he said again, same rumble, same tone, no impatience, no nothing and I got the sense he’d stand there all day fencing me in and repeating that word until I complied.

I swallowed.

Hmm.

I was thinking I didn’t want to spend the whole day in the hot sun having a conversation with a mountain of a man where his only contribution was one, one syllable word.

“They’re in the ignition.”

“Passenger seat,” he replied and I wondered if he knew any verbs.

I didn’t think it wise to ask this question. I nodded and noticed he didn’t move. There was a slip of space on either side of him between door and car but only a small slip. He didn’t intend to get out of my way.

I turned sideways, sucked in my gut and squeezed by him, the front of my body skimming the hard side of his, the back of it skimming the car door.

I got free and moved around the trunk to the passenger side.

He’d adjusted the seat and folded his big bulk into the driver’s side by the time I angled in the passenger side.

The second I pulled the door shut, my precious baby roared to life.

He didn’t put his seatbelt on or wait for me to do so as he skidded out, wheels screeching against asphalt and we took off through the waves of heat down the road in front of the prison.

Shit.

* * * * *

“Two,” Ty Walker rumbled at the woman who was wearing a yellow waitress dress, white cuffs on her short sleeves, a little white apron, a little white cap on her head, the whole outfit belonging in a sitcom from the ‘70’s.

She had her head tilted way back and she was staring up at him blinking rapidly, easily read expressions moving across her face. Awe. Fear. Titillation. Curiosity. Lust.

“Two,” Ty Walker repeated when she didn’t move then he added, “Booth.” Then he finished, “Back.”

She kept blinking.

I stepped in front of him and waved my hand in hopes of getting her attention.

She blinked a couple of times and her head tipped down so she could look at me but it was still tilted back because I was also taller than her and I would be even if I wasn’t wearing platform sandals.

“Hi,” I said chirpily. “Can we have a booth at the back of the restaurant?”

She stared at me, her eyes flicked up to Walker then they came back to me then she nodded, turned to the hostess stand, grabbed a couple of menus and hustled through the diner to the back where there was an open booth. She slapped the menus on the table and Walker rounded her and sat with his back to the wall. I slid in on the other side.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling at her.

“Coffee,” Walker said over me. “Now.”

She nodded quickly.

He kept speaking. “Bacon, crispy, double order. Sausage links, double order. Four pancakes. Four eggs, over medium. Four slices of bread. Hash browns, double order. After the coffee.”