Chapter 22
Sitting here amongst i
my newest additions to my book collection, personal and professional, I glare at King Buzzkill. I’m stunned into silence (u rarity for me, I know) at his audacity of demeaning a genre that millions of women around the globe enjoy, love, and in extreme cases, even obsess over. Here’s looking at you, Book Tok
I can see on his face that he’s not entirely sure what to do or say in this moment, and that suits me just fine, because if so much as a peep comes from him, I might hurl this whole coffee table at his handsome head. Injuries be damned.
With an irritated huff, I abruptly get up, leave the room, and head upstairs to my bedroom. I need a minute to calm down without being able to smell him, without him invading my senses and space.
I slam my bedroom door shut, loud enough that he gets the message to stay the fuck away from the crazy lady upstairs. Because I promise the universe herself, if he follows me up here, he will be losing a limb before I force feed it to him over a candle–lit dinner for one.
Flopping backwards onto my bed from the side, my knees still hanging off the edge, and my feet touching the floor, I reach a hand over and grab one of my pillows. Putting it over my face. I press it down with both hands, and fucking scream!
scream for the ten–month relationship I spent too long trying to save. I scream for the woman I forgot I was so I could appease a piss–poor jexcuse
of a man. I scream at how blood–curdling–mad the overbearing, bossy, grumpy Alpha Hole downstairs makes me. And I scream at the way my body reacts to the same overbearing, bossy, grumpy Alpha Hole downstairs.
It’s infuriating, imitating, irrational, and worst of all, it’s a mind–fuck at how easily he gets a rise from me by simply existing.
Done with my mini–meltdown, I remove the pillow and stare at my ceiling for several minutes.
Where do I go from here? Do I go downstairs and pretend the last 15 minutes never happened? Do I go downstairs and give him several pieces of my mind? Or do I lie here, and wallow in self–pity while a virtual stranger roams my house?
Deciding to choose option four, I push myself up from the bed with newfound resolve, walk downstairs, and pause in the living room door. He’s sitting sideways on the bench seat below the big bay windows, his one knee drawn up onto the cushions while the other is still firmly planted on the hardwood floor, his body turned away from me somewhat. Staring outside, he has a weird look on his face. Is that regret?
It can’t be. This man doesn’t feel regret, doesn’t apologize, most certainly doesn’t say please and thank you, and most importantly, believes he’s
never wrong
your
Clearing my throat to catch his attention, I say resolutely but not rudely, “I think you should leave. It’s clear that yo wound is better by how you move around. And I’m sure Griffin will be able to help with any bandages that need to be changed. I’ll buy you a new shirt, and if you give me your business card, I’ll courier it once it arrives. But I honestly think this is where we should part ways, and live our separate lives as if we
I’ve not been looking at him as I rattled off my speech, opting to keep my eyes on the shudge on the window pane just behind his right shoulder. Which means I don’t see the way his head rears back when I ask him to leave. I don’t see his mouth hitch in the corner with a vicious sneer when I suggest we go our separate ways. And I don’t see how his fists clench and his knuckles turn white when I mention buying him a new shirt.
What I do notice, though, is how, with inhuman speed, he’s up out of his seat, across the room, and crowding me against the stairs‘ banister behind mr.
“No,” he growls at me. Again with the growling. His voice is firm and commanding, not loud but clear, and brooks no argument. It is as if he thinks he’s in a boardroom barking orders at insubordinate employees or unreasonable investors.
His hands are wrapped around the wooden banister’s top beam on either side of my shoulders. His
s face is so close to mine that I can see a faint scar above his left eyebrow in the comer nearest to his ear. His eyes look like twin blue flames dancing to the rhythm of his banked rage.
Narrowing my eyes at him, I straighten my spine, tip my chin up, and ask in my own low but deadly voice, “What did you just say?” It’s more of a thetorical question because I heard him loud and clear. I am asking it though, to give him a chance to realize his monumental fucking mistake by refusing to leave, and accordingly change his answer.
But instead, this fucking cretin dares to slow down and enunciate each and every word as he leans in even more, so much so, that his breath whispers across my lips as he says, “1. Said. No.”
I place my hands on his pecs, intent on pushing him away from me, and hopefully into oncoming traffic. But when they connect with his body heat scaring through the thin fabric of my shirt he’s still wearing, there’s a fundamental shift in the atmosphere between and around us.
Chapter 22
The air shifts with every move he makes, like he’s pulling every atom within a five–mile radius into his orbit and manipulating it so it satisfies only his needs and whims. Vibrating on a new frequency that only he seems to know how to control without moving so much as an eyelash.
Every oxygen molecule gets sucked from my small hallway into a vortex that he seems to be the core of, causing my breath to stutter to a stop behind my ribs, my lungs unsuccessful in their basic function of drawing the life essence that is air in so it can be transported to my brain. In turn, my brain should perform its own fundamental duties of controlling the whole of my body.
But because Thane fucking Draeven is the master of this universe I currently find myself in, none of those things happen, and that’s why I’m frozen to the spot, staring into his blue eyes. They seem to have lives of their own because I swear I see tendrils of various shades of blue ebb and flow like living marble vein patterns in their depths. It’s mesmerizing as much as it’s terrifying-
His nostrils are flaring as if he can’t decide whether to charge at me like a bull would its matador as he taunts said bull with his crimson cape and finely honed sword, or if he should devour me mind, body and soul by any means necessary without moving a millimeter from where he’s got me in a figurative chokehold and without breaking a sweat.
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