Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
“Get up.” His sleeves are rolled up, and he’s drying his hands on a towel.
I sit on my knees. “Can I call my cousin?”
He tosses the towel aside.
“Then I’ll shower,” I add.
He gestures to the bathroom. “Water’s already running. Get up, Cristina. I won’t ask again.”
I fold my arms across my chest even though alarms are clanging loud and fast in my head. I want to tell him to go fuck himself and even though I know this is about to spiral out of control, I need to regain some ground. I can’t not fight.
“All right,” he says, and in the next instant, he’s stalking toward the bed.
I leap off and make a run for the door. I almost make it before his arm is around my middle. He lifts me off the floor and tugs me backward into the solid wall of his chest. How can a man be so freaking strong?
He traps my arms at my sides and carries me into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” I cry out as he sets me down and closes the door.
“Take off the robe.”
“You’re crazy! You’re fucking crazy!”
He smiles so wide that I think it might be worse than that. I think he is absolutely unhinged.
“You’re going to learn fast that I don’t like repeating myself.” The bathroom steams around us as I try to slip past him to the door. I manage to dodge him twice before he has me again and is tearing the robe from me.
I fight him, try to hurt him, but I get nowhere. I hear the ripping of fabric as he yanks the robe off. When I’m standing in just my bra and underwear, he shoves me into the shower stall beneath the spray of water.
He mutters a curse under his breath when his sweater gets wet and tugs it over his head so he’s shirtless. He tosses it aside.
I can’t help but look at the muscles of his bare chest and arms, the tattoos on the undamaged one, the hair on his chest, dark. The trail of hair that disappears down into his jeans darker. My gaze shifts to his arm, and I see that the scarring goes all the way up almost to his shoulder and covers part of his torso.
Was he conscious when it happened? When fire melted his skin right off?
I push water off my face and meet his eyes again. He’s been watching me take in the damage, and he continues to stand there for a minute, then points at my chest.
“Same event,” he says.
I look down at my scar. It’s nothing compared to his, and I have so many questions. So many.
“I—”
“Are you taking the rest of it off yourself, or am I coming in there to do it for you?” He gestures to the things I still have on.
When I don’t answer fast enough, he takes a step toward me. I back up and hold up my hands, palms facing him in surrender.
“I’ll do it! Just go. I’ll do it.”
He folds his arms across his chest and waits. He’s not going anywhere, I know that, don’t I?
I swallow, steel my spine, and reach around to unhook my bra, turning my back to him as I take it off and drop it on the bench in the shower.
“Panties too,” he says when I stop.
I glance over my shoulder at him, keeping one arm banded over my breasts.
We study each other for a moment. I wonder what he sees on my face. What my eyes give away.
I wipe the moisture from my eyes. I’m not fooling him. Even in the shower, he knows it’s not water I’m wiping away.
“Do it,” he demands.
I slip my fingers into the waistband of my panties and push them off, leaving them on the floor, keeping my face averted, my back to him.
“Pick them up.”
I hate him. I fucking hate him.
“Pick them up, along with your bra, and give them to me.”
Humiliation and rage battle within me. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
I turn to face him, not caring that I’m naked. Not caring about anything at all. “Fuck. You.” I say it slow enough that I’m sure he hears because I’m drawing a line.
He smiles, exhales audibly, wipes a drop of water that’s splashed onto his chin with his thumb.
In those few moments, I watch the metamorphosis. This transformation from human to beast.
To monster.
I scream when he lunges for me, and in the next instant, he’s in the shower with me, my hair tightly in his grip. Our bodies touch, skin on skin, water splashing over us, between us. He has my head craned back, and I blink the water away, wiping my face with one hand, the other on his chest to keep at least those few inches between us.
He looks down at me, at my naked breasts, the nipples peaked as water washes over them. When he returns his gaze to mine, there’s something dark inside his eyes. Something that makes my body react in a way that is unnatural and unwanted.