Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I’m fire, aren’t I?
All I know is to burn.
I don’t even notice when those guys skitter away. I’m too busy basking in his heat, his wildfire. I’m too busy leaning against his chest like I had done in the elevator.
Or at least I try to.
He stops me at the last minute, wrapping his fingers around my bicep. Flexing his grip, he growls in my ear, much like in the elevator. “You’re coming with me.”
I nod.
Without hesitation. Without preservation.
And then, he’s dragging me out of the bar, his fingers threaded with mine, tight and braided as if for life. I look down at our entwined fingers as he keeps dragging me and how right it feels. How destined. And meant to be.
Destiny, my brain supplies on a whisper.
If he’s meant to hurt me, I can’t stop him. If he’s meant to break my heart, I can’t do anything but hope that it’s easy for him to break.
In fact, I want to live with a broken heart and a tragic fate.
I want to die at the end of this story.
All through the ride back home in the cab, he’s quiet and seething, and I’m quiet and introspective. We reach the hotel, and he ushers me inside. We ride the elevator in pin drop silence and when he walks me to my door, again we don’t say a word to each other. He takes the keycard from my hand, slides it in the door, and opens it for me. I step inside, but before he can leave me there, I spin around and decide to finally break the silence.
I’m not sure what I’m going to say, but I have to say something.
“Stellan, I—”
“Lock the fucking door,” he growls.
And slams the door shut.
Chapter 7
I lock the door like he said.
And then stand there.
I stand there and I watch the door — my door — that he’s essentially shut in my face.
I count the seconds.
I wonder how much time is long enough to open it and run after him. But then I think that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s the whole point that I don’t have to wait anymore.
I don’t have to fucking wait.
I can run after him now. I can chase him, be with him. I can be free. I can fly. I can take away his pain now. He doesn’t have to walk on broken glass. I’m his.
Nothing is holding me back anymore.
So I throw open my door and…
Well, I come to a stop.
Because the man I was going to run to is right there.
He hasn’t left.
He’s standing in the middle of the hallway, his legs braced apart and his fists tight.
His eyes on my door.
“Y-you didn’t…” I whisper, my eyes wide. “You didn’t leave.”
“I was trying to figure out something,” he says, roughly, his chest heaving.
His repeated words from the elevator yesterday make my heart pound. “Figure out what?”
“How long,” he growls, “should I wait before busting through your door?”
“You couldn’t bust through my door,” I say uselessly, arguing my point from the first night.
“No?”
“No, it was locked.”
He studies me and licks his lips. “One day I’m going to sit you down, really gently, and explain to you in a way that will get through your pretty head that when a man’s desperate enough to get to you, as desperate as I am right now, no amount of locked doors will stop him from getting inside.”
“You would,” I remind him.
His chest jerks with a particularly harsh breath. “I would, yeah.”
“So problem solved.”
“But then who would stop me?”
I look at his agitated features, his towering body, that dark hair and those bruises that have almost completely faded. I look at the man I fell in love with at first sight. And I say the only thing I can say.
The truth.
“See, the thing is, Stellan”—I swallow—“that if you’re on the other side of the door, I’ll unlock it myself and run to you.”
Which is exactly what I do.
I run to him and jump into his arms.
And because he’s so strong and protective and everything that I’ve ever wanted and needed, he catches me. He heaves me up, wraps his arms around me and before my next breath, kisses me.
Or more like attacks my mouth.
Which is fine really because I’m doing the same thing.
I’m attacking his mouth and he’s attacking mine and I don’t even care that maybe we’re bruising each other. I don’t care if I pull his hair too hard or if he bites me a little brutally. I don’t care if his fingers are squeezing my ass in a way that I know he’ll leave his fingerprints behind as if my body is a crime scene. Or if I scratch the side of his neck in a way that I think I draw blood.
It all sounds okay to me.
It all sounds like it was supposed to happen. We were supposed to crash like this. Our kiss was supposed to be more like a war than peace.