He raises his brows, and why the hell is such a simple gesture enough to trigger a flutter in my stomach?
As if that’s not enough, a little part of me is whispering, whining, and absolutely grouching about where I’m going with this.
It’s wrong and you know it.
You’ll only get him in trouble and regret it.
But I can’t just ignore the other part, the one that’s yearning, living on borrowed air and needing to feel what it’s like to be alive.
To not just pretend I’m living, popular, and loved, but to actually breathe life into my sheltered existence.
Still, my voice comes out small, unsure. “I want you to spend an hour with me every day. Alone.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know, anything. Talking, just sitting here, reading, eating, maybe go shopping…” He scowls and I backtrack. “No shopping, got it. We can watch a movie.”
“A movie lasts for more than an hour.”
“Uh, okay. No movies either. But we can do everything else.”
“No.”
My heart shrinks behind my rib cage, but I force a smile. “Why not?”
“I will not date you.”
“I…I’m not asking you to date me.”
Okay, so maybe I was? But why the hell is he such a stone-cold asshole? Can’t he hurt people more gently or something?
“All the better then.” His face, expression, and tone are all caught in the freaking Arctic Ocean. “No dating will happen.”
“Hypothetically speaking, and only hypothetically, because this isn’t a real situation, why do you not want to date me?”
He reaches a hand to my face again and I freeze as he lifts my chin with two fingers. A charge of electricity rushes through me like a slowly brewing storm.
Tension rises, clings to my skin, and rips through my bones. I shiver, but I still can’t tear my gaze away from those ocean eyes.
They’re dark again, a manifestation of their owner’s changing mood.
I don’t know if the change is due to me or the fact that he’s touched me more in the span of twelve hours than he has in all the weeks I’ve known him.
But I’m caught in his web.
Unable to move.
Absolutely trapped under the calloused touch of his lean fingers that dig into my sensitive skin with the lethality of a whip.
When he speaks, the low, deep words nearly paralyze me.
“Hypothetically speaking, I have deviant tastes and violent tendencies for the opposite sex. You’re so fucking breakable, I’d crush you in no time.”
* * *
“How are you, baby angel?”
I internally shake my head to focus on my mother’s radiating features.