“Oh, you do?”
He frowns, grimaces too. “Yes, Echo, I know. I also know what you wore on your twelfth birthday, your thirteenth birthday, your fourteenth and your fifteenth. That’s not the fucking point.”
That has the power to give me pause and halt me in my tracks.
It does.
I know he has an uncanny ability to remember things but this is crazy, even for him. Especially when he wasn’t even there for a couple of my birthdays.
“You weren’t even…” I clear my throat, managing to keep moving forward. “You were in New York for my fifteenth birthday.”
I specifically remember Lucas telling me that Reign had gone off to New York that weekend to party with some of their teammates. While Lucas had decided to stay back and celebrate my birthday. So there was no way Reign could’ve seen me.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“B-but he —”
“I wanted to be,” he cuts me off in a rough voice. “I had made plans to be in New York but I couldn’t. I came back.”
“Why?”
A grimace. “I had to… I had to see.”
“See what?”
“What you were wearing,” he replies, in an even rougher, edgier voice, his reddish-brown eyes penetrating. “If you were wearing pink like you always do. So I drove back from New York, kept tabs on you through Lucas and stood outside your window because by the time I’d made it back, he told me that he’d just dropped you off.”
That also has the power to stop me, but there are only a few more steps.
Few more steps and I’ll be there.
Where my Bandit is.
So I push myself. “You stood outside my window?”
A muscle on his cheek pulses. “Yes.”
“On the off chance that you’d see me.”
“Yes.”
This is somehow even wilder than him doingthatwhile watching my window.
I bite my lip. “What was I wearing?”
He stares at my mouth almost violently. Then, “A light pink dress. It had… dark pink flowers on it and poofy sleeves.”
“They were roses,” I tell him, my heart racing in my chest, my body buzzing that I’m so, so close to him now,so close. “And they’re called cap sleeves.”
He leans forward then, his face all agitated and angry. “I don’t fucking care what kind of flowers they were. It’s not gonna matter what kind of flowers they were. When you get here. When you get to where I can fucking touch you. I told you if you keep coming after me, I’m going to do worse things. Itoldyou that,just ten minutes ago. So if you don’t listen to me, I’m going to call your bluff. Because it’s a bluff, isn’t it? Some kind of revenge for what I did that night. I get that. I understand revenge. Irespectrevenge. But if you think I’m going to be noble andnottouch you, if you think I’mnotgoing to put my hands on you, on your creamy skin, and do exactly what you’re daring me to do, then you’re fucking stupid. You’re fucking stupid, Echo, if you think I’m gonna let you walk out of here without taking what you’re so carelessly tossing at me. So stop before you get here.”
I don’t. I get there.
I get where he can put his hands on me.
His breaths are such that they crash against my creamy skin. They crash and gust and make my goosebumps come alive. They make my nipples come alive too, my tits, my belly.
That place between my legs.