Page 6 of Obsessed with my Temptation

Time crawled slowly between us, a strange tension thickening the air—that of unspoken words, of secrets shared.

I knew there was no way for him to know what I thought about him. What I fantasized about when I was alone and too horny to stop myself. And yet it felt like he could read me like a book, like heknewme, on some primal level. It unsettled me enough to straighten and say, “I guess I’ll be going back in.”

“Running already? We haven’t even gotten to know each other, yet.”

His bluntness made me freeze. “I didn’t know that was what we were doing.”

“Well, everyone seems to think we’rerivals, enemies of a sort.” His lips stretched just so. Travis cocked his head, lashes shadowing his eyes.

“They like that we’re opposites,” I said, because, what the fuck was I supposed to say to that?

“I think they sense something they don’t understand.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“What?” I asked, feeling my heart rattle inside my chest.

“They don’t see the way you’re looking at me,” he said, voice low, resonating through the empty alley as he stepped closer to me.

My body tensed, the air between us thinning. “What do I look at you like?”

Travis stopped right in front of me, shoulders wide and scent overpowering, standing an inch taller than me.

Nothing else existed.

He took a slow drag in front of me before throwing the cigarette away, exhaling smoke between us.

“Like you’d fall to your knees right now if I asked you to.”

I thought my heart stopped.

His words lingered in the air like the vibrations of a cymbal clashing, titling my world off its axis.

“I don’t know what—”

He tutted at me. “No need for excuses.”

“But—” I tried again to protest, but he didn’t let me.

Taking a final step toward me, he said, a savage smile growing on his face. “Don’tlie, my Prince, your eyes can’t disguise the truth,”

Lyingwas the only sensible option here. Denying the truth at every turn. I couldn’t admit to it, not when it was taking every ounce of willpower not to give in to temptation and fall to my knees right this second.

Not when he was so near and looking at me like he might just let me.

Because I wanted it. Too much.

My back hit the wall.

Travis’s hand was suddenly rising to my throat, taking hold of it gently, putting his thumb on my pulse. “And your pulse doesn’t either,” he said, low between us.

The scent of cigarettes, sweat, andmanfilled my nostrils.

“I’m straight,” I said, the same way I’d been telling myself since the moment I realized what the reactions he awoke in me meant.

“Sexuality is a spectrum.” His thumb caressed my vein, making me shiver.

“I don’t like you.”

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