Page 8 of Call You Mine

“Damon,” I murmur once more, though not making a move either toward him or away. This is my chance to flee, to unlock the door behind me and take off after realizing how much of a mistake it was to come back here again, but the way his gaze holds mine keeps me frozen in place.

The iciness of my glare mixed with the blazing heat radiating from his deadly scowl is practically fogging up all the windows in the room. My eyes flicker back and forth around the room, and that’s when I notice it’s completely vacant.

Damon shifts toward me, taking four long strides before he’s once again pressed against me. “What the hell are you doing here, Wyn?” he asks, a mixture of anger and confusion heard in his daunting tone.

“I need your help,” I croak, instinctively brushing my fingers over the dark bruise I’m sure is forming along my cheek. It aches under my touch, and I flinch when his hand comes up to cover mine, his calloused fingertips tracing softly along my flesh and down to the dried blood on the edge of my lip where Enzo’s silver ring cut me.

His eyes crease and drop to my lips. “Tell me what happened, Princess?”

I turn away from him, unable to handle the tension currently building in the room around us and deep inside me at the way his demeanor shifted so suddenly. This isn’t what I came here for. I’m supposed to hold myself together, put up a front of a strong woman with nothing to hide, yet the first moment I run into him, I’m ready to spill out every secret. I’m seconds from falling apart in his hands.

I guess some things never change. Damon could always bring out the worst in me.

His stiff fingers grip my chin, turning me toward him, forcing me to meet his gaze. I open my eyes as he tilts my chin forward, pulling the sunglasses further off me. “Tell me why you’re here.”

My gaze drops to the collar of my coat, suddenly remembering what I’m hiding beneath it.What if he’s not willing to help me? What if he freaks out and turns me in instead?

I hadn’t considered the possibility he'd refuse to help me, turn me away, and throw me out on my ass for not speaking to him in over a year. Not to mention I’m almost one hundred percent sure he knows the attack on him was my fault.

What if he wants nothing to do with me once he learns what I’ve done?

Damon’s eyes follow mine and without warning he undoes the buttons of my coat, only unbuttoning the top two before he tears the coat open in one swift tug. The round, gold buttons clatter on the wood floor where they fall, echoing in the surrounding emptiness.

“Wynter, what the fuck?” he shouts, his eyes ablaze with a deep rage I’ve never seen before as he tugs the coat off my body, letting it fall in a pool of black wool at my feet. Bold eyes look me up and down, focusing on the dark red stains over my neck, chest, and stomach. It’s dried now but the stench of it makes him wrinkle his nose in disgust. “Are you injured?” he asks, suddenly realizing all this blood can only mean one thing.

“It’s not mine, not all of it,” I whimper, instantly regretting my decision to come here.What the hell was I thinking?

He lets out a sharp, almost maniacal laugh making my brows furrow at his response. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Embarrassed and unable to look him in the eye without the possibility of breaking down like a fucking lunatic, I take the opportunity he’s stepped away to grab my coat from the floor and throw it back on. I cross my arms across my chest, wrapping the coat around my body.

“You know what? Forget it. I don’t know why I even came here.”

Without warning, he turns abruptly, realizing I purposefully came to him.Did he really think I was just wandering outside his apartment in search of someone else?

“Why did you come here, Princess?”

A sharp pang of electricity rushes through me, down my spine and in between my legs at the sound of the word princess leaving his pursed lips. It always was one of my favorite things, because from him it didn’t sound like an insult but more of aterm of endearment as opposed to those who previously referred to me as theIce Princess.

But I shouldn't like it so much. “For starters, stop calling me that,” I blurt out, walking over to the window to my left, needing to put some distance between us. It’s like I’m suffocating, the scent of his cologne overwhelming my senses and making my entire being ache.

“Princess?” he asks confused, stepping up behind me and pulling the black wig off of my head, my white hair falling over my shoulders. He takes a strand of my hair that’s covered in dried blood and twirls around his fingers, his eyes meeting mine in our reflection on the glass in front of me. “What do you prefer I call you,Snow?” he asks, looking down at the strand of white hair in his hand.

My body tenses as the word leaves his lips. There’s no way I’m letting him call me Snow. Not when Enzo has made it so that I tremble in anger and fear at the sound of it.

“Snow? Really, that’s the best you got?” I say, brushing off my genuine reaction as I pull out of his grasp.

“Well, you vetoed Princess, so…”

I turn to face him, shocked by how close he’s standing to me, my chest practically brushing against his. I inhale a sharp breath, causing a wicked smirk to appear over his lips. Running a hand through my hair, trying my best to calm the frizz caused by the synthetic costume wig, I look down at his lips before bringing my gaze back to his.

“You know Snow White is not only still a princess, but is named Snow because of her snow-white complexion, not her hair, which, by the way, is black.”

He chuckles, amused. “Well then, sounds to me you’re more the Wicked Witch type than a princess after all, Servite.”

I roll my eyes at how off topic we’ve gotten. This is wasting precious time, and time isn’t currently on my side. Someone must have found his body by now.

“Ugh, this is going nowhere,” I groan, stalking angrily toward the door, but he reaches an arm out, halting me in my tracks and pulling me toward him. His free hand comes up behind me and rests at the small of my back.

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