Page 59 of Born of Ice

“Exton,” I say with a warning lacing my tone. I don’t like where this is headed. Not one bit.

“Electra.”

“I’m not going to the gym.” I fold my arms across my chest like the angry elf he calls me.

Exton sighs. “We’ve been over this already. What I say goes because you can’t run away from me. Or do you need me to go through all the name calling again?”

I want to dish out another comment his way, something snarky and defiant, but he’s right. It’d be useless.

“And what do you suppose I’m to do there? Watch your pretty self?” Damn it, I realize too late that I paid him yet another unwilling compliment, one he doesn’t miss based on that feline smile.

“Two compliments in one morning? That might as well be declaration of love, coming from you.”

“Keep dreaming, lunatic,” I shoot back, and he grins.

“To answer your question, you can watch my pretty self if you’d like, but we are going there for you. I saw the state of your muscles yesterday when the therapist was here, and I don’t like them. They are getting too weak already and it’s only been what? A month?”

“Seven weeks,” I grumble. “But I don’t see what does it matter.”

“It matters because you need that muscle back for when you ditch that chair.”

“Goodie, we are back to that.” You can hear my snarky sarcasm from a mile away.

“We never left, angry elf.”

“I’m not going to walk,” I tell him through gritted teeth as my hands ball up. How many more times do I have to say that to everyone so they finally realize it? Somehow, it took Erik and Filip only a few days for the knowledge to sink in, but everyone else is still fighting it.

“Is that whatyouthink or what someone made you believe?” His question jars me from my haze, stirring something deep within me.

We haven’t spoken about last night, tactfully pretending it didn’t happen, but it did and I have a gut feeling that Exton is simply waiting it out, allowing his own feelings to settle behind his own wall before he breaches mine again.

“It’s what the truth is, no matter who says what.”

“Well then, I don’t see the harm in going to the gym anyway.” Based on his little smirk, he knows he got me.

“Fine, let’s waste another day.”

“I cannot wait to tell you ‘I told you so’ one day.”

“Me too.” I go to wheel myself out of here only to remember that I’m not in my chair and Exton comes over to my side, scooping me up and carries me to it, his scent wrapping around me just as strong as his arms are. And I like it. I like too much.

I’m not supposed to like it.

I should not like it and never saw this coming, but maybe that’s my mistake. I let him slip past my barriers because I wasn’t protecting them, having believed that that part of me was long dead, yet here we are. And I’m not that eager to fight it off now.

“Okay, we’ll go this afternoon. I have to go run a quick errand, so I’ll be back in about six or seven hours.” The low, husky tone of his sends a vibration straight through me. And it takes a second for me to process what he just said.

“In what world does anyone consider six or seven hours to be a quick errand?” I arch an eyebrow, and a shit-eating grin brightens his face as he sits me down.

“Afraid you’ll miss me too much?”

I snort. “You wish.”

“Hmm, maybe I do.” Can he just stop with saying stuff like that?

“So, what’s this errand you have to run?”

“Nothing important, don’t worry about it.”

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