Page 18 of Captivating

I roll my eyes and hold my ground. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and I stole this from you in ninth grade. I’ve had it longer than you ever did. It’s mine.”

“Possession, huh?” Damn that voice. Why does he sound turned-on, and why in the world does that thought do things to me? Killian walks by me like this is his house, not mine, and heads back to the kitchen.

I stand here, dumbfounded for a hot second, then yes, I stomp my foot like a pissed-off toddler. I probably look a whole lot like my best friend’s daughter right now, but I push that thought aside and follow the big oaf. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Damn him and his long legs.

He’s already in the kitchen with the fridge open by the time I get there. “Killian, stop.”

His stupid dirty-blond head pops up above my giant subzero refrigerator door. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”

He holds up a bottle of water and shuts the door. “Getting water. I’ve got to run in the morning, and I had a shot tonight... Actually, two. I need to flush it from my system before I run.”

“It’s snowing out. You’re going to run in the snow?” I can’t decide if that sounds fun or stupid. Knowing me, I’d fall and bust my ass. Knowing him, he’d be fine.

Douchebag.

“You know those things at the gym that you run on... they’re called treadmills, and I run on them too. If it weren’t already snowing tonight, I’d still run outside tomorrow. But I don’t want to bite it on black ice. So the gym it is. Tomorrow is a ten-mile day.”

“Damn... ten miles, huh?” Easy peasy. But I don’t tell him that.

I don’t tell him anything.

“Okay. I meant what are you doing in my kitchen? Don’t you have a perfectly good one at home? Your home?”

Killian cracks the lid open on the water, and here I go watching that stupid Adam’s apple working again. When did this turn into my kink?

Oh yeah. When it’s him.

He’s always been my kink, and fucking hell, that frustrates me.

Once he finishes the bottle, he looks around for the trash, then opens cabinets until he finds it and tosses the bottle into the recycling bin. In two big steps, he’s in front of me, and in a move that has me gasping, the giant, brooding bastard puts both hands on my hips and sits me on the marble counter. His hands stay planted on either side of me. We’re still not eye to eye, because when I say giant, I mean well over a foot taller than me.

“We’ve got to talk, princess.” His words and voice hold no room for argument. He’s serious, not playing, and I’m not ready for this. Not even a decade later.

“No, we don’t.” I slap my hand against his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

This close, everything about this man is overwhelming.

The way he still smells like the ocean, even though we live an hour away from the nearest one. The catlike green eyes with the gorgeous golden flecks that only ever come out to play when he’s super serious or super scared... rare as the second option is. His dirty-blond hair, that’s always been just a little too long, that I used to run my fingers through when he’d lay his head in my lap. Ugh.

“Yeah, we do. Why are you fighting your security?”

“What?” Of all the things he could say, that wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Noah told me you won’t let your security do its job. He’s scared to death for you. He thinks you need someone closer than you’re letting them get.”

When I refuse to look into his eyes, one hand slips under my chin, forcing my face up. “Lilah...”

“You don’t get to ask me this. You don’t get a say in how I live my life, Killian. You lost that privilege when you chose wrong.” Emotions long ago shoved far away crawl up my throat until I push them right back down.

I will not cry over this man.

Not again. Not ever again.

“Wrong answer, Lilah.”

I slide my leg up and press my bare foot to the center of his chest. “Back the fuck off before I make you, St. James. You lost privileges ten years ago. You don’t get to be concerned. You don’t get to have a say. And you certainly don’t get to lecture me.”

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