Page 61 of Ramsay

“Smiling. You’re creeping me out.”

He laughs, and once again, I’m struck dumb. Fucker.

“I’m sorry my amusement disturbs you,” he rumbles.

“Please, that's not humor, that’s—I don’t know. Cruel satisfaction or something.”

He drops into silence, and I fidget under his assessing stare, caught out once again by the guy who sees more than I’m willing to share.

Into the weighted silence, I say, “And I thought my parents were fucked up.”

A shadow crosses his features before he steps away from the door and locks it behind him, all the while looking at me with a mercurial expression. He approaches me silently and tingles race down my spine at the intensity of his gaze.

I feel like a rabbit caught in a lion’s predatory stare and my heart races at that.

His bright eyes trace my features as he grabs my chin and lifts my face. Sucking in a breath, I wait for what I don’t know because with Ramsay, it could be a tongue lashing or a fuck hot kiss.

I’m hoping for the latter.

“You do please me, love. Too bad,” he mutters against my lips before gently caressing his mouth against mine.

As quickly as he does it, he steps back but just that minor contact sends shivers straight to my core, and I repress a shudder of pure need. When I’m around him, all I do is want, and Ramsay, with his coolly amused stare, is not a guy I can afford to need.

I’m caught in a snare, and for the first time, I panic because I don’t think there’s a way out.

“What does that mean?” I mutter, glancing over his shoulder.

When he stares at me like that with glittering eyes and a knowing smile, I’m torn between punching him in the balls and fucking him like a whore, which drops my mood twenty degrees because I’m no one's whore.

Shrugging casually, he cocks his head to the side and says, “You're not who I thought you to be.”

Snorting, I shrug right back. “No, kidding.”

He raises his brows and says with a dark smile, “Be that as it may, and as much as it pains me, you’re a liability. And I don’t do, liabilities.”

Curling my lip to cover my unease, I say, cautiously, “Are you threatening me?”

Although his customary smirk remains in place, a tic forms in his jaw as he says in a silky voice, “Just stating the facts. Now, what am I going to do with you?”

“How about nothing? I performed your little task, now let me go.”

“Ah, but I can’t. You see you’ve become a thorn, and thorns need to be plucked.”

“How so?” I ask through numb lips.

Pulling me into his arms, he grabs my hair, drops his mouth over mine, and says in a whisper, “You’re such a sweet little thing. But I wonder, what lies beneath the fire in your eyes? Hm? What makes Willow Preston tick?”

My heart picks up in my chest as he examines me like a fucking mad scientist, and uneasily, I pull my head away from his firm grip. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, love, nothing is going on, except…”

“Except what?!?”

I’m reeling under the weight of his gaze, my skin is on fire from his touch, and I’m fucking confused. I feel like the other shoe is about to drop. The question is, will it be a steel-toed boot?

Cocking his head to the side, he says simply, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t have that, Willow. You understand?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say shakily, hoping to project a calm I don’t feel because Ramsay’s looking at me as though I’m a problem to be solved, and with a sinking sensation, I see it’s not going to be a pleasant solution.

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