Page 82 of Never Fall for an Angel

The moment I’m resting back against the cushions, she drops her hand. Picking up the book and looking over the cover.

“I’ve never read this one,” she says, her gaze flicking up to mine. “I might butcher some of the language.”

“Says the girl whose mother made sure she read Aristotle and Shakespeare.”

She blushes, rolling her eyes, but the ghost of a smile pulls on her lips.

And it’s because of me.

Eat a dick, Collin.

“You handle the asshole killing, and I’ll read the classics after dinner for us? Deal?”

I smirk, falling back into the cushions and getting comfortable.

“Deal.”

MILA

As it turns out, I can’t sleep.

Christian dozed off while I was reading to him, and though my eyes felt heavy, I found that once I got to bed, sleep was nearly impossible.

I can’t get him out of my head.

The touch of his hands on my body. The taste of his skin under my tongue.

I also can’t stop thinking about how I want to feel those same hands doingotherthings to me.

I’ve laid awake for what feels like hours, listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the jagged rocks below the cliff and attempting to ignore the dull ache in my core.

It’s Christian. The man who broke my heart.

The manIshot.

I shouldn’t be feeling anything for him other than fear because he kidnapped me.

Just when I think I’ve got him figured out, he surprises me. Just when I think he’s the biggest asshole in the world, like with his little caveman show for Collin—who, might I add, was just being nice—he goes and does something like findsThe Phantom of the Operanovel, just so I’ll read it to him.

Which brings me to my next dilemma. The way my heart ached for him when he explained how hard reading is for him. I had thought when I started reading, he would have checked out, but he stayed silent, listening to me read for almost two hours before he finally fell asleep.

I know he’s not resting well enough. It’s a fact I’ve felt guilty about since he brought me here. I’m sleeping in the big, giant bed by myself while he’s roughing it on the couch every night, despite my pleas for him to take the room.

He’s just . . . a contradiction. How a man can be selfish enough to kidnap me, but also one of the most selfless people I know, is confusing to me. My brain doesn’t know how to label him because he’s never been inherently good or bad. He’s just . . . Christian. One foot in the dark and the other teetering on the edge.

Somehow, I know the longer I stay here with him, the further I’ll be forced to step over that edge, too.

I watch the moon in the sky outside the window, wishing it was raining. I’ve found the rain on the metal roof helps me sleep and keeps the nightmares away. At least most of the time.

I’m struggling to decide if my dream after my nightmare last night was just that. A dream? Or if Christian had really held me in the dark when I thought surely I was going to suffocate from the invisible hands that had wrapped around my throat.

He’d seemed so . . . cold at breakfast, and then when he dragged me into the shower, he was like an inferno, swallowing me whole.

The way his fingers glided along my wet skin. The way he held me, letting me control what happened . . .

“Goddamnit,” I grumble to myself when my core pulses, remembering how he’d made me tell him my . . . body belonged to him.

I could just do it myself. What’s the shame in that? I’m in bed alone. Well . . . Phantom’s beside me, but I could always politely ask him to move to the floor.

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