Page 30 of Twice as Twisted

“I want to look at you,” Duke says.

“You can look from there,” I point out.

“Come on, I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, his voice going quiet, his smiling eyes serious as he reaches out a hand. “I just want to see what kind of clothes would look best on you.”

I hesitate before stepping closer. He grabs my hand, and I hiss in a breath through my teeth. Slowly, he turns me, his other hand guiding my hip. When I’m facing away, he has to drop my hand, and I fight the urge to scrub it on my pants to get the feelof him off my palm. It’s tingling, and I’m lightheaded when he finishes steering me in a circle.

Suddenly his big hands clamp onto my hips, his fingers so long they feel like the bars of a cage snapping shut, enclosing me. He yanks me forwards onto his knees, catching me off balance and using the momentum to bring me down on his lap.

Panic shoots up through my core like a geyser, and I shove back from him, but the next second I’m inside my shirt, fighting the fabric. Another wave of panic hits, and I flail, trying to get out. He rips it over my head and tosses it aside, leaving me straddling his lap in just my sweatpants and a sports bra. I throw my arms around myself, hiding my scars, hugging my body tightly, as if they can shield me from his heated, hungry eyes.

“What the hell?” I cry, trying to rise.

His hands move to my upper thighs, pinning me in place. Blood rushes and recedes in my head, rushes and recedes. It’s so loud his voice sounds far away when he speaks.

“Damn. So that’s what you’ve been hiding under there all that time. No wonder Baron’s been so selfish about you. He wants you all to himself.”

“Let me go,” I growl.

“I’m just looking,” he says, flashing me a grin. “Trust, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Here, if it makes you feel better, I’ll do the same.”

He grabs the hem of his t-shirt and peels it off over his head. The moment his hands are off me, I shoot to my feet, scrambling backwards off his knees. I don’t make it two steps before his shirt joins mine on the floor, and he stands too. His long fingers close around my waist this time. The contact of his hot hands on my cool skin takes my breath, and I freeze into a statue. The next thing I know, I’m airborne as he lifts me effortlessly, so high my head is above his for a second before hebrings my hips down on his. The breath shoots out of me in a gasp of shock.

One of his hands drags my thigh up around his, and my other leg circles his hips to match before my brain has reengaged. He covers the few steps to the bed in a single second, and then he’s on top of me, his bare torso searing over mine, millions and millions of skin cells combusting before he plants his hands above my shoulders and pushes up, grinding his hips between mine.

I can’t breathe, and yet I’m breathing so hard I can’t speak. The world is tilting, tilting, and I grasp for the escape hatch, the parachute that will yank me up out of my body, where I can just watch and not feel.

Duke gives me the sweetest smile, his mouth sinking in at the corners, the exact same one I’ve seen on Baron’s face.

“What’s up?” he asks. “You doing okay down there, baby girl?”

“Get off me,” I gasp out, my palms connecting with his chest, then recoiling. “Please.”

“Hey, chill. I told you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to make you feel good.”

I get my heels on the bed and try to push up, to escape him, but it’s a horrible miscalculation. My hips lift, dragging over his abs, and my shoulders only move an inch before they’re barricaded by his hands planted on the bed above them. He sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. I drop back onto the bed, panting, my lip trembling.

“Please,” I beg, my whole body starting to shake as stinging tears wet my lashes, hot as lava bubbling up through my frozen soul, my glacial heart, my ice-glazed eyes. “I don’t like to be touched.”

“Anywhere?” he asks, a frown tugging between his brows as his hand slides between our hips. “Or here?”

His fingers press into my center, and something buried deep, deep inside me quivers, a dewdrop on the gossamer of a spiderweb. Before it’s over, a blind flash obliterates everything, a flash-freeze that suspends the world in time. And then I’m a snowflake drifting, suspended above.

Papa’s got a surprise for his special snowflake…

The relief is instant and bone-deep, the cold embracing me in its familiar icy threads spinning around and around, preserving me like prey.

“Anywhere.”

My lips barely move. It doesn’t matter if he hears me, though. He can’t touch me now. I am a delicate snowflake balanced on an invisible thread. If he touches me, so much as breathes on me, I will melt to nothing and disappear. The whole world is less than a whisper, barely more than a breath.

“Oh,” Duke says, drawing his hand from between us. “Oh, shit.” He rolls off and sits up, adjusts himself self-consciously.

I sit up and wipe absently at the tears that spilled. There’s only a couple. They usually don’t make it out before I’ve escaped to safety, the intricate web I built for myself a long, long time ago.

“Shit,” Duke says again, casting me a guilty glance. “Sorry. Does Baron know?”

I shake my head. “Why would he?”

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