Page 637 of Flirting with Darkness

“Are they they wrong size?” he asks, seeming to ignore the fact that I’m only in a towel, and he’s right friggin’ there, now only two feet from me. I’m finding it hard to breathe. Maybe I didn’t notice as much when I was nearly dying, but I’m not stupid or blind. He’s… illegally hot. Like, criminally so. And those eyes, every time he turns them on me, I feel like I’m going to faint.

Or maybe vomit.

Not sure.

“They’re all —”

“Your size. I’d be a pretty shitty host if they weren’t.”

It’s dawning on me, in bits and pieces, that he knows a lot more about me than I give him credit for, and that he’s planned this. Actively planned it. My face flushes with a sudden wash of heat, and the world begins to pitch and move under my feet.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly, and then he carefully takes the items out of my hand and into his own. “You’re safe here. I would never hurt you, Katy.” There’s something in his voice — a specific note, or tone — which feels like it’s winding its way around me, stroking itself across my skin, binding me in place. I’m not sure what it is, but I can feel his words as if they were physical touch.

And, somehow, I believe them. Wholeheartedly.

His calloused fingers come up to my chin and he lifts it, so my eyes meet his. Those mysterious gold eyes… the ones that could drag me in and hold me caught in their mesmerizing depths, forever at this mercy… In my peripheral, I catch his lips spreading into a slow, sly smile.

“Do you like them?” he asks, and I panic for a moment. I can’t tell him that, any of it! Especially the ‘mercy’ part, it’d sound so creepy, or weird, or — “The clothes, do you like them?”

Oh. Never mind. He’s not asking me what I think of his eyes. I swallow and nod.

“You ever see someone,” he continues, “and, somehow, every single part of you knows that it’s meant… to be?”

I swear, my heart stops dead, right in my chest. It has officially beaten its last beat. I stand, deceased. Here I am, naked save for a swath of plush terrycloth, and he seems to be professing to feeling actual FEELINGS of some kind, and I am absolutely deceased.

He bends down, and my eyes can’t shut. This can’t be happening.

This can’t possibly be real…

But it is. He kisses me, the unexpected warmth of his lips on mine coaxing a gasp from them as our mouths connect, and before I know it I’m soaking in his heat.

No — now I’m drowning, THIS is drowning. My hands reach up and grab at his shoulders to steady myself, his muscles also warm through the thin layer of cotton, and that’s when I feel it — my towel. It uncurls from my front and slumps down to the ground, like a predator relinquishing its catch to a superior beast.

I gasp and pull back on reflex. He bends to retrieve it, and returns to his full height slowly, eyes leisurely dragging their gaze up my body. I don’t even move to cover myself.

“Beautiful,” he breathes out — almost to himself, like he doesn’t know he’s even said it. My cheeks are on fire, and I reach for the towel. “No, don’t,” he says, “this…” He gestures to me with a flick of his hand. “Could I just —”

My hair is dripping water down my shoulders, icy-cold over my skin, but it does nothing to distract me from the flare of heat that lances from my core up to my breasts.

Hadrion’s hands ghost over my collarbone, his rough calloused fingers stroking the rises and dips they find. He bumps the gold chain around my neck, and I feel it roll along my skin. He smiles when I shiver.

“Can’t have you be cold,” he says quietly. His body shifts as he wraps the large expanse of the towel around me. “Come here.” He takes my hand, his fingers curling around mine, and he leads me out of the walk-in closet. I glance at my bed, but he doesn’t stop at it as I’d presumed he might, and he keeps walking. I tag after him like a damp, bedraggled kite on a string, as he walks out of my bedroom and down the corridor. He presses a button next to what I think is a pair of sliding closet doors set into the wall.

They glide apart silently, opening into a small, private elevator.

“What…” I ask, and he pulls me inside, the doors closing swiftly behind me.

“Don’t want you tripping up the stairs,” he says — plausibly lies — and I burrow into my towel deeper. I shiver. The air is cooler out here, and I’m still dripping wet.

He turns to me. In the confined space, there’s only inches between us, and he quickly presses me back into the wall. His mouth finds mine, his fingers twining in the chain around my neck until it cuts into my skin. It burns, and I gasp. He yanks at my towel, and it falls to my feet.

The doors open behind him and he tugs me out, letting go of my necklace, and me, long enough for me to skid to a stop on the smooth wooden floor. I lift my head… and catch sight of the bouncing, pumping, thriving club crammed full of well-dressed strangers.

I choke out a noise of complete and utter horror, and cross my arms in front of me, doing whatever possible to turn myself inside out on the spot. Cherry red light from the club spills into the room through a sweeping wall made entirely of glass. A vast bed sits slightly away from the window, yet close enough that whoever sleeps in it could twist their head and see everybody down in the club if they wanted to. And vice versa, if the club’s patrons were to steal a glance up toward the ceiling.

Which also means they can all see me.

Where the hell is my towel —?!

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