Page 37 of Oh No, My Kidnapper Is Hot!

Stryker sees my exhaustion, and, in what I can only assume is an effort to make things “good”, he gets to work stripping the bed. He redresses it with fresh clean bedding, shooing me away when I try to help. After he’s nudged me out of the way several times, I give up and take a seat on his cot.

Sometime in the middle of him fighting with the fitted sheet, I lie down. The pillow smells like him. It’s a nice smell – woodsy and rich. It fits him.

I’m breathing it in, dozing, when my body is suddenly lifted in the air. I squeal, and my eyes fly open. Stryker rotates us and sets me softly on the freshly made bed.

“You could have just told me you were done!” I exclaim. He grins.

“My way was more fun,” he says. Fun?Fun?

“Stop carrying me around!” He shakes his head.

“If I didn’t carry you around we’d never get anywhere. It’s efficient.”

Is that steam blowing out of my ears? I sit up.

“You’re going to think effici– oomph!”

He pushes me back down.

Ignoring my protests and struggles, he covers me up and tucks me into bed like a toddler. I glare at his shoulder.

“I’m not a baby!”

Ido notlike the look he’s giving me. It’s mischievous and dark, and it has me snapping my mouth shut so fast my teeth knock painfully together.

“You aresobaby,” he tells me. His voice is low and teasing, with an edge that feels like maybe he’s not entirely joking. I gulp.

“I’d like to go to sleep now.”

He huffs an amused sound. “I bet you would,” he says. Then, in a move so shocking I think I may already be dreaming, he bends down and kisses my forehead.

“Have a good nap, Millie,” he says, then swiftly exits the room, turning off the light on his way out. I blink at the ceiling.

Did he just…

My forehead is tingling. My whole body is tingling, for that matter. I reach up to feel the spot where his lips touched me. It doesn’tfeeldifferent. It’s the same as it always has been. Smooth. Skin-like. Warmer than usual, but that’s to be expected when a man that hot touches his lips to my body. It’s a miracle that I didn’t burst into flames on contact.

Why would he do that? First a hug, then a kiss. I am not equipped to handle these kinds of maneuvers.

And so, I simply will not.

I am officially entering Denial Land, where Millie retains her sanity and peace. That kiss? Never happened. Because you can’t freak out about something if itdidn’t happen.Which means that I am so totally not freaking out about it at all. “It” being nothing, because nothing happened.

Ha. Yes. Exactly.

I’m starting to sound as crazy as everyone else here.

A few deep breaths later, I close my eyes.

My forehead keeps tingling.

I count to fifty. One hundred. Two hundred.

I roll onto my stomach. Three hundred. My side. Four hundred.

I huff and roll to my back again. I open my eyes. I will not touch my forehead. It is a perfectly normal forehead, that has never experienced any titillating behavior ever.

And yet, it tingles. Taunting me.

---