Page 42 of Burn

I take his hand, allowing him to lead me, my head hung low. I don’t look up when we pass through two sets of doors. My eyes remained fixed until a young-sounding male voice says, “Sup, Liberty! Where ya been, cuh?” My head snaps up, and I see the source of the voice. He looks around twenty and has a goofy smile on his face. His eyes meet mine momentarily before he quips, “This your girl, man? Damn…”

“Don’t push it, Scotty,” Adrian warns, “This is Lex. Lex, this is Scotty, who, it appears, has a desire to die today.”

Scotty’s laugh is loud and contagious. It briefly chases away my disappointment at the prospect of being dumped in a hotel.

“My bad, man. No disrespect, Miss.”

Adrian pulls me past the desk, down a corridor, to the building elevators. A door opens immediately, and he pulls me inside and punches the number fourteen. My curiosity gets the better of me.

“Adrian, where are we?”

He releases my hand, shoves both of his into his pockets, and looks at me nervously. Before he responds, the doors open, and he steps out and turns to face me, his eyes searching mine.

“This is where I live, Lex,” the words are a confession, thick with guilt.

What?

The doors start to close, and his hand shoots out to stop them.

“What do you mean?” Fear prickles up my spine.

Here?

He moves forward, positioning himself in the entrance, and I step back, sweat forming in the palms of my hands.

He’s been here? How long?

“Lex,” his tone is warm, inviting, and incredibly predatory.I’m in fucking danger.“You have to listen. Give me a chance to explain.”

He takes another step into the elevator, and once again, I mirror it, stepping away. Except now, my back collides with the rear wall, and I feel the blood drain from my face as the elevator doors close behind Adrian. I feel the elevator start to move, traveling back down to the ground floor, and I just need to get to the exit. My eyes flick to the lights as they illuminate the floor numbers as we descend.

12

11

10

I just need to get to the fucking exit.

I chant it again and again in my head as Adrian steps closer. My heart pounds in my chest like wild mustangs, and I tilt my chin up to keep eye contact. His size is amplified in this cramped space, and I’ve never felt smaller or more defenseless.

9

8

7

Hope creeps up my chest, and that feeling alone should be enough to warn me not to let my guard down. However, I still gasp in shock when Adrian shifts, turns slightly, and punches theEmergency Stopbutton. I push myself back into the wall as hard as I can, desperate for space between us, but in less than two steps, he’s right here, staring down and breathing hard. My body trembles as I lift my hands and press into his chest, silently pleading with him to back up. It’s no use, he’s a wall of granite, hot under my fingers.

“You can’t run,” his voice reverberates down my chest, pooling between my legs. I squirm beneath him. Beneath the weight of his stare, the inferno of his body, and from the need I can’t seem to turn off when he’s this close.

My voice is barely audible, a high-pitched whine that clearly spells out how conflicted I’m feeling when I start, “Adrian, please…”

It’s all I manage before his hands slam into the wall on either side of my head, caging me in. The motion is so familiar, we’ve been like this before, and I equally want to knee him in the dick, and grind into his thigh to release the building pressure.

The expression on his face is different, though. There are still fragments of softness seeping through the edges of steeled possessiveness, and as he slowly leans closer, I brace for the devastation of his kiss, but he pauses, our mouths so close that as he speaks, his lips brush mine, making my mouth water, “You can’t run, Lex,” he repeats. “Please.”

The speaker crackling to life pulls him away. He stands at his full height, his hands resting casually at his sides, his eyes unwavering from mine. The kid from the front desk speaks through the intercom, “Liberty, you good in there?”

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