Page 147 of His To Erase
“She stayed.”
I pause. “She chose to stay? With you?”
That earns the tiniest twitch of his mouth. “She’s smarter than most people I know.”
He’s still looking at me when he says it. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing. Something flips in my stomach, low and hot, and I hate how fast I feel it. I stab another bite—sharper than necessary—and chew like that’ll help me tonotfeel how turned on I’m getting over literally nothing.
Nope, not doing this right now.
“Of course she stayed,” I mutter. “You probably grunted twice and opened a can of tuna and she was like, ‘yeah, I could build a life here.’”
He tilts his head slightly. “Jealous?”
“Of the dog?”
I don’t even know why I ask. My brain says no, but my body’s already halfway into writing vows while his eyes drag over me.
“Of anyone who gets to sleep next to me without biting first.”
My fork freezes mid-air and my brain short-circuits.
“You did not just say that.”
He doesn’t even blink. Just sits there—arms stretched across the back of the couch with his legs spread like he owns the oxygen between us. “You asked.”
“No, I made a sarcastic comment. You turned it into a scene from a low-budget porno.”
His gaze slides down my body like he’s mapping it out and my thighs clench before I can stop them.
“Still hungry?” he murmurs, like it’s not a question.
He’s close enough that I can smell his skin—he’s the worst kind of temptation—and my brain forgets how to function.
“That depends,” I say carefully. “You offering dessert or just judgment?”
He gives me the kind of smile that undoes girls who should know better. And I’m not sure that I do. Ignoring it, I shovel a bite into my mouth just to avoid making a sound I can’t take back.
Steven
She’s on my couch, wrapped in my blanket, eating my food, and watching my screen like she belongs here.
That should have pissed me off. It should’ve switched something cold and clean in my head—like it always used to.
I don’t know when, or even how, but this reckless, infuriating girl started slipping under my skin like a habit I didn’t remember picking up. She was a problem I should’ve solved with silence or violence. Something easy. Permanent. Instead, I want to bend her over the fucking kitchen counter and remind her who she belongs to—who she’s always belonged to—even if she doesn’t know it yet.
I’m standing here like a fucking ghost in my own house, listening to her talk to the dog like it’s her therapist. She just walked in, peeled back a part of my life I’ve kept buried six feet deep—and didn’t flinch. Worse—she looked at the photos like it meant something.
I could see it on her face, it was almost like she recognized the kind of pain that settles into your bones and makes a home.
I should be angry, but all I feel is this slow, gnawing heat in my chest and this need to claim her so hard she never questions where she belongs again.
As if seeing that hoodie ride up wasn’t already handing me the perfect, filthy view of the ass last night. I wanted to leave her bruised and shaking, but it took everything in me not to shove her face-first into the cushions, rip that hoodie up over her hips, and fuck every last Frank-soaked delusion out of her reckless, pretty mouth.
Even now, it’s taking every last ounce of control I have not to drag her to the floor, shove my hand between those trembling thighs, and show her what happens to girls who forget which monsters they’re supposed to fear.
When she didn’t wake up this morning, I stayed in the office, making calls I needed to make, and kept the plan moving. But I saw her on the cameras—barefoot, half-conscious, and wandering into my kitchen like a girl who’s never been fed properly.
It was infuriating.And fucking adorable.
