Page 24 of Santa Daddy
“Good.” He stepped into the room, footsteps silent on polished wood. “You need your rest.”
Right. Because nothing lulled a girl to sleep like witnessing a hit, getting kidnapped from a Christmas tree lot, trying to call 911, and then losing her virginity to the man responsible for all of the above.
Totally restful.
He approached slowly, deliberately. Giving me time to object, move away, throw something. I didn’t. Every rational bone in my body screamed at me to retreat, and I lay there like I’d been nailed to the mattress.
When he reached the edge of the bed, he stopped.
Instead of climbing in, he just looked at me. Studied my face like he was memorizing it for later. The hard planes softened by that damned winter light filtering around him, turning him into something too beautiful and too lethal all at once.
He reached out.
Brush of fingers at my temple. Thumb catching a stray strand of hair and tucking it behind my ear, his knuckles grazing my jaw. The contact sent a shiver through me, ridiculous and involuntary.
Don’t lean into him. Don’t lean into the man who just wrecked your entire idea of yourself.
I leaned into him anyway.
His hand stilled on my cheek. Thumb tracing the line of bone with devastating precision.
“Stop pretending you don’t want this,” he said quietly.
The words were soft. Not cruel. That made them worse.
Because they were true.
I wanted to argue. To deny. To throw him back into the role of captor and monster where I could hate him cleanly with no confusing side effects.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie scratched my throat on the way out.
His mouth curved. Not a smile. Something sharper.
“Liar.”
The single word cut through every last bit of resistance I’d managed to gather overnight. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the fact that my whole body still hummed with the phantom feel of him inside me. Maybe I was just done pretending for one goddamn minute.
My hand moved on its own.
Covering his where it framed my face. Pressing his palm more firmly against my skin like I wanted to fuse us together.
“What if I am lying?” I asked.
His eyes darkened—not black, but deeper, like storm clouds over snow.
“Then I’d have to do something about that.”
The threat in his voice made my pulse stutter for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
This is insane. This is the most insane thing you’ve ever done, and you once tried to rescue a cat from a third-floor fire escape with a laundry basket and zero upper body strength.
He leaned closer.
Close enough that I could see the silver flecks in his irises. Close enough that his scent—dark cologne, coffee, the faint metallic tang of city winter—folded around me. Close enough that my lips tingled in anticipation before they even touched his.
He leaned in, just enough that his breath brushed my mouth, giving me one last, silent chance to turn my head away.
I didn’t.
