Page 57 of Santa Daddy
What the hell was wrong with me.
“You want to know what earning it looks like?” he said. His voice was rough, scraped on the way out, that dangerous edge back in it that turned my bones to liquid.
I turned to face him, chin up like that might equal armor. “Enlighten me.”
Don’t challenge him. You know how this goes when you challenge him.
He stepped closer. Slow. Predatory. Each pace closing the space between us until his heat reached me through the thin fabric of my dress, until his cologne and the colder scent of snow on his coat wrapped around me.
“It looks like this,” he said, lifting his hand.
He cupped my face with a gentleness that didn’t match anything I’d seen him do to other people. Callused fingers at my jaw, thumb skimming my cheek like he had all the time in the world to memorize it.
“Like me not being able to breathe when another man touches you.”
Oh.
The words hit harder than any threat he’d ever thrown at me.
There was something naked in his voice. Raw. A crack in the armor I’d been beating my fists against since the tree lot.
“It looks like me wanting to burn the world down rather than watch you walk away,” he went on, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheekbone. “Like me caring more about your safety than my own survival.”
He was playing me. Of course he was. This was what he did—took weapons and turned them into tools, turned truths into traps.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall?—
But he looked at me like I was something breakable he didn’t know how to hold but wanted to anyway, and every rational thought in my head went skittering like my abandoned heels.
“Konstantin,” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. His name was the only thing that made it past the wreckage in my throat.
His forehead came down to rest against mine, our breath mixing in the thin space left.
“Tell me to stop,” he said. “Tell me to walk away, and I will.”
Say it.
Say stop. Say no. Say you want your old life back, even if it was sad and lonely and paid crap.
“Don’t,” I said.
One word. Barely a breath. It felt like handing him my throat and asking nicely if he’d like to close his fingers.
But even as I said it, my hands were already in his shirt, fisting in the fabric, pulling him closer. My body moved before my self-respect could form a protest.
I was gone. Completely and utterly gone.
Something shifted in his eyes. Triumphed flickered there, yes. But there was something else too. Relief. Like I’d just given him permission to feel whatever he’d been trying not to.
His mouth crashed down on mine.
This wasn’t like the first kiss—that angry, humiliating collision. Wasn’t like the one in the restaurant or the punishing take-what’s-mine kiss at the poker table.
This was worse.
Desperation. Need. Two starving people finally admitting they were hungry.
His hands framed my face, holding me exactly where he wanted me. His lips moved over mine with a ferocity that stole my breath and gave it back tasting like him.
