Page 34 of Cassio (Belles & Mobsters 3)

“Áine, calm down.” My eyes snapped to the man. There was a note of command in his voice, piercing through my panicked brain.

The elevator jerked with a loud bang again and the train of my thoughts evaporated. I broke eye contact with him, frantically searching out Margaret. It was hard to see her and sweat beaded on my forehead. Jesus Christ, I’d have a heart attack like this. The past mind blowing orgasm and craving for his expert hands were completely forgotten.

We were still not moving.

The emergency lights came on in the lift. “Oh, this is kind of romantic,” Margaret announced.

I swallowed hard, again and again. The chokehold of this panic made it hard to swallow. I didn’t find it romantic at all. If anything, deadly was what came to mind. Threats lurked in elevators. It was stupid to think that but the irrational fear kicked in each time I even thought about an elevator.

“Should have taken the stairs,” I repeated, while black spots swamp in my vision.In. Out. In. Out. I slid down the wall to the floor, pulled my knees up and buried my head between my knees. My lungs contracted and refused to release.

The fact that I was probably giving them a full view of my exposed legs, thighs, and underwear was irrelevant. My hands wrapped around my knees, pulling them closer to my chest.

My body rocked back and forth, trying to soothe myself.

“It will be fine.” I felt big hands take hold of my cold fingers. My head snapped up to those dark eyes. Suddenly, nothing mattered but his gaze. The comfort in them felt like a lifejacket while drowning. He crouched down, too, taking the empty spot next to me.

His lips curved into a smile and the tightness in my chest loosened a bit.

“I’m Hunter,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d see me again, huh?”

He remembers me, my heart rejoiced but it was short-lived.

The elevator jerked again. My eyes widened and my breathing hitched. I stared at the door of the elevator, praying someone would come for us. But the door remained closed.

“H-Hunter, that’s a pretty name.” I called him my perfect stranger for the last two years. My hottie. It will be an adjustment to think of him as Hunter.Breathe in. Breathe out. “I don’t know if it suits you though,” I mumbled, my voice breathless like I ran a marathon. And not in a good way either.

I tasted panic on my tongue. “I can’t breathe. You think the elevator will snap? Maybe we are too heavy?”

I could kill men, fight them, slice and dice them, but stick me in an elevator and all my training dissipated. I became a scared little girl.

“Calm down.” His voice was commanding, but my panic refused to recede.

I was hyperventilating. “Oh my God.” I squeezed his hand, my fingernails digging into his skin. “I should have taken the stairs.”

“Butterfly, breathe,” Hunter demanded, his voice smooth, like rain on the quiet, spring evening. Like on one of those days when you could smell the fresh rain and taste it on your tongue. It was soothing.

Butterfly. Only one person called me that.That nickname,Butterfly. It only came in dreams. Yet, now this man called me by that nickname. I haven’t dreamt it in such a long time. A man and his voice lingered in the fog. How would Hunter know that nickname that I only dreamt about?

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

“I- I really hate elevators,” I muttered, my words shaky and my chest tied up into a constricting knot. “It’s okay, though. Right? We are all scared of something. I’m scared of snakes too,” I babbled like a mad person. “Maybe I hate elevators more than snakes.” A hiccup escaped me while I stared at his hand marked with the rose tattoo. The hand reaching out to me in my dreams had a tattoo too.

Rose petals. It was the reason I selected The Rose Rescue for the name of our company. The hand marked with the rose petals kept reaching out to me in my dreams, pulling me out of my nightmares.

“I can’t remember. I don’t know why I can’t remember,” I mumbled, my gaze on the floor of the elevator. “I saw you somewhere.” All my comments and thoughts were incoherent. “Not in the club. Somewhere else.”

“You know him?” Margaret’s voice didn’t pull my gaze away from Hunter. I finally knew his name.

“It’s okay,” Hunter soothed me. I raised my head to stare at those brown eyes. His voice was soothing but his lips… there it was again, that sinful smile. Absent-mindedly, I noted he was rubbing my back and I still liked his touch. “Keep talking.”

I took a deep breath in and exhaled. Oxygen was working its way into my lungs, the knot slowly loosening, but fear kept the words flowing through my lips, without any reservation I usually held. Every ounce of bravery was gone, probably fled through the tiniest crack of this fucking elevator.

It felt good not to be repulsed by a man’s touch. He made me feel normal, though he might be the only man on this planet that could touch me without causing my body’s retaliation.

“Everyone keeps talking about it, being great and all.” I raised my head again and met his dark gaze. “But for me, it makes me sick to even think about it. I freeze every time; I literally feel sick to my stomach. I pretend it’s okay, that it’s normal, but it’s not.”

The tiny sane piece of my brain ordered me to stop my rambling because I wasn’t making any sense.

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