Page 25 of Breaking Blaze

“I only said those things because I was angry.”

“At me?” she asked, pain nearly draining the fight from her blood, but she forced herself to remain strong. “What did I do? What could I have possibly done to make you say those things about me?”

He shook his head viciously, moving toward her. His face a mask of panicked concern as he gripped her shoulders in his hands. Stunned and confused, she let him hold her there as she peered up into eyes so conflicted they swirled.

“I was angry at myself because I was jealous.”

She stopped breathing. She didn’t just hear what she thought she heard. Sexy, gorgeous, perfectly formed Blaze Harris couldn’t be jealous, not when it came to her. She was the polar opposite of every woman she’d ever seen him with.

Was this some kind of joke?

The blue of his eyes stopped swirling as they warmed, the deep blue becoming a sun-drenched ocean.

“AJ thought I was texting with a hook up but what I was really doing was…. I was scrolling through your Instagram feed, looking at the pictures Sally tagged you in. It was some office party her boss was throwing and you were there and….” He grit his teeth, his jaw grinding, his nostrils flaring. “You were standing in some guy’s arms, smiling up at him. I hated it, Anna. Fucking hated seeing some other man with his arms around you. I wanted to find him and cut off his goddamn hands for touching you.”

Anna gasped, his anger palpable.

“You were jealous? Seriously?” she asked, incredulous. Impossible. “I don’t even know that guy! He repairs the Xerox machines in Sally’s office building.”

Blaze grunted, dropping his hands from her shoulders to run them through his hair again. Agitation flowing from him in jagged waves.

“Logically, I know he doesn’t mean anything to you, but tell that to the rest of me. Tell that to that part in my brain that has always thought of you as mine, has always imagined you draped in my arms, smiling up at me with a look of love in your eyes. Tell that to the depths of my heart and soul, where your name is etched like goddamn scripture I’ve been praying for eight years.”

Unable to think, move, or breathe, Anna stood before him, eyes wide, body blasted with longing and need.

In a blink, Blaze was before her, his rapidly moving chest separated from her by a finger’s width.

“I said those ugly things, Anna, because I was desperately fighting against the last of my defenses, trying to hang on to my self-less intentions with bloody fingertips. That jealousy I felt was a sign that, despite the vow I made to myself years ago, I was slipping. I was getting too close to falling and breaking the promise I made you that day outside the movie theater when you were eighteen.”

Struck by his words, Anna couldn’t help demanding, “What promise?”

Blaze, his large body looming over her, the heat of him enveloping her, his hands lifting to wrap around her waist, his thumbs rubbing the sensitized flesh just below her weighty breasts, peered down at her, his sapphire eyes on fire.

His thumbs, rubbing, rubbing, her skin catching fire, her nerves dancing. Her breasts never felt so heavy, so hot and tingly. She fought a moan.

“The promise to stay away from you. To keep my hands off you. To never let you see how I truly feel about you.”

She dragged in a breath, her nipples rubbing against the hardness of his belly. He flexed, groaning.

“And…and how do you feel about me?” she whispered, her voice husky.

A slow, darkly decadent smirk curled the edges of his wicked mouth.

“Let me show you, my Anna.”

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