Page 79 of Vicious Hearts

Jesus Christ, the bossiness. The controlling tone and the arrogance to talk to me like I’m a wayward child who needs to be told what to do and when to do it.

“I’lleat, okay?” I snap.

He smirks at me, lifting a brow at the untouched orange and a plate of toast from this morning.

“Soon.”

“Now.”

I glare at him.

“I’m more than happy to do it the other—”

“Okay, okay,Jesus,” I grumble, sliding from the bed.

I’m wearing one of the t-shirts and pairs of leggings that was left for me. But I still wrap the duvet around myself, shooting Cillian another withering stare as I trudge over to the table by the window.

I still don’t have an appetite. But I’ll admit that my stomach knots and groans at the mere sight of food. He’s right. I haven’t really eaten anything in days, and I can feel it in the weakness of my body.

Cillian watches like a hawk as I devour the piece of toast. When I leave the orange and turn back to the bed, he shakes his head.

“You’re not finished yet.”

I roll my eyes. “Are you joking?”

“Do I come off to you like a jokey individual?”

“You come off like anasshole, actually.”

His shoulder lifts as he nods at the plate. “Eat it.”

“It’s not peeled.”

“Are youseven?”

My mouth purses.

I had a job once, years ago, at a fancy, overpriced grocery store in LA, in the prepared food section. Twice a week, I had to peel oranges so the segments could be packaged up and sold to rich idiots willing to pay five times a much than they would for a whole orange because they didn’t want to wreck their manicure.

My cuticles felt like fire formonths.

“For fuck’s sake,” Cillian hisses under his breath. I jump as he surges toward me. When the knife flicks out of his jacket, my mouth falls open. Is the guy really crazy enough to kill me over an orange?

Actually, yes.

“Okay!Okay! I’ll eat the fucking—”

Cillian blasts past me, grabs the orange, and deftly and surgically slices the skin from it with his blade. He smirks and sets it on the plate.

“There we go,princess.”

I glower at him. But I pick up the orange, doing my best to hold back a sigh of contentment as I bite into it. It’s delicious.

Cillian watches me eat the entire thing. When I’m done, I shrug, giving him a sneering look.

“Well? Happy now?”

I gasp as he leans right into me, bending down to let his lips brush my ear.

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