Page 30 of Inescapable Gravity

And now that she'd found the one shred of happiness that had survived the hell of her life, he'd nearly gotten himself killed!

Damn it!

Stupid elevator!

She turned around and saw Marius standing outside of the room, a determined glower fixed on his face.

She took a step back.

"Stop!" He took a step closer and she countered with another step back. "Don't you dare."

Lord help her. She tipped her chin up in a defiant move.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To find the stairs," she shot back, "I can use those to run."

"Run?"

He took another step toward her, but she found herself up against a wall.

"Where are you planning to run to?"

"I don't know. I was just going to run. Run until I can't run anymore and hope... hope that you'll just go back to what you were doing before you took this job.

"Please, Mars. Please, just go."

The elevator dinged beside her and the doors opened up. Taking the easiest route, she rushed in and tried to jab the CLOSE button on the panel, but she wasn't fast enough.

Marius slid in between the closing the doors and stared at her, his eyes dark, his shoulders rising and falling with each quick breath, and his hands clenching at his side.

She stepped back and found the wall too close for comfort.

He glared at her and the intensity of his gaze made her catch her breath.

Marius reached out his arm and punched the emergency stop with the side of his fist.

The alarm rang out. The electronic siren screaming in her ears.

She put her palms over her ears to dampen the sound but it barely did a thing to ease the pounding pressure.

Cringing, she pulled into herself and hunched her shoulders, praying that it would end.

And then it did.

Confused, she waited a moment to see if she could still feel the waves of pressure from the screaming alarm, but felt nothing against her skin.

She looked up at Marius, lowering her hands to her sides.

He had a smile on his face that was a little scary in how happy he was, but that was before she saw a handful of wires in his hand.

A quick look at the control panel showed that he'd pried open the panel and done something to stop the siren.

Shaking her head, she looked back at him.

"Why?"

"Why did I stop that ridiculous alarm?"

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