Page 12 of Cruel Kiss

"He's sitting on the front steps." She points toward the window with total confidence and nonchalance, as if this is an everyday occurrence and the only weird part is that I'm finding it weird.

I sit up so fast my head swims.

He wouldn't. He absolutely would notdare.I told him to get out of my house and he did, he walked right out my broken door, and I told him?—

Well. I didn't quite tell him to leave the whole planet. He made that abundantly clear.I'll leave your house tonight and I won't come back inside without you asking me to.

But I didn't think that meant he'd plant himself on my stoop like a garden gnome!

"Stay here," I order Isabella. I swing my legs off the bed and go to the window.

I pull the shade back an inch.

Sure enough, there he is.

Ronan Akov, in the same slept-in shirt from last night, sitting on the top step of my stoop with his forearms on his knees, looking out at the empty street with his steely gaze sweeping back and forth, over and over, traversing every fire hydrant and shrub. My busted front door is leaning against the railing beside him. He looks like absolute hell—hair a mess, shadow on his jaw. Even from up here, I can tell he hasn't closed his eyes once.

He stayed.

All night.

On my steps.

I feel a squiggle of emotion in my chest, and I ruthlessly order it to go back into the deep, dark hole in my heart from whence it came. Fuckcompassionor feelingtouched—I don't want that shit! I want to feelangry!Don't I have that right?

This man lied to me, stole my company, put a bloodstain on my stairs, and now, he's decided—decided! Again! Without asking me!—that he gets to sit outside my house standing guard whether I like it or not.

That's exactly the kind of thing I told him I was done with. Men deciding what I get to have.

I march downstairs, fully intending to open the door and read him the riot act. I get all the way to the front hall, past the empty rectangle where the door used to be, and I open my mouth.

And then I look at him.

He hears me coming and turns his head, and his face does this thing—this small, careful thing, like he's bracing to be yelled at and has already decided he deserves it. His eyes are red-rimmed. There's a spot of dried blood on his collar. I don't want to think about whose it is.

But that little speck of red is enough to make me close my mouth.

I stand there for a second. Then I turn around and go into the kitchen.

I don't know why I do it. I'll never be able to explain it, not to him, not to my mother, not to a courtroom or to St. Peter at the pearly gates. But I pull two mugs down from the cabinet, brew a pot of coffee, and pour some into both of them. Then I carry them back to the front hall.

I step over the threshold where the door isn't, into the cool morning air, and thrust one of the mugs down at him.

"It's coffee," I say when he eyes it skeptically. "And no, it's not poisoned. If I wanted you dead, I'd have let the last guy finish the job."

That startles a short, tired laugh out of him. He takes the mug. His fingers brush mine, though we both pretend not to notice.

"Thank you," he mumbles in a sticky voice.

I don't sit next to him. I sit on the step above, so I'm higher up, because I am nothing if not consistent about maintaining my newfound power positions. I wrap both hands around my own mug and blow on it.

For a while, neither of us says anything. A garbage truck rumbles by at the far corner. One of Ronan's men, standing near the intersection in a dark coat, watches it go and then goes back to watching everything else.

"You stayed all night," I say finally.

"I did."

"That's insane, you know."