Page 35 of Cruel Kiss

I roll my eyes, not that he can see. Then, with as little skin-to-skin contact as I can possibly manage, I pry him off of me enough to wriggle free of the hip-to-hip wall pinning thing he had me caged in.

But even when I'm free, one fingertip lingers on the V-line of his ab. It's like it's magnetically stuck there.

"Can I go back to bed now?" I squeak out.

He eyes me, eyes flashing blue and gray. But he doesn't lower the gun all the way. Nor does he step back. He said the threat is gone or that it never existed in the first place, so what are we doing here? I'd like to ask, but my voice has abandoned ship.

I think the issue is that, with no one to fight, there's nowhere for all this adrenaline to go. My body's dumped everything it had into my blood and now it's like,Deal with it.

As if there's any way to deal withthis.The two of us, me and the shirtless mob boss, in a black hallway, breathing too hard for the circumstances.

And my finger is still on his stomach.

And his hand is still on my waist.

Now that I have calmed down ever so slightly, it's impossible to ignore. The heat of it. Five points of pressure right over the waistband of my pajama shorts. It's dark enough that I can't really see him, but I can absolutely feel him, the size of him, the bulk, the firmness, the closeness, the way the whole hallway has shrunk down to the eight inches of air between us.

I'm the one who tips up.

I don't decide to. It's as magnetic as the fingertip. My chin lifts, my weight rolls forward onto the balls of my feet, and I yearn up toward him.

His hand responds.

It glides up my waist. Skimming over my crop top. In the valley of my breasts. Up my throat, higher, higher, until his palm is against my jaw and his thumb finds the corner of my mouth and rests there. His face comes down close enough that his breath plumes over my face. No sound emerges from his lips, but he's saying one word without saying it.

Kotyonok.

It's coming, I know it is. The inevitable. Any second now, he'll… Or I'll…

But no.

He just holds there, thumb at the edge of my mouth, close enough to kiss, and hewaits.

Not even if you beg me to,he said.

Looks like he's a man of his word.

I want to scream. Instead, I do the thing I always do when I get caught. I turn into a stone-cold bitch. It's the only way to protect my heart.

"I haven't forgiven you, you know."

It's meant to come out cold, but "breathless" ends up being a much better adjective. "Shameless" would work just as well, because I'm panting and subtly grinding against his thigh.

His thumb taps once, just barely, against my lip.

"I know," he says. "I'm not asking you to."

And then he lets go.

He steps back. The heat of him pulls away and the hallway gets big and cold again. I'm left just standing there against the wall with my heart going a mile a minute for no reason a measly broken branch could account for.

"Go back to sleep," he says. "I'll make sure the branch gets the punishment it deserves."

Let's be real: I was never gonna fall back asleep.

I lie on top of the covers, staring up at a ceiling I can't see, seething mad.

Not at the scare. The scare I could've handled. A man on the stairs, a branch on the sensor, whatever. I've got a reflex for danger now. I know what to do with fear. Fear is easy. You grab a knife, you put yourself between that scary thing and your babies, and you swing that sharp S.O.B. until something bleeds.