Landlord? He owns the damn building. Mother. Fucker.
My hands are trembling with my ire as I pluck my keys from my bag, shimmying one into the bottom lock before pulling it out and unlocking the top one. I pause with my palm on the knob. “Please tell me what’s going on. I don’t need you to drive me. And if I do, that means something bad is happening.”
“Don’t get all up in your head.” He reaches over, hooking a tendril of hair behind my ear, his fingers grazing along my cheek and inciting a shower of bumps in their wake. His enigmatic eyes meander all over my face, like he’s searching for the rest of his explanation, as he bends toward me, his subtle scruff bristling my skin and his rasp coiling around me. “I’m tired of you snubbing me. We’re going to spend some time together and get to know one another.”
That is a horrific idea.
Never gonna happen. Absolutely not.
And yet my entire body is on fire.
No.
Maddox Noire is a kamikaze mission. He might provide explosive fireworks on the way down, but he’s the flight of no return. Maybe this is my fault. Or maybe he’s calling my bluff. I used those texts to mess with him because I’d noticed his reaction to me this afternoon. That seems to be my only power here.
He doesn’t actually want to know me. I’m sure he just views me as a conquest, the one woman who refuses him. But again, I can probably use that.
I lift my high-heeled boot onto the plant stand, and he tracks my every move while I untie the top laces, wrench down the zipper, and shimmy out the Karambit knife he gave me. After I zip and lace that one back up, I switch feet and repeat on the other leg. His gaze is glued to my boots and the several inches of bare skin peeking out through the high slit on my skirt. And maybe this is my head playing tricks on me again, but I swear his half-mast dick jerks in his jeans.
Investigating the authenticity of that claim is a terrible notion, so I stand to my full height and fan out the two sheathed knives. “This is an area in which I’m willing to bend.”
He might be watching me, but I’ve just proven that he doesn’t see everything.
The corners of his eyes crinkle before his lips quirk into a grin. “Good girl.”
Heat sizzles on my skin, rushing toward my core. I loathe myself and all womankind that those two words have any effect on libido.
“That’s a start,” he goes on, his voice a blend of velvet and gravel. “And those shapely legs of yours are undoubtedly a distraction, but weapons and tools are useless when you have to dig to reach them.”
My focus snaps to the bulge in his pants and up to his face. “Noted.”
He chuckles, rubbing his hand over his mouth, seemingly stumped.
What the hell am I doing?
Rolling my shoulders back so it’s clear our teasing is done, I lay it out. “If you want me to be armed and ruthless, make sure I get walked out of work late at night, and insist that I always fill my gas tank during the day, that’s fine. You want to have playdates with my doorman? So be it. If you decide to have me work extra shifts, there’s not much I can do about that.”
“Your point?” He lurches toward me, my back thumping against my door as he cages me there with his arm perched above my head, his scent cocooning me in the aroma of duplicity and desire.
“I don’t want to get to know you, Maddox. And I certainly don’t want you to know me.” That’s barely above a whisper. Maybe because something about those words tastes like a lie, despite how I meant them on a bone-deep level.
I’d be embarrassed of my breathiness, but his chest is heaving in tandem with mine; his brows are furrowed, as if he’sas mystified by the crackling air as I am; and his rosy lips are parted in what appears to be salacious intent.
I wish he hadn’t given me a reason to hate him.
He strings his fingers through my mid-length strands, his eyes teeming with resolution. “Too bad. That’s not an option. I’m amending the terms of yourlife sentence. Now, I want”—he pauses, making me wait through a muted drumroll—“you.”
My pulse flails like the wings of a hummingbird on crack. “Me?”
“Yes,” he confirms, his mouth a hair’s breadth from mine, his gaze flicking from the near connection back to my eyes. “You, Tess. All of you. I’m not asking much …yet. Who knows? Maybe, eventually, I’ll have you tattoo your name on me …somewhere. Or maybe I’ll etch mine on you. Anything could happen. So, don’t test me. If I want to fucking know you, you’ll let me get to know you.”
That controlling response, along with my neighbor jimmying her doorknob, jolts me out of whatever hypnotic stupor I was ensnared in.
“Right.” I balk, shaking my head.
My eyes sting with the disillusionment of the corner I backed myself into and the man I allowed to crowd me there.
Turning the knob, I step backward into my apartment, summing up what my relationship with Maddox amounts to. “Favors and secrets come at a mighty cost. Got it.”
