The steam was still thick when he shut off the water. For a moment, neither of us moved. My legs were weak, my breath uneven, my thoughts scattered. Remo didn’t look any calmer either. His chest rose and fell fast, his jaw locked tight but there was something else too. A feral shadow behind his eyes.
He wrapped the towel around my shoulders in a single decisive motion then stepped back, studying me for a long moment like he was peeling me open, reading the parts of myself I kept locked away.
“You’re trembling,” he said, voice low. “Good.”
My pulse tripped. “I’m not?—”
“You are,” he cut in. “And I like it.” He dragged a thumb across my cheek, and the gesture should have been gentle, but on him it felt like a warning. A second more and his expression shuttered into that aloof coldness I knew well. “Get dressed,” he said. “I’m taking you back.”
I blinked. “What?”
His gaze flicked to me. Dark, unreadable. “To work.”
“You’re letting me go?”
A slow, humourless smile tugged at his lips. “No, little fox. I’m releasing you.”
The difference crashed into me. He trapped me against the sink with nothing but the sheer force of his presence. Towering, unhinged, arrogantly sure of every word leaving his mouth.
“You think trying to run earlier means I’ll keep you?” he murmured. “You think I’m so deprived of control I’d chain you to the bed just because you bolt like a frightened rabbit?” His hand slid into my damp hair, gripping, not painfully, but firmly enough to make my breath stop. “If I wanted to keep you, you wouldn’t even breathe without my say-so.”
A shiver scraped down my spine. “You don’t own me.” I sounded like a freaking broken record.
He laughed again, softer this time, almost affectionate if affection came dipped in madness. “Keep lying to yourself, it makes taking the truth from you more fun.” He leaned in until his lips almost touched mine. “I already do. You just haven’t accepted the paperwork.” I tried to shove him, but he didn’t budge an inch. “Besides, I want you to walk around all day knowing you can still feel me, taste, and smell like me.”
Heat rushed through me so violently my knees weakened.
“And because I want you to realize,” he continued, brushing his thumb across my lower lip. “That even when you’re not in my house, not in my bed, not near me, you’re still mine.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “But I’m your insanity now.” He stepped back abruptly. Controlled. Measured. The calm of a man who’d already decided everything for both of us.
“Be dressed in five minutes. You’ll find something to wear in my sister’s closet, two rooms down the hallway.”
Sister? Why did that simple relation make my head buzz. “Maybe because monsters shouldn’t really have family,” I mumbled under my breath.
Dressed in black yoga pants, a large white t-shirt, my hair hanging loosely around my back and face sans cream or make-up, I met Remo at car, seven minutes later. His gaze drifted down my body briefly before he slipped behind the wheel.
The car ride was suffocating and nauseatingly fast. Remo had slipped into that arrogant ass I first met, no longer the man who cooked and fed me breakfast. He didn’t speak or look at me, his silence carrying more danger than his gun would. His grip on the wheel was firm, composed, confident. Every gesture screamed power.
By the time the car entered the pathway leading to the hospital entrance, my frayed nerves snapped. “You can’t just kidnap me, sleep with me, and then toss me out here like nothing happened,” I retorted, not sure what I actually wanted from him.
His jaw clenched. “I’m not tossing you out.”
“Then what would you call this?”
He turned his head just enough to pin me with a look that burned straight through my ribs. “A calculated reprieve. A pause. Not an ending. Call it what you like.”
I frowned. “A pause from what?”
“From consuming you entirely,” he replied, pulling up to the hospital entrance.
“What’s wrong with you?” I snapped, needing to fight his decision.
He swung around, his glare threatening to bury me. “You,” he muttered on a tight-lipped growl. “I’m a man who has never felt a single ounce of emotion for a woman yet you…” he shook his head. “What the fuck kind of hold do you have over me?”
“Me?” I gawked. “You came after me, remember? You took without asking,” I lashed out, hating him right now. “You stalked me.” I poked a finger in his chest and he let me.
