“I’m not yours,” comes her quick reply.
“Wrong, but they should have known better than to even step foot in the city.”
“I’m not yours,” she says again, this time through gritted teeth.
“You dropped a body on my doorstep, Max. We can see it as a gift or a threat. Would you rather be my enemy?”
Instead of answering me, she says, “I need to change,” and closes the door in my face. I tip my head back and look at the ceiling, frustrated that I called her mine. It doesn’t matter if that’s how I feel, I never should have voiced it, not to her.
Ten minutes later, she emerges from the room in a pair of black fitted jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She’s plucking at the loose fabric over her stomach. Has she lost weight, or was the shirt always that big on her? I examine her closely. She doesn’t look thinner, and when she drops the shirt, I notice her nipples are hard. I try not to make it too obvious that I was staring, but damn, that was fucking distracting.
“Ready.” I rise slowly, making an effort not to let my gaze slip below her face.
“I need shoes,” she says, and my eyes drop down to her sock-covered feet. I tilt my head toward the closet near the entryway. She trails me, as expected, and I stand back once I open the door.
“Ugh, who was at my house, pawing through all my stuff?” she whines while shoving her feet into a pair of sneakers, bending to tie the laces. I get distracted by her position, then get caught looking at her ass when she peers past her legs to glare at me.
“Well?” she prompts when she’s upright and straightening her shirt again. “Did you have one of your mencreeping through my house? Tell them to get me some fucking bras next time!”
“It was me.” I edge her away from the door with my body and quickly enter the code for the alarm. It only takes me a few seconds longer to unlock the door with my keys, but before I open it, I deliver one final warning. “Don’t make me regret this.”
MAXINE
“Nobody fucks with what’s mine.” His words echo in my head, stirring up all kinds of shit on the back of him short-circuiting my brain with the grown woman comment. Something stirs in my lower gut. Attraction?
“I’m not yours.” I deny the notion immediately, as if that could make the statement truer. Holy shit, no, this is not happening. I am not going to get all Stockholm on him.
“Wrong, but they should have known better than to even step foot in the city.”
“I’m not yours.”
“You dropped a body on my doorstep, Max. We can see it as a gift or a threat. Would you rather be my enemy?”
“I need to change.” I slam the door on him and the ideas swirling in my head. What the hell is wrong with me? I pace around for several minutes, feeling agitated. I really must be screwed in the head. Never once has the idea of having a man appealed to me, and now I find one who should be completely off fucking limits. I mean, he essentially kidnapped me, held me here for weeks—or possibly just days but it feels like weeks—locked in a room, and I’m actually thinking about what it would feel like to be protected and cared for by him.
He did save my life, and he only locked me in the room after I tried to break his face. “Stop it, Max.” Crap, now I’m talking to myself and using his nickname for me. I need therapy.
My hands shake when I rip down a pair of my jeans. As I’m pulling them up, I think how nice it is to have my own things, and then I want to smack myself for revering him and not remembering he let someone go through my things without my permission.
I flip my sweatshirt over my head. It’s always freezing in here, but it’s warm outside, so I trade it for a loose T-shirt and get pissed all over again because I don’t have a bra.
Winger is waiting on the couch when I open the door. His eyes roll from my head down my chest and stop abruptly before he suddenly finds something interesting over my shoulder. You wouldn’t think a guy who runs a strip club would even notice nipples.
“Ready?” he questions.
I remind him I don’t have any shoes, and he leads me to a closet, where he then reveals several familiar pairs. “Ugh, who was at my house, pawing through all my stuff?”
When he doesn’t respond, I look over to find him staring at my ass.
“Did you have one of your mencreeping through my house? Tell them to get me some fucking bras next time!” I snap, feeling self-conscious, as if I’m doing something on purpose to make him look.
“It was me.” He opens the door, and I’m so surprised by his admission, I don’t even try to see the code, but he’s not finished. “I was the only person in your house besides the team who did the alarm install, and I was there the entire time.”
“You installed an alarm system in my house?” I’m dumbfounded.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
