I lean back against the couch and drag a hand through my hair.
The words had just… tumbled out. And it surprises me how much I actuallymeantthem.
I should be pissed at her.
One second I’m on the brink of a climactic moment—the kind that usually ends in blood, sex or both—and the next, I wake up here. Inherworld. In her house.
It was jarring.
But what throws me the most? I’m not mad. Notreally.
Beneath the frustration, and the weird, tangled confusion of being fictional and suddenly not… there’s something else.
Curiosity and... need. A need that curls low in my stomach every time I look at her.
Noia Wilde, the prolific author dubbed ‘The Queen of Steam’, has a tragic backstory and a stubborn, sexy mouth. Chaos in a bun, she’s all sharp, snarky comebacks and soft, full lips, swearing under her breath while she stomps around the house like a pissed-off cat.
And now she is sitting next to me, flustered and fidgety, pretending like she doesn’t notice the way I’m eye fucking her.
Why hide it?
She’shellasexy.
Not in the over-processed, Instagram-filtered kind of way. The real kind of sexy. The kind that creeps up on you. The kind that makes your mind go blank and your dick stand painfully at rock-hard attention.
With messy dark blond hair and a hoodie that clings to her curves, her lips are a little puffy and red from biting them while she pouted in her room.
She doesn’t even realize how beautiful she is. Which, of course, makes it even worse.
And hell, I know exactly how she wrote me.
I’m supposed to be broody and dangerous with a little redemption buried under all the trauma and smirks. But despite everything she plotted out, none of it prepared me for how real this would feel. Or how drawn I would be to her.
I sit back and watch her turn on her heel and stalk toward the kitchen, muttering about needing more caffeine.
My gaze follows her hips as they sway, attitude cranked up to eleven.
I smirk.
Yeah. I want to do this. Not just because I want her to finish my story—but because of her.
Deep down, I know she didn’t mean to summon me here. She doesn’t even believe I am real. I’m pretty sure she’s just playing along, seeing how all this is going to play out—or if she might wake up tomorrow morning in the looney-bin.
Her life is unraveling, words jammed up inside her like the Hoover Dam, heart still wrecked because of some douchebag who didn’t even have the balls to show up to his own wedding.
And, even after all the bullshit she’s been through, she hasn’t completely broken down.
Noia is strong and stubborn, cussing and fighting me with a fire in her eyes that says she’s ready to take on not only me, but the whole goddamn world.
So yeah. I’m going to help her.
She needs help finishing her story. And maybe, just maybe… so do I. Even if it means seducing her—and especially if it means watching her squirm every time I get too close.
“I’m gonna more than make it worth your while, kitten,” I murmur to myself.
Grabbing her book from the coffee table, I flip through it again. My notes are scribbled along the margins, but instead of going back to correct the dialogue, this time I distract myself by imagining how the next scene should play outoff the page.
So, I’m going to take her out on a real date—one filled with pure, unadulterated sexual tension.
