Page 29 of A Dangerous Kind of Love

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Calm down, bitch.

“I tend to have this effect,” he says, smug as hell.

I sit up straight.

“Okay. I’m back.”

He lifts a brow at me.

“You’re a dick.”

“You still want me to stay, though, right?” he asks, and he pulls that goddamn lip lick and bite combo again.

I punch him in the arm. He only grins, dragging his tongue across his top teeth, and suddenly I’m airborne. The next thing I know I’m slung over his shoulder while he strides down the hallway. He pushes open the first door. My office. He shuts it again. Second door. Guest room. Nope.

The third door opens and finally—my bedroom. He strides in and tosses me down onto the bed and starts taking off his pants.

Holy shit.

“Put on some pajamas,” he says, already stepping out of them, and somehow my body moves. I cross the room and go straight to my dresser.

I’m standing in the middle of my room holding my pajamas like an idiot while he watches me in nothing but a T-shirt and boxers. His legs are completely covered in tattoos.

Oh, that is not helping the situation at all.

“You got an extra toothbrush?” he asks. “And are you going to change?”

I meet his eyes. “Um, let me check.”

“Go change first.”

So I do.

Why am I so easily bossed around by this man?

I find an unopened toothbrush shoved in the back of my bathroom closet. When I walk back into the bedroom, Michael is sprawled across my bed. One arm is tucked behind his head, the sleeve of tattoos winding down his bicep and forearm, dark ink against his skin.

His legs are a different story entirely. There is ink everywhere. It’s not neat or symmetrical either. There are random pieces scattered from his thighs down—words, shapes, and lines disappearing beneath the waistband of his boxers and reappearing again along his thighs, calves, and ankles. My brain fixates on the tattoos that disappear beneath the waistband of his boxers along his pelvis.

I nearly trip over my own feet. He sits up, smiling when he sees me standing there. I decide that I hate him, so I throw the toothbrush at him.

“Here.”

He catches it mid-air without even flinching. Then he swings his legs off the bed and stands, passing close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. His hand slides around my waist and tugs me a step with him before letting go.

“Oral hygiene,” he says, holding up the toothbrush, “is important.”

He heads toward the bathroom while I stand there with my back to him.

“Oral hygiene is important,” I say, mocking him under my breath.

Two hands clamp onto my hips, and I’m off the floor.

“Michael—!” I squirm in his arms as he carries me with him. “Do you think because you’re bigger you can just manhandle me?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” he says without missing a step.