Page 23
“I’m not.”
Bella’s face falls as I turn, wind my arm back again—
She tackles me from behind. I hit the railing with a grunt, the bag dropping from my grip and rolling across the gravel behind us.
“Get off me!” I mutter, trying to dislodge Little Miss Homicide. She yelps when I grab the waist of her yoga pants and yank, sending her sprawling to the ground.
But, again, this girl is made from fucking rubber. She bounces up in half a second and slams into me head-on, driving me back to the ground. I land with a dull grunt and Satan’s emotional support gremlin astride my waist, a dark, gleaming grin on her face. The grin drops like a rock when I roll us onto her back.
She jams her knee into my side, making me groan loudly before we roll again and again, dust, dirt, and dry leaves scraping my skin and choking my breath as the stabby menace claws and kicks at me before we finally come to a stop in a heaving, gasping tangle of limbs.
Her on her back.
Me on top of her, between her legs, my hand around her throat.
Your. Fucking. Move. Little Nightmare.
5
BELLA
“Now stay. Fucking. Put.”
A clash of ideals wars within me. On the one side, the second his growled words ghost over my skin, something clicks defiantly into place.
Someone probably should have told this sweet summer child what a god-awful idea it is to give me orders.
But on the other side, as much of a douchebag as he is, and as supremely stabby his barked command to “stay put” makes me?
That side can’t get past the fact that there’s a large, extremely muscled, outrageously hot man pinning me to the ground with a hand at my throat.
That would be the traitorous side that melts when I feel his hard, chiseled weight settling between my thighs as he presses me into the dirt at my back.
It’s ridiculous that he has these genes. A douche-nozzle like Damiano should be a trollish cretin with bad teeth, zero muscle tone, and…I don’t know…an incredibly off-putting facial deformity or something.
Instead, the man pinning me to the ground is a fucking god.
So incredibly unfair.
His dark, deep-set eyes have an aura of sinister shadow around them that ping every villain fantasy I’ve ever had. His teeth are white and perfect. His chiseled, clean-shaven jaw hovers inches above my face as the faintest hint of mint and masculinity teases my senses.
His big hand wraps firmly around my throat—not choking me, just squeezing enough to make my core liquify. The muscles of his bulging shoulders and biceps strain at his black t-shirt, turning my poor lizard cavewoman brain to mush.
…But not so much that I don’t remember I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve.
It almost works. But just as I bring my knee up enough to get my hand around the switchblade stuffed into my sock, the criminally attractive shit-bag figures out what I’m doing.
“Oh, you stabby little nightmare,” he grunts.
I curse loudly as he yanks the switchblade out of my hand and tosses it into the trees behind us, then gasp as he grabs my wrists and shoves them above my head. He pins them there with one big hand, the other one supporting his weight as he looms over me.
Time freezes for a moment as I stare up into those intense, focused dark eyes.
My pulse jumps and roars. My blood ignites. And very suddenly, I’m aware that I’m being held down and restrained by a man, and I’m not losing my shit.
I’m not panicking or fighting tooth and nail to break free, almost like…
My throat bobs.
