Page 12 of Arrogant Bastard

He reaches me and holds out the glass. “Sit down and drink this.”

I slide my gaze from his body, turn away, and shake my head. “I’m not accepting anything from you. How do I know you’re not going to drug me again?”

“Because I want to have a conversation with you. And to do that, I need you awake and alert.”

“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we have nothing more to say to each other.”

“If you’re sure we’ve exhausted conversation, may I suggest other activities?” he says, his voice a fraction deeper.

I know what that means. And, God, I can’t entertain that suggestion. Even a little bit. “You may not.”

He sighs heavily. A familiar, melodramatic sound that used to make me laugh. The memory tugs hard at me. I shift my gaze back to the window. Dawn is fast approaching. I don’t need to be back at the Punishment Club for another several hours. But the reminder that I have a life out there, one that’s been violently interrupted by my past, is rammed home to me.

“I can’t stay here,” I say without looking at him.

He doesn’t reply.

“Whatever you’ve planned by kidnapping me, it’s not going to work,” I stress.

More silence. Against my will, my attention is drawn back to him. The glass is on the coffee table, and his gaze is on my body. I open my mouth to say God knows what, but the look in his eyes stops me.

He inhales raggedly as his eyes slide all over me. “I didn’t forget how beautiful you were, but, God, having you right here, in front of me, you’re even more beautiful than I remember.” His voice is gravel-rough, filled with the same churning hunger dredging through me.

And just like that I’m trapped. By his words. By his eyes. By every essence of the man in front of me. His hold on me was shamefully effortless right from the start. Against my will, I allow myself a small sliver of him, and let my gaze feast on him too.

Time has given Killian’s fallen-angel looks an even more lethal edge. The air around him bristles with danger and something else I can’t place my finger on.

“You’ve changed,” I say, more than a little distracted by the shift of cotton moving over his shoulders and torso as he withstands my scrutiny. “You seem…harder.” Not that he was soft before.

“It’s been hell without you,” he responds simply.

Killian’s ability to disarm me with words had knocked me off my feet within a few minutes of first meeting him. The deadly effect hasn’t worn off. “You say that like it was paradise before.”

“Then let me rephrase. It’s been a different kind of hell without you. I’ve discovered there are several layers of hell since you left me.”

Every breath I take rattles its way weakly into my lungs. “You can’t hold me responsible for your suffering.”

He steps closer into my personal space. Until we’re almost sharing oxygen. My tingling intensifies until my whole body is vibrating on a fine frequency only Killian Knight has been able to strike. “Can’t I? I may have failed at many things, but I know I didn’t fail to tell you or show you how much you meant to me. You knew exactly what leaving would do to me,” he says with more than a hint of a chill in his voice.

“Killian…” I stop and clear my throat when my voice sounds like I’m in the middle of a porn movie. I see its effect on him when his eyes darken.

“God, do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard you say my name like that in my dreams?”

“Killian—”

A rough sound rumbles out of him. “You keep saying my name like that and it’ll make me forget about the conversation we need to have. Instead I’ll make it my mission to strip those clothes off your body and reintroduce myself to this lean, mean new you. I like it, by the way. Not that there was anything wrong with the old you. I’m not entirely convinced about the hair color though, but I can come around to—”

“Stop! For the love of God, you’re driving me nuts.”

A half smile twitches his lips as he stares at me. But there’s no humor in his eyes. He’s watching me like a hawk. Enough that I know he’ll capture me in a second if I follow my instinct and try to flee again.

“I’m still very much open to trying other forms of communication,” he says gruffly. His eyes are twin fires of blazing hunger as they latch onto my mouth.

The fierce tingling that starts where his eyes remain makes me want to lick my lips. Over and over. Just to see if the memory of his kiss is as mind-blowing as I remember. God, I can’t take much more of this. I retreat a couple of steps away from him, and I nod at the glass on the table. “Can I have the water now?”

His gaze slowly rises to meet mine. “Of course.”

The moment he turns away to grab the glass, I bolt for the only opening that leads out of the living room. It’s a wide entryway with two hallways branching out on either side. Behind me, I hear the glass hit the table right before he curses under his breath.

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