Page 66 of Lifebound

A muffled scream escaped me, and Rune turned.

Now, the water could have been boiling.

I wrapped my arms around myself and said, “Turn around!”

He didn’t.

Rune didn’t fucking turn around. Instead, hecame closer,and he could see me. I was naked and my legs were in the water up to my thighs, and he could fucking see me.

My God, if I could just get my body to move, I would be running away right now. Or fisting him in the face. Or doinganything at allother than standing there, trying to cover my boobs and my pussy with my hands.

The asshole came all the way to the rusted tub, squatted to its side, and put the palms of his hands against it.

“What are you?—”

Bright white light came from the contact.

The ice-cold water that had practically frozen my legs began to warm up.

Rune’s eyes slid down from my face and to my body like a fucking caress, and I felt the heat of his gaze as if it was physical. God, my heart was going to break through my ribcage any second. My lady parts were on fucking fire.

What the hell is wrong with me?!I’d been with a guy before, damn it.

“This okay?” Rune whispered when my lungs had run all out of air.

It took me a good long moment to understand what those words meant.

And when I did, I could only nod because my voice had abandoned me again.Traitorous fucker.

Rune stood up. Looked down at me. His eyes were made of blue fire, and I was suddenly desperate to get fucking scorched.

“Go ahead.” Slowly, he walked to the door again, backward. Never taking his eyes off me for a second. “And try to calm down, Wildcat. Everyone in the building can hear your heartbeat.”

That’s when he turned his back to me again.

I wasfuming,but no word came out of me. This was the first person in my life who’d ever gotten the last word, and I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed by it or just ashamed.

Instead, I sat down in the tub where the water could hide me a little bit, and I forced myself to breathe.

He can hear my heartbeat.He could actually hear how it was galloping in my chest, and it had to stopnow.

The best way to do that was to focus on something else. A bar of soap was in my hand and I was in the water, and I was going to fucking clean myself up thoroughly no matter what this asshole said or did.

The moment I calmed down a bit I realized that it wasn’t aboutsayinganything back to him—it was aboutdoing.It was about serving him the same medicine he served me.

I tried—I really did, but I couldn’t let it go. I would never forgive myself if I let him get away with what he just did.Never.

So, I stood up again.

He heard me—his head turned to the side, but he didn’t look at me that I could tell.

Then, against most of my instincts, I began to hum the slow melody of one of my favorite love songs, and I cleaned my limbsslowly.

My eyes were on him. His shoulders were tense, his hands in fists. He might be afae—whatever the hell that really meant—and he might be dangerous enough to scare off a vampire, but right now he was just a guy who could piss me off and turn me on at the same second, so I needed to get back some of my self-respect. I was going to, no matter how much it cost me.

He wanted to play games and make me uncomfortable? Fine. Any game was more fun with two players, anyway.

“Hey, Rune, grab that pitcher for me?”

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