Page 33 of Through the Flames
Her breathing shifted, just a little, the barest fraction.
And it hit me. What if the attraction wasn’t one-sided? What if she was already thinking about it?
My jaw locked, a muscle ticking as I kept typing.
My girl had no fucking idea how much I thought about her, about all the things I’d do to her.
How often I imagined those same hands she was watching right now wrapped around her thighs, buried in her hair, curled tightly around her throat.
Not hard, but just enough to let her know who she belonged to.
I’d never type again if it meant I could put these hands on her.
But I didn’t look at her. Not yet.
Just raised a brow like I didn’t feel her gaze.
Like I wasn’t building a whole damn religion out of the way she looked at me.
Let her squirm in it a little.
She moved closer to take a look at what was on my screen — yet another barely-there touch of skin to skin.
My brain blue-screened. Ella touched me, like it didn’t mean anything. Like it didn’t ruin me.
Teeth clenched, I slowly exhaled through my nose, trying to focus despite my cock straining against my sweats. Blindly, I started clicking through the files she forwarded.
This was too easy.
I routed it through three regions, staggered the timestamps, and added noise to the metadata. It was clean work, if I do say so myself. Not traceable, just like Ella requested.
At least not to anyone butme.
Typing was muscle memory, but I could feel the heat creeping up the back of my neck ever so slowly. I allowed my eyes to flick her way for a second.
“This is a favor. You will owe me a favor in return.” I didn’t need the favor, all I needed was a reason to keep her tethered.
Ella raised a brow, still looking amused. “Depends on how clean you make it.”
She said it like a dare, and I let out a quiet scoff, more out of reflex than humor. She thought she was being clever, but she had no idea what she’d just invited in.
The kicker was, she even looked pleased with herself.
Challenge accepted, her expression said.
My girl didn’t realize I wasn’t doing her a favor; I was building her a fucking cage.
Ella leaned in to skim the page of the drop script, squinting like she understood it, even if she didn’t. Then she just leaned back.
“You got this, right?” she asked. She made it sound so simple, like handing someone your loaded secrets was casual. Just another Thursday night.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’ll handle it.”
“Cool. Then I won’t worry.” She just nodded.
That’s right. Let me take care of it.
At this point, I had already memorized the cadence of her worry for the times I’d need to remove it.
