Page 12 of Outlaw

“Tell me what you meant.”

“Jesus!” Christian groans, rolling his eyes. “Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“Fine!” he says. “The way you kissed…it was just…”

“Bad?” I snap.

“No!” he sighs. “See, this is why I didn’t want to bring it up. It wasn’t bad; I could just tell you hadn’t really done it much before.”

I close my eyes and hang my head. Yeah. It was obvious. I feel like an idiot.

“Hey, hey,” Christian says as he gets up and takes a seat beside me on the bed. He puts a comforting arm around me, but I push it aside. I don’t even want it there. I’m not good enough for him. “Take it easy. It’s not a big deal—”

“Yes it is,” I mutter. I screwed everything up. This man tried once to warn me away from those men, and I didn’t listen. Then he risked his life to get me away from them, took me back here, gave me a drink and kissed me, only to discover that I had no idea what I’m doing. Nice, Claire. Real nice.

“It’s not,” he says firmly. He takes me by the chin and turns my face to his, but I keep my eyes shut. “Hey,” he says. I keep them closed. “Hey!”

Nope. Not opening them. Christian sighs and pokes me in the side. It tickles, but I try not to let him see that. He does it again and I swat his hand away and still keep my eyes closed.

“Fine,” he sighs. “Be stubborn…bitch.”

That does it. My eyes snap open and I slap him in the face. Or at least I try. He catches my hand by the wrist just as I’m about to make impact with his cheek. His face lights up with a grin and he chuckles.

“Again – kidding,” he says. “I just wanted you to look at me.”

“You are a real bastard; you know that?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

8

Claire

I feel like I’ve been pulled into a dream as I stare into Christian’s eyes. He’s infuriating. Just when I think I know what he’s going to do or say, he does something different. He’s a mystery – an asshole and a sweetheart at the same time and he knows exactly how to push my buttons. His body is warm and his hands are strong. He smells like man and his presence is overpowering.

What he does next – I never could have predicted.

“What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” His question is so out of left field that it almost doesn’t register. Did he really just ask me that?

“What is this? Twenty questions?”

“It’s one question.” He smiles. “Well…two. But I need the answer to this one before I can ask you the second one.”

“Let go of me—” I say as I try to pull his hand off my face. But he pushes my arm away and holds on to me.

“Would you stop being a brat for five seconds and just answer the question?”

Brat!? I want to snap at him, but the brat in me somehow decides it would be even more bratty to answer him, as he’s probably expecting me not to.

“Mint chocolate chip,” I tell him. “How could that possibly matter?”

Christian doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he finally lets me go—and I admit to feeling kind of conflicted about that – then stands. Without saying another word, he goes over to a door I hadn’t noticed before and pulls it open. He tugs a cord and a light comes on to reveal a pretty large storage room that he’s converted into a walk-in closet. Still silent, he strips out of his clothes, all the way down to his white boxer briefs.

Standing there, he looks like a Calvin Klein model. If you told me that he spent seven days a week at the gym, I’d believe you. His body is that nice. As he moves, every muscle ripples, showing every cut. There are scars scattered across his torso, giving him the appearance of a warrior. I could easily see him in that movie 300 with Gerard Butler.

He doesn’t even look over at me as he finds a new pair of jeans and a faded maroon Henley. I watch shamelessly from the bed as my body reacts to him. The warm feeling between my thighs grows like a golden ball. I shift slightly and can feel the slick beginning to form. My panties are damp and I’m feeling flushed. I wonder if he even realizes just how insanely sexy he is.

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