AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I scowled before I could stop myself. Kael grinned like an asshole.
“Goddammit,” I groaned as Kael stood up from his seat, came to stand behind me, and took my left wrist between his fingers.
He lifted it high, right to his eyeline, and made a cold, wet mark across my skin. “One.”
“Stupid,” I growled under my breath.
Kael dropped my wrist and went back to his seat. “Go faster. I’m hungry.”
I bit my tongue and nodded, scrubbing at the pan. Some of the noodles were getting stuck to the ceramic coating, and the liquid from the melting frost bubbled in pockets around its surface. I scraped angrily at the sticking noodles. “How long do I cook this for?”
“How should I know? You’re the one making me dinner.”
I nearly shot him another glare, but I resisted. I stirred a little more vigorously than was strictly necessary instead. Kael laughed behind me, and schooling my features into a solemn mask, I turned slowly on my heel to face him. “I believe dinner is almost done.”
Kael’s goading smirk deepened the brackets around his mouth. “Good girl.”
I seized up, my fingers tightening around the spoon handle and my lungs drawing in a slow, calming breath. Through my teeth, I gritted out, “The fuck I am.”
Kael snorted, and standing again he came to stand in front of me. Reaching down, he grasped my wrist, brought it between us, and marked me again. “Two,” he said, his voice wavering a breath away from laughter.
I tried to light his gray-streaked hair on fire with my glare.
“Not as easy as you thought?” Kael asked, clicking the pen and putting it back in his pocket.
Admittedly, my parents were so much worse than Kael. I got a sinking feeling of dread at the thought of keeping my composure through this farce. It settled in my stomach before tightening with a painful lurch. I lifted my eyes to Kael’s in defeat. He must have seen some of my thoughts in my look because he chucked a finger under my chin. “That’s more like it.”
My stare hardened. “You are insufferable.”
Kael grabbed my wrist and marked it again. “Three. You’re incorrigible.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” I asked in exasperation. Behind me, the dish sizzled and spit, probably close to burning after all of two minutes of being in my care.
Kael reached around me and turned off the burner, effectively caging me in again. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He shuffled me to the side, but he didn’t step away or release my right wrist that he had circled in his calloused fingers. After moving the pan off the burner, he leaned his hand on the counter, still so close that I could feel the heat from his body radiating into mine. “If you were really my operative, I’d just make you afraid of me for real. No acting required.”
I should have asked him to move and give me space. I didn’t. “You’d make me afraid?” I queried with more brass than I felt.
Two arctic eyes held mine. “Ideally.”
“And how would you do that?” Dangerous games, Mattie, my smarter inner voice whispered. You’re playing dangerous games.
My features must have belied my skepticism because Kael’s mouth hardened into an angry line. “You’re not going to goad me into showing you, Bunny.”
For a shrewd hitman-bodyguard-bounty hunter, Kael certainly did fall into traps easily. “And why not?” I asked, my voice breathless as I watched the dance of emotions on his face. Incredulous anger, followed by a thoughtful expression that tugged his dark eyebrows together. Say it, I thought with my heart pounding in my ears. Say you like me.
Kael’s left hand coasted up my arm, over my shoulder, and then finally came to rest around my neck. He encircled my throat with alarming ease, and his features fell into a hard mask I had seen before. It was his “working” mask. It was Ghost. The slashing, intimidating armor he wore when he was dead set on a target. I’d been in his crosshairs before. My body was smarter than my brain, and my pulse leaped in fear. Kael squeezed gently. “If you’re not afraid of me, then you’re not paying attention.”
He hadn’t cut off my air, but my body reacted like he might. I brought my hands up to cover his, and my lashes fluttered lightly as I pulled in an unsteady breath. “You could have hurt me lots of times.” My voice scratched through the space between us, barely audible, but I knew he heard every word by the reactions that broke through his mask. “But you didn’t. I’m not afraid of you, Kael.”
His hold on my neck shifted, and then he glared at his fingers as his knuckles skimmed down the side of my neck. “You would be safer if you were.”
“Probably,” I murmured, enraptured with the way he was staring at where my pulse fluttered on the side of my neck. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at me this way, like they were fully entranced by something so mundane as my heartbeat. Actually, I didn’t think anyone had. Not ever.
But then the spell broke, and Kael looked away, dropping his hand and leaning his body away from mine. I felt the lack of warmth like he’d opened a window on a winter day. “This is not going the way I planned.”
“When do your plans ever go well with me?” I grinned sideways, trying to dispel that charged moment.
“Never,” he admitted grimly. “Literally, never.” Sighing, he stepped away again. “If you can’t even pretend to be timid, then at least look bored. If you’re bored, then maybe you won’t make bratty faces.”
