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“You’re thirty-one years old, dude. Youareancient.”
“Ouch.” I couldn’t help but grin. Going back and forth with her like this was kind of fun.
“Yeah, it’s true. You’re old and you don’t know what personal space is, and you’re always smiling like that—”
“I thought you hated my smiles because they don’t reach my eyes?”
Charlie puffed herself up. “I did. I mean, I do.Do. Present-tense. So, stop smiling at me like that. Stop it right now.”
I took a tiny step closer to her, my neck bent at a hard angle so I could stare down at her. “And what if I don’t? What if I keep smiling, hmm? And what if—” Charlie took a step back, and I matched it. She leaned back against the wall near the window, and I boxed her in by resting my arms on the wall on either side of her. “—I keep invading your personal space? What are you going to do? Are you going to tell me to move? To go away? Try to tell me to leave again? We both know I’m not going anywhere now, Charlie Mulanie.”
Whatever bluff she was trying to pull, she wouldn’t pull it on me. And, besides, I could see the way her feistiness started to fade, the way her brown eyes filled with something else—something other than their usual eternal sadness. She wasn’t going to tell me to leave, or to step away. She couldn’t.
And that was a good thing indeed, because at this rate, I didn’t think I could pull away even if she told me to.
What happened between us couldn’t be wrong. How in the hell could something be wrong when it had felt so fucking good?
I couldn’t leave. I wouldn’t, because Charlie wasn’t just Charlie Mulanie anymore.
She wasmyCharlie fucking Mulanie.
Chapter Two – Charlie
I tried to replay the conversation to play back how we’d ended up like this, but I couldn’t think straight, not with Brett looming over me with that look on his face. His smirk had fallen away, replaced by something else, and those piercing blue eyes of his bore into me in a way no other set of eyes had. Not Zak’s, not anybody’s.
His arms were on either side of my head on the wall, his tall frame boxing out the world. I felt so much smaller than my five feet when faced with his muscled six-and-a-half-foot tall frame.
The expression he wore was so intense, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. All I could do was stare up at him and get lost in those eyes.
He was a bad man. A dangerous man. He wasn’t the kind of man you should ever want to be with. Maybe I was stupid, maybe this whole mess was way bigger than I thought, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t scared of him. He wouldn’t hurt me.
“Do you know why I’m not going anywhere, Charlie?” The way Brett said my name made a chill crawl up my spine—but not a bad chill. Not the scary kind. No, more like the kind of shiver that took over your body when you experienced something toe-curling and heart-palpitating for the first time.
It took all of my willpower to answer him, “Why?” Deep down, I probably knew, but I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted… well, at this point I think it was obvious what I wanted.
“Because,” he spoke in a whisper, his hands sliding down the wall near my head. Those same hands moved, sweeping back along my jaw and taking my face in his rough, calloused palms. The way he stared down at me made my chest ache and other parts of me warm. “You’re mine now.”
My breath caught, and I struggled to breathe.
I was his now.Such a simple answer, and yet the weight of it pressed upon me, almost suffocating—but again, not in a bad way. It was odd; my stalker had said nearly the exact same thing, but when he’d said it, I’d grown anxious and fearful. When Brett said it, the only thing I felt was complete.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. With his hands holding my face, I whispered, “I’m… yours?” It came out like a question, as if I still wasn’t sure what he meant. Which was just silly, because with the way he gazed down at me, fire in those blue depths, it was more than obvious he meant it in every single way.
Brett nodded once. “You’re mine now, Charlie. I’ve tried to deny it. I’ve tried to pretend otherwise, but that lie never lasts. It’s always the first to die. You’re so fucking mine, Charlie. You’re mine. I won’t let anyone hurt you… and that includes yourself. I’ll keep you safe, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
My breath caught. The quiet confidence Brett had, that lingering dangerous tone that always lined each and every word he spoke when he wasn’t making a stupid joke was gone… and in its place was earnestness, lust, and a whole lot of hunger, all directed toward me.
If I was his, did that make him mine? Was Brett Banks mine now? Was hemyserial killer? I didn’t know, and right now, it didn’t really matter, because all I could think about was feeling those lips on mine again.
How in the world did I go from suicidal to kind of horny? This day was not going like I thought it would, and you know what? I couldn’t be more grateful. When I’d called Brett, it wasn’t in the hopes that he’d come and save the day. I didn’t call him to bring him back to me. I had no right to ask him to come back after telling him to leave that night.
But he was here. He was here and he was telling me he wouldn’t leave me again, even if I told him to go. He was fighting to stay at my side.
How in the world could a freaking serial killer make me feel this way?
“Brett,” I whispered his name the moment the ache in my body started to be too big to ignore.
The corners of his mouth tugged into a slow smile—and this time, the smile reached his eyes. “Are you going to tell me to stop invading your personal space again?” he asked as his lower half pressed harder against me, pinning me to the wall, as if I wasn’t already caught between a rock and a hard place.
