Page 60 of Ballrooms & Blackmail

God, I know that feeling.

I’ve lived it. Been suffocated by it. Been made small by it.

So, I again table the questions for another time, for another moment.

Then I do my best to make his pain go away.

“Okay,” I say brightly, clapping my hands together. “The mission—should you choose to accept it—is for us to gather clothes and books so I can pretend I’m a normal human adult who doesn’t need her personal emotional support billionaire to retrieve clean underwear.”

Thorn’s gaze flicks toward me. “Emotional support billionaire?”

“Okay, so maybe it’s more of me needing a personal security billionaire.”

He’s still for a long moment.

Then his lips twitch. “How about I pack up your mixer and those tools you were lamenting I don’t have in my kitchen and you take care of your own underwear.”

“You sure you don’t want to handle the underwear part?”

I mean it as a tease.

Okay, not that kind of tease.

A joke. That’s what I meant.

Until heat fills his eyes and I realize what I’ve said and desire slams through my body and I discover what I want?—

For him to handle the underwear part.

Need gathers low in my belly and I press my thighs together, trying to ease the sudden ache there.

An ache I haven’t felt in a long time. Not since?—

Fear hits and it does it hard, hard enough for me to freeze, my desire disappearing off into a puff of smoke.

“Ah, little hen,” he says, his voice edged with gravel, “as much as it pains me, I think I’d better stick to kitchenwares.”

A brush of his knuckles over my cheek.

Then he’s moving away.

Shame washes over me, but I shove it down. I’m doing good, dammit. I’m making progress, not hiding from what I want just because Preston was a dickhead who abused me.

I’m living.

Are you?

Yes. I lift my chin, continue my argument with…myself. At least for the last few days I’ve been living.

I move toward the tiny bedroom area and start pulling open drawers.

Socks.

Sweaters.

Jeans.

I am, I tell that inner doubtful voice.