After a beat or two of silence, I turn all of my attention his way, taking a step toward him.
“Do you believe in God, Nathaniel?” I ask softly.
I’m feeling too melancholy, too out of sorts. It would probably be best that I leave right now, just as he originally asked me to.But I can’t seem to stop talking, to stop craving his observing eyes and his ability to see into me.
“I’m not sure what I believe,” he replies honestly.
The open way in which we’re speaking—it’s doing something to me. It’s lowering my guard.
“If there was a God,” I start, taking another few steps toward him, “do you think he’d give mere humans such extraordinary powers? One that could be used against him?”
Nathaniel says nothing, only watching me with those warm, angry eyes as I take the final step, standing right in front of him.
“Let me tell you a secret,” I continue, and his lips twitch slightly as he stares down at me. “I don’t believe in a god. Because if hewerereal, I wouldn’t feel…”
I can’t force it out. This last bit of truth is lodged in my throat asalone, sad, and misunderstoodclogs my airway.
“Sad?” Nathaniel asks quietly, and the word reaches straight into my chest and yanks at my barely beating heart.
Instead of saying yes or letting him see how this is affecting me, I smirk.
Nathaniel Barfred sees me. What a dangerous and yet impossibly beautiful thing it is to be seen fully by someone else.
It makes me hate him even more, and also, maybe a bit less.
Nathaniel
9
I FEEL AS IFthis surprise visit from Landon is becoming scarily intimate. I find myself swaying toward him internally, wanting to know more about this sadness that I briefly saw in his eyes at the hotel, and that I see now, so present and daunting.
It makes me angry. It makes me so fucking irritated that I’m feeling anything other than hatred as I stare into his glowing green eyes.
But fuck, he’s beautiful. Soft brown hair, sharp features, full lips, and thoseeyes. His body is so perfectly sculpted, a piece of art he works so hard on, and the emotion dripping from him only adds to his allure.
It makes you want to invade his mind, his space, hissoul.
“Leave, Landon. You can’t make my life hell if you hold no real power over me. What you’re doing is pointless.” My voice is cold and distant, a desperate plea for him to leave before I do something stupid.
Something likecaringabout him.
But Landon just smirks, his head tilting as he says, “I can doanything, Nathaniel. I’m just that good.”
Visions of him straddling me, telling me that very same thing, swarm my brain. It puts my body on high alert, primes it for something dirty, and makes my blood sing.
Heat rolls through me, taking my breath momentarily as I stare into his lust-filled eyes. What is he really doing here? If it’s to make my life hell, he is most certainly failing.
Although this internal battle over hating him is pretty shitty, so maybe heisn’tfailing.
“Then be that good in California, not here,” I demand.
“I’m not a corporate slave just yet. I’m free to go where I like.” His tone is full of humor, but I can sense the negativity beneath it. This manreallydoesn’t want to work for his father.
ButIreally do need him to go. If he doesn’t leave now, I’ll end up stuck in this endless cycle of “I hate him, I want him. I hate him, I want him. I hate him, I want him”all night.
And I think he can sense this. I think he can smell my desire and my desperation leaking from every pore on my body, because Landon gives me a deadly smirk, his hand landing square on my chest like an unmoving weight.
“You don’t want me to leave,” he says, reading my damn mind. “You know you’d be so lucky to touch me; such a lowly servant getting his hands on someone like me—”
