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I inhaled, fists straining by my sides. “I’m fine now. It’s been hours.” My voice barely carried, the sound nothing more than a whisper.
“Don’t go. Stay here with me.” He slid his hand lower, his long fingers tangling with mine. “Just for tonight.”
My eyes fell to our entwined hands.
With his loaded request and silken touch, he was leading me into tumultuous waters—the dangerous kind—where it was disturbingly easy to lose sight of the shoreline, and almost impossible to distinguish what lay beneath the surface.
My eyes flitted to the digital clock on the microwave. Numbers illuminated in green blinked back at me in the dim light.
Almost ten minutes to midnight.
On New Year’s Eve.
It would make sense to leave this in the past. Leave him in the past.
But if nothing else, my actions tonight proved I was lacking in the sense department when it came to Leon Bradshaw.
My lids drifted closed as my resolve floundered. I didn’t resist when Leon led me back from the door.
Ten minutes later, fireworks exploded in the night sky as we lay side by side, facing each other without speaking on top of Leon’s black, rumpled bed sheets. Eyes soft, he leaned in toward me, lifting a hand and sweeping a section of hair back off my face. “Happy New Year, Snow Queen.”
A heart of ice… that’s what I had. Supposedly.
Anything could thaw in the right circumstances, though.
And sometimes… even the wrong ones.
NINETEEN
LISS
I cracked my lids open, peering through the darkness shrouding me as I tried to get my bearings. The heavy weight draped across my chest drew my gaze down, and I slammed my eyes closed, my head dropping back into the cushion.
Leon’s bedroom. That’s where I was.
Leon’s arm. Laying across my chest.
Leon’s lips… hands… body. All over mine.
A muted groan squeezed past my lips.
Edging out from under him, I padded lightly across the carpeted floor and through the partially open doorway. The keys he’d confiscated last night sat discarded atop the kitchen counter. I snatched them up, grabbing my sneakers and easing the trailer door open before slipping through it.
The irony of what I was doing wasn’t lost on me. Last night, I’d judged him for doing the exact same thing.
But this was different. Somehow.
Air wheezed out through my clenched teeth as I clicked the door into place and turned to sag back against it. My eyes settled on the staggering hues of lilac and pink streaking the early morning sky. I expelled a shaky breath that fogged the cold air, then smoothed my hands down my sides and started toward the car on bare feet.
Prying the door open with trembling fingers, I sank down into the seat and immediately lifted my gaze to the rear-view mirror.
I slept with Leon Bradshaw.
Virginity. Gone.
But it was what happened after I let the supposed bane of my existence punch my v-card that bothered me. He’d kissed me, threaded his hands through my hair, and kissed me with a tenderness that took my breath away and warmed the ice around my heart.
I’d fallen for it. Without a shadow of a doubt. Last night, I’d fallen for the act, then fell asleep in Leon’s arms.
