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I glared up at him and held out my wrists, waiting for him to free me from my plastic prison. But he shook his head. “I gotta go grab your shit.”
My shit?
The knife in my back wedged a little deeper as his broad shoulders disappeared out of the doorframe and returned with luggage I recognized right away. Those shiny pink suitcases belonged to me. They had been in my closet at the apartment I used to share with Gypsy. And now they were here. She really did send me away.
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t let them fall. I’d never let anyone see me cry, but certainly not this oaf who was currently eyeballing me like I was a stray pet he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. He disappeared down the hall, dispersing of the luggage before he returned for more outside. And so the process went on. Meanwhile, I attempted to escape my binds, only to dig them deeper into my skin.
“You might not want to do that.” Ace gave me the side-eye as he finally shut the front door. “They aren’t the most forgiving.”
“Then let me out of them,” I demanded.
He crossed his arms and stared at me. “Say please, and I’ll think about it.”
My eyes narrowed, but it did nothing to sway him. He was actually serious.
“You want me to ask you politely?” I smiled. “Fine, please quit being a fucking asshole and—”
Calmly, he strode toward me. There wasn’t anything particularly scary about his eyes or his mood. It was just the devil in all his details that got to me. He was a beast of a man. Giant paws for hands. Forearms sculpted from hard labor. Boots that echoed off the floor like shotgun blasts. I liked to push him. When he got angry with me earlier, it made me feel vindicated that I could get to him. But now he was as Zen as he ever was, and this part of him… the quiet, brooding hulk of a man hovering over me… this part frightened me.
When he bent toward me, I squeezed my eyes shut, but as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t touch me. Instead, I heard him snatch something off the couch beside me, and I realized it was my purse. My eyes flew open again, this time to find him rummaging through my private things until he pulled out my iPhone and looked straight at me.
“What are you—”
My heart skittered into a frantic rhythm as he walked into the open kitchen and retrieved a glass from the cupboard. Without emotion, he filled the glass from the tap, and then unceremoniously dumped my phone into a watery grave.
“What the hell are you doing?” My arms protested against the plastic binds as I forced myself up from the couch. “I need that phone.”
The restraints around my ankles thwarted my efforts to hop into the kitchen, and instead, I flopped forward without grace, my knees bouncing off the tile floor before I toppled over into a heap.
“Son of a bitch!” I hissed.
Before I could process what was happening, Ace was kneeling beside me, shaking his head. “You are too impulsive. Do you ever just think things through?”
His scolding had little effect on me, not when my knees felt like they’d been hit with a jackhammer. Once again, he heaved me up onto the sofa, instructing me to stay put while he disappeared down the hall. As if I was going to try to go anywhere now.
A visual inspection confirmed that my knees were already starting to bruise. There was a small scrape on the right leg, and my ankles stung from the force of the plastic that had jarred against my skin during the impact.
When Ace returned, he had a handful of first-aid supplies with him, and despite his cool demeanor, he looked concerned as he set them on the coffee table. He glanced at my knees and walked back into the kitchen, retrieving a bag of frozen peas.
“It’s just a scratch,” I murmured resentfully as he sat beside me. His brow marred with concern as he gently dabbed at the scrape on my knee with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball. Nobody had ever taken care of me this way since Gypsy had tried to teach me how to ride a bike. But this was different. Ace was surprisingly gentle even as his calloused fingers scraped over my skin, examining the swelling. I shivered, and the pain became a distant memory as endorphins flooded my system. I felt him everywhere. His touch produced a physical reaction in me that defied logic. It was pure chemistry, and it stirred the very marrow of my bones.
I wondered if he felt it too when he looked up at me and our eyes locked. For a split second, his hand stilled on my thigh, and his thumb skated across the flesh there, producing another shockwave in my body. Goose bumps broke out along my skin, and my fingernails dug into my palms as his eyes darkened with a primal satisfaction he couldn’t hide. But just as quickly as I’d witnessed it, he tore his gaze away and obliterated the moment with a wall of silence.
