No. Well. Maybe my original copy ofTender is the Flesh. That might deserve the death.
I suck in a breath. Do or die, Dorian.
I still have my reading glasses on my face. I adjust them, twist the handle, and burst into the bookstore. There he is. The thief. Silhouetted in the kids corner.
My heart is kicking like a wild animal in my chest.
“Hey!” I shout, mustering up as much masculine aggression as I can throw into my voice. Bat in one hand. Phone in the other.
He screams. No—wait.Shescreams.
Dove jumps around, wide-eyed. She sees the bat and freezes in place. The paint can in her hand drops to the floor with a heavy thud. She’s wearing overalls, like a sexy Bob Ross.
“Hello?” The operator says. “You dead, John Cena?”
Dove has anoops?expression written all over her face.
I feel my teeth grind. I exhale a slow, thin breath. “Falsealarm,” I tell him. I put down the bat and lean it against a bookshelf. “It’s my fucking girlfriend.”
“Copy that. So I can deactivate the alarm?”
“Please. Happy holidays.”
Then I end the call. The second I do, the blaring alarm cuts off.
For a second, Dove and I stand there in the deafening silence.
She points to my phone. “Did you just call me your girlfriend? I feel like we should unpack that.”
My adrenaline is pounding too fast to metabolize her cuteness. “What are you doing here?”
She lifts her palm. My key ring dangles from her pointer finger. “You left your keys. I just thought?—”
“You just thought you’dbreak in?And—what.” I motion to the paint can. “Redecorate? Are you insane?”
Even I’m aware there’s a heat in my voice I need to tame. But Dove doesn’t back down. Instead, her lips thin. She crosses her arms and cocks her hip. “Yes. I am. And it’s your fault.”
I bark a laugh. “Myfault?”
“Yes. You. You have me acting in ways that are uncharacteristic. Frankly, alarming.” She motions to the wall. “I was going to repaint your stupid owl. It was supposed to be a grand, romantic gesture!”
Now, she’s yelling at me. Guilt dissolves on my tongue and softens my tone. “You hate grand, romantic gestures.”
Her mouth pinches in a frown. “Yeah, but since you’ve got a cast-iron heart that can’t take a hint and recognize that someone might, god forbid, care about you, I’ve resorted to breaking and entering to spell it out in big, brush-shaped letters.”
We’re squared off now, two bulls caught in each other’s horns. Dove isn’t an intruder—she’s something far morethreatening to my sanity—and my heart hasn’t slowed down since I burst through that door.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I hear myself say. A weak protest.
Her laugh is bitter. “You didn’t ask for this? Hell,Ididn’t ask for this. You think I wanted to fall in love with a reclusive, self-loathing, bratty submissive?”
Fall in…
Love?
Did she say love?
She doesn’t say the word that way I say the word. Loaded with shame. She says it with her full chest. Her eyes on mine. Bold. Vulnerable.
