All masculine, musky, and clean.
Christian Hayes felt like a man I didn’t know.
The initial shock forced me down on the chair with a hypnotized look.
Inhale.One… Two… Three…
“You don’t mean that.”
Four… Five…
“Of course, I mean it.”
Six…
“You want to break up?”
Seven…
“I’ve wanted to break up for a long time.”
Eight.Exhale.
At my hip were sharded pieces of the past. The skin grew around the cuts, closing off the shallow parts, but never addressing the hollow blade wounding me. I’d never healuntil I pulled out the remaining analepsis—I always had an issue with blood. Refusing to extract it seemed like the better option.
Until now.
I cleared my throat from the disrespectful jittering heartbeat. “Mr. Hayes,” confidence hesitated in the quiver of my lips. There was responsibility resting on my shoulders and people’s whispers dripping like heavy raindrops in my mind.Flooded, if I didn’t quickly disentangle the situation. As much as I'dloveto leave, I couldn’t.
My left brow shuddered.
“You okay?” Osama’s concern came out in a whisper and a weak smile. I flushed with humiliation, somehow nodding.
Christian toed closer. His scent amplified.
“You can call me by my first name, Adelaide.”Sandalwood. Damn, he smelled divine.
Down girl.
My teeth grinded together. How could I findanythingabout this man attractive? Any person who disrespected my dignity could never be attractive. Christian Hayes was my irritating creaky door. Despite oiling it, every so often it returned in the middle of the night as a horrendous reminder. Why not replace it? One may ask. Well, one could replace it if they weren’t busy figuring out ways to move on. Instead, I dealt with it because adulthood was about compromise.
Except—figuratively speaking—-if he was in the ocean, drowning with piranhas swimming around him, then I would gladly let his blood coat the water. In fact, I’d drink the blood-coated water and want it to course through myveins so that his final screams stuck to every corner of my organs.
“We’re not on a level of cordial-ship to be calling each other by our first names,” words formed themselves into snippy, petty letters—pouring out of my lips. I retracted back, taking in the speech with me. “I’m also in a meeting with Mr. Taimoor right now.”
Other people would have taken that as a dismissal.
Husky, deep, and dark. Christian simply laughed.
A pulsation against my stubborn coreclenchedfrom his laugh like it could remember the feeling being rubbed against my most sensitive part. I didn’t like it.Not one bit.
Christian tasted me once with his less than satisfactory tongue. If he wanted another bite, he’d do it for the sake of torturing me—putting on a performance of licking away my fears before throwing me to the wolves.
But honestly, I’d rather be with wolves than this lion.
Pique rested on the roots of my hair and wandered down each strand, tying itself to the end and ready to whip themselves at him.
“I love to be the one to inform you, Ms. Mikael,” he shuffled closer to my chair and leaned down. “But the meeting is actually with me.”
