Page 3 of Unwrapping Deviance
Daniel isn’t a race. He’s a marathon. I have to seduce him slowly, but win I will. It’s only a matter of time.
“Do you want to know what this one’s about?” I tease.
My adorable hulk of a man shifts in his seat. One big paw lifts off the wheel and rubs nervously across the back of his neck.
I have to bite my lips to contain my giggles.
“I need to focus on driving.”
Pretending I don’t hear him, I flip through the worn pages teasingly. “There’s a Halloween scene with a mask—”
“Mira...”
I lift my chin and bat my eyes at him innocently. “Yes?”
His chest expands under that too-tight top. “Unless he’s five and trick or treating, I don’t think I’m ready to hear it.”
I purse my lips thoughtfully and tilt my head. “Definitely not five, but he does get his treat.”
“Goddamn it,” he grumbles under his breath. “Behave.”
It’s there, right on the tip of my damn tongue to give that final nudge, to be that brat and challenge him. I’m practically vibrating with the need. My panties are soaked, and he hasn’t done a thing, except tell me to behave.
“Or what?”
The challenge slips from my body with zero forethought. It explodes in the silence left behind by his threat. It rings as clear as a bell between us and I stop breathing.
He’s crushing the wheel beneath white knuckles. His lips are pulled tight in a hard line that mirrors the knot in his razor-sharp jaw. That jaw. The kind that can cut a woman’s thighs as he dives between them.
“We’re almost there,” he bites out and I know I’m not getting an answer.
I settle back in my seat and turn to watch the smear of greens blurring past. Disappointment curls around my chest, a weight that stifles my lungs. I’ve learned over the last year to breathe around it, but it’s becoming harder and harder.
I know I’m not crazy. I know I’m not imagining the bulge pushing up against the front of his jeans. I may not have all the experience in the world, but I know Daniel MacAllister wants me.
There is no doubt in my mind, but the man has a will of steel.
I fully understand that I’m being a brat, and I know Daniel didn’t sign up for that. Hell, he didn’t sign up for any part of me. I was just some broken seventeen-year-old orphan he got saddled with because his best friend got sick. We both fell intoeach other’s lives and somehow, ten months later, we’re still stuck.
He’s stuck.
He came into my life at my very lowest, and he put me together. He made Mom a promise to look after her daughter, swore on her deathbed to take care of me and he’s done nothing else. He moved out of his swanky condo to move in with me so I wouldn’t have to upend my life again. He paid for all of Mom’s funeral arrangements, even though I have a pretty hefty bank account thanks to the settlement fee and insurance money from Dad’s death. Plus, Mom’s insurance. Daniel never asked for a penny. He dragged my ass out of bed when the will to live was nonexistent. He forced me to eat. To shower. He hauled me out of my dark room and didn’t leave my side, not even when I slept for two months.
He held me through every nightmare and let me cry until I couldn’t breathe. He made me laugh when it shouldn’t have been possible and soothed my fears.
He made it impossible not to fall in love with him.
It happened so quickly and all of a sudden that I wasn’t even given a chance to brace. He clobbered me over the head and almost a year later, I’m still reeling with the knowledge that this man has become my entire world, and I would die without him.
That isn’t me being dramatic.
He’s mine and I know he shouldn’t be.
I know if the curse touches him, if the universe takes him from me, they will have to put up with me tagging along because I will not stay here without him.
No therapist will ever convince me that the curse isn’t real. I’m risking his life every day I don’t let him go.
And I’ve tried.