Twisted Love (Twisted, #1)(22)
“I’m not a toy, Ava,” Alex said, his voice lethally soft. “Don’t play with me unless you want to get hurt.”
I swallowed my fear. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
That mysterious spark crystallized into anger. “This is why Josh was so worried about you. You are trusting to a fault.” He leaned forward a fraction of an inch, and it was all I could do not to lean back. Alex’s presence crackled with coiled energy, and I had the unnerving sense that beneath all that ice lay a volcano waiting to erupt—and God help whoever was around when that happened. “Don’t try to humanize me. I’m not a tortured hero from one of your romantic fantasies. You have no idea what I’m capable of, and just because I promised Josh I’d look after you doesn’t mean I can protect you from yourself and your bleeding heart.”
Pink blossomed on my face and chest. I was torn between fear and fury—fear of that hard, unyielding look in his eyes; fury over how he spoke to me like I was a na?ve child who couldn’t tie her shoelaces without hurting herself. “This seems like an overreaction to a simple joke,” I said, my jaw tight. “I’m sorry I touched you without permission, but you could’ve told me to stop instead of giving me an entire speech about how you think I’m a helpless idiot.”
His nostrils flared. “I don’t think you’re a helpless idiot.”
My anger edged out my fear. “Yes, you do. You and Josh both. You always say you want to ‘protect’ me like I’m not a grown woman who’s perfectly capable of handling herself. Just because I see the good in people doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I think optimism is a good trait, and I feel sorry for people who go through life believing the worst of others.”
“That’s because they’ve seen the worst.”
“People see what they want to see,” I countered. “Are there awful people in the world? Yes. Do awful things happen? Yes. But wonderful people exist and wonderful things happen too, and if you focus too much on the negative, you miss all the positive.”
Utter silence, made all the more awkward by the fact that I was still straddling Alex’s leg.
I was sure he would yell at me, but to my shock, Alex’s face relaxed into a hint of a smile. His fingers grazed the small of my back, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.”
Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors.
“Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly.
A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts.
Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.”
He did not—what? An inferno consumed my body.
“You’re—you—no, I’m not!” I sputtered, pushing him away and scrambling off him. My core pulsed. Oh my God, what if I was? I couldn’t look, afraid I’d see a telltale wet spot on his jeans.
I’d have to move to Antarctica. Build myself an ice cave and learn to speak penguin because I could never show my face in Hazelburg, D.C., or any city where I could run into Alex Volkov again.
His chuckle blossomed into a full-blown laugh. The effect of his real smile was so devastating, even amid my mortification, that all I could do was stare at the way his face lit up and the sparkle that transformed his eyes from beautiful to downright breathtaking.
Holy crap. Perhaps I should be grateful he never smiled, because if that was what he looked like while doing it…womankind didn’t stand a chance.
“I’m talking about your bleeding heart,” he drawled. “What did you think I was talking about?”
“I—you—” Forget Antarctica. I had to move to Mars.
Alex’s laughter subsided, but the twinkle in his eyes remained. “What’s the next movie?”
“Excuse me?”
He angled his chin toward the DVD on the table. “You brought two movies. What’s the second one?”
The sudden subject change gave me whiplash, but I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t want to speak about my dripping anything with Alex. Ever.
My thighs clenched, and I gritted out, “Marley & Me.”
“Put it in.”
Put it—oh, the DVD.
I needed to get my mind out of the gutter.
While the opening credits played, I sat as far away from Alex as possible and “casually” placed two throw pillows between us for good measure. He didn’t say anything, but I saw his smirk out of the corner of my eye.
I was so focused on not looking at him I barely paid attention to the movie, but an hour later, when my eyes drooped and sleep beckoned, I was still thinking about his smile.
9
Alex
I silently cursed Josh as I carried Ava upstairs. That asshole always put me in situations I didn’t want to be in.
Case in point: sleeping in the same room as his sister.
I’m sure he would be even less happy about it than I was, but I hadn’t set up the guest room—I never had guests, not if I could help it—and it was pouring outside, so I couldn’t bring her home without both of us getting drenched. I could’ve left her on the couch, but she would’ve been damn uncomfortable.