The Girl Next Door - Emma Hart Page 0,52

real, I bet she wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.”

Well, that seemed as good an idea as any.

“All right, then. I’ll do that.” I tossed the water bottle on the sofa as I grabbed my keys from it and headed for the door.

“Wait, no—Kai! I didn’t mean do that! Kai!”

I shut the door behind me.

“Damn it!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – IVY

I tied the strings of my pajama shorts and peered at myself in the mirror. A chill ran across my skin as I lifted my tank top and looked at my stomach.

It didn’t look any different.

Not sure why I thought it would. The baby was a raspberry, not a damn watermelon.

My boobs, though, were another story. Blue veins painted roadmaps across my light skin, and my areolas were darkening, becoming larger by the day, it seemed.

It was weird.

I tugged my shirt back down.

Tonight had been weird. Really, really weird, I thought as I grabbed a face wipe to remove my makeup. It’d started off fun, then gentle, then I’d ruined it by letting my mouth run away with me.

The truth was that I had feelings for Kai. Crazy, intense feelings that scared me the most about all of this. They’d appeared quickly and fiercely, and my own subconscious was rapidly becoming my worst enemy.

I was just so, so tired. All the time. Every second of the day. Loading the dishwasher was a mammoth task, not to mention carrying laundry up and down the stairs to and from the laundry room in the basement while the elevator had been out of order for maintenance.

Fuck. That. Shit.

I was so tired of everything else that when it came to my feelings, I really didn’t have any energy left to figure them out.

And it was always easier to push someone away, wasn’t it? Easier to push them away than let them in. If you let them in, that meant there was no turning back. They’d always have a piece of you, and I didn’t know if I could give any more of me away right now.

Maybe that was unfair and selfish but I was a little past caring. I was too tired. I wished someone could make the decision for me, that someone could just tell me what to do. That someone, somewhere, knew what the best choice was and could promise me it was the best thing to do right now.

Was that weak? Maybe. Childish and pathetic? Probably.

I wished I could untangle all the things that confused me. Lay them all out like strings in front of me, untie and untangle and straighten them until they all made sense again.

Of course, now that I was alone in my apartment, all I really wanted was to bury myself under some warm covers in a warm bed and snuggle up against Kai’s strong body.

You fucked that one up, Ivy, girl.

A thump came from the living room, followed by the sound of my door being unlocked.

What the fuck?

I dropped the face wipe, leaving one eye still covered in makeup and grabbed the nearest heavy item which happened to be my hairdryer—thankfully unplugged for once. I held it out in front of me the way one would wield a frying pan.

I was not nearly armed enough for someone breaking into my apartment.

“Ivy?”

It was Kai.

Of course it was Kai.

“Ivy?”

Kai had a key.

“Where are you?”

Why was Kai letting himself into my apartment? This wasn’t an emergency.

“Don’t ever do that again!” I snapped, rounding the corner into the kitchen with my weapon now at my side. “I—”

He closed the distance between us and kissed me before I could finish my sentence. His large hands cupped the sides of my face and held me still as his lips captured mine and took control of me.

My entire body lit on fire.

From head to toe, I was burning.

I leaned into his body, gripping his shirt with one hand as I tried not to drop my hairdryer with the other.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

He looked down and tugged the hairdryer from my grasp, then set it on the sofa before he came back to me. His hands rested either side of my face again, and his blue gaze bore into mine with an intensity that made my knees weak.

“Don’t think,” he said quietly but firmly. “Don’t think about anything. Just feel, okay?”

Before I could respond, he kissed me again. This one was deeper and hungrier than the last, and it stoked a fire deep inside me. Desire trickled through my body, spread by