feet on my own,” I snapped.
He didn’t respond, though he didn’t manage to hide his sharp intake of breath seeing my nightgown.
Score for me.
Then his face evened out to almost blank and he snatched my hip, half carrying me, half dragging me to bed. I should’ve been a lot more against him manhandling me, but I was tired. And I did hurt. So the bed was welcome.
Duke did not say a thing after I’d settled in bed, but the way he held himself told me he was affected. Men were like that. They could hate you as a person but they couldn’t stop themselves from wanting to fuck you if there was attraction.
Which there was.
A lot of it.
This little theory of mine went both ways. I wasn’t sure whether I liked Duke or not, but I was certain I wanted to have angry hate-sex with the man.
I snatched the book on the nightstand and did my best to make it look believable that I was reading it. What I was really doing was watching Duke undress. He didn’t make use of the bathroom for changing. No. He just dropped his trousers right here. It was a strangely intimate thing to have someone do in front of you and it hit me in that tender spot in my chest he’d opened up with his question earlier.
It was now hard to swallow, so I forced my attention back to the words on the page. They were little more than a jumble, but I made sure to stare and turn pages like someone engrossed in a book might.
The bed depressed as he got in it and I held my breath, still pretending to read. He didn’t grab any kind of prop, nor did he try to feign sleep. He just lay there, staring at the ceiling, shirtless, the covers barely covering his abs.
I waited for him to say something. Entertained the fantasies I’d been harboring about him grabbing me roughly, kissing me, devouring me and fucking me violently.
That was not something I should’ve been doing with the shirtless man in question in the same bed as me. My grip on the book tightened as I forced myself to not act on the desire that was coursing through my veins.
“You can’t do that shit again,” Duke clipped after we’d been silent for a while. “You can’t storm off in a fucking hissy fit. This isn’t the life you’re used to. This isn’t the world you’re used to. That could’ve been much worse if I hadn’t found you and you’d been there all night. You could’ve fuckin’ died.”
“If you hadn’t found me?” I repeated, voice shrill. I abandoned the farce of my book and sat up turning to glare at him, not missing the way his eyes flickered to my thinly covered chest area. I also didn’t miss the way my traitorous body responded to the simple, fleeting and hungry look. But I had lines to deliver.
“If you hadn’t saved me, that’s what you mean,” I continued. “Because that’s your role, isn’t it, Duke? You’re the big man on his big horse with his big muscles that is here to save the bitchy, ungrateful and vapid movie star. The damsel is the only role I could possibly play so of course the hero is yours. But I’ve got some news for you, buddy. I’m not someone that collapses and gives up because of a fucking snake bite. I know that rattlesnake bites rarely kill people. I also know I’m strong enough to withstand a little venom in order to make it across a fucking field in order to save myself. I’ve done it plenty of times before.”
After delivering that—perfectly, I might add—I moved from the bed, careful not to flinch with the pain of standing.
Duke moved too.
Quicker than me, which wasn’t at all fair. I managed to get out of bed, but because it was rather ungraceful, Duke rounded the bed before I could move to my destination. He was standing in front of me—shirtless—and pissed off.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” he demanded, eyes hard.
“I’m going to sleep on the chair,” I said, most of my bravado being lost with his closeness.
He tightened his jaw and leaned in even further, as if he knew he was torturing me. “You’re not sleepin’ in the fuckin’ chair.”
I tilted my chin upward in defiance. “You’re not telling me where I can fucking sleep.”
Of course, I expected to get another growled demand, because that was his way.
But instead