RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,47

for your amusement. I’ll be cold and dead in the ground before I let you use my heart as a punching bag. So, you can just forget it. Forget me.”

Panic sizzles under my skin as Wren slowly gets up from the couch. His eyes are alive with electricity, that bottom lip of his trapped between his teeth again. My big speech hasn’t had its desired affect by all accounts. He prowls forward, his muscles shifting beautifully under his skin, and I nearly trip over my own damn feet in my hurry to back away from him. He looks like he’s going to fucking eat me. “My brain doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. I don’t just forget. If I want something, I can’t just move on and pretend like it doesn’t exist.”

I inch away from him, and my chest tightens when the backs of my legs hit the armchair I was sitting on a moment ago. I’m going to have to climb over the fucking furniture if I want to get away from him, which is not going to look graceful or dignified. I’ll willingly do it, though, if it means I escape him.

Wren has other ideas. He takes one last step, so close to me now that I can feel his warm breath skating over my cheek, can see the flecks of amber and gold surrounding the black well of his dilated pupil. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. If I even blink, I suspect that he’ll pounce and tear me apart. He takes hold of a lock of my damp, tangled hair, winding it thoughtfully around his fingers. “You’re not a bet, Elodie. I’ve had to bargain with them for you. I’ve had to break my own rules in order to claim you, and it’s cost me greatly.”

Over the top of my paralyzing panic, a hot, furious anger begins to rise. Who the hell does he think he is? So fucking entitled. So fucking arrogant. “You can’t bargain over a person. I don’t belong to any of you. I won’t be haggled over like a piece of meat.” My pulse is hammering at thirty different points all over my body: in my temples, in my ears, in the tips of my fingers. In my lips…

Wren stares down at my mouth. He’s stopped breathing, wound tight, coiled like a hunter, ready to attack at any moment. I—Jesus Christ, I’ve got to get out of here, before—

Wren tugs on my hair, leaning in even closer, his eyelids half closed as he angles his head to one side, assessing my features. I rock back on my heels. A weightless, terrible moment passes, where I register how unbalanced I am and I realize I’m about to fall. Then I’m sitting down heavily in the chair behind me, the air huffing out of my lungs as Wren continues to press forward. He places one hand on the arm of the chair, the other against the back of it, right above my head. I’m trapped in a cage made by his body, and all I can smell is him—a dark, heady, beautiful scent that teases the back of my nose. It reminds me of night blooming flowers, and cold winter walks with my mother, and the ocean, and my Uncle Remy’s carpentry workshop.

Holy shit. The next time I smell this scent, it won’t remind me of any of those things. Powerful enough to overwrite my memories, the next time I smell this scent, it will remind me of this moment, trapped in this chair, the way my heartrate is soaring and I feel like I’m about to die a most delicious death. “Get away from me, Wren,” I whisper.

He smiles sadly. “Wish I could, Stillwater. But it ain’t on the cards.”

I’m poised and ready to react. He’s about to fucking kiss me. I’m not afraid of it. I’m shaking all over and I can’t fucking think straight, but I am not afraid. “Back up, Wren.”

His lips are parted, his pupils close to swallowing up his irises. My palms burn, my fingers itching. I don’t trust myself to move right now. A part of me wants to slap the intense, doped, lust-filled look right off his stupidly handsome face. A part of me wants to fist a handful of his hair and pull him to me, so that his full lips collide with mine.

I want the kiss. I want him to suffer for this invasion of my personal space. I’m at war with myself, and