This was crazy.
A few weeks ago, he’d given up on his new plan. He’d told himself to just fucking forget about it because the way she’d bounced back to that douchebag? Well, she obviously didn’t want him like he wanted her.
But then she called him out of the blue. Let him know it wasn’t what he thought. And that was that.
Now they were here at her door, with him silently begging her. Let me in. You fucking belong to me. Let me in.
He almost said the words out loud. But he swallowed them down before they made it all the way to his mouth.
Instead of saying what he wanted, Phantom took a step back and muttered, “Alright….bye.”
Her answering “Bye, and thank you again” hit his back as he walked away.
Almost ran.
He had to close himself back up in the passenger seat of the car to keep himself from forcing the issue.
She wasn’t ready, he advised himself, as Wayne drove him uptown.
He had to give her time. He had to be patient. He had to—
“Turn back around.”
The three words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Wayne glanced at him in the rearview. “You forget something?”
Phantom didn’t have a good answer for that question—at least not one that didn’t sound crazy and obsessive.
So he just said it again. “Turn around.”
And Wayne turned around.
There was a car accident on 86th, and they got caught in the kind of stand-still New York had made famous in the movies.
Son of a bitch. He couldn’t make himself wait—couldn’t sit still in the backseat.
Without a word of explanation to Wayne, he climbed out of the car and started walking toward her brownstone. Then running, his chest thundering with determination.
“Hak-kan?” Olivia asked when she opened her door to the sight of him panting. “Is everything alright?”
“Let me in,” he answered. “Let me in.”
13
OLIVIA
“Let me in.”
I didn’t think about it. I just opened the door wider and let him inside.
“Is everything alright?” I asked again as he bound in past me.
He scanned the door as I closed it behind him.
“Just two locks?” He eyed the deadbolt like it was a piece of scotch tape.
“Two locks are all I need,” I insisted—I’d had the same conversation with Skylar during her visit to the city.
He didn’t answer. Just stared at the lock, his black shark eyes burning with some emotion I couldn’t name.
“Why…?” My voice came out shakier than I wanted it to, so I swallowed and said, “Why are you here?”
My question drew his eyes away from the lock, and I wished I hadn’t asked it when he pinned me underneath that intense shark gaze.
“You were right.”
“I was right?” I repeated, unable to look away. “Right about what?”
“Me having needs.”
“Oh…” The confusion cleared, leaving behind a hollow, cold sensation in my chest. “So you’re here because you want to cheat?”
He shook his head slowly. “Nah, I don’t cheat.”
“But you just said you have needs.”
“Yeah, I do. But I got my fist. That can be enough.”
I looked to both sides. “So you came here to tell me you want to masturbate? That’s fine, of course. I’d never begrudge you tha—”
“O,” he said, cutting me off. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop being stupid,” he answered, his shark eyes burning into mine. “You know what I mean. You know why I’m here.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. But then…
Somewhere deep inside of me, the woman with sexual needs that I’d been squashing down rose up to answer all my questions.
He wants you, she told me. He came here. He asked you to let him in because he wants you.
Her claim tingled across my skin. But that couldn’t be true.
Could it?
As if in answer to my unspoken question, he stepped closer. So close that when I tried to step away, my back hit the door.
And did he apologize for erasing all but a sliver of the space between us? No. No, he didn’t.
In fact, he placed a hand on either side of my head, crowding me in further, filling my nose up with his signature scent of cold wind and danger.
“I have needs,” he said, his voice low and quiet. “But I fucked this up. I made it about you not cheating. I should have asked, do you have needs, too?”
I swallowed—at least I tried to swallow. My throat was so dry. It ended up a choke.
Our relationship was fake. We’d both agreed to that.
Adding anything extra to it wouldn’t be wise. I should tell him that, then send him away with a gentle good night—
“Yes…yes, I have needs,” my scared heart spit out before my brain could finish processing a wise reply.
Three words: I have needs. But they were the scariest things that had ever fallen out of my mouth.
And those three words were all it took.