Want.
An old devotion that should have been crushed underfoot.
Clearly, I was the fool.
I gripped her by the chin. “You’d do well not to underestimate me, Aster Rose.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, I scooped her up and tossed her frozen ass over my shoulder.
“Are you kidding me?” she shrieked, her legs kicking in a bid to get free. “Put me down.”
“Nope. Not going to happen.”
She screeched as I tucked her into the front passenger’s seat of my car so she wouldn’t end up an ice block. I yanked the seatbelt across her body and clicked it into place.
“There.” I smiled like I was proud of the great job I’d done.
“Logan.” Ferocity and frustration filled every line of her expression.
I just held that smug smile, shut the door, and rounded the front of the car so I could slip into the driver’s side.
I didn’t dare glance that way as I put the car into drive and gunned it because having her this close promised to do me in.
I ignored the tugging of inevitability. The lure. The draw.
Gravity.
It felt like this moment had been coming for a billion years and there would have been nothing either of us could have done to stop it.
Her breaths were shallow. Short and panted and filling the cabin like an intoxicating dream. Every twitch of her body I felt like a spark.
“What do you want from me, Logan?” Her attention was focused ahead, her fingers clutched together on her lap so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Did you actually think I was going to leave you out there in the snow to fend for yourself?”
I heard the thick swallow that got lodged in her throat. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’d get eaten alive out there.”
“By you.” A ripple of distrust vibrated through her body.
Like I was to blame and not her dumb-as-fuck husband who’d been stupid enough to meet my proposition?
The laughter that ripped from me was low. “There isn’t anything within twenty miles, and you aren’t going to get service. You really want me to dump you on the side of the road? Fine. Be my guest.”
I wouldn’t. But fuck. I could barely handle the hatred that emanated from her. The distrust. The disbelief.
How the fuck did we end up here?
Because I remembered…I remembered.
I roughed my fingers through my hair like it could staunch the roil of agony that was threatening to burst.
She inhaled a sharp breath before she released it in surrender, her teeth gritting when she pressed, “Why would you make that bet?”
Because he was a monster.
Because she no longer shined when she was standing at his side.