Page 72 of Bronx

I step away from him again.

“Visiting a patient.”

“Let me rephrase that. What the fuck are you doing here?”

The woman riding up with us shifts her eyes over at me, probably trying to determine whether I’m in some sort of trouble, and if she should call for help. I give her a small smile of assurance as the door opens at the next stop on the fifth floor. She gets off in a hurry but looks back at us just when the door closes.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snap back at Bronx.

“I’m simply asking a question. An hour ago you put a cake in the oven and were taking a walk, now you’re here. Why are you visiting the man who did that to your goddamn face?”

When he extends his arm and points to my eye, I unintentionally jump. Bronx pulls the emergency stop button in the elevator and glares at me as if he’s looking at someone he doesn’t recognize.

“Did you just flinch?” he asks incredulously.

“No,” I lie. “Why’d you stop the elevator?”

I’m growing increasingly anxious. I don’t like to be in small, enclosed spaces, especially when they’re dangling from a cable wire.

“Are you scared of me, Karma?”

“You’re being oversensitive. I didn’t flinch.”

I reach out to release the stop button, but he grabs my hand.

“I’m talking to you.”

“And I answered you.”

He pulls me in closer to his chest, a solid wall of warm muscle.

“Are you scared of me because I almost made you come we were in my kitchen?”

“Absolutely not,” I whisper, as if someone was still in the elevator with us and could overhear his dirty words.

He raises both of his hands and slams them against the wall of the elevator, directly above my head, boxing me in.

“I said the wrong thing earlier about how you were dressed. I didn’t mean shit by it. I just wanted to touch you again, and I thought that maybe you wanted me to.”

How can I tell him that I overreacted back at his apartment because of a million reasons that have nothing to do with him? How do I admit that if I wasn’t such a hopeless case that I would have let him touch me anywhere he wanted.

God, I wanted him to.

But sex is a complicated act for me. I’ve had plenty of it, but none of it was good, probably because I can never relax enough to enjoy it.

“I think we’ve strayed a bit from the real purpose of our arrangement.”

“You’d be surprised how well I can multitask,” he says with a completely serious look on his face. “I can find Lev, but I can also make you feel good. It doesn’t have to be an either or situation.”

I’ve never considered myself an exquisite beauty. I’m average looking at best and twenty pounds overweight. Men don’t cat call after me on the streets and women are rarely ever jealous of me. But the way Bronx is looking at me, the way he always seems to look at me, makes me second guess everything I’ve ever thought about myself.

“I don’t know–”

Bronx bends his head lower to mine as I stutter through my objection, and I swear it would be the perfect moment for another kiss if I wasn’t stuck in this metal box.

“Are you going to kiss me?” I ask nervously.

He uses a finger to lift my chin to meet his smoldering gaze.