Page 33 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Brice

S he is magnificent.

She is so beautifully red from the rage I can see broiling under her skin, and I want to bend her over her desk to show her how much I like the sight of her reddened cheeks.

Maybe I’ll make her butt cheeks an assorted color to match.

My mind catches on something she said though, because for once there is no trace of deceit in that speech of hers.

She finished coding to remove that special part of mayhem that makes my mind see black when it comes to my best friend.

She’s not done with the rest, but she already knows how to get my feelings back. She still doesn't know how to get my sensations back, but after last night, do I really need anything back?

I don’t know if it was because it happened for the first time in what felt like forever, but I can definitely say that I felt. I felt a lot yesterday when I came with the idea of her in my mind.

“Let’s take things one at a time,” I answer her calmly.

It seems to piss her off some more.

“Stop being so calm,” she answers me. “I’m telling you I haven’t found a way to completely cure you even after a week of working and you’re answering me like this problem is merely a bug that you swatted away. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You already know what is wrong with me, Miss Furious,” I answer her in the same calm tone.

“And stop calling me that!” Is the only answer she manages to bite back.

“But it suits you so well,” I say as I get even closer.

I can see the throbbing vein at her temple and I press my thumb to it before following the line it makes up to her hair.

She uncrosses her arms and hits me in the chest with her right fist.

“Don’t touch me,” she says.

But I catch her fists and bring them to the small of her back with both of my hands before pinning them in my left one and bringing my right one back where it was.

“But why?” I ask, “You look so pretty when you’re mad at me. It’s like you want me to make you so damn furious.”

I know I’m probably delusional with that last part but I also know that it might piss her off some more.

As if on cue, her cheeks darken.

“You have no right,” she says between gritted teeth.

I let my thumb trail from her temple to her heated cheek and then to the pulsing at the side of her throat.

I feel my fangs elongate.

What the hell?

I withdraw my hands as if the contact of her skin burned me, when I actually know that it is more about the fact that my body is betraying me.

I don’t understand what is going on with myself.

It’s like my own body decided to go from zero to one hundred in just a day and it shouldn’t be possible.

Your brain and body are messed up, you idiot. Everything is possible.

Touché.

Florentine looks at me like she doesn’t understand what is going on either. Her face is painted with more mistrust than bewilderment, though.

“Anyway,” I tell her, trying to compose myself again. “The block is the most important for now, but that’s not why I came here.”

She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to elaborate as she crosses her arms back under her breasts.

She keeps doing that but I don’t think she realizes how much that simple movement makes her breasts stand out so much.

“You would keep feeding yourself with coffee and pastry if no one came to force you to eat a proper dinner,” I tell her and I have half a mind to congratulate myself because not once do my eyes drop to her stretched shirt right under my nose. “So here I am, picking you up for dinner.”

I belatedly realize it might have sounded like I was picking her up for a date, and I guess that would explain why her eyes narrow and she looks at me like she thinks there’s a trap in what I just said.

“Dinner?” Florentine asks. “As in dinner in the dining room or dinner out?”

Ahhh so, yes, she’s preoccupied about the idea that it could be a date, but not the way one could expect. She doesn’t want it to be a date, not because she doesn’t want to date me—even if that idea is completely ludicrous—but because she doesn’t want to spend time with only me.

She still doesn’t like the fact I can read through her lies, and it’s probably what she hates the most about me.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re eating in the dining room tonight,” I tell her.

She visibly relaxes.

“Let’s go then,” she says without letting me add anything before she’s passed me and is out of the lab.

I should add something, though, because I have a feeling she’s either going to be disappointed or mad.

Because what I’m not telling her is the fact that she’ll still have to eat with only me.

Why?

Because I timed the exact moment I was going to pick her up with the end of the crew’s dinner.

And why is that exactly?

Because I’m an asshole with controlling issues and if there is even a chance to make her mad, I’m not letting anyone else see it.

Will it give me more chances for it to happen? Obviously.

It looks like I live for the little thrill her rage gives me these days, so why would I deprive myself of it?