Page 38 of Iron

I couldn’t read her reaction. Not even a little bit. I would have said that she had been shocked but I didn’t think that was it.

She almost seemed confused as her head slightly cocked to the side and those cold blue eyes roamed over my face.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said to me.

I wasn’t really sure how to react to that. She hadn’t said that I didn’t have to do that. She made a statement as if she disapproved of me doing it. Yeah, I was confused as fuck.

I cleared my throat before I attempted to speak.

“I thought I’d clean up a little for this.”For you.But I wasn’t going to say that. Mostly because I knew she didn’t want to hear it.

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I know.” I blew out a frustrated breath and scratched at the much shorter hair covering my jaw. It wasn’t like I had shaved it all off. I just trimmed it. You know, a lot. I knew she sometimes liked to draw her fingers through my beard and maybe I should have thought about it a little more before I started cuttin’. But there was still plenty there to tickle her fingertips. Not enough for her to grab, but my chin wouldn’t mind the break.

She made a strange noise in the back of her throat. Almost like she was disgusted.

“Well, you can’t fix it now. We should go,” she said as she moved to the elevator, snagging a silver clutch off of the arm of the couch as she walked.

I blew out a harsh breath.

I followed behind her thinking it was best if I let it go.

But as the doors closed behind us, I couldn’t.

“Need you to know one thing, Pet,” I said as I gripped her hip and pinned her to the back mirrored wall of the moving box. Her head tilted to the side as she pinned me with a warning look. “You didn’t ask me to do this. I get that. I’m not saying you did. But I did do it. I did it for myself and for you. Because I know you’d never say it, but I get how much this means to you. Just like I know how much these girls mean to you. I get it because I feel the same about my boys. So, yeah, I get this is a big fuckin’ deal to you. And I wanted to show you that I care too.”

“Why?” she asked like she didn’t understand what the fuck was going on here.

Petra wasn’t dumb. She might have been a little emotionally off but that wasn’t because she didn’t feel. It was because she kept her feelings closed down. She didn’t hide them. Instead, she chose to make them invisible. Chose to cut them off before they blossomed into something more.

She needed the words.

So I was going to give them to her.

Loud and fuckin’ clear.

“Because I care about you. A whole fuckin’ lot, Pet.”

Her eyes narrowed like she couldn’t understand why I would care about her.

“Yeah, I love to fuck you,” I went on. “Love it so much that I haven’t been with anyone while I’ve been with you. Don’t even want to. Even though you keep me at a distance and toss me crumbs when it works for you. I take it because when I’m not here with you, I think about you more than just to get myself off. Hear me?”

Her painted mouth parted as she blinked at me.

She didn’t say anything but that one little movement let me know she was hearing me alright.

The elevator stopped moving. The doors opened then closed and we remained still.

“So, here’s what’s gonna happen.” I held her eyes as I kept on talking. “I’m going to tell you how fuckin’ beautiful you look and you’re going to smile at me, say thank you, and then tell me how motherfuckin’ dashing I look. Then you’re going to take that sweet little hand of yours and touch my face because you need to feel what I’ve done for this moment. You’re going to acknowledge it and then you’re going to press those luscious lips against mine because I’ve been dying to have them on me since I saw you.”

There was something that happened the moment my words sunk into her pretty little head. I couldn’t begin to explain it, but a part of her that I’d never seen kicked on.

“Petra,” I said, my face moving closer to hers as I breathed out the next words. “You look sexy as hell tonight.”

I raised a brow at her and waited. Ball was in her court. She had a choice to smirk and watch it roll to a stop, or melt and hit it back to me.

I honestly wasn’t sure which one she would choose.