Page 61 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

He pulled his hand away and my eyes flew open. “Youshouldn’t have done that? If I remember correctly, I did thedoing, you did the sitting.”

He smirked, his eyes crinkling just a little bit in that perfect way. “IfIremember correctly, I told you what to do.”

“But before thatItoldyouto tell me what to do. So it comes back to me initiating.”

“Kiss me.”

“What?” I glared at him.

“I’m telling you what to do without you initiating it. Kiss me.”

“That’s not fair,” I huffed, “You can’t just tell me to kiss you in order to win an argument.”

“Cordelia Montgomery, with all due respect, shut the fuck up and kiss me.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up at his harsh words, and the rough edge to his tone. I’d always hated being told what to do, but whenhedid it… inthatvoice…

“Screw you,” I muttered, grabbed his collar and pulled him to me.

I wasn’t even pretending to hold back. I kissed him with my lips, my tongue, my teeth. I kissed him in a way that curved my body into his. I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe.

“Point made,” he rasped, chest rising and falling fast against mine.

“No,” I gasped and stole another kiss from his lips, “I’ve kissed you multiple times without having to be told to. I like kissing you. This kiss just coincidentally happened after you told me to kiss you.”

He rasped a laugh, and my eyes fell shut as I soaked the sound in like sunshine. “You win this round,” he said, “but one day soon, I’ll tell you to get naked and wrap your legs around me and you’ll do as I say.”

“You know where to find me when you want to test that theory.”

“Soon. Just a little more time.” He kissed my forehead. “I promise.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“That job of yours pays well?”Luka asked as he took the exit off the I-90, which meant I was less than 10 minutes from being home with Cordelia.

“Yeah.” I’d barely needed a cent of the money over the years, considering Cordelia put a roof over my head and paid for the food. I knew better than to let Luka know that I had half a fortune in the bank by now though. “It’s good work.”

“Waiting on some rich girl's hand and foot?”

“Sure.” The housekeeper, took care of cleaning, laundry and most groceries. That, too, was information I wasn’t willing to volunteer though.

“Why?”

I shrugged and tossed the ice pack to the backseat. It had lost its cooling effect hours ago, leaving my face hot and throbbing.

“Come on, what are the upsides? Sell it to me. Because you decided to be a fucking butler instead of getting out of the country. You look like the biggest idiot in the world to me - and we both know that you still have a fully functioning brain in that thick head of yours. At least for the time being.”

I didn’t particularly care about what my cousin thought of me or my choices, but he had been the one person who had understood why I had to get out. Not just out of the octagon, butout. If only he understood that there was better for him out there too.

“She’s good, Luka. She’s a genuinely good person. It’s nothing like what we grew up with.” I flexed my jaw. “It’s like waking up from a nightmare. You don’t realize you were stuck in hell until you sit up in your bed and the world is actually quiet and safe.”

“Yeah, no, I think you’re full of shit.” He chuckled and shook his head. “The real world is hell. You’re just escaping into a perfect little dream. Helps that she has boobs and legs, so being her lap dog doesn't seem so bad. It’s time to wake up and face reality, man.”

He was wrong, but he had spent 30 years being fed this reality. One crappy metaphor wasn’t going to deprogram our family’s shit out of him. He was right about one thing though. I had to wake up. I had dragged Cordelia into my nightmare. She deserved better.

“Is that why you told your father where I was? Because I didn’t take the chance to get out of the country and decided to stay with a woman?”

“I told him jack shit, Vitya.”