Page 92 of How to Kill Your Rival

‘Eliza.’ His voice is even. ‘I know you’ll gladly run yourself into the ground for Fraser, but I don’t want to see you dead because you’ve not looked after yourself. I couldn’t live with it.’

‘I need to be doing something. I can’t sleep. I can feel him out there, James, I can feel it, and every hour we’re not looking is an hour⁠—’

‘Stop.’ He steps between me and the window. ‘Look at me.’

I look past him.

‘Look at me,’ he demands, his voice dropping low and making me squirm in a whole different way.

When I meet his eyes, I see how red they are. Circles gathering below them where they don’t belong. We’re both tired. I know it. But how do you switch off when every hour counts?

I kick off my shoes before peeling my socks off. Not to go to bed, but because they ache.

‘We sleep, then we kill. Got it?’

‘I’m not tired. I’m fine.’

‘Your judgement is currently suggesting we storm a warehouse at four in the morning on no sleep and no plan, so respectfully⁠—’

‘Don’t you respectfully me.’

‘Go.’ He steps towards me. ‘The fuck.’ Another step. ‘To bed.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Just lie down. For a little while.’

‘My brother is in a box somewhere. Or a chair. Or… who the fuck knows, a grave.’ My voice catches, which I hate, only inflaming me further. ‘I am not lying in a hotel bed while he’s⁠—’

‘Then I’ll fucking tie you to it,’ he growls.

I glare, the urge to best him rearing up at the same time as I clench my thighs. Because, fuck, James in daddy mode is a whole new kind of interesting.

‘No, you won’t,’ I say.

‘Try me.’ He reaches for his belt, his fingers unbuckling the leather so slowly that I can’t help but bite my lip. I shouldn’t watch his veined hands the way I am, given the circumstances, and yet the slow pull of leather through the loops has me practically panting.

‘James…’ My voice is far breathier than I intend it to be.

‘Bed.’

A flame flickers low in my stomach. A need to push back.

‘Make me.’

It ignites the tension like a match.

His grey eyes shadow as his head tips down. The belt hangs from his hand while he assesses me. His focus goes from my rising chest to my clenched hands to my eyes.

My blood is on fucking fire. I need a place to expend all the despair I feel.

James lifts the belt, slapping it against his hand as I tense. Inching the softened leather across his hand, he watches me like a predator.

The sound cracks through the room when he cracks the belt against his hand.

I bolt.

It’s not rational. The room isn’t big, and I don’t want to take the chase into the corridor where I might knock down an unexpected granny. James is already moving, and I throw myself over the bed, rolling myself onto my feet and putting it between us. He goes left, and I go right. My heart thumps in my chest when he climbs the bed, making a grab for me, and I narrowly avoid him, throwing myself hard to the side. Despite Fraser and the bone-deep exhaustion, I am breathless and laughing. The laughter might be half-crazed, but still.