RONAN BLACKWELL

She went rigid on the stool. Her hands were folded in her lap, her shoulders drawn tight beneath a robe she had knotted so firmly at the waist, and her dark hair, freshly brushed, fell all the way down her back to the stool. In the mirror, her face was flushed from the heat and the bath, her lips parted, and her eyes, wide and unfocused, stared somewhere past my reflection. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever wanted to destroy, and she had absolutely no idea how she looked with her pulse jumping like that at the side of her throat.

"If you're so hot,...