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“And that’s a cliché,” she said

He frowned at her “What?”

Rainne pushed away from him, tidied the first-aid kit and walked across the roos to put it on the desk

“I said it’s a cliché Every ro physical with the heroine then saying it was ahurt Macho bull-crap It wasn’t a ain if your poor, wee, delicate heart can’t handle it”

Alastair gaped at her

“I’ to use the bathroo ahich was as much of a cliché as the rubbish he’d spouted

???

Alastair watched Rainne stonation, and his chest ached with the need to keep on touching her He kneas behaving irrationally He didn’t want to touch her, but he couldn’t seem to stop She drew him to her like a bear to honey But he had to resist He had to fight the pull He had to re with Rainne would be a bad idea—the top one being she couldn’t be trusted not to rip his heart out all over again He closed his eyes with a groan He shouldn’t have kissed her All it did was ood it was between them

He couldn’t stop his ether It’d been snowing then too The Christerie shops were putting on a runway show Rainne should have been there—she was er of one of the shops—but instead she’d turned up at his door, cold and shivering So co—he later found out her family had ripped her apart, but at that ht of her He would have done anything, said anything, to make thin

gs okay for her He’d felt helpless and panicked as he’d taken her up to his bedroo to hit and let hi, eyes ith unshed tears, cheeks stained with the evidence of tears already shed And she had broken him in two

“You want to talk about it?” He hoped she would tell hi her

She shook her head, but didn’t utter a word Leaving hilanced around the roos he should ask or do to ht

“What do you want to do?” he asked at last

Her shoulders relaxed slightly as her wide blue eyes peered up at hi past his skin to deep inside of him To a place no one else had ever seen before

Without a word, she stepped in to him, stood on her toes and kissed hi, but she wouldn’t let hiue over the sea Rainboas addictive He’d never get enough His hands settled on the sainst hiainst his wiry fraers and then with his tongue