Bree
The moment his words registered—the moment I actually grasped what he was saying—I forgot how to breathe. My lungs refused to expand, air caught tight in my throat, while the rest of me seemed to ignite from the inside out. My entire body was filling with fire, with a kind of molten heat I had never experienced before. It wasn’t just attraction, not the simple flutter that came when someone cute glanced my way. No, this was deeper, rawer, like a spark had caught somewhere in the very center of me and was spreading fast, taking over every nerve.
He didn’t want anyone else to touch me. The words kept echoing inside my head, rolling around, gaining more weight with each repeat. Did he mean it in the most obvious sense—that no one should hurt me, that no one was allowed to lay a hand on
