My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 130 I Had Almost Kissed Him

NALA POV

"I make the rules sweetheart."

That was the last thing I heard before his hand turned me so my back was against the door and I was staring directly at him and the first thing I noticed, the thing that short circuited whatever smart response I had lined up, was his eyes.

One blue. One brown.

I knew this. I had seen his face before, several times in fact but something about being this close with his hand still sitting on my waist and the door solid behind me made me look at them properly for the first time and they were genuinely unfair.

Like whoever designed this man looked at the rest of him and decided he needed one more thing to make him impossible to deal with on a basic human level. The heterochromia was doing something to me that I was not going to be admitting out loud to anyone including myself.

His other hand was still flat against the door above my head.

There was no space between us. None. I could feel every hard ridge of his body against mine and his face was close, too close, getting closer or maybe I was getting taller, one of the two, except I knew I wasn’t getting taller so maybe his face was getting closer to mine.

His breath was warm against my face.

I didn’t realize I had closed my eyes.

I really did not realize I had tipped my chin up either, lifted my lips toward him like my body had made a whole separate decision without running it past me first and had already committed and was not taking questions.

Then nothing.

I opened my eyes.

He was looking at me with that face, that completely unreadable, controlled, aggravating face and the corner of his mouth was doing something that was not quite a smile but was close enough to one that I wanted to push him.

So I pushed him.

Not hard, both hands flat against his chest, except he didn’t move at all. The fucker just looked down at my hands on his chest and then back up at my face and raised one eyebrow by about a millimeter which was somehow worse than if he had laughed at me.

"Don’t." I said it low.

"Don’t what."

"Don’t look at me like that."

"Like what Nalayna."

My full name again and in that voice. I genuinely needed him to stop doing that or I was going to do something I would have to spend a lot of time not thinking about afterward.

"Like you know something." I dropped my hands from his chest because leaving them there was not helping my argument. "You don’t know anything."

"I know you closed your eyes first."

I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck and I was grateful for my skin tone at that specific moment.

"I was blinking."

"For four seconds."

"I have dry eyes, it’s a condition, it’s medical, none of your business." I pressed back against the door like I could put more distance between us without him noticing that’s what I was doing. "And you still haven’t moved your hand."

He looked at where his hand was sitting on my waist like he had forgotten it was there, which I did not believe for a single second, and then he looked back at me and did not move it.

"The rules." I said, trying to locate the anger I had walked into this room with because it was somewhere and I needed it. "You can’t just decide you make the rules and expect me to stand here and accept that. That’s not how people work. That is not how I work."

"And yet here you are."

"Because you had your hand on the door."

"My hand is on your waist."

"There was a hand on the door."

"There was." He agreed, easy, like this conversation was a perfectly relaxed experience for him and the close proximity and my almost-kiss that I was already in the process of fully denying was just a regular Tuesday addition to his afternoon.

I hated him.

I hated him and his mismatched eyes and his one hand still on my waist and the specific warm smell of him at this distance and the fact that my body was completely betraying everything my mouth was trying to establish in this conversation.

He stepped back first. Slow and unhurried, like it was entirely his idea and his timeline. He picked his phone up from the chair and checked the screen and I used the five seconds of him not looking at me to get my face together.

"I need a phone." I said it to his back. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

He didn’t look up from his screen. "No."

"I’m not asking to make an international call I just need something to do, I’m going insane down here, there is genuinely nothing—"

"No."

I stared at the back of his head. "Did you hear the part where I said I’m going insane."

"I heard you."

"And?"

"And no." He slid his own phone into his pocket and turned around and looked at me with that same flat expression that I was learning meant the conversation was over on his end regardless of where it was on mine. "You don’t get a phone Carrot top."

"Because?"

"Because I said so."

I laughed completely without humor. "That is your answer? Because I said so? What am I, twelve?"

"You’re someone who is here because her brother owes me and has not paid." He said it plainly, no cruelty in it, it was an honest fact that gets laid down to remind you exactly where you stand and exactly how much room you actually have. "You’re not a guest. You don’t get bored and ask for things and receive them. That’s not what this is."

Something about hearing him say it out loud did something cold to the warmth that had been sitting in my chest approximately two minutes ago when his hand was on my waist and his breath was on my face and I had apparently lost my entire mind and tipped my lips up toward him like a complete and total idiot.

I was so angry at myself. Not at him, I expected this from him, this was exactly who he was and I had never had any illusions about it. I was angry at myself for the four seconds of closed eyes. For the chin tip. For the way my body had just gone completely rogue without consulting me and nearly handed him something he absolutely did not deserve and would have absolutely used against me.

"Right." I picked my jacket up from the chair. "Prisoner. Got it, I momentarily forgot."

"Don’t be dramatic."

"I’m not being dramatic, I’m being accurate, those are different things." I pulled the jacket on and smoothed it down because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t throwing something. "You keep me here, you keep information from me, you won’t give me a phone, you make rules and call them something else when it suits you. That’s a prisoner Ivin. Put whatever nicer word on it you want."

He looked at me and said nothing and the nothing was the most aggravating response available to him which he obviously knew.

"I’m going back to my room." I said it with as much dignity as I could gather, which was a reasonable amount all things considered. "To stare at the walls. Because that is apparently the full scope of what’s available to me."

"Nala."

I was already at the door.

"When Ethan pays what he owes you get your phone." He said it to my back.

I walked out without turning around because turning around meant he would see my face and my face was currently doing several things I had not authorized.

I made it all the way down the corridor, around the corner and into my room before I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both hands over my face and replayed the moment against my will.

The chin tip.

The closed eyes.

The four seconds.

I had almost kissed Ivin. My brother’s torturer and former best friend, my unofficial captor, a man who had just looked me in the eyes and reminded me without blinking that I was essentially collateral.

I had almost kissed him and he had not even kissed me back, he had just stood there and watched me do it and now he had that, sitting in his pocket alongside his phone, for whenever he decided he wanted to take it out and use it.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

I needed to get out of this building.