Read Break Away (Away, Book 1) for Free Online Page A

bit by bit the hand holding the envelope, until it
was leveled to his hip. If he was doing it on purpose or not, if it
was part of some stupid strategy, it didn’t matter. I threw my hand
forward in a mightily attempt, but in the same second, he snapped
back his hand behind him and I crushed against him. The soft flesh
crowning my chest lessened the hard contact, though it hurt a
little. Ian was pure lean muscle; even the ripples of his abs were
obvious under the fabric of his shirt.
    Okay, I had to give him that. The guy had an
amazing body.
    I pushed away the thought from my mind in a
flash and glared at him more intently, keeping the short distance
between our bodies. My eyes almost shooting sharp ice balls.
“Forget the kicking ass thing. I would gladly cover you up in meat
juice and push you down into a bed of starving ants,” I said
slowly, each word infused with dark fury.
    He leaned down his head, placing his face
only an inch away from mine, and whispered, “I'm not afraid of you,
Dafne.” His voice blew into my lips. And that’s not what shot a
shiver up my spine in that moment. Behind those words that seemed
so daring and bold, echoed a sort of promise. A promise of what? I
didn’t know. But it suffused his sharp words with warmth—a
startling contradiction.
    He was still staring at me with great
intensity, the emerald in his eyes deep in exasperation. This was
entirely new, this almost intimate approach, which was the thing
that jolted me out of my confusion and opened my eyes to the hidden
machinations inside his infuriating mind. I’d forgotten who I was
facing.
    “And I’m not affected by you, Ian,” I
muttered pushing my face closer, the tip of our noses nearly
touching. “You can work your ways through people to lure them to do
your every wish and need, but like I’ve told you a zillion times
before, I'm not one of them.” It wasn’t that he was trying
to seduce me or anything like it—he was my sister’s
boyfriend, and not even he, an innate Casanova, could’ve fallen
that low—he just wanted to break my ice-solid defenses down so he
could prove to himself that even an ice queen like me weakened to
his presence. He needed his massive ego to be pampered whenever he
was around me, and that, I think, wasn’t a pleasant feeling for a
guy like him.
    “That’s not wh—”
    “Well,” Buffy’s sudden flat voice cut him
sideways, but we didn’t pull away, just kept glaring at each other
like tigers on the verge of clawing at their victims. “If it wasn’t
because of the hostility glowing in your eyes, I would’ve thought
you were about to cheat on me—both of you.”
    At that, Ian stepped back and turned to look
at Buffy. Taking advantage of his distraction, I swung my hand
forward and finally snatched the envelope from his hands. He gave a
little gasp of surprise and then let it go with a soft shake of his
head. He reached Buffy’s hand and pulled her into his arms. “Where
were you, babe?”
    I mimicked his words with a grimace, the tip
of my tongue escaping past my lips like a four-year old. Since Ian
was giving me his back, he didn’t notice—he might’ve felt it
because it’d been as sharp as the tongue of a poisonous snake—but
Buffy did, with a roll of her eyes over his broad shoulders. “Were
you stealing Dafne’s PETA mail again?” She looked up to see him.
“Why can’t you two just get along like civilized people?”
    “Let’s not talk about her, okay? It’s a
waste of time.” He leaned down and kissed her.
    If it’s such a waste of time, then why do
you stick your nose in my mail asshole, I thought with a
frown.
    After a few seconds, the merging of mouths
started to get so intense and so…nauseating that I had to sit down
before I would see the contents of my stomach splattered on the
rug. “Oh, get a room, would you?” I snapped, annoyed while
squeezing a piece of sushi between the chopsticks. “If you’re more
interested in each other’s throats than