Take My Breath Away

Even though Blair was struggling quite a bit, Wesley ignored that resistance and carried her out of the car.

"Humph!" With a gruff mumble, she straightened her clothes and then made her way towards the elevator as soon as he put her down. She didn't even seem to be in a mood to wait for him.

However, she couldn't get rid of him so easily. Wesley caught up to her and grabbed her arm. "What!" she almost roared, turning around.

"You seem really short-tempered and hold in too many feelings. That's not good for your health. You know what? Let's take the stairs. The exercise is good for venting out some anger." She could be as troublesome as she wanted to be, but he was an expert in taming people.

"No! I'm so not taking the stairs! You take the stairs! Let go of me, you jerk!" No matter how much she despised wasting energy on the stairs, she was taken to them anyway.

'Twenty-one floors! Forty-two flights of stairs! Damn this heartless, cold-blooded, overbearing tyrant!' Her legs started shaking at the very thought. "Wesley, if you really want to climb the stairs, go ahead and knock yourself out; but I don't want to. I'm not a masochist. I want to ride the elevator. Let me go!"

Wesley must have had some plan in his head because he stopped at the bottom of the stairs to give her a chance to soften her tone before starting climbing. "What do you plan to do tomorrow?" he asked again.

"Sleeping!" She was still fuming. 'He is the devil.'

That was it! The anger still hadn't gone away! Holding her arm, Wesley started ascending the stairs. Blair shouted behind him, "Wesley, it serves you right that you've been single for so many years. No wonder not a single girl likes you. You don't deserve one! You don't even know how to treat a girl!"

Wesley turned around and asked her in a simple tone, "Aren't you a girl?"

Caught up in her fury, Blair didn't understand where his question was coming from. She had forgotten that she liked Wesley once upon a time. But still she retorted, "What a stupid question! Of course I am!"

Wesley didn't press further, but he seemed satisfied.

When they reached the third floor, Blair finally realized what he had meant. Panting, she tried to argue with him. "Nuh-uh, nice try! But I told you I was over you. Tomorrow, I'll bring home a boyfriend to prove it to you. And he's going to be much more handsome, taller, stronger, more thoughtful, and more successful than you are. He is going to be perfect!" Even she had no idea what she was saying.

"Okay," Wesley nodded calmly. To be honest, he would be really happy for her if she could find someone like that; if such a someone existed at all!

When they reached the sixth floor, Blair felt like she couldn't breathe anymore, but she still couldn't convince Wesley to let her go. And the fact that she had trouble breathing did not help her cause in any way since she could not speak.

'Boo...hoo... this evil man. How can he torture me like this?' she thought sadly. The fury was slowly turning in

ut of a sigh of relief and tried not to puke. Grabbing the handrail to steady herself, she looked at Wesley miserably and told him, "Leave! I don't want to see you right now."

Ignoring what she was saying, he turned around and squatted down. "Fine! Come on up!" he demanded. Come to think about it, every time when he wanted to punish her, he had ended up coaxing her into doing something SHE wanted. It was baffling! Like how did she manage to do that? Even a soldier like him was unable to tame this woman!

Blair climbed onto his back. "I have to say you asked for this. It was your idea to climb the stairs, and now it is you giving me a piggyback ride all the way up to the twenty-first floor." In retrospect, it was rather ironic!

She also had to confess to herself that the man had incredible stamina. He carried her up from the tenth floor to the twenty-first without stopping for a breather.

Deciding that she would give him a break, Blair had even suggested that she could climb the last four sets of stairs when they reached the nineteenth floor, but Wesley had objected. "I said that I would carry you upstairs, and carry you upstairs I will," was his response.

Finally, when they were back in their apartment, Blair all but ran into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the shelf and handed it to Wesley. "Here, drink some water. Do you want it to be boiled?" As far as she recalled, he never had mineral water boiled. By habit, he merely unscrewed the lid and gulped it down.

Wesley looked at the bottle in her hand and took it with a slight smile, his first one in a long while. "No need. But I can see that you're a pretty good liar."

"What?" Blair was confused.

Wesley took another huge gulp of water without responding to her words. He didn't want to embarrass her further.

Then she remembered that she had told him earlier there was no mineral water left in their home. Damn! "This is the last bottle," she said, trying to save face with an embarrassed smile.