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Persy quivered inwardly as well as outwardly as the pleasure began to radiate throughout her whole body.
“You have a Persephone file?” She was too curious not to ask rather than pushing Casper away, as she knew she should.
“Only a mental one,” he confirmed huskily. “I don’t want anyone else to know the pleasure I feel when I have you pressed against me. Or be aware of how sexy the curves and hollows of your body are beneath your business suit. Or know of the big heart inside you that can’t bear to know of anyone being treated badly without trying to help them.” He raised his head to look at her. “But I’ll make sure everyone knows the moment you agree to be mine.”
She swallowed. “Yours?”
“Mm,” he murmured confirmation. “I no longer want to fight fate, so I’m on board with it all now. Which means I belong to you, and you belong to me.”
Persy’s whole body flushed at the thought of this man belonging to her. Of her belonging to him.
Her mother had died when she was very young, and she barely remembered her. For the next five years, it had been just her and her father. Then her father had met May, and she and her eight-year-old daughter had moved in to live with them. For the next thirteen years, they had been a happy family. A year ago, that had all been shattered, first by pain, and then by death.
Her father had been emotionally destroyed and was now a mere shell of the man he had once been.
Persy had refused to be destroyed and instead became an instrument of retribution.
She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she still missed the loving family they had all become. Maybe because she kept herself so busy saving other people who were victims of violence and abuse, there wasn’t time for her to sit and brood about her own loneliness.
She might have chosen to enter the military when she was eighteen, and her father and May might never have married each other—May had believed it to be an antiquated system at best and an unnecessary burden at worst—but in every way that mattered, May had been Persy’s mother and her daughter had been Persy’s little sister.
They were both gone now.
Both dead because of the actions of a single man.
Persy’s family, destroyed because of that man’s penchant for violence.
If he wasn’t dead already, Persy knew she would have hunted him down and killed him herself.
“Persephone…?” Gentle fingers beneath her chin lifted her face so that Casper could look at her. “Has the thought of the two of us being together made you cry?”
It was the first indication Persy had that she was crying.
She reached up to touch one of her cheeks, instantly feeling the wetness of the tears that were cascading down them.
She very rarely allowed her emotions to become this raw, knew from experience the tears would continue to fall now, possibly for hours, maybe even for the rest of the night.
She didn’t want that. “Take me to bed, Casper.” She deliberately used his given name again now that she knew how much he liked it when she did.
He looked at her searchingly for several long seconds before speaking again. “There’ll be no turning back once we take that step together,” he warned gruffly.
She gave a choked laugh. “How can you say that when I have a list in my possession of the people you’ve been intimate with in the past four months and never seen again?”
“You’re different,” he insisted. “We’re different.”
She released a heavy sigh. “Why does everything with you have to be so complicated?”
“Because you already mean too much to me to be a casual one-night stand.”
She eyed him frustratedly. “How can that be true when you’ve only known me for such a short time?”
“In the same way my cousin Adam knew after a single glance at the woman he’s now married to. And Max, Sinclair, Felix, and Darius. Malachi too. We just know. Admittedly, I never thought it would happen to me but here you are.”
“Here I am…?”
Casper almost burst out laughing at the wary expression he could see in Persy’s eyes. Except he knew this situation wasn’t in the least funny.
He really had thought he would escape what he had jokingly called the “family curse” of falling almost instantly in love with the woman they were destined to spend the rest of their life with.
