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“Which is?”
“She’s a prostitute.”
Dahlia froze. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but the rest of her never moved. Except her eyelids—she blinked so many times, a smaller person would have started flying.
“I don’t understand.” She finally relaxed, frowning up at me. “Isn’t she a part of the business?”
“Yes. She owns ten percent, I believe, per my mother’s will. She shuns it because she believes we disowned her because of the pregnancy. Problem is, the will was ironclad. It’ll roll over to her daughter, whether she wants it to or not. My father attempted to have Perrie removed as a part-owner, but there’s no way in hell to do it. My parents owned the business sixty-forty, and the ten percent my mother passed on upon her death belonged to her. He’s powerless and it kills him.”
“Why would she do that when she has a rolling income? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, sweetheart. Like I said, I tried. She made it perfectly clear what she wanted. I do what I can with what I have. If I had my way, I’d have her and her daughter living here with me.”
She smiled sadly, touching my face once more. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a really good guy?”
I raised an eyebrow. “No, actually. That’s generally the last thing people say.”
“Then, they’re idiots.”
I raised my other eyebrow.
“No, don’t look at me like that.” She tapped my chest. “I will admit that when we met, I thought you were a bit of an asshole.”
I snorted.
“All right, a lot of an asshole. A raging one with hemorrhoids, actually,” she paused, and I cracked the smallest of smiles. “But, you were just annoying. Infuriating. I plotted your murder a few times.” Another pause. “But you’re not a bad person, Damien. That’s evident by everything you’re doing for your sister even though she doesn’t want it.”
“It doesn’t make me a good person, either.”
“Maybe not. But isn’t it better to question whether or not you’re a good person than knowing that you’re a bad person?”
“Stop making sense,” I said quietly, cupping her chin and tilting her face upward. My eyes searched hers, looking for the knowledge that I was guilty, that the blame of some of what had happened lay with me.
I searched.
And searched.
And searched.
I didn’t find it.
It wasn’t there.
There was no hint of blame for the child I’d been. There was no hint of it for the teenager I’d been and the adult I was. There was nothing but understanding—pure, real understanding of the pain I’d been through and the guilt I’d carried inside me for so many years.
There was nothing but Dahlia—of the woman who’d proved herself to be worth a thousand of me.
Yet, as I stared into her eyes, maybe I was worthy of her, too.
Maybe I was worthy of her love.
Because there was no doubt about it. This woman held my heart in the palm of her hand. I didn’t know when it’d happened, when I’d fallen wholly in love with her, but I fucking had.
She had the power to create me or crush me.
Everything I was, belonged to her.
Mind.
Body.
Heart.
Soul.
There wasn’t an inch of me that she didn’t own.
Each one burned with the imprint of her existence. Of her heart and her soul—of the goodness that she embodied with every step, every smile, every blink of her goddamn beautiful eyes.
Fuck.
All the whole pieces of me, every last shattered fragment of me, loved her.
I loved her.
And there was no going back from this. Not now.
“You know,” I said, my voice low and gruff as I held onto her like my life depended on her, “six weeks ago, I didn’t know who the fuck you were. I didn’t care. Now, all I care about is that I don’t have to be in a position where I might forget you.”
She stared at me—then, she leaned in and kissed me.
She didn’t need to say anything.
Her kiss said she felt the fucking same.
***
The clock on the nightstand told me I hadn’t had nearly enough sleep to face the day, no matter how soundly I’d slept in the end. Apparently, talking about everything had been the therapy I needed to sleep like the dead.
Having Dahlia Lloyd curled against me wasn’t exactly hard.
Unless you asked my fucking cock. It was as hard as it could be. My hips were currently a few inches back from her since I had no desire to wake her up. She hadn’t shown up to my house until the small hours last night, and we’d talked until at least four in the morning. It wasn’t even nine yet.
She was exhausted.
The last thing she needed was my cock poking into her.
Unfortunately, that was the exact thing I wanted.
My cock inside her tight little pussy.
Goddamn it.
I rolled over onto my back and covered my eyes with my hand. She needed to sleep. She was tired. She had to sleep longer than four hours.
