“Let me make something very clear.” My voice comes out low and cold and controlled even though inside I’m anything but. “You and Luca belong to me now. You’re going to live in this house under my rules. You’re going to tell me everything aboutmy son. Every single detail you kept from me. And there’s no negotiating. No running away. No escape.”
“I’m not your possession.” Her voice shakes, but she holds my stare. She’s fighting to keep that spark of defiance alive. “I’m a person with rights. You can’t just?—”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want.” I lean in closer until our faces are almost touching, until I can see the individual flecks of green in her eyes. “You came to me for protection. You put yourself in my territory. That means you play by my rules now.”
“Those aren’t rules, that’s prison!”
“Then you should have thought about that before you called me.” My hand moves from the desk to her hip, gripping hard enough to make her gasp. “Before you got on that plane. Before you walked back into my life with my son and no explanation.”
“I didn’t have a choice! Someone’s trying to kill me!”
“And whose fault is that?” I shift my weight and my thigh presses between her legs. Not intentional, but I don’t move away when I feel her breath catch. When I see her pupils dilate despite the anger radiating off her. “You stayed hidden for six years and now someone’s found you. Someone’s hunting you. And you ran straight to the man you’ve been hiding from because you had nowhere else to go.”
“I hate you.” The words come out through gritted teeth, but her body is telling a completely different story. Her hands have come up to my chest, but she’s not pushing me away. Her fingers are curled into my shirt like she can’t decide whether to pull me closer or shove me back.
“No, you don’t.” I can see it in her eyes, can feel it in the way her body responds to my proximity. “You hate that you still want me. That even now, even angry and scared and trapped, your body remembers exactly what it felt like when I was inside you.”
Her hands tighten in my shirt and for a second I think she’s going to slap me. But instead she just holds on, her knuckles white with the force of her grip.
“You don’t know anything about what I want.”
“Don’t I?” I drop my voice lower, letting it scrape against her like sandpaper. “Your pulse is racing. Your breathing’s uneven. And if I slid my hand between your legs right now, I bet I’d find you wet for me despite how much you claim to hate me.”
“You’re such a bastard.”
“I never claimed otherwise.” I lean in until my lips are almost brushing her ear, and I feel her shiver despite herself. “But you still came back to me. You still called my number after six years. You still got on that plane knowing exactly what I am.”
She turns her head and suddenly our mouths are inches apart. I can feel her breath on my lips, can see the war happening in her eyes as she battles between wanting to knee me in the balls and wanting something else entirely.
“I came back because I had no choice.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” My hand slides from her hip to cup her face, forcing her to look directly at me. “But we both know you could have gone to the police. Could have disappeared again. Could have done a dozen things that didn’t involve walking back into my life.”
“The police can’t protect me from these people.”
“And you think I can?”
“I think you’re dangerous enough that they’ll think twice before coming after me.”
“I am dangerous.” I grip her face harder, my thumb brushing across her lower lip. “Especially to you. Because you’ve been running from me for six years and now you’re exactly where I wanted you. In my house. Under my control. With nowhere left to run.”
“This isn’t about control.”
“Everything is about control.” I can feel her trembling now, whether from fear or desire or both, I can’t tell. “And you gave me all of it the second you got on that plane. The second you brought my son to me.”
Her hands are still fisted in my shirt, and I can feel the tension vibrating through her entire body. She’s terrified and furious and attracted to me all at once and she doesn’t know how to handle any of it.
That makes two of us because I don’t know whether I want to strangle her or fuck her against this desk.
Maybe both.
“I’m not staying here forever,” she says, but there’s no conviction in her voice anymore.
“We’ll see about that.”
“The second the threat is gone, Luca and I are leaving.”
“Are you?” I let my thumb trace her jawline and watch her eyes darken. “You really think I’m going to let you take my son away from me again after I just found out he exists?”
