Page 35 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“You said it yourself, Dami. We’re in another man’s house right now. I won’t have my protection sleeping down the hallway from me. I want him here, close by.”

“Then I’ll sleep on the goddamn floor.”

“You’ll sleep where I tell you to sleep.”

I spin around, frustrated as hell, and look at that calm, unreadable face. “And where will that be?” I grit out.

He tilts his head slightly. “Right here. Next to me. As usual.”

A few breaths pass. “Is that really what you want?” I ask at last.

“That is really what I want.”

Every second I’m next to him, breathing in that smell of his, feeling his warmth, will be agony. He must know that.

But I owe him. He’s within his rights. If he wants to punish me, he should go ahead and punish me.

He reaches over to switch off the light on his side of the bed, and the room plunges into semi-darkness, leaving just a stripe of moonlight on the wall from the break in the curtains.

I undress in the dark then slide in next to him, careful to stay at the far edge of the mattress.

His breathing doesn’t slow for a long time. I lie on my side of the bed and count his breaths in the dark, one after another.

I do want to tell him I’m sorry.

Sorry about everything.

But words don’t make a damn bit of difference, do they?

CHAPTER 13

CALIGULA

I know I’m being watched before I know I’m awake.

That sense I developed while living on the streets has never gone away. And after spending so much time as Damiano Orsini’s prisoner, there’s a very special feeling I get when his eyes are on me.

That’s how I know his eyes are on me now.

I turn over in bed and time shifts. There’s a man in a chair and he’s watching me sleep, and I’m back in the basement.

I bolt upright and the basement dissolves. I take in pale blue silk wallpaper and winter light, and the Morelli mansion reassembles itself around me. I’m not in the basement.

But the chair is real, and Dami is in it, dressed, shaved, hands resting casually. Watching me.

“What are you doing?” I ask sharply.

He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “I cleared out the old house yesterday. The collection in the basement survived. The renovation company will have all your family’s furniture cleaned and crated by tonight.”

There were so many words, but only one caught my attention. “The basement?” I echo. He just nods.

Two feelings go through me at once in opposite directions, making me feel like a rubber band stretching thinner and thinner. The first is relief so violent, it’s almost nausea. The second…

Cold fury.

And then the rubber band snaps. “That was mine to decide, Dami.”

His brows twitch together. “What?”